Jesse greets Jen first with a hug, commenting on how clammy her skin feels. Are you feeling okay? she asks her. Jen mumbles something about just needing to get in the shade.
Jesse doesn’t go on to hug everyone, but she makes contact in some form. Kelly gets a pat on the tush—groping your underlings is edgy when the groper is a woman!—and Lauren an arm around her shoulder while Jesse whispers something into her ear, probably about her not even noticing she burned off the back of her head because Lauren’s hand flies to her choppy ponytail. Vince and I are the only ones who don’t get any Jesse DNA on us, and I’m glad for it. Turn me away from the lunch table where the cheerleaders and football players feast. Sign your own death sentence.
“Where’s our girl?” Jesse asks. She’s thought for hours that “our girl” “went back to the city,” but we have to have the conversation on camera for the viewer. That’s one thing I won’t miss, having conversations two, three, sometimes four times. Each take was a turn in a maze, leading me further away from myself.
“Brett had some work to take care of back in the city,” Kelly says, making a beeline for the seat next to Jesse on the white picnic bench. The table has been set with natural cut wildflowers and purposefully wrinkled linens. On top of a mound of fresh-caught shrimp, a black fly sits like a king. Jen stares at him, turning green.
“Work?” Jesse is incensed. “I thought this was her bachelorette party. What happened?” She begins to pour wine for everyone, though she is drinking Casamigos on ice. For a long time, I assumed Casamigos was an actual spirit. Having taken a newfound interest in the drink, I’ve recently learned that Casamigos is tequila and that it is George Clooney’s.
I shove my glass in Jesse’s path. “I’d rather have what you’re having,” I tell her, and she sets the wine bottle down and obligingly starts me on my way to tequila-wasted while Kelly chews the inside corner of her mouth, undoubtedly sorting out her story for Jesse. For all Kelly knows, Brett went back to the city because the two of them nearly came to blows last night. She knows nothing of the blood shed on the floor of Lindy’s van.
“It’s such a bummer,” Kelly says, “but our manager at the Flatiron studio had a family emergency and so Brett went back to fill in for her today.”
Jesse peers at Kelly over the brim of her sunglasses, skeptically. “Why wouldn’t you have gone? It was supposed to be her weekend.” She serves me with a look that encourages me to jump in at any time.
I pull back my shoulders and run my tongue over my teeth to be sure I don’t have any gloss on them. My financials are in order, all my money going somewhere that gave me a good, wicked giggle. I wanted to make sure Vince didn’t see a cent, having no idea at the time that he would be able to join us here today. And though I haven’t showered or had a pass by the glam squad’s hand, I wrangled my hair into a pretty braid just before we left. I’m wearing my new dress and I will never be more ready than this. “Kelly doesn’t think Brett should marry Arch and they had a fight about it,” I say. On the other side of the table, Kelly bores a hole between my eyes, furious.
Jesse swivels her head in Kelly’s direction, pretending to be surprised by this information. “How could you not want Brett to marry Arch? Arch is bae goals!” Ugh—bae goals? Tell your twenty-two-year-old assistant to update your cheat sheet of hip young-people sayings, because no one under the age of thirty is saying “bae” anymore, you dumb pterodactyl.
Kelly uses her napkin to dab at a bead of sweat above her lip. “I think the world of Arch. Arch and I have a special connection,” she adds, defensively, in the manner of a raving racist telling you about her many black friends. “I just think that Brett is still young, and that there is no harm in taking a step back and making sure she’s ready for a commitment like marriage.”
I sneak a glance at Vince. His Adam’s apple is moving like a Boomerang video. He knows Kelly’s reservation has nothing to do with Brett being too young. She is twenty-seven years old. Can we stop talking about her like she’s some sort of child bride? “Vince?” I say. “You and Brett had a special connection. And I always love to hear a guy’s take on the silly matters of the heart. What say you? Should Brett marry Arch?” I smile at him, goadingly, showing as many of my movie star teeth as I can.
Vince turns to me in slow motion, seeming, finally, to catch on to what is happening. This is a setup. I came here to shred him. “I like Brett,” he says, woodenly. “But I really don’t know her well enough to say, babe.”
“We should text her,” I suggest, fairly. “Give her a chance to weigh in. We’re sitting around, talking smack about her relationship—are people still saying ‘smack,’ Jesse? I know you’re super jiggy with it.” I reach into my pocket and remove my phone, tapping the green messages icon with my thumb and sending a text to someone, though that someone is not Brett.
Almost immediately, Jesse sits up straighter. The zapped posture of a person whose phone has just mildly electrocuted her left ass cheek.
“You should really get that,” I tell her, in an undertone. I’ve always wanted to say that! You should really get that, like a murderer at the end of a genre novel, right before he confesses to his crimes in Scooby-Doo detail. He. Gosh, how sexist of me to assume that only men can be murderers.
Jesse keeps her eyes on me as she removes her phone from her back pocket and opens the text message. “It’s from you,” she says, unsmiling, but I can tell by the way her finger moves on the screen that she’s opened the file I’ve shared with her, and that she is now watching the GoPro footage I clipped last fall, right before I asked Brett to move out for good.
I thought I had a rat. I would walk into my pantry to find that bags of flour and brown sugar and hot chocolate packets had been tampered with, walk out leaving a trail of powdery footsteps. I had a GoPro that I had forgotten to return to prod last season, and so I set it on the low-light feature and positioned it on a top shelf, turned toward the pantry door, to see for myself. No sense vacating my apartment to have it fumigated if I didn’t have to.
The camera captured a little over three hours of footage before it ran out of space, and so the next day, I dragged my thumb along the slider at the bottom of the screen, keeping an eye out for any small moving shadows hurtling along the foot of the frame.
At the two hour and thirteen minute mark I removed my thumb. There was something, but it wasn’t a filthy, disease-ridden rodent. (Well . . .) It was Brett, slinking into the pantry, poking around, sticking her fingers into the bags of flour and sugar, licking them clean and crudely shoving them right back in. What is she doing? I wondered at first. But then I remembered something I learned at a live taping for a self-care podcast that Brett loved and dragged me to back when we were friends. Self-care—what will well-to-do white women come up with next?