CHAPTER 14
Brett
“The weak are always trying to sabotage the strong.”
“Huh?” Layla shouts.
“Shhhhhh.” I can’t help but laugh, slouching farther down in my seat. I tap the ear of Layla’s headset, reminding her that on a plane she has to speak at a volume she can’t hear. Layla has never been on a plane before. The passengers around us don’t seem at all bothered. A few actually chuckle. Because even on a red-eye to London in seats that don’t recline all the way back, Layla beguiles. How could she not? She looks like an off-duty model on her way to walk her first runway at London Fashion Week, and unlike her mother, she chose to fly coach so that an Imazighen woman could afford a loaf of bread to feed her children tonight.
“It’s a quote from this movie,” I tell her, touching the screen of her airplane TV. “You should watch it. It’s about female ambition, and the lengths people will go to extinguish it.”
Layla’s lips travel the synopsis of Election, silently. She mumbles an intrigued huh, and selects the play now option. Thank God. Aunt Brett needs some adult talky time with her ole buddy ole pal Marc, who is stomping his foot in the aisle seat, trying to get the blood circulating.
“This sucks,” I sympathize, tearing open a bag of sour cream ’n’ onion chips and offering it to him first.
Marc sticks his hand in the bag and rustles around. “I can’t believe you’re not in first.”
“I can’t believe they are. We are about to meet some of the most disenfranchised women on the planet. It’s like”—I explode a hand by my brain—“total disconnect.”
Marc snorts, popping a chip into his mouth. “Did you really think Queen Simmons was going to slum it in coach? She’s probably allergic to cloth seating.” He dusts his hands together, sending onion powder into the air.
I slide a chip into my mouth, unsure if a white guy calling Stephanie a queen is racist but unwilling to go to bat for her even if it is. I need something from Marc right now. I twist my Standing Sisters ring with slippery chip fingers, trying to figure out the most artful entry into this conversation. As director of photography, Marc sees and hears everything on both sides of the lens. If there are any rumblings, and if anyone is willing to share them with me, it will be Marc. “What, um. What do you think was going on with Steph and Vince back there?”
Marc sighs, sounding disappointed.
“What?” I ask, wide-eyed and innocent.
“Don’t do that, Brett,” Marc says. “If you want to have a real conversation about this, then let’s have a real conversation about it. But don’t pretend like you don’t know what Vince and Steph were fighting about back there. You’re not like that. That’s why we’re friends.”
Something about Marc that everyone knows but not everyone appreciates is that on the weekends, he plays bass in an eighties cover band called Super Freaks. This detail is traded mockingly by the other Diggers, but what they don’t know—because they would never deign to ask the crew anything about their lives—is that his band used to regularly sell out the Canal Room, and that twenty-two-year-old girls line the stage whenever they open at Talkhouse in Amagansett. My ex and I went to see them once, and afterward, we’d eaten slices at Astro’s with Marc and his boyfriend, who plays drums. I did all of this because I like Marc. But what if I didn’t like Marc? Would I still have sought him out like I did, knowing the producers can’t edit, for better or for worse, film that doesn’t exist? The answer floors me: Probably. Definitely. I am exactly like that.
“You’re right,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m just . . . I don’t know what you know. What anyone knows. And, well,” I glance at Layla, making sure she’s watching the movie and not listening to us, “something happened that shouldn’t have happened, and I’m not sure what to do about it.”
Marc smiles at me, kindly. “Everyone makes mistakes, Brett. That doesn’t make me love you less. It makes me love you more.” He reaches for my hand and I let him hold it for a few moments, smiling back at him gratefully, marinating in my full stink.
Marc cranes his neck, making sure the passengers in our immediate vicinity are asleep or otherwise occupied. Determining that we have our privacy, he says in a low voice, “Lisa doesn’t think that you and Stephanie were fighting about you not passing on her book to Rihanna or whatever it is you’re saying.”
I swallow, tasting bile in my throat. I can barf in the chip bag if I need to. “What does she think it’s about?”
Marc bites his lip, checking our surroundings again. This time, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out his phone, and opens up the Notes app. I am practically in his lap, watching as he taps out the answer: She is starting to think you and Stephanie had a thing while you were living with her and it ended badly.
The words on my tombstone blur and come into focus, blur and come into focus. This is bad. This is really, really bad. I’m engaged. Steph and Vince might have the sort of marriage where they trade hall passes every other week, but Arch thinks more highly of herself than that. She will leave me if she gets wind of this.
Marc is opening the camera icon on his phone now, thumbing through pictures of his niece at the beach and expertly captured sunsets, arriving finally on a grab of what appears to be a page in a book. He offers me his phone, and I spring my thumb and index finger apart, zooming in.
It’s the title page from Stephanie’s third novel. The one I thought I had trashed in the clean-out of my old apartment. To the love of my life, she had written to me. Sorry, Vince!
“Where did you get this?” I ask Marc, my ears roaring.
“Lisa sent it to me. It was on the bookshelf at your old place. Where Kelly and”—he signals Layla with his chin—“are living. We were there to film and Lisa noticed it. She thought it was weird it was there, and she opened it, and then, well, she read that, and it just got her thinking and then—”
I hold up a finger to Marc—press pause on that thought. I motion for Layla to remove her headphones.
“Layla?” I ask, in a quiet, stern voice. “Remember that copy of Stephanie’s book that I put in the recycling bin?”
Layla swallows.
I nod. “Tell me the truth.”
Layla looks like she wishes she could disappear. “I was curious,” she whispers, her cheeks blazing. Curious about sex, she means.
I return her headphones to her ears, cursing my sister under my breath for banning Layla from watching Game of Thrones. Jon Snow could have sated that curiosity. This could have been avoided.
“Go on,” I tell Marc, digging my fingers into my armrests.
“Lisa started to think about it more, and she asked me to show her the film I took of you and Steph meeting up in Barneys.” Marc waits for me to remember. “And she noticed that Steph brought up your new tattoo on your foot.”
I feel my face contort into a confused scowl. “So?”
“So it had been a month since you and Steph quote unquote made up in the bathroom at Lauren’s event, and you got that tattoo just a few days later. We filmed it, remember? That means when you and Steph saw each other in Barneys you hadn’t seen each other in a month—but why? If you had really patched things up, and if it had been over something as insignificant as what you said it was about, why wouldn’t you two have been hanging out all the time again? But the nail in the coffin is that she bailed on your engagement party.”
“She was traveling.”
“No,” Marc says to my surprise. “Lisa checked her flight info. She was in New York that night. She chose not to come. Maybe because she’s in love with you and it would have been too painful for her to attend?”
I tip my head back, resting it on the seat, wishing I was asleep and this was all just a bad dream. “Has Lisa told anyone else about this yet? Other than you?” I hold my breath.
“I don’t think so,” Marc says, and I exhale, audibly. “I think she’s waiting to see if her theory has legs before she brings the others into it.”
I sigh, feeling unjustifiably sorry for myself. I’ve waited four years to take everyone to Morocco and a secret lesbian affair storyline is going to overshadow all the good we’ve come here to do.
“I will say,” Marc adds, “that it’s definitely another post to the pile that she saw Steph and Vince arguing like that. She thinks Vince knows and is pissed. Which is hypocrisy of the highest order given the way he’s been sniffing around your sister.”
“Oh, great.” I laugh, helplessly. “So I’m not the only one who’s noticed that.”
After my engagement party, I had to have a serious sit-down with Kelly. Did something happen with Vince? I asked, my throat tight, because I really was afraid to hear her answer. Kelly doesn’t date. She won’t allow herself to devote that much of her time and energy to anyone other than Layla and the business. Occasionally, she uses Tinder to screw. I’ve babysat for her on those nights. Have a good orgasm! I call after her as she heads out the door in a tight dress. Vince would have happily provided her such a service and saved her the effort of dragging her thumb across the screen. Kelly is all about efficiency.
She had responded to my question with hostile disdain. “You have problems,” she scoffed, and walked out of the room. No yes. No no.
“Jesse can call this episode ‘Incest Is Best,’ ” I mutter to Marc.
Marc raises his eyebrows. He’s never heard me take a jab at Jesse before, but I’m not so googly-eyed that I haven’t noticed her sense of humor, which all too often tries to appeal to the youths and all too often falls abysmally short. And her pun-y captions on Instagram—cringe.
Suddenly, the plane gets caught in a nasty ripple of turbulence. Layla, first-time flyer, seizes up in fear. I put an arm around her, tucking her into my side and assuring her this is normal, even though it feels like a shark has the pilot’s cabin in its mouth, like we are being shaken to death. I promise her that this is nothing to be afraid of. Nothing I haven’t seen before. I’m talking to her but I’m talking to myself, and I’m lying to both of us.
It’s early afternoon by the time we land in Marrakesh and taxi to the hotel, Marc swallowing yawns while trying to hold his handheld steady in the front seat. I’m in the first row of the van, squeezed between my sister and Layla. Steph and Jen are behind me and Lauren shares the third row with an arm looped over her luggage, which she insisted come in our van. Something about her grandmother’s silk scarves. Something none of us believed. I’m assuming she did her research and knows that in certain establishments in Morocco, women are barred from drinking alcohol, and took her own precautions.
I warn everyone against napping. The best thing to do is power through the day and let sleep snatch you only when you can’t run any further. I suggest that once we get to the hotel, we freshen up and meet in the lobby for a ride through the Jewish quarter on the SPOKE electric bikes, which have been shipped to the riad in anticipation of tomorrow’s field trip to the village of Aguergour in the lower Atlas Mountains. I do think this would make for a nice outing and my investors will be pleased with the prime product placement, but a part of me wants to keep the group together, under my paranoid eye. I don’t know who has heard what—about me and Steph, about Kelly and Vince. The last thing I need is the women splitting up, saying God knows what about God knows who on camera.
“Actually, there’s this spice shop I wanted to check out,” Jen says.
I close my eyes, briefly. Of course there is.
“The Mella Spice Souk,” Jen reads off her phone. Kelly twists in her seat, ears perked.
“Très bon,” the driver chimes in. “Est célèbre.”
We all turn to Lauren, who says to him, “Est-il?”
He rattles off something else in French, and Lauren raises her eyebrows, nodding, making it clear she understands. “He said that market is like a famous market. Where the locals go. Tourists too, but not a tourist trap.”
Jen gets this smug smile on her face, as though she has bested my plans. “My yoga instructor told me about it,” she says. “There’s a Moroccan blend that’s supposed to increase the restfulness and renewability of sleep. I may integrate it into a new tonic.” She beams. “Rest is the new hustle!”
Oh.
My.
God.
“I think Steph agrees.” Lauren laughs, and Steph’s eyes pop open at the mention of her name. She had been dozing next to Jen, her forehead suctioned to the window.
“Sorry.” She wipes away some drool with the back of her hand, “What?”
“I was just talking about what we should do between now and dinner,” I repeat for her. “I wanted to take the SPOKE bikes for a ride through the Jewish quarter to test them out. Everyone is welcome to join.”
“I want to ride the bike again!” Layla declares, sure to let everyone know she already got to do it once.
Lauren leans forward in the back seat and addresses me. Already, she is making an impression on Morocco, as much for her aggressively blond hair as for her not-so-sly innuendo. No one has ever handled my bags like that, she purred to the driver when he met us at the curb. “They, like, do the work for you, right?” She grins at the driver in the rearview mirror. “I’m loyal to one kind of cardio and one kind of cardio only.”
Jen groans.
“You won’t even break a sweat,” I promise her.
“Then I’m in.” She gives me a flirty wink. Just a few months ago, Lauren stonewalled the trip to Morocco, convinced I was the one who sold her out to Page Six. But Digger alliances are like New Year’s resolutions—made to be broken. She even seems to have softened on Steph, her new projected mole, though her gentle ribbing doesn’t necessarily mean all is forgiven. She could just as easily be lying in wait. In some ways, Lauren is the most dangerous. A butcher with a blowout. You never know when she’s going to come for you.
I turn to Kelly, my expectation that she will want to stick by me apparent. Instead she says, “I’ll go with Jen. So she’s not alone.”
“Kel,” I say, annoyed, “don’t you think we should make sure the bikes are working properly?”
“I don’t think it takes both of us to do that.” She leans around me and taps Layla’s knee. “And Layls, I’d prefer it if you came with me too.”
Layla whines, “Why?”
“Because it’s different riding the bikes here than it was in the warehouse. There’s traffic and people walking and I don’t want you or anyone else to get hurt.”
“I thought nine-year-olds could ride them.”
Kelly glances at me, but I refuse to meet her eye. I don’t want Layla riding the bike on a busy city street either, but that’s Kelly’s fault—for begging to take on the responsibility of the manufacturing process, for being the cheapskate who said no to thumb grips. The next shipment of bikes will arrive in the fall with a safer design feature, but in the meantime, we’re here with the prototypes. It’s not the end of the world, necessarily. Plenty of early model electronic bikes were designed without thumb grips and plenty of people have ridden them without incident. We just have to impress upon the villagers how easy it is to unwittingly accelerate with a twist grip, that you can kill a person going only forty miles an hour.
Kelly says to Layla, “Well, when you have to walk ten miles to collect water for your family I’ll let you ride it again, okay?”
Layla appeals to me with her eyes stuck in the back of her head.
“Sorry, Charlie,” I tell her, pursing my lower lip to assure her that her pain is my pain. “But I’m with your mom on this one.” I glance over Layla’s shoulder. “Steph? You coming with?”
Steph speaks to the window with glazed eyes, lulled by the rolling portrait of brown earth and blue sky. “I have some calls to make when we get to the hotel.”
“You sure?” I ask her. “This is the only full day we have in Marrakesh. Don’t you want to see the city?”
Stephanie shuts her eyes again. “It’s beautiful.”
When we arrive at the hotel, the hits keep coming. Lisa informs all of us, in her creepy little-girl voice, that there has been a change to the rooming assignments. I am no longer staying in the suite with Kelly and Layla. Jen will be taking my place, and I am to room with Stephanie.
“I’m happy with that.” Jen bumps Kelly’s shoulder with her own, and I try not to gag.
“And I’m happy to be on my own.” Lauren beams. I eye the luggage that hasn’t left her side. I’ll bet she is.
I’m also betting that this is a setup, so that Lisa can see if her theory has legs, and that there is a very real possibility she may bug my room. I am alone in that concern, it seems, as Stephanie appears indifferent to the fact that we have been stuck together, and that there is only a single, king-sized bed for the two of us to share—not a coincidence. When we get to the room, she drops her things, kicks her nice shoes across the room, and heads for the privacy of the bathroom.
“Steph, wait,” I say to her before she can shut the door.
She pauses without turning to face me. I put my phone in front of her face so that she can read the unsent text message to her: Marc told me Lisa thinks we SLEPT TOGETHER! That’s why she wants us in the same room. She might have bugged it so we have to be careful what we say.
Stephanie reads and rereads the message, her face eerily blank. She takes my phone and composes a response, handing it back to me and shutting the bathroom door without waiting for me to read it. I look at my screen to find that she didn’t write me back in words. Instead, she selected three emojis, the ones with the screaming faces and hands clasped to the jaw.
“She’s definitely not coming?” Lauren asks when I meet her by the elevators.
I shake my head. “I think she’s pretty tired. She’s probably jet-lagged from being in L.A. right before this.”
The elevator doors open and Lauren and I wait patiently while Marc backs in with the camera first.
“Is she tired?” Lauren asks when the elevator doors have trapped us inside. “Or is she upset?”
The hair on my arms prickles. “Why would she be upset?”
“I don’t think it’s escaped her that Vince has a little crush,” Lauren teases, and I instantly regret giving Lauren this opening on camera. “Did you not notice at your engagement party?” she continues, to my complete horror. “He followed her everywhere.”
I steady myself against the gold ballet bar lining the inside of the elevator. “I didn’t even get a chance to eat at my engagement party. So no, I didn’t notice. And anyway, Kelly would never.”
Lauren slaps a hand over her mouth, capping a gotcha! laugh. She is wearing the most impractical biking outfit I’ve ever seen. To not exercise Lauren wears head-to-toe Nike and to exercise she wears a gown rimmed with rainbow-colored tassels that the wheels of the bike are going to gobble alive.
I glare at her. “What?”
Lauren drops her chin to her chest with an infuriating giggle. “I didn’t mention Kelly by name.”
A cold sweat surfaces on the back of my neck. “No,” I insist. “You did.”
“Nope.” Lauren says the word with a pop of her lips: no-pope! She grins, adjusting the gold beaded tikka splitting the part of her baby blond hair.
“That’s Indian, you know,” I tell her.
“I know,” Lauren huffs in a way that makes it clear she didn’t. She lifts her chin as the elevator door opens on the ground level. “Africa is trying to improve relations.” I follow our self-appointed U.N. representative into the lobby, making did she really just say that? eyes at the camera.
“And by the way,” Lauren says to me over her shoulder. “I would never either. Doesn’t mean he hasn’t tried. This slut has standards.”
I accidentally land on the heel of Lauren’s sandal, and she snaps backward. “Fuck!” she cries, and when I look down, I realize I’ve torn her ankle strap.
“Oh my God, Laur. I’m so sorry.”
“I just got these,” she moans, crouching down to examine the damage.
“You’re supposed to bike in closed-toed shoes anyway.”
Lauren scowls up at me from the brightly tiled floor of the riad and I laugh. “I’ll buy you new ones at the Tanneries, okay?”
“Américain maladroit,” Lauren mutters, standing.
“I’ll wait for you down here,” I tell her, as she hobbles back toward the elevator. Marc stays with me.
I plop onto a sand-colored linen couch in the lobby, scrolling through my phone and rereading reminder texts from Lisa. REMINDER: talk to Lauren about how you feel about Jen and Kelly pairing up today. I know you and Jen have made peace, but she has talked so much shit about you over the years. Kelly is your SISTER. How does this not bother you??
I drop my phone into my lap, running my hands over my face and sighing. Of course it bothers me that Kelly is under the spell of a holistic hack, but I have bigger things on my mind. Like the fact that Lauren has noticed Vince’s fixation on Kelly, and that Stephanie seems very much on the verge of defecting.
On the other side of the lobby, there is a bit of commotion that catches my attention. Kelly, Jen, and Layla appear beneath an olive arch with a second camera crew in tow. Kelly and Jen are both wearing flesh-colored pillowcases that Jen probably had commissioned from her own exfoliated skin cells. I start to lift a hand to get Layla’s attention, but I’m stopped cold by what I witness next. Kelly, noticing that the tag on Jen’s dress is sticking out, reaches out and tucks it in, her fingers grazing the back of Jen’s neck. Jen, walking a few steps ahead of my sister, is clearly startled by my sister’s touch. Startled and something else that changes her face in a single, sneering flash: repulsed. She wrangles her reaction not even a second later with a grateful smile.
The axis of my world shifts, just enough for me to review everything I know about Jen and Kelly’s infuriating friendship in a new light. I’m happy with that. Jen had said to Kelly when she found out they were rooming together. Why, then, did my sister’s touch just cause her to recoil in disgust? It makes no sense, unless it is not that Jen is happy to spend more time with her new friend—but that she’s been coached to spend more time with her.
And who would coach Jen to spend more time with my sister? I wake my phone and reread my reminder texts. Lisa. Lisa must have shared her suspicions about Vince and Kelly with Jen. Of course she did. Lauren knows, and if Lauren knows, her overlord does too. I watch Jen wind the diameter of the lobby’s central fountain, wondering what her reminder texts from Lisa say. Ask Kelly how she’s getting along with the other women. How are things going with Steph? It doesn’t seem like Steph has taken to her—any thoughts as to why? My best friend’s husband and my booby sister—it would make for a luscious storyline.
Marc says, “Check out the Bobbsey Twins.” He zooms in on Kelly and Jen, who are now swishing out of the lobby in their long, shapeless dresses. Kelly doesn’t look like the new girl anymore. She looks like an original. Like she could be wearing my ring.
I didn’t know it could be possible, but I feel worse after Lauren and I get back to the hotel. Based on our conversation as we roamed the market with our guide, it’s clear that she has been instructed to ask me questions to help shape Kelly’s impending storyline as a husband-stealing harlot.
“So, what’s the deal with Layla’s father?” Lauren had asked as we perused the stands of leather slippers and Moroccan saffron and tin lanterns.
“He’s not in the picture,” I’d replied with a friendly note of finality in my voice.
“So, like, has anybody been in the picture for Kelly over the last—how old is Layla?”
I took my time examining a SPOKE-red beaded gandoura. I asked how much in my spotty French. The merchant rattled a response too quickly for me to understand.
“He said four hundred and forty dirham for one, eight hundred dirham if your sister wants one too,” Lauren translated for me. Lauren speaks French like a rich college girl dripping in Patagonia and Van Cleef, which is who she was once. Even I can hear that her accent is a travesty.
“Rude,” I joked, hoping for a pardon.
“Right?” Lauren agreed, playing along. “Like we could be sisters.”
“Mother, daughter, maybe,” I said, grinning, and Lauren gasped, truly stricken I would say such a thing on camera.
We continued on our way after bargaining down to seven hundred and sixty dirham for two caftans, red for me and virgin white for Lauren.
“So how old again?” Lauren asked.
I stopped to admire a pair of sandals. “How old again what?”
Lauren smiled at me, patiently, while the camera looked on. “Layla.”
“Twelve.” I held up the sandals. “What do you think of these?”
“Cute,” Lauren said without looking at them. “And so, has Kelly been with anyone in all that time?”
I bartered with the vendor before answering her. “I really don’t like to think about my sister being with anyone, Laur.” I shuddered as if to say, Kelly? Naked? Ick.
“She must be pretty lonely then.”
I shrugged, counting out thirty dirham.
“She must be pretty pent up. I can’t even imagine going that long without the D.”
I handed the money to the vendor without answering, trying not to think about what happened the last time Kelly felt pent up, right here in Marrakesh.
When I open the door to my hotel room, the lights are off, an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians on but muted. It’s an old one; Khloe still has her original face.
Stephanie is asleep on top of a creamy, sequined Moroccan wedding quilt, barefoot but dressed in the same clothes she’s worn from L.A. to New York to London to here. The pink polish on her toenails is chipped, which brings me to a full stop. I’ve only ever seen Stephanie with a perfect pedicure. She wraps her toes in plastic before going to the beach in the Hamptons, to keep the sand from dulling the topcoat. It used to drive Lisa crazy. Cut the princess off at the feet, she’d tell Marc, at a pitch dogs could hear.
Steph’s phone is charging on the floor next to the bed. I check my battery—16 percent—and drop to my heels. When I unplug her phone, the screen lights up long enough for me to read a text message from Vince. If anyone asks me about it, I’m telling the truth. I’m done lying for you, Steph.
The hair on the back of my neck stands to attention, as though summoned. I look up. Stephanie is in the exact same position she was in when I entered the room, only her eyes are wide open, watching me.
“Steph!” I fall back with a startled gasp. “Sorry. Can I . . . ? Do you mind?” I hold up the cord of her charger because the way she is looking at me has rendered me incapable of speaking in complete sentences.
Stephanie reaches for her phone. She skims the message from Vince, then regards me, coldly. “Help yourself.”
“I was going to shower,” I tell her, standing unsteadily. All the blood rushes to my head, blinding me for a moment. I put my hand on the cool lime wall until my vision clears. “Unless you want to first?”
Stephanie closes her eyes. “You go.” She slips her phone under her pillow, like you would a gun.
The women are sitting cross-legged on a smattering of quatrefoil-printed pillows, facing the cameras with their backs to the fire. When I came to Morocco for the first time at fifteen—twelve years ago now!—I was surprised to find that a fire would be necessary at night. When I pictured Morocco, I pictured rolling orange dunes, wavy in the heat, men in turbans hallucinating pools of fresh water. Basically, a dumb American’s caricature of a country that I found later to be as diverse in geography and climate as my own. In June, in Marrakesh, the weather is what my mother would call pleasant. A far cry from New York, right now a festering septic tank of loogies and dog piss and two million colony-forming units of bacteria per square inch. Bless its yucky heart, I miss it.
The clover-shaped windows are open, calling the flames west. Maybe north. I’m such a girl when it comes to directions, though I know better than to say so out loud and perpetuate such a stereotype. Lisa holds up a hand in question, wanting to know where Stephanie is. I mime applying mascara while one of the sound guys mics me up.
Lisa rolls her eyes. “So another two hours then?”
I spread my palms—what do you want me to do?—and enter the shot. “Salut, les filles,” I say, tugging on Layla’s pony and wedging myself between her and Jen, who, I shit you not, is wearing a red fez like she’s motherfucking Aladdin. “How was today?”
“Oh my God. We walked, like, ten miles,” Layla says, leaning forward to dunk a cracker into a bowl of hummus. The fire sets off a sterling flash at her neck.
“This is new,” I tell her, pinching the charm between my thumb and index finger.
“Oh, yeah.” Layla tucks her chin. “What’s it called again?”
“Hand of Fatima,” Jen answers, and I realize she’s wearing one too. I don’t need to look at my sister’s neck to know they got a three-for-two deal at the souk today.
“It’s supposed to keep anything bad from happening to you,” Layla tells me.
I reach for something that looks like lamb. “Is there enough food here for you?” I ask Jen, at the same time deliberately scraping the meat off the bone with my teeth like the top of the food chain savage I am. “I told them we have a vegan in the house.” I stick a greasy finger in my mouth and suck off the juices. Definitely lamb. Lamb has such a distinct taste—pure animal.
Jen buries her face in a mug of tea, her words parting the steam. “It’s plenty.”
“Are you sure?” I say, scooching closer to the table to examine the spread. “What can you even eat here?”
Jen indicates her paltry options because I did not, in fact, call ahead and warn the hotel we had a vegan guest in our party, because we do not have a vegan guest in our party. “Olives, carrots, naan, hummus.”
“There’s egg in the naan and feta in the hummus,” I tell her.
“You’re so thoughtful to worry so much about me.” Jen means to smile but only shows her teeth. “I ordered some veggie kabobs to the room earlier so I’m not very hungry.” She sets her tea on the low table, linking her hands around her knees, her beady eyes alighting. “Is Steph coming or did you two have another fight?”
“We had so much to catch up on we lost track of time,” I return, easily. “But, I’m sure any minute now.”
I watch Lauren make eye contact with Lisa over my shoulder. “Maybe I should go check on her,” she says. She climbs to her feet, holding tight to her water glass. A lot of lime in that water.
I do not want the second camera crew following Lauren upstairs so she can grill Stephanie—Have you heard the one about your husband and Brett’s sister? I stand and offer to go with her.
“Brett,” Kelly says, tugging on the hem of my dress, “we actually want to talk to you about something.” I stare down Lauren a moment, but what can I really do? I can’t be everywhere at once. Reluctantly, I return to my seat on the floor, watching Lauren sashay out of the room, her caftan grazing the black-and-white medina floor, the assistant cameraman weaving the same unsteady path behind her.
“We were talking,” Kelly continues, tucking her hair behind her ear and glancing at Jen to make it clear who she was talking to, “and we thought that maybe when we get back we can throw you a bachelorette party at Jen’s Hamptons house.”
I point a lamb rib at my chest, looking both ways over my shoulders, as though she couldn’t possibly be talking to me.
Kelly har-hars at my put-on bewilderment. “Yes, you. Jen was saying she’d like one last summer weekend in the house before it sells.”
“And I think it’s important to continue to feed this good energy between us,” Jen says. “Celebrating joy builds walls that keep animosity out.”
Jesus, hold my earrings. We both know this is a production-driven move—there is always “one last hurrah” before the end of every season, an event that brings the women together to kiss and make up before we tear each other to shreds at the reunion. I had been the one to suggest a bachelorette party to Lisa, I just didn’t think Jen would be the one hosting it.
“Are you going to have guy or girl strippers?” Layla asks, already red-faced, mouth covered, waiting for Kelly to scold her.
“No strippers.” Kelly wraps her arm around Layla’s shoulder and kisses her forehead while Layla squirms. Kelly says something quietly into Layla’s ear that stills her.
We pick at the food and make safe observations about the weather and the people and the time change, and I go over the plan for tomorrow. The vans are leaving at 7:00 A.M.—one for us and the crew, one for the bikes. The village of Aguergour is only twenty-one miles away, but as the last ten miles are a dirt track on the edge of a treacherous mountain range, it will take over an hour to get there.
The waiters come to clear the platters and bring out coffee and tea. Layla stops them from taking her plate. It’s full of bread and dips and meat that she hasn’t touched. “I put it together for Lauren and Stephanie,” she says, and Jen’s aw maybe would have duped me had I not seen how she looked at my sister earlier.
I tried to get Kelly alone before dinner, to share with her my suspicions that Jen is not her friend, that she has only glommed on to her to push a narrative that Kelly has slept with Vince. I was also hoping to finally get a definitive response from her regarding whether or not she actually slept with Vince—because on that, I am still not clear—but Kelly hasn’t left Jen’s side since we arrived this afternoon, and I’m too smart to put this into a text message.
“Here we are!” Lauren peals.
When I look up, it appears to be only Lauren in the doorway, holding that same glass of heavily limed water. But then Stephanie steps out from behind her, her wet hair in a bun at the nape of her neck and a shocking amount of makeup on her face, even for her.
“Sorry,” Steph says, unapologetically.
I make room for her on my pillow. “It’s fine. It’s all very casual. Layla saved you a plate.”
“You are such a sweetheart!” Lauren cries.
Stephanie mumbles something that I can’t quite make out, ignoring the spot I’ve opened for her and sitting next to Kelly, on the other side of the table across from Layla and me.
Kelly turns to her, which is a lot more confrontational when you are shoulder to shoulder with someone, sharing a bright pink pillow. “What was that?”
Stephanie reaches for an olive. At a slow, thunderous volume, she repeats herself, “I said, she’s been raised so well.”
Kelly purses her lips, disbelievingly. I’m pretty sure Steph said trained—not raised—too.
“What are you drinking?” Steph helps herself to a sip of my wine. “Mmm.” She rubs her lips together. She points at it and barks at the waiter stationed in the corner, “Get me a glass of that.”
Stephanie reaches for a piece of naan. Instead of tearing off a bite-sized piece, she folds it and shoves the whole thing into her mouth like a taco. “Mmm,” she says. “Thank you for not eating carbs, Laur. This is heavenly.” She reaches for another piece of naan, though her jaw is still working like a baseball player’s on chewing tobacco.
“I eat carbs,” Lauren protests with a laugh.
Stephanie spells out, “L. O. L.” I can see all the food in her mouth when she pronounces the “O.” She glances around the table, her eyes wide and unfocused, herbs tacked to the thick coat of gloss on her lips. “How was everybody’s day?”
The question is mockingly curious, clearly not meant to be answered, and we fall silent, unsure of how to handle this Joan Crawford–shellacked Stephanie before us.
I clear my throat and take a stab. “Well. Lauren and I rode the new bikes down to the Jewish—”
Stephanie interrupts me. “Lauren partook in physical activity that was not—?” She glances at Layla, clasps her lower lip in her teeth and performs a slow, sexy body roll, crooning, throatily, “Bow-chick-a-wow-wow.”
I open my mouth to object. Stephanie shoots me a look that makes me close it.
“Subtle,” Kelly snaps.
“This is an adult trip,” Stephanie says, matter-of-factly. “If you didn’t want your daughter exposed to adult language, you shouldn’t have brought her.”
Layla looks fairly heartbroken. I reach for her hand on the floor.
“I’m glad you’re here, little mama.” Lauren winks at Layla. Lauren may be a drunk pitbull but at least she’s kind to kids. Turning to Stephanie, she responds, “And for your information, I don’t mind partaking in physical activity when the piece of equipment is, like, the Hermés bag of the fitness world.”
“What a ringing endorsement!” Stephanie cries, her tone swinging from nasty to bubbly faster than I can think, how many milligrams is she on? The waiter returns with her wine. “Sir,” she addresses him formally as he sets the glass in front of her, “could you go into the basement or storage unit or mummy tomb or whatever and look for our bikes? You’ll know they’re our bikes because they’re SPOKE bikes. They are the most beautiful bikes in the whole wide world. They came in first place at the Omaha county bike beauty pageant in ’09. They beat out Christy Nicklebocker and she motorboated all of the judges, including the three-hundred-and-seven-pound church lady who is related to her through marriage.”
The waiter turns to me, dumbstruck. “Madam?” he asks.
Everyone is looking at me, waiting for me to do something, to say something. “Just a joke.” I laugh haltingly to the waiter, offering him the plate of food Layla put together for Stephanie and Lauren, so that he has an excuse to take it and leave the table. I have to keep nodding at him as he backs away, you can go, it’s okay.
“I’ll make sure you’re the first to ride one tomorrow,” I say to Stephanie, desperate to placate her. Just hold out on going completely crazy until the trip is over. “When we get to Aguergour.”
“When we get to A-grrr-gorrrr,” Stephanie repeats with ridiculing concentration. “A-grrr-gorrrr.”
“Yeah,” I say, pretending like she isn’t making fun of me. “It’ll be better anyway. We’ll have more room to see what the bikes can really do in the country.”
Layla sighs longingly, turning to my sister with big, pleading eyes. “If I promise to stay under a certain speed limit, can I try them?”
“Layla,” Kelly says in her scary mom voice, “what did I say?”
Stephanie works a back molar with her tongue, dislodging a lump of wet food, her eyes darting from Layla to Kelly, Layla to Kelly. “My mother never let me do anything either,” she says, her gaze settling on Layla.
“Excuse me,” Kelly laughs, testily, “but she is in Morocco.”
Stephanie rises to all fours, trying to untangle her legs from her caftan to get into a more comfortable position, but for a moment, I think she might spring across the table and attack Layla. “I hid everything from her,” Stephanie continues, leering at Layla like a lecherous old man. “You’ll learn how to do it too. You’ll have to because your mother will never truly understand what life is like for you. You’ll become little negro Nancy Drew.” She giggles, queerly. “I should do a children’s series. Negro Nancy Drew.”
“Hey!” I say, more startled than angry. I have never heard that kind of language from Stephanie before.
“Don’t use that word about my daughter,” Kelly says, voice quivering with indignation.
Layla grumbles, looking absolutely humiliated. “Mom.”
Stephanie only laughs. “You don’t get to tell me anything about that word, Miss Teen Mom.”
I gesture desperately at the riad’s butler, who has been waiting on the sidelines for a moment to intervene. Now is the time, the wave of my hand says. Now. Now. Now.
“Ladies,” he says, his hands clasped in prayer, “dessert is served on the Atlas rooftop, along with a special treat.” He holds out an arm, leading the way. “If you will.”
The Atlas rooftop is so named for its unobstructed views of the High Atlas mountain range, its djebels brown and snowcapped in the winter, but only brown now. I stay close to Layla as the rest of the Diggers fan out on the quiet, twinkle-lit rooftop. I can tell she’s reeling after what happened downstairs.
“That’s where we’re going tomorrow,” I tell her, pointing at the mountain range. Tucked into the crests and valleys are mud-thatched Berber villages where the women sing as they weave pom-pom rugs and knead dough for bread, celebrating their emancipation from the walk to get water, their freedom to work.
Layla aims her phone at the view width-wise, snapping a picture for an Instagram story. She attempts a few different captions before giving up with a dispirited sigh.
“You okay?” I ask her.
“Why doesn’t Stephanie like me?” Her mouth tightens and twists to the left, a sign she’s about to cry. Kelly and I used to take videos when she was a baby, her mouth a little raisin on the side of her face, the veins in her temples straining against her skin. You can hear us giggling in the background, Oh, oh, there she blowwwwws.
I lean against the clay ledge of the rooftop, so that I’m facing her. Under the fat Christmas tree lights, Layla’s face is arresting save for a humdinger of a pimple in the corner of her chin. Marc electric-slides around us, capturing us in a profile shot. “It hurts when it feels like someone doesn’t like you, especially someone you might admire.” I rove my head around, until I find an angle where I catch her eye. “Right? You admire Steph?”
“I do admire her, but I thought . . .” She exhales with enough force to blow out the candles on a birthday cake, as if frustrated she can’t find the words to explain.
“What?” I ask gently, reaching out to smooth her hair.
Layla ducks out from under my hand. “You wouldn’t get it.” There is something on that word—you—that I have never heard before, at least not directed at me.
I blink, stung. Kelly is the one who loves Layla but doesn’t get her. That’s my job. That’s what I do—I get people. I try to make her see that I understand. “I admired Stephanie too, and it was important to me that she liked me,” I say. “But something I realized, Layls, is that—”
Layla doesn’t let me finish. “Stop telling me you understand because you don’t. You don’t know what it’s like not knowing anyone who looks like you.”
The statement feels like a concrete barrier erected on a previously open border. I’m shook to my core realizing that Layla feels like this and didn’t tell me. Of course I have worried about her, being one of a handful of black students at her school, but Layla is so far from an outlier. She’s one of the most popular girls in her class. Everyone who meets her falls in love with her. I guess I assumed that being liked was the same thing as belonging. I never stopped to think how meaningful it would be for Layla to meet someone like Stephanie, someone who would understand what life was like for her better than anyone, but who instead has taken a visceral dislike to her. “I feel really stupid for not realizing you might feel like that,” I tell her apologetically. “And for assuming you would just volunteer those feelings if you did. I’m the adult. I’m the one who should be asking if you’re doing okay.”
Layla gives me a half-hearted shrug. “It’s fine. Mom is always asking me anyway. It gets annoying.” But she doesn’t sound annoyed at all.
On the other side of the rooftop, where white benches pen in a short table set with a platter of sour fruit tarts and a mosaic-styled ice bucket, Lauren cries, “A fortune-teller? Maybe she can tell me which one of you hussies planted the Post story.”
“Shut the fuck up about the Post story,” Steph roars. “Everyone is so fucking bored of the fucking Post story.”
I can practically hear the air being let out of Lauren’s sails from across the rooftop, but I ignore the heated exchange for Layla’s sake. I will do anything to cheer her up. I pop my eyes at her as if to say, A fortune-teller? Fun!
“Come on,” I say, leading her over to the sitting area, where the evening’s special treat has turned out to be a plump, fifty-something woman with a sheer yellow scarf draped loosely around her head, shuffling a deck of tarot cards.
As we approach, I hear the butler explaining, “Jamilla only speaks Arabic and French, but I’m told we have a translator for the group.”
Hmm, I wonder who told him that? I study Lisa, my enthusiasm for this special treat waning. There are very few people I trust on this rooftop right now.
Lauren thrusts her hand into the air, thrilled to provide such a critical service for everyone here. She introduces herself to Jamilla and listens intently to the woman’s response.
“She says that the person she is reading should sit next to her,” Lauren says.
Kelly addresses Layla with a buoyant smile. “Want to go first, Layls?”
I know Kelly is just trying to make up for what happened downstairs, but I don’t want Layla anywhere near this crystal gazer. Even if she isn’t a producer plant, I don’t trust Lauren to translate truthfully.
Layla sidesteps the bench, taking a seat to Jamilla’s left. Jamilla pats the pouf of Layla’s hair, exclaiming delightedly, and poses a question to Lauren, who claps her hands together, hooting at whatever it was Jamilla said to her.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “No. Elle est sa fille.” She points to Kelly, saying to Stephanie, “She thought Layla was yours!”
“Why is that funny?” Stephanie wants to know.
“Jesus, you are in a mood tonight.” Lauren reaches for a sour fruit tart, checking to make sure the cameras are watching. I eat carbs.
“Let’s let Jen go first,” I intervene. “This is more her beat anyway.”
Jen purses her lips in what could be considered a smile. “I believe that wellness of mind and body is the best predictor of the future, but sure,” she shrugs, “okay.”
Jamilla shuffles the deck, fanning it out for Jen and motioning for her to pick one. She pats her chest, instructing Jen to press the card to her heart.
“Fermer les yeux et penser à ce que vous derange.”
Jen turns to Lauren.
“Close your eyes and think about what troubles you,” Lauren translates for her. Jen complies with a gamely sigh through her nose, clamping both hands over the card as though trying to smother it.
“Ouvre tes yeux.”
Jen arches one eyebrow, eyes still shut.
“Open your eyes,” Lauren says.
Jen flutters her eyes open. Jamilla motions for her to reveal the card on the table: The Lovers. Jen runs a hand through her longer hair with a laugh. “Okay,” she says. She’s nervous, I realize.
Jamilla begins the reading.
“The Lovers do not always symbolize love,” Lauren says, when Jamilla pauses to take a breath. “Especially when somebody places the card upside down like this.”
The group leans forward, elbows on thighs, to get a better look.
Jamilla rattles off a long spiel that Lauren seems to have trouble with.
Seems to.
Seems to.
“Can you say that again?” Lauren asks.
Jamilla repeats herself, and Lauren nods along, brow cinched, in a commendable effort of trying to understand. “She says that a reversed Lovers card can indicate that you are at war with yourself, and that you are struggling to balance your own internal forces.”
Jen produces a polite hmm! As though Jamilla’s reading is interesting, but doesn’t resonate.
“That’s all?” I say. “It sounded like she spoke for a lot longer than that.”
“That was the essence of it,” Lauren says with a celestial smile.
“Toi,” Jamilla says, suddenly, beckoning Stephanie. “Je veux te parler.”
“She wants to talk to you,” Lauren says.
Jen gets up—almost eagerly, I note—but Stephanie makes no move to trade positions. “Why?” she asks in a surly way.
“Get over there and find out!” Lauren places a hand between Steph’s shoulder blades and shoves. The plane of Stephanie’s back hardens in response.
Jamilla says something else that sounds urgent.
“She says it’s important!” Lauren exclaims.
Stephanie sighs irritably. We all watch, collectively holding our breath, as she decides to finally get up and move into Jen’s spot. She plunks down next to Jamilla with category-five attitude and, without awaiting instruction, pulls a card, holds it to her chest, and shuts her eyes. She’ll do this on her own terms.
She opens her eyes and places her card on the table at Jamilla’s untranslated behest: The Hanged Man, upright. Jamilla says something short and unemotional.
“So,” Lauren says. “The Hanged Man is a willing victim. He makes personal, financial, and professional sacrifices in order to accomplish a higher goal. You are the ultimate martyr.”
“No shit,” Stephanie says, and, just like the pink chipped polish on her toes, this response is pronounced and out of character. We have a funny contest at the end of the season—which Digger required the most bleep censors in the editing room. It’s usually a toss-up between Lauren and me, but Stephanie, the group’s wordsmith who prides herself on more thoughtful articulation, has always come in last place.
Jamilla is speaking again. When she finishes, Lauren takes a moment before translating. “You are giving too much of yourself to someone. Someone who doesn’t give enough of himself or herself back to you. You let him or her hurt you time and time again.”
Steph leans back, getting comfortable, a dangerous smile pulling at one corner of her mouth. “Is that so?” she asks, nodding, thinking it over. She strokes the underside of her chin, ruefully. “Ask her to narrow it down for me, Laur. Is it a him?” She looks directly at me. “Or is it a her? Because really,” her laugh tinkles, “I could go either way.”
My hands and feet go numb. It is chilly up here, so close to a woman I thought I knew so well. Because the Steph I knew cared deeply about the dog and pony show. She was hell-bent on protecting her pride. If I wanted, I could turn to the cameras and say you can’t use this or fuckshitfuckshitfuckshitfuckshit, which we do sometimes to blemish the shot if it isn’t to our liking. But doing so would only draw more attention to Stephanie’s oh-so-unsubtle insinuation that we had a thing. It won’t make Lisa let go of that theory, it will only make her latch on harder.
Lauren translates Steph’s question for Jamilla. Jamilla closes her eyes, thinking about it—is it a him or a her? Lui, she says to Lauren, after an airless moment.
“Him,” Lauren says to Steph.
Stephanie pouts. She wanted this to be about me, I realize, feeling dizzy.
Jamilla continues to speak.
“You let him hurt you because you believe, in your heart, that he loves you,” Lauren says. “But he has given his heart to someone else.”
Stephanie sidles up closer to Jamilla, her lips parted in absolute elation. “Is that someone sitting here tonight?” She wiggles her fingers, spookily.
Jamilla looks to Lauren for assistance.
“Go on,” Stephanie whispers, at a silly, horror-movie pitch, “ask her.”
Lauren moves an inch away from Stephanie, but she does ask Jamilla the question.
“Oui.” Jamilla nods, and Stephanie claps her hands and woot-woots.
“The person is here?” Stephanie cries. “Oh, goody goody gumdrops! Wait, okay.” She shimmies in her seat, excitedly. “I’m going to point, and I want her to tell me to stop when I’ve pointed to the person my husband has given his heart to.”
Stephanie raises one arm without waiting for Lauren to communicate her request to Jamilla. For a moment that feels incalculable, she rests an arrow-straight finger on Kelly.
Kelly starts to say, “This is”—but before she can finish, Steph directs her finger around the circle, stopping for a fraction of a second on Jen, then me, then Lauren. When she’s finished implicating all the Diggers, she raises her arm and points above our hairlines at Lisa, Marc, and the rest of the crew. Stephanie explodes with a hoarse laugh, one that sounds like it’s skinned a layer of tissue off the back of her throat.
“I have to tell you,” Stephanie says, wiping away tears of joy, “I was skeptical, at first. But this is the most accurate reading ever. She didn’t stop me on anyone—which is the God’s honest truth. Vince is the Goal Diggers’ bicycle. Everyone take a ride! We should have brought him instead of your fancy new electric bikes, B. Kel, would you have let Layla ride him?”
“Steph!” I say, horrified.
Kelly hooks her hand under Layla’s armpit, standing, forcing Layla onto her feet with her.
“Mom!” Layla cries, trying to find her footing.
“On that note,” Kelly says with a thin, ferocious smile.
Layla rips her arm away from Kelly.
“We’re going to bed,” Kelly hisses at her, and Layla skulks ahead, her long legs outpacing my sister’s, clanging open the heavy wooden door without bothering to hold it for Kelly.
“That was fun.” Stephanie sighs, contentedly, leaning back and resting her hands on her stomach, like she’s just finished a fabulous meal. “Who’s next?” She turns to me. Her makeup is truly insane. She’s extended her dark charcoal eyeshadow far above the arch of her brow. “Roomie?” Her eyes glitter nastily. No, seriously, they glitter. That smoky neutrals eye palette she favors was always too heavy on the shimmer.
I watch the dark above me, listening to my sister breathe like Darth Vader in the next room. No fucking way was I shacking up with my roomie after that little scene on the roof of the riad. I’d rather not be shanked in my sleep.
I’m on the short couch in the living room, Jen in the bedroom to my left and Kelly and Layla in the one to my right. I assumed Kelly would sleep in the bed with Jen and I would bunk down with Layla, but apparently my sister and the Green Menace aren’t there yet in their friendship. I flop onto my stomach, sighing, jet-lagged, uncomfortable. My feet are hanging off the arm of the love seat and I’m only five foot three.
I’m considering moving to the floor when I detect movement behind me—bedsheets thrown off, a soft bump, a softer ow. I figure Jen is just getting up to pee out all that mint tea, but then the door wheezes open, and Jen’s feet are making a sticky sound on the tile floors.
I squeeze my eyes shut and go very still. Jen pauses next to the couch, watching me. Goose bumps flare across the back of my arms. I’m sure my eyelids are twitching but I’m hoping her eyes haven’t adjusted enough to notice. After a few moments, she continues her tacky trek toward the door. I crack open an eye and in the brief flash of light from the hallway, I see that she’s clutching her phone in her hand. I count to twenty-seven—my age—then I get up and follow her.
The second floor of the riad is outfitted with a small balcony at the end of the hallway, just past the stairwell. Sheer curtains snap in the cool breeze, providing a sound cover. I stay flat against the wall, sidestepping my way closer to Jen. The breeze stops, and I stop. It turns a sort of quiet that makes Jen’s voice the star, a clear, bitchy three-in-the-morning solo.
“. . . to hear your voice tell me it’s okay,” Jen is saying, as I hold my breath and starfish the wall. The pious camera tenor is gone, replaced by something I’ve never heard before: something like tenderness. Is she on the phone with Yvette?
“Yes, she pointed at everyone. But she started with Kelly. And sort of, like, lingered on her.”
She’s talking about Stephanie.
“No, no. I believe you. But I thought you should know. They’re trying to set it up as a storyline. So maybe try to stay away from her.”
There is a long stretch of mmm-hmming while the person on the other line responds. I no longer think she’s speaking to Yvette, but I can’t think of who else it might be until . . .
“Yeah, I’m rooming with her. I asked Lisa as soon as she told me about it. I’m giving her all kinds of opportunity to deny it. I don’t want you to look like a jackass either.” Her pause is uncertain. “I miss you.” This one too. “Baby.”
Baby. The word is a peach pit in the back of my throat. Baby. I can’t swallow. Baby. I can’t breathe.
Jen suddenly makes a shushing sound. I hold everything in my body still, lungs burning, as a trolley trundles in the lobby below. There is an exchange in Arabic, and a shared laugh.
“Nothing,” Jen says, “just the concierge. I should get back, though. The Big Chill is sleeping on our couch.”
Pause.
“Because she doesn’t want to sleep in the same bed as your crazy . . .”
I slide back along the wall with wide steps, crisscrossing ankles. I slip inside the room, dive onto the couch, and shut my eyes. A minute or so later, the door opens and Jen ducks inside.
She’s watching me again. I can feel it. My slow, deep breathing is a mismatch for my heart, hauling blood to my organs like it is under a time constraint. Can she hear it? I don’t know how she couldn’t.
“Brett,” Jen whispers.
I breathe. I pray.
Jen tiptoes into the bedroom and shuts the door. I don’t move for a very long time. Not until the sun starts to squint into the room. Then I get up, stuff my feet in Kelly’s sandals, and head downstairs.
The lobby is illuminated, the fountains whistling dark water. A single attendant sits at the front desk, reading French Harry Potter, Selena Gomez playing softly from the computer. It’s still too early for most of the guests to be awake. I caught Kelly’s eye up in the room when I said I was going downstairs to wait for everyone. I need to talk to you in private is what I hope she took from my expression. I couldn’t very well have this conversation up there, with Jen padding about in her towel and humming happily into her first mint tea of the morning.
I know Kelly understood me, but as the minutes tick by, I am worried she chose to disregard me. She’s upset about last night, the way Stephanie went after Layla, and I’m sure she’s found a way to illogically blame me for it.
I’m just about to give up hope and go get breakfast when Kelly and Layla appear at the bottom of the stairwell.
“Layls,” I say to her with a mischievous wink, “they have a latte machine.”
Layla murmurs an adolescent, “Cool.” She’s mad. At me for being a racially insensitive dunce. At Kelly for embarrassing her in front of Stephanie.
“You know I don’t like her having caffeine, Brett,” Kelly says to me.
“She’s on vacation,” I say.
Kelly takes her time, deciding. Finally she jerks her thumb in the direction of the dining room: permission to imbibe caffeine, granted.
Layla perks up, ever so slightly.
“Will you see if they have to-go cups for us?” I ask her. “I want to talk to your mom for a second alone.”
Layla nods—Sure, sure, sure—just short of skipping to the dining room.
“What’s up, Brett?” Kelly folds her arms across her chest. Yup, she’s definitely mad at me for last night.
“Something happened after we all went to bed. I heard Jen leave the—”
“They don’t have to-go cups!” Layla shouts from the dining room’s arch.
“I’m coming, sweetie,” Kelly calls back, and starts to turn away from me.
“Kel, wait.”
“No. You know what, Brett? I don’t want to hear it if it’s about Jen. I’m so sick of listening to you bad-mouth her. She’s been the only one here who has been a decent person to me.”
“She’s using you! She thinks you—”
“I mean it, Brett,” Kelly says with a murderous edge to her voice. “Shut the fuck up about Jen. And if Stephanie ever treats Layla that way again, I will come at her with what I know. On camera. Make sure your best friend knows that.”
Kelly turns and walks away without giving me a chance to respond. Without giving me a chance to explain that Vince is the one who broke Jen’s heart, that Jen calls him baby and is probably still in love with him, and that she sidled up to Kelly because she wanted to make sure Vince wasn’t in love with her. Worst of all, she’s walking away without giving me the chance to demand an answer to the question that has been burning a hole in my throat for the last few weeks. Did you sleep with Vince, Kel? Yes. Or no.