“This is Bitsy. Bitsy, this is Jemma. Jemma is my friend.”
I waved, and so did she. I stared at her, trying to memorize everything about her, as if I might have to identify her in a lineup someday. She could have been a plain woman, with her long stern nose, the bridge of which was like a bullet, and her tight, pale purple lips, and small dark eyes like black pearls. She looked old, I thought, at least as old as Melanie’s mother. But the rest of her was extraordinary in a way, maybe because she was so different from everyone I knew. Her hair was a beautiful shade of bronze, a huge and styled and shiny mane, and her ears and neck and her wrists were dripping with gold and diamonds; diamond earrings, diamonds bigger than my engagement ring, and a thick braided gold necklace with a huge diamond teardrop hanging from it, and gold bracelets, so many of them, up and down her tanned, muscular arms. The car smelled of a rich perfume. I got a little high off it.
“How delightful to meet one of my Melanie’s friends. At last.” Bitsy stretched her arm around the back of Melanie’s seat.
“Well, any friend of Melanie’s…,” I said. I didn’t bother to finish it. I was certain Bitsy and I had nothing in common.
“Yes,” said Bitsy. “And all that jazz.” She revved the engine softly and rhythmically, as if she were tapping her foot on it.
“You take care of my girl,” I said.
Bitsy smiled kindly, but then raised her eyebrows too high, and her face changed into something sinister, and I thought for a second that she was going to kidnap Melanie forever, and that I would never get her back.
IN COLLEGE, I had clung to Melanie, night after night. We used to get together and drink until we saw double, and laugh so hard we could barely stand. Then we would walk home, arm in arm, from a party or from one of the bars in the U District, weaving up and down the empty, rainy streets, across campus, wherever we felt like walking, because we were young and drunk and it felt good to use our limbs. Me and Melanie, and then Will and Doug, too.
There were other friends, other girls, but no one stuck like me. For a brief while Melanie had a fascination with this girl with a stutter, Sarah Lee, visiting from some East Coast city, Philadelphia or Boston. Some sort of town of urban blight. They worked together at this bakery near the expressway entrance. In the mornings commuters would come in for coffee and a muffin, and in the afternoon they’d get the stoner crowd, hungry for chocolate-chip cookies, or their pies, which they were known for, cherry and apple, fresh from the oven. I ate more than a few slices when I was in college. I know how sweet they tasted.
I never fully understood Melanie’s interest in her. Yes, Sarah Lee was a pleasant girl, pretty enough, and when she laughed it was loud, and excited, with huge gasps of air at the end, and it made everyone—not me, of course—want to laugh, too. And I remember in particular we all enjoyed looking at her outfits—she was always tearing apart clothes she got at the Value Village and restructuring them into something cool and different and new. But she had these unfortunate, large ears, and of course, that stutter, and who was she anyway? Just another girl you work with at a part-time job. A little bit younger, a little too enthusiastic. Innocent, perhaps. At first anyway. A transplant trying to find herself, when Melanie and I already knew exactly who we were.
But Melanie always took to eccentrics, so when I wasn’t around, there was Sarah, which was fine. I understand. It’s good to have a partner, a wingman of sorts. And then after a while Sarah was around even when I was there, and I didn’t like that one bit. I never got to know her that well because I never tried. I only knew that she was always there, as if she were a new next-door neighbor who keeps borrowing sugar, and then eggs, and then milk. Eventually you let her know you can’t spare anything else. Even if your cupboard is completely full. Because eventually enough is enough.
MELANIE’S REPORTS from the island made her sound happy, and I liked to hear it. Contentment, I wondered what that felt like. Bitsy had offered her a residency program of sorts, she explained. Melanie had studied landscape design in college, and Bitsy had offered up part of her land as a canvas. Plus Bitsy was introducing her around to all the rich folks on the island, and Melanie was starting to get some work on other estates.
“They’re awful competitive out here,” she told me. “You plant one row of tulips in someone’s front yard on a Monday, and by Tuesday you’ve got phone calls to do the same at four other homes. Only—twice, and bigger.”
“The mysterious case of the multiplying tulips,” I said.