Smoke

by Meili Cady

  Maybe he was fired, maybe he left voluntarily. I don’t know. I’d like to think that he caught wise and left. Henry always seemed like a smart guy, and he certainly deserved more than Lisette was offering him.

  IT WAS TWO WEEKS AFTER Ben walked out of my apartment, and I’d been given no work to do for Lisette. Again, I wondered if trips were happening without me. I’d seen how much she’d enjoyed watching Henry in pain, and I couldn’t kick the thought that maybe she liked to see me suffer too. I couldn’t believe I was thinking these things about the person I’d called my best friend for years. But I’d seen her betray other people. Why not me next? I didn’t feel protected the way I used to. I still saw her socially, but only when she invited me. I hung out with her now more out of obligation than genuine interest; she had never taken well to rejection, and if I didn’t have a very good reason for not seeing her, it could cause problems that I didn’t have the energy for. Part of me, the part that had never listened to reason, still loved her as I always had, but another part of me feared her and saw her as a dangerous stranger. I tried not to let her see how conflicted I was, but she could tell that my affection for her was circling the drain. I never asked when I could see her because I hardly cared. I felt very little. Numbness was a welcome change for me. I secretly wished that she would fire me for good, though I didn’t know what I would do if she did.

  Around that time, I was invited to a party on a small, private yacht in Marina del Rey. It was the first time I’d gone out and felt like a part of the living world in quite a while. The fresh air in the marina was invigorating from the moment I stepped off the dock onto the tethered yacht. The drinks were cold and the company was welcoming. I was halfway through my first beer when I got a text from Lisette.

  HI ANGEL! GREAT NEWS! I CANCELED MY MEETINGS TODAY AND YOU’RE COMING OVER! WE’RE GOING TO BED BATH & BEYOND TO GET SOME STUFF FOR MY NEW CONDO! WHEN CAN YOU BE HERE? I MISS YOU XOXO.

  Lisette had recently moved into an even more expensive, more regal-looking building on Wilshire Corridor. Her penthouse was enormous and as of yet unfurnished, save for her mirrored bedroom furniture. I texted her back saying that I couldn’t join her because I was at a party in the marina. I knew she wouldn’t like hearing this, especially the fact that I was with other friends, but what the hell did she want me to do? Drop everything I was doing, everyone I was with, and go to her? No. It wasn’t like that anymore. She responded to me ten minutes later, saying NO PROBLEM, and telling me that she had already assigned one of her “army of skanks” devotees to join her instead. I’d never met any of these other friends she’d said she grew up with, her army of skanks. I wondered sometimes if they even existed. The pictures on their MySpace profiles never changed, not in four years. Unless every one of them had packed on eighty pounds and didn’t want to update their photos, it didn’t make sense. People change their photos, they just do. It was difficult to imagine that Lisette would create such an embarrassing lie to make it seem like she had other loyal friends, but who knew?

  I remembered once, years ago, when I was present for a fight between Lisette and her sommelier ex-boyfriend. I was on the sidelines of their screaming match, and her boyfriend said something that truly shocked me. He called her a liar. He’d turned to me and said, “Meili, you do know that she’s a pathological liar, don’t you?” I was so taken aback by that. I thought he was just throwing out unfounded accusations. I’d never thought of her as a liar, and I’d forgotten that he’d said that until recently. Now, in these past months, the memory of his words had come back to me. I had never caught Lisette in a lie, but I wondered sometimes if maybe her ex-boyfriend had legitimate reasons for saying that.

  I was enjoying perfect weather on the roof of the yacht when I got another text from Lisette.

  OMG BABE—GOOD THING YOU DIDN’T COME WITH ME TODAY. MOTHERFUCKING BEN IS HERE SHOPPING WITH SOME DUMB BROAD NEW GIRLFRIEND. UNBELIEVABLE. THEY ARE TWO PEOPLE AHEAD OF ME IN LINE RIGHT NOW. I’M FIGHTING A STRONG URGE TO PUNCH HIM IN THE BACK OF HIS HEAD.

  I excused myself from a conversation with a friend and went downstairs to sit by myself on the lower level of the boat.

  I just breathed and looked out on the water, taking a moment by myself before I texted Lisette back.

  ARE YOU SURE IT WAS HIM? I asked. DID HE SEE YOU?

  IT WAS DEFINITELY HIM, she said. I’D KNOW THAT FUCKING SHIT FACE ANYWHERE. HE DIDN’T SEE ME. HE’S TOO DUMB, AND HE WAS FOCUSING ALL OF HIS ATTENTION ON HIS NEW WHORE. IT WAS DISGUSTING.

  My stomach twisted with nausea at the thought of Ben’s hands on another woman, especially so soon after we’d broken up.

  ARE YOU SURE THEY WERE TOGETHER? I asked her.

  POSITIVE, she wrote. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE, YOU CAN MEET ME FOR DINNER TONIGHT WHEN YOU’RE DONE WITH THE PARTY.

  I did my best to have a good time during the remainder of the party. Getting Lisette’s texts had brought up a wave of feelings, but I was determined not to let myself be swept away by them. When the sun began to sink in the watery skyline of the marina, the guests on the yacht reached for their sweaters. I took this as my cue to leave.

  Lisette told me to meet her in the valet area of her building so that we could ride together to a nearby Indian restaurant. She appeared to be in an unusually chipper mood when I climbed into her shimmering white Bentley. “How was the party?” she asked me as she drove.

  “It was fine,” I said, distracted by a head full of questions about Ben’s mystery girlfriend at Bed Bath & Beyond.

  I walked into the restaurant wearing shorts and a sweatshirt, with an uneven sunburn and a layer of salt on my skin from the ocean breeze. Lisette was her usual put-together self, with thick yet skillfully layered makeup and shiny, dark hair falling elegantly down her back. When the waiter came to our table, Lisette ordered a sizable variety plate from the menu. “I’m starving,” she said. I ordered a hot tea that I didn’t plan on drinking.

  “So what do you want to know?” she asked me from across the table.

  “Um,” I said, “I don’t know . . . what did she look like?”

  “She was blond, looked kind of like a cheerleader type,” Lisette said. “She looked like that Hayden Pannaberry actress from TV, whatever the hell her name is. Really annoying.”

  “Was she pretty?” I asked.

  Lisette thought for a moment, then said, “Babe, I mean, do you want me to lie to you?”

  “No,” I told her.

  “She was pretty. Annoying though. She kept laughing really loudly.”

  The waiter brought me my tea. I took the tea bag out of its package and put it into the hot water. Lisette studied me.

  “I’m surprised you’re taking this so well,” she said. “Usually you’d be on the floor by now.”

  “I know,” I said. “I guess I’m out of tears for this guy . . . Time to move on.” Lisette pursed her lips and nodded.

  “I’m trying to think of what else,” she said. “I know how you’re obsessed with details, so I don’t want to leave anything out.”

  “What else is there?” I asked. The waiter brought Lisette’s meal. She dug in right away, taking in hearty forkfuls of Indian food. My fully steeped tea was untouched in front of me on the table. “What were they buying?” I asked.

  “A bunch of stuff, like household stuff. They were so cheesy—they had His and Hers bathrobes and a bunch of scented candles. Made me want to yak.”

  “When you say ‘household stuff,’ what do you mean?” I asked. “Like stuff for an apartment?” I felt my heart pounding faster in my chest.

  Lisette nodded with a mouthful of food. “Mm-hmm.” She swallowed her bite. “Yeah, like they were moving in together or something.” My knees felt weaker by the second.

  His and Hers bathrobes? Moving in together? I was supposed to be the one moving in with Ben.

  Lisette stared at me. “Are you okay, sweetie?” she asked. “How does this make you feel?”

  “Ha. Uh, not particularly good,” I
said.

  “I’m really shocked you’re not crying,” she said. “You must have found your strength.”

  “Yeah, I guess. I just have one more question,” I said, giving in to a masochistic curiosity.

  “What is it?” Lisette asked.

  “Did you hear either of them say ‘I love you’?” Lisette set her fork down and looked at me, then turned away like she didn’t want to say it. She nodded.

  “Yeah, I think I heard that,” she said, grabbing a piece of naan from her plate.

  “Did she say it to him, or he said it to her?” I asked, on my last leg of strength.

  “I heard him say it to her,” Lisette told me. “She probably said it to him too. It was hard to hear everything. They were all over each other in line. That’s probably why he never noticed me. He kept coming up to her from behind and putting his arms around her and kissing her neck. It was gross.”

  I stared at her and sat for a minute in silence. I could feel the meager wall of strength I’d managed to build beginning to crumble. “He told her that he loved her?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Lisette said matter-of-factly. She casually dipped a piece of naan into a puddle of orange sauce on her plate.

  I rested my elbows on the table and leaned onto them. I dropped my face into my hands, as if to try to block everything out and keep my feelings bottled. But it was no use. I felt a warm, salty tear come out against my palm. I immediately wiped it away and sucked in the rest that might have followed. Lisette swallowed a mouthful of Indian food, got up from her seat across the table, and came over to sit beside me. She put her arm around me. I looked at her and noticed wetness in her eyes. “It breaks my heart to tell you all this,” she said, stroking my hair. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you . . .”

  SHORTLY AFTER THAT DINNER WHEN I heard such devastating news about Ben, Lisette called a meeting for Team LL. We still rendezvoused at the same Beverly Hills hotel bar. It was quiet there, and no one asked questions. Lisette told me before we assembled that I’d be meeting a man named Richard who was going to replace Henry on the team from now on. “Who the hell is Richard?” I asked her.

  “Richard. My assistant. Sweetie, I’ve told you about him.”

  “I’ve never heard you talk about anyone named Richard, ever.”

  “He’s been my assistant for six years.” She always seemed to have a lot of assistants that came and went casually out of the woodwork.

  “What?” I asked. “How is it possible that I’ve never heard of him?”

  “Well, he was my assistant when I met you, and then he left for a while to chase some girl. He’s back now and working for me again. Oh, and, babe, when you see Richard at the meeting, I need you to act like you’ve met him before. Just in front of Frankie, otherwise it would look weird. Frankie has obviously known Richard for years.”

  At the hotel bar, I sat with Frankie and Lisette at a booth. Lisette’s BlackBerry lay on the table. It lit up with a message. She’d installed a text tone that played a remixed version of Tony Montana’s most famous lines from Scarface, set to music, every time she got a text. She looked at her phone. “He’s here,” she said. The man Lisette was calling Richard walked into the bar from the lobby. He was tall, standing only a few inches shorter than Frankie, and filled out a suit. Richard was white, in his late twenties, and judging by his slight accent, I’d say he was from the South. Richard smiled a lot, but you got the sense that he liked things to be dangerous. It was obvious to me that he and Lisette had a flirtation.

  This is bullshit. They haven’t known each other for six years. I can tell just from watching their body language.

  After a few minutes of discussing details for the next trip to Ohio, Frankie left. Lisette, Richard, and I stayed at the booth. Lisette paid the tab for our cocktails, then suggested that the three of us get a hotel room upstairs and hang out for a while.

  Once we settled into a room, Richard broke out a bag of cocaine and poured some of it on a horizontal mirror. “All right, mama, get ready to be impressed,” he told Lisette.

  “I’m ready to see what you have,” she said.

  “What should I use to cut?” he asked.

  “Use a card. Just grab one from your wallet,” she said.

  “All right.” Richard took a leather wallet out of his pocket. He plucked his driver’s license from it and began to break the lump of cocaine down into a powder.

  I was suspicious of Richard and his relationship to Lisette. I simply didn’t believe that I was being told the truth, or at least not the entire truth. As Richard leaned over the mirror and cut, I took a closer look at his ID. I couldn’t read it, but it sure didn’t look like it said Richard. Once he stopped cutting for a moment, I read the name. His license said Christopher Cash. “Your name’s not Richard,” I said. He looked up at me nervously. He hadn’t expected that and looked to Lisette.

  “Yes, it is,” she stammered.

  “No, it’s not,” I said. They both appeared confused. I was sick of the lies. It was past the point of ridiculous. “Dude, come on. You used your driver’s license to cut the coke. It says Christopher Cash.” He looked down at the card in his hand.

  “That’s not his license,” Lisette chimed in.

  “Oh my God, yes, it is!” I said. “Stop lying to me. What the hell is your real name? Is it Christopher Cash?”

  He looked at Lisette before saying, “Uh, yeah, it—I mean, that’s my birth name.”

  “Richard is the name he uses for business,” Lisette said. “Don’t call him Chris in front of Frankie or anyone.”

  I said fine, though none of it made sense. My expectation that things should generally make sense had gone out the window a long time ago.

  In all Team LL business going forward, I’d be alerted of our schedule via group text messages to the team that were coming from Chris, though every message would be signed off with the name “Richard.” He was using one of Lisette’s old phone numbers, she said. She told me that she gave him her phone to use for business.

  A few days after the meeting, Lisette invited me to come over to her penthouse. When I came to her door, we shared a close hug. She was beaming.

  “Babe, you have to see what my mum just sent me from France,” she said.

  She walked me down her entryway and stopped in front of a portrait. What looked like masterful brushstrokes had conjured the image of a woman in profile, sitting alone at a bar. She wore a bloodred cocktail dress, with shadowy hair swept delicately behind her neck. Her fair skin was illuminated by the glow of a jazz show, and she sat turned toward it, ignoring the untouched martini that waited at her side.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? It’s a gift from a Parisian artist—very famous in Europe,” Lisette told me. “You probably wouldn’t have heard of him. He loves my family. He told my mum that he wanted me to have this.”

  “It’s gorgeous,” I said. “It looks like your mom.”

  The woman at the bar did look like Lisette’s mother. In the four years that I’d known her, I’d never met either of her parents, though she spoke of them constantly, gushing about how much they adored her and when they might be coming into town next. She said that they traveled a lot for business and owned homes all over the world. She’d always seemed to keep a few photos of them, but I remembered one professional photo of her mother, sitting on an expensive-looking couch. She was striking and looked much like Lisette. The only photo that Lisette had shared of her father showed a handsome Asian man dressed in a full suit, standing almost as one would in a catalog for menswear. I’d never seen any candid photos of her parents, or pictures that she was in with them.

  “Do you think that he painted this of your mom?” I asked. Lisette stared at the woman in the painting.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said, without moving her eyes from the image. “Probably.”

  “You should ask her,” I said. “I bet he did.”

  Lisette took me farther down the lengthy entryway to reveal a smaller p
ainting. “This is another work from the same artist, babe. My mummy bought it for me,” she said. It was a cityscape of what appeared to be some European metropolis at night. The tiny windows in the buildings stood out like stars against the dark canvas.

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s really sweet that your mom sent these to you.”

  “I know,” Lisette said, smiling dreamily at the artwork.

  Less than a week later, I went to Bed Bath & Beyond to pick up some candles for my apartment. While I wandered around the store, I passed an aisle of home decor. As I glanced over the selection, something caught my attention and stopped me in my tracks. Sitting ahead of me on a crowded shelf, I saw exact duplicates of the works that I’d been in such awe of at Lisette’s penthouse, looking slightly less regal and slightly more like mass-produced knockoffs than when I’d seen them hung so pristinely on her walls. They were priced at sixty dollars each. I gaped at the prints.

  She lied.

  It seemed preposterous to imagine her gussied up in Bed Bath & Beyond, strutting through the aisles with her phony priceless paintings sticking out of a rusty shopping cart. I couldn’t fathom why she felt the need to lie about something so trivial, especially to me. It would’ve been humiliating for her if I’d told her that I knew. I was flushed with embarrassment for her just at the thought of it. I decided that it was best not to say anything, for now. I knew that whatever had compelled her to lie about such a petty matter had nothing to do with me, and I didn’t want to put her on the spot and make her feel defensive. To me, it represented a greater issue that ought to be handled sensitively. I didn’t know how or when I would ever address it, but I wasn’t going to bring it up casually without being prepared for a full-on intervention.