“No, not at all,” I said in a voice that I hoped conveyed a secret message: Scram!
Clambering to her feet, Simone delicately pulled her shorts out of her butt and sidled up to Ben with one hand on her hip. “Can I have a sip of that? I’m parched.”
Ben smiled and shrugged. “Sure, I guess.” He handed her his beer. I shot him a look. “We met by the coleslaw,” he said by way of explanation.
Simone laughed, touched his arm under his short sleeve. “You are too funny!”
“Isn’t he?” I said with gritted teeth.
“Before, when we were talking, I meant to tell you,” Simone said, tossing her hair, turning her back to me, “about this study I read about the health benefits of turmeric in Alzheimer’s patients. But you had me laughing so hard it completely slipped my mind!”
I’m going to kill her, I thought, as I watched Ben soak up her flirtations and flattery. I’m going to finish this battle once and for all and vanquish her right here.
That’s when I remembered that I could actually vanquish her, seeing as there were two inflatable sumo wrestling outfits right next to this bouncy castle. “Hey Simone,” I said, interrupting her drivel. “I have an idea!”
She didn’t answer, having purposely ignored me to talk more about turmeric and, I gathered, almonds and blueberries.
“Hey Simone!” I said again.
“What?” she said, not turning around.
“Want to go sumo wrestle with me? Those suits look like they’re a ton of fun.”
She turned this time, wrinkled her nose prissily. “Thanks, but no thanks,” she said.
Ben laughed. “You two? Sumo wrestling? Hard to imagine.”
I smiled triumphantly at her. “The writer needs our help imagining.”
Simone gave me a dagger look. “I said I don’t want to.”
“Sure you do,” I said. “You just don’t know it yet.”
“I said no,” Simone said. “People have been sweating in those suits all day.”
“People have been sweating in here all day too,” I said, thwacking her a little too hard on the arm. “Come on. It’ll be fun!”
“Do it!” Annie said, testing out her ankle, likely eager to move the locus of humiliation elsewhere.
“You don’t have to,” Ben said concedingly. “But if you wanted to—”
“I know, I’ll take a video!” Lindsey said, taking out her phone.
Simone looked at me with the fury of someone who knows they’re about to lose but still has the energy to put up a good fight. “Okay, fine, why not,” she said, in a tone of voice that meant I hate you, Casey P.
* * *
—
Some forty minutes later, fresh off a best-of-three victory over Simone, my body slick with sweat, my makeup smeared, and hair dampened, I toppled onto the grass, breathing heavily. “Good game,” I panted, raising my other hand in farewell to Simone, who was limping toward the beverage tent. She raised her arm and gave me the middle finger as she departed.
“Boy,” I said to Ben, who was lying on his side next to me. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”
“You were a little rough on her, weren’t you?” he said lightly, and nudged me.
“I wouldn’t have been,” I said, equally lightly, “if you hadn’t so enjoyed her trying to get all up on you in the bouncy castle.”
Ben paused. When he answered his voice was cold. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I reached for my phone and pulled up Facebook. Wolf Prana had posted a status update that morning that had trended to the top of my news feed. He’d friended me right after we’d met, and I’d accepted because I accepted everyone’s friend request, even if they were my enemy.
“Yeah, actually, it does matter,” Ben said. He sat up in the grass. “Even if she had been coming on to me, which, by the way, she wasn’t, it’s not like I would have done anything—”
“But you looooovved talking to her about, whatever, turmeric and Alzheimer’s,” I interrupted. “Even though you never talk about what’s going on with your mom with me.”
“Her grandpa has Alzheimer’s! It came up incidentally! There were blueberries in the fruit salad, someone said something about brain food—”
“Wait. Hold on.” I put a hand up. “One second.” Something in Wolf’s post had caught my eye.
Thought about telling you I have a book of words & pics coming out w Phaidon
Next fall then realized I didn’t give a shit
There is everyone in the lessening of your wounds
It was that last line, the line about the wounds. That was a line from a poem I had read before. A poem I loved. It was empirically impossible that Wolf could ever write anything I loved. It took some time for what was happening to finish happening and settle in the front part of my brain but when it did—
I was so stupid.
So, so stupid.
“I have to go,” I said suddenly, and leapt to my feet.
“Where are you going?” Ben said, shielding his eyes from the sun and looking up at me accusingly.
I re-buckled my sandals. “I’ll tell you later. Long story.”
“You can’t just run away every time we have a difficult conversation, you know.”
“I’m not!” I said, in a bitchier voice than I meant to use. I softened. “It’s not that. I’ll be back as soon as—listen I have to leave right now.”
“Oh, come on—” Ben started, but I took off across the park, shouting, “I’ll be right back!” and digging my keys out of my purse as I ran. I drove like a maniac and didn’t stop until I got to the building I was headed for, and because the intercom was busted, I had to wait for a resident to come out to enter. When someone finally did, I ran through the lobby and up the stairs two at a time until, barely twenty minutes after I’d seen the posting, I was banging on Susan’s door. This was something I had to explain in person.
Susan and I hadn’t seen each other since the night at the brewery, where I thought, more or less, we seemed to be back on good terms. When she opened the door, it was clear she was surprised, though not displeased. I barged into her studio without preamble. Susan’s apartment looked even more neglected than usual, which made me feel even sicker about what I’d done. Dishes were piled in the sink, clothes and papers were strewn all over the floor, and there were chipped saucers filled with cigarette butts.
She must have seen me looking around, because she said, “I’ve been writing a lot. Sorry for the mess.”
“Ha ha, ummm, no need to apologize to me,” I said, and added, “Seriously.” I needed badly to find a way to move beyond chitchat and into a discussion of some, well, very serious problems that were very much all my fault. If the going got tough, the tough could at least be honest with her best friend about what had happened, due to the road to hell being paved with good intentions, and hope that her best friend could forgive her.
But the thing about friendship, I’d learned over the past few months, was that it was fragile. Millions of gossamer threads connecting one heart to another—it looks like a thick rope at a distance, but up close it’s like a spiderweb. All it takes is one clumsy swipe to knock the whole thing down. I wanted so badly for my best friend to be my best friend again. I feared that with the news I was about to deliver, the possibility was about to unravel.
“Can I do your dishes?” I said suddenly. Before she could answer, I went over and started washing.
“Oh boy,” Susan said, taking a tea towel and beginning to dry. “If you’re cleaning already, it must be bad. What is it? Did something happen with Ben?”
“No…” I trailed off and let the water wash over my hands. “Something else.”
“Work?”
“Yeah, work.” I stopped washing, closed my eyes, took a breath. “And you.”
/> “Me?” Susan laughed, I thought, rather alarmedly. “What does your work have to do with me?”
With my eyes still closed, I started talking. I said the words very fast. “I just saw Wolf post a status update on Facebook using a line from one of your poems. It was a poem, oh God, that I stole from your apartment back in the spring, that night of the duende reading, because I had this half-baked idea that I was going to use the writers I was meeting through work to help, you know, launch your career in the literary arts. So I gave a few poems to him when I was in New York so he could send them around to his people or whatever, and he did, I swear, I saw the emails with my own eyes, but clearly he’s also used them for his own benefit. I don’t know how much, though, I’ve only seen that one line, but I promise you that as soon as I leave here I’m going to call him and demand that he take the post down, and also redact whatever else he’s used in his book project, even if I have to call the publisher myself and make a formal accusation of plagiarism.”
My fists were clenched under the water by then. “I know that stealing your poems and giving them to Wolf without saying anything to you was a really fucked up thing to do. I completely own that. But I hope you also understand that everything I did really was to try and help you. I guess I just…wanted you to stop hiding, and help you share your gifts with the world, you know? And I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry, that even by trying to help you I really, really hurt you instead.”
There was a long pause. The water was scalding my hands. I kept them there.
“Is that all?” Susan said. “Is that everything?”
“Yes,” I said, collapsing inwardly. “That’s everything.” Except for the fact that I passed her short story to Mary London.
When I opened my eyes, Susan was no longer standing beside me. She was standing by the front door, and it was open. “Who are you?” she said in a trembling voice. She was looking at the floor. “And what did you do with my friend?”
I knew that voice. There was no point arguing with that voice.
“You should go.”
Listen, if I were her, I would’ve done the same thing. Susan felt life as deeply as a fish’s gills feel water. So porous, so yielding, until a hook got hold and killed her. I left without saying another word. Such a good human deserved better than my foolish machinations.
* * *
—
But I also wanted nothing more than to stomp on and tear the flesh of her enemies. I’d discovered to be true what I always feared deep down: that my Real Self was pretty rotten, no better than my father or my mother or any other grown-up who only cared for themselves. But maybe I could use this to destroy Wolf and everything he stood for. Fight rottenness with rottenness. Out on the street—I couldn’t even wait until I got home—I FaceTimed Wolf. I wanted to see his face, the shifty bastard, while I threw down all the evidence of his misdeeds.
To my surprise—I think there was a part of me that figured I’d just have to rage over voicemail—my phone alerted me that we were connecting. “Whaddup, Casey?” Wolf spoke like he had a bunch of taffy in his mouth. His eyes were stoner-red, his face uncomfortably close to the screen.
“You know what’s up.” I was furiously walking down the street instead of hopping straight into my car, attempting to blow off the extra steam.
“Is this about the chlamydia?” he said. “I was going to call you but then I figured, you seemed like the kind of chick who got checked anyway.”
“Jesus Christ, you idiot, we didn’t have sex!” I was yelling now. “This is about the fact that you took the poems my best friend Susan wrote, my best friend WHO NOW HATES ME, and STOLE THEM for your stupid book!”
“Whooooo!” I heard a male voice call after me as I thundered down the street. “That bitch cray!”
“I SAW that Facebook post and YOU BETTER take it down and take out whatever else you plagiarized or I’m going to drag your name through shit all over the Internet. I KNOW people now. IMPORTANT people. WAY more important than you. Ever heard of Mary London? Izzy Calliente? I’m going to call them as soon as we get off the phone. You are DEAD MEAT.”
“Yo.” Wolf was holding a patronizing, but, I thought, slightly freaked out hand up to the camera. “What’re you talking about, homie?”
“Don’t homie me. Everyone in the lessening of your wounds? That’s not your line, Wolf! You stole that!”
He scratched his head. “Chill, bruh—”
“Enough with the cultural appropriation, bruh,” I interrupted. “And I have proof. Susan has all her poems on her computer. Microsoft Word date stamps. All it takes is a screenshot of the last edit and you’ll be found out so fast your stupid Twitter followers won’t even have TIME to shame you, you’ll already be so obsolete, you talentless—”
It was maybe right around this time that I realized there was a presence behind me. I glanced back. Some guy wearing a private security uniform was stumbling behind me. When he saw me looking at him, he said, “Shouldn’t be wearing a dress like that in this neighborhood.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake.” I broke into a jog and turned back to Wolf, who appeared to be, whether through drugs or innate male confidence, completely unfazed by our conversation. “Seriously, take it down right now, excise whatever else, or believe me—”
“What—you’ll tell some old ladies about it?” Wolf was shaking his head, a funny little smile on his face, the smile of someone who has never once felt threatened, not really, whose reality has never once been impugned. “Casey, girl, you off your meds?”
“IT’S ONLY TEN MILLIGRAMS OF LEXAPRO!” I bellowed. I turned around to see if I’d lost the security guard, but he was jogging behind me. I crossed the street and doubled back in order to return to my car.
“I’m gonna go,” Wolf was saying. “Hope you’re okay, girl. You know what? Just to be sure I’ll call Celeste first thing in the morning and ask her to check up on you.”
Well, shit. Wolf couldn’t say anything to Celeste. She didn’t know about my private dealings with Susan’s papers, and would have my head if she did. Conflict of interest, using her connections to make personal gains, it didn’t sound good, it didn’t sound like the actions of someone with fifteen percent equity. “You better not, you little—”
“Byeeeeeee.”
“YOU CAN’T GO!”
Ah, but he’d already disconnected. I broke into a dead sprint. I heard the creepy security guard say, “Where are you going?” as I ran to my car. As I started the engine, the guy came up and put his hand on the passenger-side window, motioning at me to roll it down. I relocked the doors instead. Through the glass I heard him slur, “What’s the matter, baby?”
What was the matter? I thought. You’re following me to my car and you’re asking me what’s the matter? Well, if he was going to put it that way, I was going to answer that way. With a fury I hadn’t felt in a long time, I burst out, slamming the steering wheel with my hands, with what was not even close to the entire answer but was the best I could do at the time, “All of you! I hate all of you! I HATE MEN!”
It was in this rather odd frame of mind that I wobbled back to the PR company picnic. Late afternoon had transitioned into evening. The blue moon was rising, and the shadows were long on the grass. Thumping summer beats thrummed out of a large speaker system as my colleagues danced and talked and laughed a little too loudly. Every day in advertising was an exercise in convincing ourselves we were having a good—no, amazing—time.
Off on one side, Ben was engrossed in what looked like a serious conversation with Celeste, while on the lawn, Jack, Lindsey, and Annie were whacking balls around a haphazardly constructed croquet court. I decided, for the meantime, to let Ben be. I needed to cool off before talking to him again, given everything that’d happened since.
“It’s like talking to a child,” Jack was saying to Lindsey as Annie bent her knees, took a deep breath,
and hit her ball a good five yards away from the nearest hoop.
Annie shrugged. “Oh well,” she said to no one in particular. “Your turn!”
“What’s like talking to a child?” I said, picking up a croquet mallet lying in the grass. Maybe it would be good to take out all this fear and shame and aggression on a harmless croquet ball, seeing as Simone was now nowhere to be found.
“You’re back!” Lindsey said to me. She hit her ball marginally more accurately than Annie. “Gosh, this is harder than it looks. We missed you.”
“On another little mission for Celeste, I bet,” said Jack. He looked down and adjusted his stance. He was wearing slim shorts and suspenders, along with his usual bow tie. With a low crack, he hit the ball with his mallet. It went straight through the hoop.
“Nice try, and great guesswork,” I whipped back. “Not that it’s any of your business, Jack, but I had a bit of personal stuff to attend to.”
“Uh-huh, right,” Jack said, tapping his palm with his mallet. “Very important business, I’m sure.”
I ignored him. I said, “Mind if I take a turn?” Annie and Lindsey nodded. I nudged the ball with my foot toward what seemed like a reasonable starting position. “Anyway, who’s the child?”
Lindsey said, “Jack’s been having a little trouble with Mary London and Izzy Calliente.”
I closed my eyes and pretended the ball was Wolf’s head. I took a swing and barely made contact. It rolled maybe an inch forward in the grass.
I threw my mallet on the ground. “Goddamn it.”
“It’s okay. You can try again,” Lindsey said encouragingly. She continued, “Jack’s not used to working with artists.”
“You’re an artist, Lindsey,” I said, picking the mallet back up. “Maybe I will try again, if that’s okay.”
“Sure it’s okay,” said Lindsey. “We’re not keeping score. And even if we were—”
“I meant real artists,” Jack said. He looked at Lindsey. “Sorry.”
A Lady's Guide to Selling Out Page 18