“You deplete everyone in your orbit, you get them to serve you and save you and give and give and give, and—worse—you get them to do it without forcing them to. You get people to choose to indenture themselves to you. You treat young women like intravenous nutrients until they believe that’s what they are—until they believe you’re what they’re for. Like Jim fucking Jones.”
“I’m not sure if that part is fair, actually,” he says. “The plural part. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
She pauses, then halfheartedly punches his stomach.
He barely reacts. “You can hit me harder than that.”
She hesitates. “I don’t want to.”
But then she does, aiming at the navel, as hard as she can without a running start.
“Jesus.” He winces, clutching his stomach and coughing.
Rain falls harder, cooling their skin, and their anatomies buzz within it. For the first time, she notices how sick he looks. His tan had been concealing it, but he is skinny and his eyes are bloodshot, pitted in shadow. White seems to invade his hair and stubble as she studies him, like he is aging decades in a span of seconds.
“Sorry,” she says, and her voice cracks. With tightened fists and a great deal of confusion, Blandine collapses into her high school theater director. He holds her automatically, his force restrictive and secure and warm, and she tries not to enjoy these things, but her brain and her heart are not calibrated to the same moral system, and she is so tired of contorting her emotions to fit her principles. She weeps and sort of yells into his chest because she is tired, and she is shivering, and he is the only living structure in her field of vision that she wants to touch. He holds her upright. She can’t see his expression.
“Please do not apologize to me, Tiffany. Anything but that.”
The scent of him—generic soap—overthrows her.
“This really hasn’t happened before?” Blandine asks.
“Never. Nothing like this.”
“Bullshit,” she whispers into his white shirt.
“Tiffany, I may not be the greatest person, but I’m telling the truth about this. By the way, I’m not suggesting that the anomaly of my actions excuses them. That’s not what I’m trying to say.”
“You’re still teaching at Philomena?” she asks.
He hesitates. “Yes.”
She pulls away, narrows her eyes. “And you swear on your mother’s death that nothing like this has ever happened before? Between you and a student?”
“I told you, no. Nothing.”
“Are you lying to me?”
His eye contact is secure, his irises warm and green, his voice gentle. “No. I’m telling the truth.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“I’ve never lied to you, Tiffany.”
Blandine doesn’t want to say it—if she says it, she’ll have to confront it, and she’s effectively repressed it until now—but the words emerge without her permission.
“Then why the fuck,” she begins in a low voice, “would Zoe Collins contact me after I dropped out?”
James’s face empties, and Blandine recognizes him as an animal purging its weight so it can run for its life. This is all she needed to see. Revulsion invades her, and she steps away from him. He keeps a steady voice, but he can’t conceal his fear.
“What are you talking about?” he asks.
“Zoe Collins. Three years ahead of me.”
He swallows.
“It was sloppy of you to pick students who overlapped at school.”
“I barely know Zoe,” says James.
“She was your music student. She sang. She played piano. She was in your plays. You helped her get that conservatory scholarship. Of course you know her.”
“Well, yes. Obviously. But it’s not like I ever even met individually with her, let alone—what—what did she say to you?”
Blandine doesn’t look away from James as she recites Zoe’s email. “So he got you, too?”
She can see his body turning off the lights, drawing the curtains, locking itself up.
“She could be talking about anyone,” says James.
Blandine narrows her eyes.
“Look, Tiffany, she was obsessed with me,” he says, rerouting. “I intentionally avoided meeting with her one-on-one because she was so inappropriate, always sitting too close, always sending me messages, always trying to get private lessons. She even sent me a picture of herself, once—I mean, she was clothed, but it was completely inappropriate—and she disguised it as some kind of costume check, but I knew what she was doing, and I deleted it right away, told her not to do things like that, but she—she had no boundaries. She told other students about it—about her crush on me—and they warned me. That’s how I knew. She told them she wanted to break me. She told them it was her goal to seduce me away from my family. No, really—that’s what she told them! The other students! I—I never allowed things to get even close to anything—romantic—I purposefully built distance between myself and her so that she wouldn’t—”
“Stop,” says Blandine. When the message appeared in her inbox, months after she dropped out of St. Philomena’s, she couldn’t bring herself to reply. She could scarcely bear to read it. Now, an awareness of her own betrayal floods her. How lonely Zoe must have felt. How foolish and freakish and exposed and disposable. Alone. “Just fucking stop.”
James shakes his head. “No, this is important. I can’t believe she’s spreading rumors like this. She probably feels rejected, and that’s why she’s angry. I mean, it’s been years, Jesus. You know, she touched my leg once, after rehearsal, when she got me alone, and—”
“I thought you said you never met with her alone.”
“I didn’t! It was just for a second, and she managed to pull something like that! I got away from her immediately, and I told her she had to quit it, and that if her behavior continued, I would have to talk to the principal. I’m sure she’s just embarrassed. I mean, that’s all she said? So he got you, too? That could mean anything. Maybe she just thought you had a crush on me, too, or something. Maybe she wanted to talk about that. She was delusional, obsessive, desperate. Really insecure. She had a fucked-up home life. I think her parents were going through some ugly divorce when it happened. Come on, Tiffany. You can’t possibly believe—”
“So this is how you talk about me?” Blandine demands. “When people ask?”
He blinks, panicked. “No. Of course not.”
“You tell them I was obsessed with you? I had no boundaries? I was just the result of a fucked-up home life? Another teenage girl dying to fuck an older man because she’s been fucked over by one before?”
“Tiffany. No. I would never say that.”
She glares at him, noticing that his expensive white tennis shoes are now frosted in mud.
“Nobody asks,” James mutters.
“Of course nobody asks!” Unable to quarantine the scream any longer, she unleashes it. He steps back as she does, looking frightened. The scream is animal. Ancestral. The scream of the first woman in the first dirt wounded by the first man. “That was part of your plan, wasn’t it, James? My freakishness was part of your fucking plan! I bet Zoe was the same way. I bet she felt like an outcast until you came along and made her feel special. I bet you made her feel like she couldn’t connect with people her own age because she was just too mature, too sensitive, too intelligent. Different from the rest because she was unique, because she was brilliant, because she was destined for great things. I bet you told her that for months before making a move. Where did you fuck her? In your house? In your office?”
“It didn’t happen, Tiffany.” His tone is resolute. “Nothing. Happened.”
“Clever to pick students who have no friends. Why would anybody ask? I never told anyone. I obeyed you. I kept your fucking secret because I mistook it for mine.”
“Please let me drive you home,” says James. “You have to understand, Tiffany. Nothing happened between me and Zoe, or any other student. I swear to you. I swear on my mother’s life. You are the only student who ever—who I ever . . .”
It’s the first time Blandine has ever seen James so desperate, so out of control. She hates it.
“The point is,” he says, “we can sort this out. I’ll show you messages she’s sent me. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. I’ll show you the evidence. I can’t stand the thought of you believing this—this lie.”
He reaches for her hand. She recoils.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” Blandine says, her voice low. “You will never touch any version of me again.”
Paper bags of supplies wait in the backseat of his car, forgotten. Blandine Watkins turns away from James Yager and runs home, through the rain, daring cars to hit her.
Sold!
At 8:14 p.m. on Wednesday, July seventeenth, Clare Delacruz, the former personal assistant of deceased child actress Elsie Jane McLoughlin Blitz, posts a tweet. She sits on the kitchen floor of her cramped studio apartment in Koreatown, Los Angeles.