The grant covenant stipulated that twice a year for the next three years, Brett had to host aspiring LGBTQ business owners at the studio. She would listen to their stories, help them shape their ideas, and dispel her wizened advice. I always found reasons to stay away from SPOKE on those days. I couldn’t bear to face these struggling, hopeful hard workers, knowing that my sister had robbed them of an opportunity designed to increase their parity. I thought we just had to get through those three years, ride out the contract, and then Brett’s counterfeit sexuality would cease to be one of her defining qualities. But then the show came calling.
A magazine editor at Cosmo had taken a class at SPOKE, and she invited Brett to be a part of a package she had pitched: “Twenty-Five Boss Women Under the Age of Twenty-Five.” The article caught the attention of a casting director for Saluté, on the hunt for a gay woman to round out the diversified cast of Goal Diggers. The show had so much to offer our nascent business—exposure, connections, growth—that it almost justified Brett borrowing an identity from a historically oppressed group of people.
I was complicit. I lied to the cast and to Jesse, which is why Jesse hates me and also why she needs me. I participated in a pyramid scheme that recruited her affections and played her like a gullible desperado, and she would die of embarrassment if anyone ever found out. I know by the way she looks at me—a little bit ashamed—that she imagines Brett and I laughed at her behind her back, called her a dirty old man for slavering over my sister the way she did. Brett tried to once but I shut her down quickly. There is nothing funny about what we did. The deception made me sick, especially when Imazighen girls would whisper to Brett that they thought they might be like her and they were scared that their families would no longer love them if they were, and Brett would comfort them with the made-up hardships she had endured when she was their age. But the sword in my heart was always Arch, who deserved so much better than someone who may have loved her, but wasn’t in love with her. She’s thirty-six, I pleaded with Brett after they got engaged. She wants kids. Don’t waste her time. Don’t plan a wedding only to call it off or divorce her in a year for the storyline.
I don’t think Brett would have proposed, or accepted Arch’s proposal (however you want to slice it), if she hadn’t done what she did in the break between seasons three and four. My sister is not cruel by nature, but she made a bad decision, and she needed to make a grand gesture to cover her tracks. Proposing to Arch was a form of lifestyle insurance.
I could have told Arch the truth. Scratch that. I should have told Arch the truth. But if the viewers found out that Brett was lying about her sexuality, commodifying the gay community’s plight, they would have turned on her (and rightfully so). SPOKE would be done. Her role on the show would be eliminated. My role on the show would be eliminated. Brett told a lie from which we both profited, and I let it live. I own it. But I also worked so hard to make SPOKE what it is today. The thought of walking away from everything I’ve built fills me with despair.
“It must be so painful to know the truth,” Jesse says cruelly. “To know that your sister died while you were sleeping just above her. We know now that after Stephanie and Brett came home from Talkhouse, Vince arrived at the house, and he attacked Brett in the kitchen.”
“That’s the timeline the police are working with,” I say, carefully. That is the timeline the police are working with—but it’s not the correct one, and Jesse and I both know that.
“Do you also believe their theory that Vince killed Brett in a jealous rage after finding out about her affair with Stephanie?”
“It makes sense,” I say, again, carefully. I flinch when I see the blip of anger in Jesse’s eyes. I’m not here to play word hockey. I’m here to conclusively push a narrative that serves the show better than the truth. “It wasn’t just an affair—Stephanie and Brett were in love,” I say, and Jesse’s face softens with forgiveness. “The humiliation of that was clearly too much for Vince to take.”
There was a humiliation, too much for one person to take, but that person wasn’t Vince, it was Stephanie. Jesse and I both know that Stephanie killed my sister, and we both know that it has nothing to do with Brett and Stephanie “being in love.” But the tape shows otherwise. We’ve made sure of it.
CHAPTER 20
* * *
Stephanie
I thought I would lie awake all night, charged with loathing and second-guessing, but my sleep was straight out of a fairy tale, replete with a wake-up call from chirping birds and soft sunlight on my inarguably lovely face. Perhaps I slept so well thanks to the memory foam mattress in the downstairs guest bedroom—Brett’s room, which I claimed from her like a birthright when we got home. I punch my fists into the air with a gratifying yawn, the kind that distorts your face with pleasure, like sex. Good sex. Not Vince sex. Vince. Why am I thinking about Vince on this morning of all mornings? I swing upright and then go very still, listening. It’s after eight and the house is already smug with doing things, and that is Vince I hear in the living room.
I get up and follow his voice without washing my face or brushing my teeth, which is not how the day was supposed to start. The day was supposed to start with Jason and my team here at the crack of dawn (where are they?), my Starbucks order hot and my hair in rollers. I wasn’t to leave my bedroom until I was spit and polished, my wits properly caffeinated. Leave it to a man to fuck up this day, the day I plan to cement my legacy.
In the living room, Kelly and Lauren are sitting on the couch, drinking coffee across from Vince, who sits in one of the hairy white chairs, a plastic Duane Reade bag at his feet. Outside, Jen is holding a warrior pose in the shade. The puddles on the porch are evaporating and the sky is a tragic, September 11 blue. What a beautiful day to ruin these bitches.
Lauren raises her mug in greeting. Her hair (what’s left) is stiff and her face is red and shiny, like she just had surgery. I’m not even hungover, I realize. It’s like a clear seventy-degree day—the temperature so optimal for the human condition that you don’t even notice the air around you. I feel alive and fresh and happy, but not so alive and fresh and happy that I’m thinking about taking up yoga and cutting out caffeine and spending less time on social media or whatever it is people do when they decide to self-improve.
“How was Talk house?” Kelly says the name of the bar as if it were two distinct words. Like Burger King. Or Nordstrom Rack, which is probably where she got that dreadful cold-shoulder maxi dress she is wearing at the moment. God, she is embarrassing.
I ignore her and address Vince. “Why are you here?”
“I mean, Steph. Everyone is calling me. My mom is a mess.”
“A mess about what?”
“You seriously don’t know?” Lauren asks, her voice froggy and hungover. She must have knocked herself out last night through some combination of booze and pills, because she did not stir when Brett and I got home. No one did. God bless all these highly functioning addicts.
“Someone tell me what the fuck is going on before I lose it.” I hear myself and smile, demurely, softening my tone. “I mean—please?”
Kelly reaches for her phone. She calls up something and tosses it my way. I have to wait a second for the screen to right itself, but when it does, I realize I’m looking at a video post from TMZ: Drunken Stephanie Simmons does not hold back on her soon to be ex-husband. I hit play. In case it isn’t clear what I’m saying, they’ve taken the helpful liberty of adding subtitles: They’re going to try to make it look like Vince fucks Brett’s sister this season. But that’s not who he—boom. Brett plows into me, her huge hips eclipsing the frame. The video cuts off right before I jump offstage. Thank God. I already had monsoon hair. I didn’t need everyone to see me land like an American gymnast with weak ankles.
I face my firing squad. “That’s all?”