It seemed captivity had taken a toll on her, because she looked less intimidating than I remembered. She was stockier, with thinner, rattier hair. Though the five of us wordlessly assembled around her chair, she was totally oblivious, glancing up in apparent disinterest before returning to her phone. She was used to her father’s students visits at all hours for guitar lessons and rehearsals.
“Peggy? Kitten? These are friends of Jim Mason’s. You remember, Jim, my student? The, uh, wunderkind? One of the very best young lyricists I’ve ever come across.” Mr. Joshua held up a finger, a soft smile. “He was going to go far. His musical about Lennon was one of the most gorgeous— A veritable tapestry of music and words…” He seemed to forget himself for a moment, blurting this with unabashed sadness. His face reddened. “Well. What brings you to our neck of the woods?”
It had never occurred to me to consider how Mr. Joshua had taken Jim’s death—not until now, standing in the shabby taupe modesty of his house, the deafening rain pounding the roof, the faint smell of mothballs, acoustic guitars mounted on the walls hinting at some unplayed song. It had been Mr. Joshua, after all, who’d been Jim’s biggest champion, coaching him about out-of-town tryouts and a Broadway run. It was Mr. Joshua who had taken Jim’s dozens of demos, recorded on Logic Pro, and transcribed them into sheet music, Mr. Joshua who had pushed him to dream up cleverer lyrics, sharper characters, more variety for the ear, analyzing with him the ingenious phrasings and renegade words of Stephen Sondheim and Lin-Manuel Miranda and Tennessee Williams. It was Mr. Joshua who had arranged for a major New York producer to listen to Jim’s demo of songs from Nowhere Man. The producer had loved what he’d heard, and a meeting, a lunch in New York, was being set up around the time Jim had died.
I found myself wondering if Mr. Joshua had been in love with Jim. Or was it something else? Had he seen himself attached to Jim’s rising star—Jim, his one-way bus ticket out of town; Jim, his partner, pet student, meal ticket—all those hopes and prospects null and void now that Jim was dead?
“Vida definitely remembers Jim,” said Whitley, grinning. She tilted her head, arching an eyebrow. “Kitten, dear? Now would be the optimal time to ask your parents to leave the room, unless you want them privy to all the gory details.” She plopped easily into a chair at the head of the table, hitching one leg over the armrest, and helped herself to a green bean. “We want to know everything,” she went on, nibbling the end. “Who started it? Who ended it? Where did the two of you sneak off to off campus? And why did you leave town the nanosecond Jim turned up dead?”
Vida only stared, her mouth open, incredulous.
“Please don’t insult our intelligence denyin’ it, child,” drawled Kipling, waving his hand in the air. “For one? Beatrice doesn’t lie. She’s the kindest, most honest person you’ll ever meet. Her middle name’s Good Witch a the North. And two, we don’t have a lot of patience. We’ve been livin’ this same day, known as a wake, over and over again? And it’s made us all a little tense.”
“A little impossible to deal with,” added Cannon.
“Excuse me?” asked Mrs. Joshua. “What on earth is happening here? Paul? Paul!”
Mr. Joshua, standing beside her, seemed unable to move or speak, sort of like a wren hovering nervously around a park bench where a few breadcrumbs have just fallen.
“You people are nuts,” said Vida in a hoarse voice. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Smiling, Whitley grabbed a plate of food and launched it into the air like a Frisbee. It sailed across the room, chicken, corn, rice flying, crashing against the windows.
For a moment, everyone was too stunned to move. Then Mrs. Joshua dashed to the side table and grabbed a phone. She dialed 911.
“I’d like to report a home invasion.”
“Tell her to hang up,” Cannon told Vida, scratching his nose.
“We need the police. Now. There are children—teenagers—trespassing in our house—”
“Tell her to hang up if you don’t like orange jumpsuits,” said Whitley.
Vida glanced at her, startled.
“Or public showers,” said Cannon, plopping easily into a chair.
“They’re terrorizing us. My husband’s former students. Please come at once.”
“Hang up the phone, Mom,” said Vida.
“One of my pet peeves is when girls don’t support other girls,” said Whitley. “When they just help themselves to someone’s boyfriend like he’s some free smoked gouda sample speared with a toothpick at Whole Foods. It’s so unforgivable. And out-of-date.”
“The Darrow School—”
“I’d call off your pit bull of a mom,” said Cannon.
“Mom,” said Vida sharply.
Mrs. Joshua didn’t hear her. “Five forty-five Entrance Drive. Please hurry.”
Vida leapt to her feet. She ran to her mother, shoving the woman aside as she wrenched the phone away and threw it across the room. It hit a small painting of a fox playing a violin, which immediately fell off the wall, revealing a bright rectangle of wallpaper spangled with black mold.
Everyone fell silent in total bewilderment.
Vida stood there gaping at us, wild-eyed, trying to catch her breath.
“What did you do this time?” Mr. Joshua asked her.
“I don’t know how many times I have to say it,” growled Vida. “We were friends. That’s all. All he did was ask me for a ride. He wanted my help getting off campus. He hid under a blanket in the backseat of my car as I drove past Moses. And that was it, okay? I really don’t know what the big deal is. You people are seriously insane.”
“We don’t believe you,” said Cannon.
“That’s your problem.”
“Where did you take Jim?” asked Martha.
“I already said.”
“Tell us again,” said Whitley.
“I don’t know. Some shopping center?”
“In Newport?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember where it was? Or what it was called?” asked Martha.
“No.”
“What can you tell us?” asked Cannon.
Vida shrugged. “It was some dingy section of town. Dollar stores. A pet store. The parking lot had some man in a chicken costume handing out heart balloons.”
“And why did Jim want to go there?” asked Martha.
“Maybe he wanted to eat fried chicken and buy a pet iguana? I have no fucking clue.”
“You must have drawn some conclusion,” said Wit.
Vida shrugged, irritated. “I thought maybe he was trying to score some weed. There were these dime baggers loitering around the parking lot.”
“What time was this?”
“Eight? Nine at night?” Vida sighed. “I offered to stay, give him a ride back to school, but he said he’d make his own way. And that was it, all right? I don’t see what the big deal is, and I had nothing to do with his death. I mean, please.”
For the past twenty minutes, contemptuous and huffy, Vida had been relating the same story over and over again: Jim had only asked her for a ride that night. That was all. There was nothing more to it. They had not been hooking up. They’d been accidental friends. She had not wavered in this explanation. And though I was inclined to believe her, listening to her was still like a knife through my heart, because even if it was true that there was nothing romantic about their relationship, it still meant Jim hadn’t chosen to confide in me, that whatever he had been up to, whatever had upset him, he’d chosen to deal with it behind my back. And if he had lied to me about that, I couldn’t help wondering what else he’d lied about.
“I find it pretty far-fetched that he’d ask you for a ride if you weren’t more than friends,” said Whitley.
Vida glared at her. “Like I said. We talked. Occasionally. He visited me at the art gallery and gave me advice sometimes. Jim was a card-carrying genius. He understood stuff. I talked to him about my issues, you know, and he gave me better advice in ten minutes than six years of Dr. Milton Yeskowitz with the goatee, the too-long thumbnails, and the bookshelf full of seventies self-help manuals called Learning to Love Yourself.”