Vince folds his hands behind his head and tilts his face to the ceiling. “Great.” He laughs, sarcastically. “There was more?”
“I’m keeping your name alive in the press, babe,” I say to him, sweet as candy. Vince turns away from me, his jaw clenched. Across from him, Kelly is gripping her mug of coffee so hard I’m waiting for it to shatter. She knew. She had to have known from the beginning. That’s why Vince found any opportunity he could to corner her. He wasn’t trying to fuck her; he was trying to get information out of her.
“What are you all so upset about?” I say. “I said Vince didn’t fuck you, Kelly. I did you a favor for when they try to make it look like he did. Which they will do.”
“Steph,” Vince says evenly. He clears his throat, glancing at Lauren and Kelly for their little nods of confidence—You can do this, Vince! “I think we should head back to the city together. I called Jason and the whole glam team and told them not to come.”
I feel like a troubled teen who has come downstairs to find two former Navy SEALs in her living room, about to be shipped off to one of those Wilderness Therapy Camps where they sodomize you with a flashlight for cursing. I cannot go with Vince.
I head into the kitchen to pour myself some coffee while I land on a strategy: Be agreeable. “I wouldn’t mind heading back with you after brunch.” I stir steamed almond milk—my only option—into my mug. It immediately clots, forming a puke-textured scum on the surface. I don’t care who or what has had to suffer to provide real milk for my coffee all these years, their sacrifice has been worth it. “Beat the afternoon crush.”
Vince skims a hand through his hair, slowly, sensually exposing the belly of his bicep and a few underarm sprigs that have escaped the sleeve of his thin white tee. Ugh, it truly is a sight to behold, that hair move, something every girl needs to see before she dies. It makes Vince seem so troubled, so brooding. It makes women willing to do anything to make him smile. Isn’t that the secret sauce of seduction? First the snare of mystery, then the distinctly female instinct to rehabilitate.
“Stephanie,” Vince says, more patiently than he would if not for Lauren and Kelly’s presence, “I think you should head back now. Just quit while you’re ahead.”
I curl up in the armchair next to him, bringing my mug to my mouth. Panic is streaking through me—No, no, no, don’t make me go—but I have to remain calm. “We have a scene at Jesse’s today,” I remind him in a forgiving tone, like it is perfectly understandable that he could have forgotten given everything else that’s going on in our world.
“For Brett’s bachelorette, though, and Brett left.” Lauren rubs out the leftover mascara from underneath one eye. Her dark nails have chipped between last night and this morning.
“Brett left?” I say, with pretend surprise and genuine disappointment. The surprise is for Lauren, Vince, and Kelly’s benefit. They have no idea how the night ended, of course. But the disappointment is actually real. The plan had always been for Brett to be at Jesse’s house today, but, well, plans change. Successful people are the people who find a way to roll with life’s inevitable setbacks.
Kelly passes me her phone. Before the sun rose, Brett had texted her, Called a car to take me back to the city. Over this shit. I thought I had smashed the screen of her phone hard enough to destroy it, but turns out, it was still possible to send a text. Kelly wrote back early this morning, asking if she was okay. Thus far, there has been no response.
“I feel like I saw Brett last night,” Lauren says, not to us, but to herself. As though she is just remembering this herself. She visors her eyes against the sun spilling through the skylight and squints at me for a long moment. “Did you . . . were you with us?”
I arch an eyebrow at Vince as if to say—I’m the one who needs to quit while I’m ahead? “I think you maybe dreamt that, Laur,” I say.
Lauren’s gaze drifts over my shoulder. I turn to see what she’s looking at: Jen, balanced on one leg with a foot tucked into her crotch. “I guess so.” Thank goodness for pillheads, and their easy suggestibility.
Vince gets up abruptly and starts down the hallway, taking that Duane Reade bag with him.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m packing you up.”
“Vince,” I say, but he continues on his way. “Vince!” I yell, sharply, but he doesn’t stop like he used to. I jump up and follow him. Chasing after my estranged husband. Not the look I was going for this morning.
Vince is tossing my products into my toiletry bag in the downstairs guest bathroom, chucking glass bottles at glass bottles, like he is trying to break them.
“Vince,” I say, closing the door behind me. “Vince.” I put my hand on his arm. “Please listen to me for a moment.”
Vince stops with an anguished cry, reaching into the Duane Reade bag and producing a Jimmy Choo shoebox. For Gary, I’d written in black marker across the top before leaving it on my front stoop for—plot twist!—Gary, the photographer from the New York Times who has been staked outside my window for the last few weeks. Not only is Gary from the most reputable publication of the lot, but he’s the one who has so far displayed the highest degree of professionalism. No, he doesn’t work weekends. None of them do. I’m not that big of a story. (That’s about to change!) But he is always there, bright and early on Monday morning, before the rest of the pond scum trickle in for normal business hours. Monday served my purposes better, anyhow. I needed Gary to discover the package and watch the clip in question after I did what I am planning on doing today. If this got out before the brunch at Jesse’s, I don’t know if I’d ever be in the same room with these prostitutes again. The scene today would be canceled. What is on that tape is that much of a bombshell.
I can tell that Vince has watched the footage by the injured expression on his face. “I saw you leave on the Ring,” he says, referring to the security camera we have for our front door, “and I thought I’d try to get some more clothes out of the house while you were out. But then I found this and—” His voice breaks off, emotionally. How dare he. How dare he be hurt by me.
“You were going to let this get out?” Vince continues, woefully. “You were going to let my family see that? My mom?”
I eye the hot curling iron on the sink, which I forgot to unplug last night. Bring up that red-hat-wearing bitch one more time and I’ll—
“You know,” he goes on, “you were not an innocent bystander in this marriage either, and I’m not going around flapping my mouth about it onstage at Talkhouse. I’m not shilling videos of your affairs to the paparazzi.”
It’s the most honest thing he’s ever said to me. There is an honest thing to say back, in an iron, don’t fuck with me tone, but it is not time to be honest yet. I have to say whatever it takes to get me to Jesse’s house. I take a deep, fortifying sigh, steeling myself for the industrial load of bullshit about to come out of my mouth. “I know,” I say, making my voice as gravelly as his. It doesn’t take much. After my stage performance last night, my vocal cords are shot through. “You wouldn’t do that to me.” You would just fuck the one person who I thought was safe, and so I told her everything—about feeling so invisible and so unmistakable, about neurotransmitters, about how hard it was to be a daughter to my mother, about what Vince does when I’m not around and how I did it too but only to keep the deep and abiding feelings of inadequacy at bay. I showed that bitch my belly because I thought I never had to worry about losing her. I thought Vince couldn’t be attracted to that and even if he was, it wouldn’t matter because she wasn’t attracted to that.