I can hear laughing and revelry inside. A Chainsmokers song that will be dubbed over with some nondescript track. (Production music libraries are much cheaper than licensing commercial music.) I can smell food Jen pretends to eat browning on the stove. It’s a decent imitation of a fun summer party, but it’s the difference between a cardboard cutout of your favorite celebrity and having him rescue you in his big strong movie-star arms after you’ve fainted onto the subway tracks. Usually, by the last group shoot of the season, we’re like rubber bands that have been snapped too many times, all the bite of wet spaghetti. The Martini Shot is an old Hollywood term to describe the final setup of the day—because after that, the next shot is out of a glass. This crew has a taste for a different spirit, and thus, this weekend Lisa is here to get her Tequila Shot. It’s a spectacular display of senioritis, the few days of the year Lisa really earns her paycheck. She circulates the room in an attempt to get a current going, whispering in our ears to remind us of all the season’s petty slights, trying to live-wire the action. But tonight feels different. Tonight feels like the start, the music and the laughing a trap when they only used to be a trick.
Maybe it feels that way because we’ve never been upended by a bombshell this far into the season. Stephanie, man, what were you thinking? In this day and age of digital espionage, you do not tell a lie before you become the lie. If Stephanie wanted to peddle a triumphant survivor’s story as her own, she should have gotten herself invited to dinner at Bill Cosby’s house first.
She’s been in hiding for the last month, ever since we got back from Morocco. She won’t open her door for anyone—not even Jesse, who knocked two days in a row. I heard she’s still selling a lot of books, but the New York Times has removed her name from The List, as has her agency’s website. Both outlets extended their heartfelt apologies to women of color who are survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. The Oscar-Nominated Female Director publicly denounced The Site of an Evacuation on Jimmy Kimmel, calling it a cowardly appropriation of survivor culture, and everyone cheered and clapped. Search Stephanie Simmons and Google will vomit-spatter all the scorched-earth headlines you can imagine. Is Stephanie Simmons the most hated woman in America? Stephanie Simmons is the reason no one believes abuse victims Four black women will die today at the hands of their abusers and Stephanie Simmons has made millions off their backs.
I don’t know how you come back from this.
I thought about knocking on her door. About sitting with her in her mostly white living room, the Roman shades pulled flat against the photographers still skulking around outside. I still love her, though I have no right to.
In the end, I didn’t have the stones. I still don’t know what she knows and doesn’t know about Vince and Kelly and Vince and Jen, and I’m deeply disturbed by what she did in Morocco. An accident, we told the reporters who asked about it, but I watched it happen, and she was clear-eyed. Kelly is convinced Stephanie thought Kweller was Layla, but I think the only person Stephanie was aiming for was herself, and at the last moment, she reneged.
The red door swings open on an exuberant Lauren Fun in shredded white jeans and a shredded white tee, braless, barefoot, toenails black. “Happy bachelorette!” she cries, offering me a rainbow-tiered Jell-O shot from the tray she’s balancing on her right palm. She backs up so that we can enter and the crew surrounds us like a rival gang.
“Vegan and alcohol free,” she makes a point of saying, because I guess we are still pretending like she’s not drinking, even though the shot is so loaded with Tito’s it leaves grill marks on the back of my throat. “And also Greenberg’s organic sex sprinkles!”
“So that’s why I’m hard,” I deadpan as I follow her into the kitchen.
“I’m hard for your sister in that adorable little playsuit,” Lauren returns over her shoulder.
“Net-a-Porter,” Kelly says correctly, rubbing the goose bumps out of her arms. It is Siberian in here. The house is designed for indoor/outdoor living, but every window, every double French door is latched shut against the summer. My nipples feel like knives. Good thing Jen’s tree-hugging brand doesn’t advertise its intent to reduce the impact of climate change or anything.
In the kitchen, Jen is shaving corn off the cob with a serious butcher knife. Behind her, three hopeful dog noses press against the glass doors from outside. Yvette told me Jen makes them sleep in the backyard now that the house is done. She is paranoid about dog hair and dog urine, dog laughter and dog joy.
“Our guest of honor is here,” Lauren says, presenting me like the evening’s entertainment, and for a moment we pause and regard each other somberly. It’s the shaking of the hands before the duel.
“How was traffic?” Jen asks, civilly.
“Not bad.” Kelly drops her bag at her feet. “We just got a late start. I had to get Layla to a friend’s in New Jersey.”
Jen looks at me. “Where’s Arch?”
“She’s going to come out tomorrow,” I say. “Stuck at work.”
Jen nods, running a finger along the steel plane of the knife.
“May I offer you a beverage?” Lauren asks us formally, trying to be funny.
“Whatever you’re having,” Kelly makes the mistake of saying.
“I’m having club soda,” Lauren says laughably, “but we have a bottle of Sancerre chilled.”
Bottles of Sancerre, it appears, as she tugs open the refrigerator. Sancerre and Tito’s and Casamigos and a carton of almond milk that’s been turned on its side to make room for more booze. Lauren shuts it quickly, before the camera responsible for the wide shot tells on her.
On the stove, a pot boils over. “Want me to . . . ?” Kelly offers, heading for the utensils holder by the sink. She lifts the lid and something puke-colored spits at her. My stomach grumbles. I haven’t eaten since noon and I need a real meal, not a mushy plate of ancient grains.
“Oh!” Jen cries, like she just remembered something. She steps around Kelly and brings out a platter of chips and dip. “I picked up that guac I know you like from Round Swamp, Brett.”
Kelly gives me a little smile over her shoulder. See! She isn’t so bad!
Kelly still doesn’t know about Jen’s middle-of-the-night conversation with Vince, on the balcony of the riad in Marrakesh, or about my suspicions that he is the one who broke her heart last season. I tried just that once, the morning of the accident. Then came that nightmare of a day, and my focus was on damage control for SPOKE. After speaking with my shareholders and having a lawyer review my partnership agreement with Kelly, I figured she was in for enough of a kick. No need to add insult to injury by telling her that Jen was only pretending to be her friend to find out if she was having an affair with Vince, because she might still be in love with Vince herself. Let Kelly believe the friendship was real. Who could it hurt?
Jen wipes her hands on an apron that reads Viva Las Vegans! “So. The plan for tonight is dinner, then Lauren has organized some bachelorette games—”
Lauren blows into a party horn, immediately whispering Sorry when Jen glares at her for interrupting.
“And then, I don’t know?” Jen continues, using the base of her wide knife to rough-chop raw walnuts for the salad. “Maybe Talkhouse if everyone is up for it?” She glances up, mischievously, and for a moment she is not the drippiest drip I know. Jen can be fun when the cameras are not around, and Talkhouse is the fraternity rager you go to after having dinner with your family when they’re in town for parents’ weekend. The network has never been able to obtain the permit necessary to film there, which means everyone can take as many shots of piss-colored tequila as they’d like without record.
“You are here until eleven,” Lisa squeaks from behind the camera. It’s like a reverse curfew—we have to stay home until a certain time, deliver some decent footage, and then we get to go out and paint the town red.
“Yes, Mom,” both Lauren and Jen say at the same time.
“Call me that again and you’re fired,” Lisa says, touching the drooping skin on her neck. “And for the love of God, someone bring up the elephant in the room.”
Jen sets down her knife and inquires with over-performed concern, “Has anyone heard from Steph?”
We all pooch our lips—No.
“What about Vince?” I don’t look directly at Jen at first, so as not to be obvious, but when I do, I find she’s picked up the knife again and is chopping those nuts into sawdust.
“I heard,” Lauren hinges at the waist and sets her elbows on the counter, chin in hands, voice gossipy, “she served him with divorce papers but he’s refusing to sign.” She rubs her thumb and three fingers together, indicating money. “He gets nothing in the prenup.”