by Ilana Masad
“Daphne?” Maggie’s voice breaks in a squeak and she starts laughing. “Fuck, I haven’t thought about her in years.” Daphne was the first girl Maggie kissed. It started during a game of truth or dare, but after that she and Daphne would sometimes hide away and make out, though they never planned it or talked about it, really. Maggie thought she was in love, and that maybe Daphne loved her too. Until the day Daphne’s twin brother, who also went to their school, walked in on them in the band room and called Daphne a dirty dyke and said he’d tell their parents. Daphne refused to talk to her after that. “I never knew you had a crush on her. Good taste, little brother.”
There’s a rushing sound and a thunk of plastic on glass; he must be putting coffee on. “Don’t you remember I always tried to hang out with you? You were such a bitch to me.”
“I’m sure I was.”
“Anyway, she’s super nice now, she’s like a mom and shit, brought her baby with her and everything. Her husband is this dude who looks like he lives at the gym or is a drill sergeant or something. So weird. Anyway, she said she’d come back tomorrow for a bit, in case you’re here by then.”
“Awesome, I will be. I promise,” Maggie says. The traffic opens up, finally, and her foot presses down on the pedal, merging with the faster current of cars.
“Mags, um, don’t get pissed, okay?”
“Sure,” she says, but she’s distracted, looking in her mirrors. Drivers in LA are crazy, she thinks as a BMW zigs out from behind a trailer to her right and narrowly misses hitting her as it goes into the lane on her left in order to pass her.
“I didn’t want to ask because, uh, I dunno, but did you find out what the deal is with those letters?”
“What? Ariel, you’re breaking up, look, I’m driving, I’ll text you when I’m heading home, okay?”
“Okay,” he says, and hangs up.
He wasn’t breaking up, and Maggie can certainly drive and talk because she’s done it plenty of times before. She just doesn’t know what to say. What to tell him. He has a right to know. She doesn’t want to do it over the phone, though, that’s for sure.
But he also has a right to choose whether he wants to know, doesn’t he? It’s not as if Iris meant to tell them any of this, clearly. She probably just thought Peter would stick the letters in the mailbox without question. Damn, that’s cold, Maggie thinks. Mom, really? You set up your husband, the father of your goddamn children, to send letters to the men you fucked behind his back? She remembers Liam called her mother classy and snorts, her arms and chest and face getting hot. This is the unclassiest move she’s ever heard of.
She gets off at the exit her phone indicates, and spends the next half hour trying to find parking that isn’t a flat rate of $20—she’s been spending a lot the past few days, much more than she usually does in this span of time, and though she knows she’s going to be okay, she doesn’t see any reason to push it. But eventually, she gives up, parks in the too-expensive lot, and walks the long block to the chic, clearly refurbished white building where DRAKE & CARDINAL is emblazoned in small tasteful gold letters on the tinted window. She pulls at the glass door, also tinted, but it’s locked. She looks up and sees a camera pointed at her. High security, that’s interesting, she thinks. She finds the discreet buzzer to the left of the door and presses it.
“Drake and Cardinal,” a cool voice says. “Who are you here to see?”
“Eric Baishan? Bayshan?” Maggie isn’t sure she’s pronouncing it correctly.
“One moment, please.”
Maggie waits. Eventually, a clicking sound comes from the door and she pulls it open.
Inside, the place looks more like a spa than an agency. Tall plants stand in the corners, white couches line the walls and glass coffee tables are stacked with glossy magazines, large art books, and celebrity memoirs. A woman who looks like she’s emerged from one of the magazine covers sits at a white desk in the center, in front of an elevator whose doors are tinted rose gold. She looks at Maggie expectantly, like a principal at school waiting for a student to come closer.
“Hi,” Maggie says. “Can I please talk to Eric Baishan? I have something to deliver to him.”
“There is no one by that name here,” the woman says. Her tone is bland, her hands are folded in front of her on the desk, and the space is so free of clutter that Maggie wonders what she actually does all day. Maggie thinks she’s going to say something else, but she doesn’t. She just looks up at her, fake eyelashes blinking slowly. It’s like being stared at by a Stepford wife.
“Well, I have a letter addressed to him here,” Maggie says.
“May I ask how you know this person you think is located here?” the woman asks.
“I don’t, exactly. My mother did. She died a few days ago, and she knew him, and she left a letter for him. She wanted me to hand-deliver it,” Maggie adds, inventing.
“Like I said, there is no one by that name here,” the woman says, the tiniest expression coming into her face. “I can give it to one of our attorneys, though,” she adds, and holds her hand out expectantly.
Maggie isn’t sure what’s going on, but clearly the woman knows who this Eric dude is, and either he’s one of the lawyers or it’s his attorney who works here, not him. “No, I need to find him and give it to him and only him. Like I said, it was my mother’s dying wish.” She stresses the last two words, hoping for sympathy. Hoping to get this over with. This conversation, this search, this—all of it. “Maybe you can give me his address?”
The woman seems uncertain as to what to do in the face of this tragic story Maggie is telling her. But she knows her lines. “We don’t give out clients’ addresses, ma’am,” she says firmly.
“Okay, so he’s a client, see, we’re getting somewhere,” Maggie says, and the woman has a full-on expression, her hand flying to her mouth in mortification of the precious information she’s given away. Maggie turns on as much of her bitchy, customer service, let-me-tell-you-something tone as she can, the same one Iris used to use with the people trying to sell her more internet or cable services, and says slowly, “How about you just call him, how would that be? Or his lawyer, hmm? Maybe if you tell him whose daughter I am he’ll agree to see me, okay?”
“Take a seat.” The woman won’t raise her eyes now.
There’s no seat in front of the desk, which puts Maggie in the awkward position of needing to walk over to one of the sofas and sit there, twenty feet from the receptionist, as the woman puts a delicate blue headset over her curly, wet-look blond hair and presses buttons on her phone. She cups the mic of her headset in a hand and murmurs into it so that Maggie can’t catch the words. Then the woman takes the headset off, and without glancing at Maggie, turns to her computer screen.
When a couple more minutes go by with no sound other than the occasional clicking of the receptionist’s mouse, Maggie decides to speak up. “So, uh, what’s the verdict?”
The woman is back to neutral. “He’s coming,” she says. Maggie doesn’t know if she means Eric or his attorney, but she decides not to ask. The receptionist reminds her of the worst of the girls she went to school with. The kind who have a power she’s never understood, this apparently feminine ability to be entirely disdainful of all women who don’t have their level of normative beauty. Maggie feels infinitely small beside her, even though the woman is physically tiny all over, short and slim, with a button nose and a pursed mouth.
While she waits, Maggie opens the message Gavin sent her. It’s so him, so carefully worded and thoughtful, and her breath catches when she reaches the last part:
Allow yourself to feel whatever it is you’re feeling, if you can. Grief isn’t uniform. Everyone goes through it differently. I think people judge themselves for how they perform their grief, or don’t, and the thing is, it’s hard enough without adding guilt. If you’re angry, be angry. If you’re sad, be sad. If you’re giggling
and euphoric for being alive, that’s okay too. And if you vacillate between those and a hundred other emotions? That’s okay. You’re allowed. And I’m here. And I love you.
Maggie leans her head back on the wall and opens her eyes wide, trying to dry them out. She doesn’t want any tears escaping in this cold room. When she’s gotten herself under control, she starts writing back to Gavin, thanking him, ending with, Want to talk sometime soon? I miss you. I have so much to tell you.
She begins to erase that last sentence, but then retypes it and hits send.
Finally, the elevator doors hush open and a tall, square-built white man in a navy-blue suit with no tie comes out.
“Mr. Miller,” the receptionist says, smiling brightly. Maggie wonders if she’s just a kiss ass, or whether this man might, against all odds, be a good boss. “This is the person I mentioned.” She points at Maggie, as if Maggie isn’t the only other person in the room.
“Thanks, Crystal,” Mr. Miller says. He walks up to Maggie and holds out his hand. She jumps up to shake. “What’s your name, honey?” he asks.
Her spine shivers at the endearment, but she returns his handshake firmly, gripping a little tighter than necessary. “Margaret Krause,” she says, hoping this version of her name sounds less childish and more like someone who shouldn’t be fucked with.
“Wonderful, Margaret, how about you come on upstairs with me?”
“Sure,” she says, though the man gives her the creeps. In the elevator, he pulls his phone out and taps at it fervidly, not glancing up at her once. So she glances at her own—Lucia has answered. Come home to me bb, soon?
Maggie’s cheeks warm, the request infusing her with courage, but she doesn’t have time to respond before the doors open onto a foyer that looks like a bad set for a film taking place in Japan. Tatami mats layer the floor, and the office doors aren’t actually paper and bamboo but painted to look like it. She winces to see Mr. Miller walking across the mats in his shoes, feels the need to take her own off. The whole place makes her feel icky, discomfited by its strange design appropriation.
He slides one of the doors open and gestures for her to come in. The inside looks like a mix of the downstairs lobby and the foyer: more tatami mat flooring but the desk is broad and glass and the chairs heavy leather. It looks awful, she thinks, but maybe this is what wealth looks like to some people.
“Now,” he says, sitting behind the desk. “Tell me your little story again?”
Maggie bristles, and rather than taking a seat in one of the low chairs facing Mr. Miller’s desk, she stays standing in the middle of the room. She wants to be able to flee if she needs to. She breathes through her nose, slowly, trying to keep hold on her temper. “It’s not a story. It’s the truth. My mother, Iris Krause, passed away the night of August twentieth. She left letters for several people. One of them is Eric Baishan. She wanted me to deliver it to him in person.”
“See, here’s the trouble I’m having, honey,” Mr. Miller says. He looks utterly at ease, leaning back in his big leather chair, twirling a pen between his fingers. “That name is the trouble. You see, very few people know that name these days. And the ones who do are usually close personal friends, or people who work here and who know they will be sued to Timbuktu if they break their NDAs, or scam artists who dug up some records and are trying to get money. Now, you admit to not knowing the man. You don’t work here. So what’s your scam? What are you trying to get from him?”
“I don’t know what you mean or who this dude is,” Maggie says, her tone slipping away from politeness now. “I just know that my mom knew him and I want to meet him and give him his fucking letter.”
Mr. Miller turns his chair toward the large window that looks out on a lush, wasteful garden hidden in a walled courtyard. “Let’s say I believe you,” he says. There’s a thwacking sound; Maggie thinks he must be tapping his pen on one of the chair’s armrests. “Even if I do, the trouble is that the man you’re looking for isn’t someone who I can simply summon here. But, you know,” he swivels back around, grinning wolfishly, “let’s see what I can do for you.”
He seems so amused that Maggie feels like something terrible is about to happen, but he just turns to his computer and beckons her closer with a large hand. His knuckles look swollen. She approaches the desk and sits gingerly at the edge of a chair.
He clicks something on the computer, and the telltale musical tones of a video-chat program start ringing loudly from surround-sound speakers hung around the room.
A deep, oddly familiar voice replaces the tone. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Nice to see you too,” Mr. Miller says to the person on the screen. Maggie can’t see him, whoever he is.
“What’s so damn important.” Why does Maggie know that voice? Its deep timbre, the almost Southern linger over some vowels.
“There’s a young lady with me here, and—”
“Fuck you, Jeff. I don’t need a consolation prize, and I don’t need a working girl getting in my business.”
Mr. Miller flicks his eyes to Maggie and smiles, showing his perfect veneers. “I don’t think she’d be interested even if you were,” he says, eyes back on the screen. “She says you knew her mother once. What was her name, honey?” he asks Maggie.
“Iris Krause.”
Whoever is on the screen is quiet for a while. Mr. Miller says, “Well?”
“That’s . . . wow. Her kid’s there? Let me talk to her.”
“By all means,” Mr. Miller says. He turns the screen, with its embedded camera, towards Maggie.
Never before has she considered herself a person who is easily starstruck, but when she sees who’s on the screen, the voice slots itself into its rightful place and she finds herself unable to speak for a moment. This man is Mac Lòpez, an actor whose star rose very suddenly a few years ago when he began playing a host of Native American characters on a variety of high-profile, big-budget cable TV shows and giving long interviews about his Oklahoma upbringing, his Apache ancestors on his mother’s side and his Spanish and Indigenous roots on his Mexican father’s. He talked about his daughter, a servicemember who died in Afghanistan. He was vocally active in the #NoDAPL movement, making appearances at Standing Rock. Just last month, Maggie and Lucia went to see his newest film, a gritty historical drama about Westward Expansion and the Indian Removal Act. It was getting Oscar whispers before it even came out.
“Hi,” she says stupidly. She and Lucia cried through the last quarter of the movie and then debated all the way home about a viral tweet that opined that the film, which was written and directed by a white woman, was using the rarely told story of those who refused to walk the Trail of Tears in order to pander to white audiences’ thirst for trauma porn. Lucia is going to lose her shit when she finds out Iris slept with Mac Lòpez. Mac Fucking Lòpez. If Iris were alive now, Maggie would be tempted to give her a high five, despite everything—You had it going on, didn’t you, Mom?
“Wow,” Mac says. Or Eric. She isn’t sure which is his real name. “You look like her.”
“Thanks,” she says, uncertain if this is a compliment or not. “Uh, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but my mom died a few days ago.”
He nods, his shoulder-length hair framing his face. He looks older than on the big screen, less smooth-faced, with bags under his eyes. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he says after a moment.
“She, um, she left something for you. A letter. She wanted me to give it to you. I guess I can leave it here for you to pick up?” She gestures vaguely at the space she’s in, feeling dumb. “Or they can mail it to you, I guess?”
“Sure,” he says, shrugging. He doesn’t ask her anything else, just gazes, looking a bit sad. She remembers seeing a tabloid headline a couple of weeks ago while in line at the grocery store that his model wife divorced him and took their three-year-old son with her. Maggie dismissed it then, assuming
it was a fake story, as so many tabloid pieces appear to be, but now she wonders if maybe he is mourning something too. Maybe it’s just his tired eyes that make him look sad, though. Or the quality of the camera, and she’s just projecting.
She tries to recall her anger at him, at all these men. “Did you know she had a family when you were fucking her?” she blurts out. Mr. Miller raises his head from his phone and leans forward like he’s about to tell her off, but he doesn’t get the chance.
“I wasn’t,” Mac says, and Maggie notes how weird it is to see his lips moving but have the sound coming from around her—just like in the movie theater, she realizes.
“You didn’t know she had a family?” she says, trying to focus.
“No, I wasn’t fucking her,” he says calmly. “And yes, I knew she had a family. She was thinking of sending you to the school my kid went to.”
This is a surprise Maggie isn’t sure what to do with. “Wait, what?” she says. “But—then—why would she leave you this.” She stares at the letter in her hand, feeling confused, deflated.
“She was a good friend for a while,” he says. “That’s all.”
“But,” Maggie says. This can’t be right. These letters are to the men Iris cheated on Peter with, aren’t they? “What do you mean?”
“I need to go now,” he says. “Bye.” The call disconnects and Maggie is left staring at a white screen with a row of names to one side, several of which she recognizes at a glance as other very famous Hollywood actors.
“Whoops,” Mr. Miller says and shifts the screen back. “I guess that’s that, huh?”
“Call him again,” Maggie says. “I need to know more. This doesn’t make sense.”
“Sorry, honey, he’s a bit temperamental, if he had to go, he had to go.”
“Please, just, just try. Please?”
Mr. Miller rolls his eyes but clicks again, and they wait through the ringing until a popping noise tells them no one’s answering. “Told you,” he said. “Now, you want to leave that letter or what?”