“Just holler if you got questions, sugar,” Candace says. “Make me look good in front of the manufacturing guys.”
“You got it, Candie,” I say, before giving her shoulder a light squeeze and bumping hips with her. (Kendra’s not the only one with charms.)
I lean into Kendra, who’s still shaking to the beat. It moved from K-pop to Bollywood hip-hop fusion, and Kendra is nodding deep into the groove. “Any minute now, you’re going to strip down to the sari you’re wearing under that Zac Posen two-piece, right? Lotus hands and everything.”
“That’s why I dragged you away from old foot-fucker Candie,” she says. “I want you to meet the DJ. She’s my cousin. Well, our cousin”—Kendra gestures toward the glass booth. “Lindee just showed up.”
“Wait. I thought Lindee hates sex and everything related to it.”
“I know, but she’s stressin’ about work shit; some new director is chapping her ass. They’ll probably end up getting married—watch. Then I saw on the e-mail invite thing that our cousin Tina’s spinning, so I told Lindee. I hope it’s okay that she tagged.”
“Candace loves you. Whenever I show up at one of her things without you she looks legit heartbroken. It’s fine. I’m just surprised that Lindee agreed to come to a sex shop.”
“A sex shop called Sexistential, by the way.”
“I can taste her bitter all the way from here. Such a broken bird, that one.”
“Hey, hey. That’s my twin.” Kendra stops her dancing short. “I can say shit about her, not you—especially not you. You’re an only child; you have no idea how this thing works.” She starts moving her upper body again. “But maybe your parents will adopt a baby from Malawi like my mom’s neighbors did. It’s like the new thing for bored empty nesters. Even better, your parents can request a preteen or tween or whatever—skip the diapers, but you know, still stay busy. Then you can be the pissed-off big sister proper, talk all the shit you want about your annoying brat brother stealing all your thunder.”
I’m saying the words in my head, but they’re tumbling out of my mouth and there’s no way to draw them back behind my tongue. “Is that supposed to be funny?” I’m right up in Kendra’s face, my nose nearly scraping her cheek. “You don’t know the first thing about my parents. Why would you even say some shit like that? Like you know anything about them, what they need.”
“Whoa. Slow down. What just happened? I should be the crampy one here—but I’m not, because it’s jokes and we’re in a sex shop, celebrating an anal probe. So let’s relax, okay?” Kendra tilts her head at me. “Wait, is this about that Tell Me More post? Watch, soon some reality-show D-lister will show up at an event wearing a giant condom and nothing else. Everybody will be focused on her instead. People have ADD, Best. Their memories are Swiss cheese. And BFD, the hotty-McHotts King was knockin’ boots with fierce bitch Best all this time and no one knew. In the grand scheme, who cares?” She takes a beat and looks at me. Her smile drops. “Or is this about Grant himself, you know, the mental-break part? It’s got to suck for him to be outed like that. What’s up with his costar—ferret face? How you gonna just shove your teammate onto the third rail like that? What a dick.”
“No. No, it’s not about that. It’s not about Grant. Not everything is about Grant!” I can’t even try to contain it now—the words, the fire; all of it is spilling out fast and fresh. I’m yelling and don’t care who hears me. “He had a temporary mental-health episode, Kendra. That’s it. He didn’t go all the way under. He survived. And it has nothing to do with being lucky or chosen or whatever. He survived. Sometimes people just survive!” It’s obviously too late to try saving myself here. The only option left is to storm off.
I can feel Kendra’s eyes, wide and wild, burning holes into my back as I hustle off the floor hoping for an unlocked door in the back office. Trying to remember any of Dr. Monfries’s go-to phrases, calming chants for moments exactly like this, is a losing game. I consider my sessions with Dr. Monfries largely a waste of time; too many questions (for me), too little answers (from him), but he did know his way around a calming mantra. Of course, I discovered this in retrospect and am drawing a complete and fateful blank right now, when I need to remember most. My mind is empty of anything useful or quiet. I reach for my coins in my skirt’s pocket, but they’re missing too. I forgot to transfer them over from my cardigan—which is hanging in my office. I feel the panic crawling up the back of my throat and hurry into a darkened aisle near the “classics” DVD section. My eyes are watery, but I can still see clear enough across the room to the DJ table. Kendra, Lindee, and DJ Tina are bundled like nesting dolls. Kendra is tossing her head back; her long hair rolls against her like a thick, black wave. Lindee is wearing her cousin’s jumbo headphones and fiddling with something on the chrome table. The cousin points to something else and all three of them turn their attention above them. Watching them huddled together looking to the sky—their narrow, brown faces made golden by the soft lights above the DJ’s table—I clutch my stomach, trying to grab hold of the loud, jerky gasp burning up through my chest. My right eyelid starts twitching and I think I’m going to vomit.
And just like that, the moment—the clear, haunting one I had chased away years ago—returned. I was sucked back into the hole beneath me, reaching for Benjamin, slowing into a cold and sick silence, unable to move or process that my brothers were dead and dying and that I was surely next. I hear those sounds; the realness of it tries to choke the trembling life out of me. I’m gasping and step back farther into the shadowy aisle, reaching my hand for something sturdy. I don’t want to pass out here with only Linda Lovelace and the other dusty porn stars around to hear my fall. It’s all spinning around me, strange and unsettled. I can barely keep my head up. I dig my hands into my left pocket once more, knowing that those coins aren’t there, but at this point I’ll take anything—even the idea of my golden safety tokens will do.
CHAPTER 5
“So did you have this grand-mal freak-out before or after you called me a broken bird?”
“Jesus. It’s been over a week, Lindee. Is this why you invited me out—to rub that salt in good and proper? I’ve already apologized at least eighty different times. Can we all let it go now?”
I knew she was avoiding me, but this no-show completely seals it: Kendra’s fully pissed. Lindee asked me to come with her to pick out a birthday day gift for their mother. It was such a twin thing that I was honestly surprised to see that Kendra wasn’t joining us.
“Is that why Kendra didn’t come with you?”
“We don’t have to die together too, you know,” Lindee says. She’s such a sour bitch, and most days I love it. I stopped asking questions a long time ago when it comes to Lindee. She tells me all the time how obnoxious my “reporter mouth” can be. Always asking, never telling. She’s right. My general curiosity—let’s just call it comprehensive—makes me a good reporter, but also downright nosy. It’s annoying, all the questions—I can see that. Kendra doesn’t mind it as much, so I often get sidebar scoop on whatever’s happening with Lindee from her.
Their mother’s birthday is either on Christmas Day or Boxing Day, I can never remember. Kendra just sends her to a super-luxuriating spa in the city for a full day. She has her assistant make the call to the spa too. Actually, I think the assistant set up a standing annual appointment for the mother, auto-billed to Kendra, years ago. There’s operating on minimal effort, and then there’s Kendra, right below that. But Lindee likes to search out the perfect gift for the woman who she says “was my only real friend during the roughest phases of my life.” More than her own identical twin, her mother is the one person who has Lindee’s unwavering respect and love. It’s sweet to see Lindee sweet.
Every gift suggestion I toss out is quickly deemed “not good enough.” I get why she started looking a month early.
My mother never wanted gifts from us on her birthday. And getting her to accept anything store-bought on Christmas morning was its own s
truggle. She was of the you children are gift enough set. Crafty attempts, no matter how sloppy and hardened with globs of glue, were always welcomed with wide arms, though. When we got older, long past the scribbly Crayola days, she only asked that we each write her a letter for her birthday. She really did treasure us, all that we were.
“Are you coming over this Thursday or what? Thanksgiving dinner, remember?” Lindee says.
“Was that an invitation?”
She barely raises a brow. “You’re doing that question-witha-question bullshit again? Because I’m not into it. Kendra already invited you. So are you coming?”
“First I’m hearing of it.”
“Jesus Christ on a bleeding cross. This is all Flavio’s fault.” Lindee chucks a leather bag she’d been inspecting into a neat, expensive pile and drags her feet to the next display. She’s rough and loud and deliberate about all of it, and pays no attention to the sighing, gawking salesgirl with the thick coating of chalk-white foundation and her hair pulled high and tight into a blond bun. Lindee’s quite used to people staring at her, trying to understand what’s happening with her face: the beautiful features slightly lopsided and the odd sliding step to her gait. “Him and that pretentious show he’s putting on in Italy—it’s all he has her thinking about right now. Swear, if he wasn’t so skilled with that thick dick, he would be such an ex. He knows it too.”
“Good God, the number of times I’ve heard about this man’s penis—”
“Almost as much as you’ve heard about his whole pussy-eating obsession, I’m sure,” Lindee says, her face straight and stony.
“Gross. So, lunch is just not happening today, then?”
“Off topic, unimportant; that’s all Flavio will ever be. Just come to the dinner. It’s not like you have some other Thanksgiving gathering to avoid. When do you Cafuckians celebrate again, middle of July?”
“October, numbskull. And Cafuckians? Is nothing sacred to you?”
“Cows.” She scrunches her face, looking down at a pair of flat, low-cut leather boots in disgust. “Most cows.”
“This dinner, is it at your parents’ house? Is it friends and family or mostly family and oddball me or—”
“It’s dinner in Queens. Relax. Plus, it’ll help smooth all the stuff between you and Kendra.”
“The stuff between me and Kendra? I didn’t know there was stuff between me and Kendra. What stuff?”
“Bitch, please. That doesn’t work on me. Of course there is. You know that.”
“All I did—”
“All you did was embarrass the shit out of her with your Hulk-out in the middle of the dance floor. Look, if it was me, whatever. You know I ran out of fucks to give back in the early 2000s. But my sister, that’s a different deal. She’s soft under it all, like Mother. Kendra has a high tolerance for a lot of bullshit. I mean, Exhibit A: fucking Flavio. But the one thing she’s not going to do is be humiliated. Please. Kendra is not the one. Our stepdad Gary tried it when we were young, like no-tits-yet young. He was laughing at her for getting some shit wrong on our chemistry homework. Just steady mocking her for no real reason—boredom or whatever white-guy patriarchy bullshit he was trying to pull with his new Indian wife and her brown twin daughters. Whatever. Kendra set that fucker straight one night when Mother was out with her cousin—DJ Tina’s mom. She unleashed a torrent of insults and swears calling his entire gene pool into question. Bumbling fool. It was excellent. I wanted to slow-clap that shit. He never bothered her or us again. Didn’t matter how late we would sit at that creaky kitchen table doing homework, that guy didn’t dare step into our radius. He would go sit in the back room and watch TV like some bad dog on punishment. Oh, Gary—no one misses you, asshole,” Lindee says, then makes a quick sign of the cross along her chest and points her middle finger to the ceiling.
“You really are a broken, bitter bird.” I put my hand on a powder-blue cashmere hoodie. Lindee scowls before I can pull the hanger off the rack all the way. “It’s just, I don’t always do well with families and aunts and cousins and all that.”
“I bet you don’t,” Lindee says, adding a loud snort. “You don’t even want to be around your own family. Kendra said you’re always trying to dodge your parents. Going home for Christmas is like walking to the gallows for you.”
I open my mouth. Only a long, low breath dribbles out. Lindee rolls her eyes.
“Please, Best. You’ve cut all ties to family and familiars. Basically, anyone who knew you before New York? Deleted. No trace. You don’t even have that bullshit middle-school friend popping up on your Facebook talking about CrossFit or the problem with the government these days. For all we know, you could be a black Russian spy or a rampant sociopath. But I’m the broken bird. Or was it bitter bird?” she says.
All I can do is shake my head, and we continue walking the waxy, bright-white floor in silence. Lindee seems to prefer it this way. I can feel High Bun trailing me, watching each piece of overpriced crap on which I place my hand. Lindee may be accustomed to the stares and assumptions, but I’ll never be, not all the way. I’m kind of hoping that High Bun will step up her game and say something blatantly shitty, like Let me show you the sale rack, just so Lindee can unleash the dragon and belch that fire the Singh girls were born with in their bellies. But another customer calls High Bun away.
I walk toward Lindee. She’s holding a low-cut boot in one hand and thumbing something into her phone with the other. “Okay. I’ll come,” I tell her. “What should I bring?”
“Don’t bring your cell phone, I can tell you that much.”
“Wait, what?”
“My mother doesn’t allow cell phones in the house,” Lindee says, without looking up from her screen. “She’s freaked about vibrations, so keep that shit tucked deep in your bag.” Lindee lifts her head and stares right at me. “I’m serious. Once Flavio tried to sneak his phone into the house in the front pocket of his tight-ass skinny jeans—what a dummy. Mother complained about neck pain the whole evening. Fucking Flavio. And on top of that, he asked if it was okay to smoke—inside the motherfucking house.”
“Okay. No cell phones—because that’s not weird at all. But I meant, what should I bring, like food-wise?”
“My mother makes turkey and dressing, but that’s it on the traditional bullshit. Everything else is straight-up Indian food. Bring an empty belly and eat what’s served. No imaginary food allergies or dumb-ass no-bread diets or whatever. You eat for real at this table. Mother would be insulted otherwise.”
“And you’re sure Kendra was planning to invite me?”
“I’m not up for this, okay? You’re invited. Make a fucking decision. Bring someone, if that helps you stop being such a limp dick. Speaking of, Flav will be there, of course. He’s still trying to get in the good books. Spoiler alert: Never going to happen, fratello. I’m going to bring this guy with me—maybe. He’s still walking the wire.”
“Which guy?”
“From work, sort of. His name is Mark—yes, another Mark. Kendra calls him New Mark, and it’s kind of sticking. He’s a director, slumming in TV commercials for a minute. He worked on this big campaign for us in Amsterdam. He used to live there a few years back—he basically lived everywhere, born in Malta. Doctor parents, disaster relief workers—it’s a whole indie movie. Whatever. We got him dirt cheap, so someone’s winning.”
“Ooh. A noble artist with humanitarian roots. Cute?”
She gives me her dead-eyed look. “Bitch . . . please.”
“Well, is it serious? It’s been awhile for you, Kalindee.”
“None of these things are ever serious.”
“Right. I don’t really have anyone to bring—serious or hookup-ery.”
“Well, according to Tell Me More, it’s probably safer that way—for the dudes.”
“Are you serious? That’s what you’re quoting here?”
Lindee rolls her eyes and clenches her teeth. I can’t tell if she’s trying to stifle a smile or dealing with
her usual jaw pain. “Oh, calm down. Is that what made you go off on my sister, the stalkerazzi?”
“Christ. I keep getting these calls at work from this one reporter. E-mails too. It’s like he can’t just let this go. I didn’t ditch Grant because he went nuts. I mean, Jesus. On Twitter, my mentions are in shambles. Everyone thinks I’m the worst kind of bitch. They actually type that out: Best Bitch. That’s what they’re calling me, and you know that’s only a short walk to Black Bitch . . . keep the alliteration thing going.”
“Hmm. You know what? Best Black Bitch sounds dope as fuck, like some raw punk band. You should own that shit.”
“Own it? They’re saying that I caused Grant’s mental break, that I’m the reason. I ruined their special King. Why the hell would I want to own that?” I shake my head hard, as if that will make these awful thoughts tumble out of my ears. “I can’t own that. I’m not a monster!”
“Wait. Who’s going to the monster level on this? Seriously, you’re overreacting. It’s a gossip rag. Complete piece-of-shit thing that people scroll through when they’re waiting in line to order coffee—oh, wait. That’s it,” Lindee shouts through her twister mouth. “That’s it: Bitch Black. Yes, yes, Bitch Black is fucking excellent. That could totally be the name of a nail polish or lip color or skinny cocktail. My agency would be all over that and making bank on it too.”
She walks off nodding, moving on to go knock over another neat stack of folded-down T-shirts. But Lindee was gone long before she walked away. Probably stopped listening to me a while ago. I rub my hand along a neat stack of fluffy cardigans. It’s a soft spread of color and oddly, it’s making my thoughts linger on my mother. Moms are always cold, always chilly. No matter the season, you know? Even in the eye of summer, there was always a breeze for my mother. Ice in her veins, she said. She was joking. But it’s not very funny, is it—ice in the veins?
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