Vince snatches my wrist and draws me close. “I can destroy you if I want,” he says, not very loudly, but the cavernous Air France departures terminal amplifies the threat. His eyes dart over my shoulder, bulging, and he releases me at once. I turn to see Brett, Kelly, and a girl with Didi braids rolling some truly disgraceful nylon luggage our way. Lisa and Marc trail a few steps behind, Marc gripping the little handheld camera by the stabilizer like a pitchfork.
“Bonjour!” Brett does a little skip. “Bonjour, amis et—” She stops with a gasp when she gets close enough to see my splotchy face. “Steph. Are you okay?”
I wipe my wet chin on my shoulder. “I’m fine.”
“You look fine,” she laughs, because she can never be fucking serious, not even when it is serious.
“Stay the fuck out of it, Brett,” Vince snarls. “You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
Lisa gasps, positively delighted.
Brett lowers her head and presses her lips together, which is smart. Cowardly, but smart. Kelly steps in front of Layla like a soundproof shield, as though Brett Courtney’s niece has never heard anyone say “fuck” before.
“Well,” Vince says, with demented cheer, “have a magical trip, everyone!” He takes off, my suitcase clattering smoothly behind him, his knuckles white on the handle.
“Nice guy,” Brett quips, but there is a wobble in her voice. I feel queasy when I look at Lisa and find her studying Brett with ruthless curiosity. Does she suspect?
Brett turns to Layla and forces a smile. “We should get in line to check in, Layls.”
I gesture to the sign before us that says “Air France First-Class CheckIn.” “We are in line to check in.”
“Layla and I are flying coach,” Brett says, chest puffed. She directs a quick, sanctimonious glance Kelly’s way.
“We’re donating the difference in a first-class ticket to the Imazighen women,” Layla says. The little do-gooding bitch extends her hand. “We’ve met before but I’m not sure if you remember me. I’m Layla. I’m a big fan of your work.”
Oh! How adorably creepy. How scientifically miraculous! I did not know that doctors had succeeded in transplanting the brains of thirty-year-old women into the skulls of twelve-year-old children. I take this Girl Boss Borg’s hand with unease, finding some comfort in the fact that next to her leggy niece, Brett looks like Shrek with nicer hair. Layla is tall and thin, yes, but this—this?—is the “runway model” I’ve been hearing about for the last few months? She has a fresh whitehead on her chin and an old angry one on her cheek and not a stitch of makeup to soften the blow. And for this, she gets to hear she is beautiful. Get me a cane to shake grouchily into the air, because in my day, not even actually being beautiful was enough.
I squeeze Layla’s hand until she grimaces, thinking, You have no idea about pain, girly. You have no idea what I’ve been through to get here You don’t want to know what I’ll do to stay.
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?”