Thirteen
I gave Tyler exactly sixteen minutes. If he’s not out when my timer beeps, I’m going into Nagar’s Breath and dragging him out by his Hermès belt buckle if I have to.
I leap forward when my phone vibrates in the dashboard holster, in case it’s Tyler texting that he’s been cornered by a horde of fans and he needs me to come help him squeeze out of the bathroom window.
It’s not, though. Instead, it’s a text from an international number that starts with +65—Singapore’s country code—and that contains four words: How was the shoot? My first thought is, How did Clarissa get my number? But my second thought is, Of course Clarissa has my number . Before I can reply, another four-word question that makes my gut flip upside down and inside out: How is the article?
With shaky hands and a clearly extensive vocabulary, I type back Great!, then, wanting to add a bit more, send another text clarifying On both ends!
Three dots appear, then three words— Good to hear —that, in her very Clarissa way, indicate that the conversation is over just as instantaneously as it began. And although now would be an excellent time to have a panic attack about my definitely not great article with the definitely nonexistent Tyler Tun–career-related scoop, I have to prioritize.
Swiping back to the timer, I see that I’m down to one minute and forty-five seconds and am about to shove the phone in my purse when one of the back doors opens. I turn from my position in the driver’s seat just as Dipar is sliding in, Tyler ducking and shutting the door behind him.
“Hi,” I say, twisting and leaning over into the space between the driver and passenger seats.
Dipar’s flirtatious smile freezes as she looks at me, then at Tyler, and back at me. Making a one-eighty, her mouth droops, pupils dilating as it dawns on her that she’s most likely not going to have a one-night stand with Tyler Tun tonight.
“We’re not kidnapping you!” I blurt out, only to realize that that sounds like what a kidnapper would say.
“Cool. I’m… gonna go,” she says, trying to escape without making any sudden movements. She gives the other door a tug, and jolts in her seat when she finds that it’s locked.
“We can explain—” Tyler starts.
Dipar flattens her back against the door, not knowing whether to focus on me or Tyler. “Who are you?” she asks me. “What do you want?” she asks Tyler. Then, “I don’t do threesomes!”
“We just want to talk!” I jump in. “No threesomes! Not that I’m kink-shaming. I think threesomes are a perfectly legitimate means through which to explore new territories in your sex life—”
“Khin,” Tyler says, bringing me back.
I shake my head and start over. “My name’s Khin. I have a few questions about Jared. We’re not murderers or kidnappers, I promise.”
“Then why did you trick me into getting into this car and lock the doors?”
I wince in the face of a perfectly reasonable question to which I do not have an equally reasonable answer. “I know how this is going to sound,” I say with a light chuckle that I hope will ease her worries. Instead, her face twists some more. “We needed to get you alone.”
“Oh my god,” she groans. “This is how I die, isn’t it? I have a dog at home! His name is Kauk Swe. My sister hates him because he farts in her face, but can you tell her my last dying wish was that she loves him as her own—”
I fling up a hand to interrupt. “You live with your sister?”
Dipar nods. “Yeah. But not in a mansion if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s a one-bedroom in Yankin; I sleep on the couch!”
Tyler and I trade a Huh? expression. “What about… Jared?” he asks.
Dipar swallows. “What about him?”
I shift in closer to make sure I don’t mishear her. “You don’t live with him?”
“What?” She seems as confused as we are. “Why would I be living with him?”
“Because he’s your boyfriend?”
“We broke up months ago,” she says, squinting at me. Something hits her, and she immediately looks scared once more. “Wait, how do you know about me and Jared? I’ve never met you in my life.” Turning to Tyler, she asks, voice raising several octaves, “How do you know about Jared? What is going on?”
I raise both hands to reassure her that we’re not going to hurt her. “You haven’t seen him recently?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“So you don’t know Jared’s dead?”
“What?!” Her body visibly tenses. “Jared’s dead?!”
Tyler tilts his head at me with a look that reads, You really couldn’t have been more tactful about that? “Sorry,” I say with a grimace. “I assumed you knew.”
But I don’t know if Dipar even hears me, because she’s staring down at her lap, motionless.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Tyler begins in a low, cautious tone. “Are you… were you guys in touch recently?”
Dipar lifts her head, her eyes clouding over with an indistinguishable darkness that pierces the sheen of tears. “No.” She exhales. “I… cut him off. Completely.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
She gives an unthinking shrug. “It means that—” She pauses, swallows, and looks out the tinted windows. We go silent while a group of drunk teenagers stumbles past on the sidewalk. Once their voices fade out, Dipar continues, “Jared wasn’t a good man. Or even a good human being.” She turns to us, head slightly tipping like there are so many things in her mind she’s weighing whether or not to say aloud. “I don’t know why you guys are looking into him, but let me guess, it’s not good news,” she says, and even though she says “you guys,” she’s looking directly at me.
I shake my head. “He was—”
“I don’t want to know,” she interrupts. “I left him because I was tired of being collateral damage. I’m not happy that he’s dead, but I’m not going to be mourning him either. I can’t help you out with whatever it is that he dragged you into, but I hope you find peace soon. I have. Now can I please go?”
She sounds like someone who’s been through a lot. Enough, even. I’m about to admit defeat and unlock her door when Tyler’s gentle voice asks, “Can you direct us to someone who might have seen him recently? We… have some questions.”
The sound of Dipar’s inhale and slow exhale is amplified tenfold by the car’s silence. “There’s a bar across the street from our old place,” she says, eyeing us, probably wondering if she’s making a mistake by telling us this much. “It’s called Devil’s Lounge. I’ll warn you, it’s dark and sleazy and almost exclusively filled with old white men. One of Jared’s favorite things to do was rack up a tab there. So if you do go, you should tell them that they’re not going to be paid anytime soon.”
“Thank you,” Tyler says.
A mild “Good luck” is the last thing she mumbles before exiting.
It’s nearing midnight when we pull up in front of Tyler’s building. “Thanks for coming.” I shoot him a smile. “I’ll go to Devil’s Lounge tomorrow and see what I can find,” I say, not expecting the frown that overshadows his face.
“What?” I ask.
“Khin.” He laughs through my name. “You have to stop.”
“Stop what?” I reply, pulling back.
“Stop trying to get rid of me,” he says matter-of-factly. “I’m helping you until we solve this. I’m seeing this to the end.”
I let out a “Ha!” into the dark. “And what if it ends with me going to prison?”
“You’re not going to prison.”
“What if I do?”
“Then—” In one fluid motion, he unbuckles his seat belt, the fabric emitting a soft whoosh as it slides across and up his torso until he’s free to lean forward. One elbow rests on the center console, and his hand lowers onto my thigh. “—I’m going to watch the entirety of the 2005 American serial drama Prison Break starring Wentworth Miller so I can take notes and come up with a foolproof way to, as the title states, break you out of prison.”
I burst out laughing, and a smile spills and seeps into every corner and crevice of his mouth and god if the sight doesn’t ignite a flurry of embers in my gut. You are a good man, I think.
“Tyler, I don’t want you risking your job over my mess. It’s okay. I’m a freelancer, remember?” I say, hoping I’m not letting on that my insides are nowhere near as solid as my tone. “I’m used to going out on my own. Your assistance is appreciated, but I can get out of messes myself.”
He shakes his head, and, to my horror and misfortune, gives my thigh a light squeeze. I say “horror and misfortune” because it feels like he’s squeezed other parts of me, and I know I need him to leave this car within the next five minutes or I cannot be held responsible for the actions I’m about to commit. Currently, my center of gravity is the spot where his palm is (still) connected to my thigh, the heat between our skin alleviated only by the blue satin of my skirt. If this were anyone else, I’d say this was intentional, a move in a dark car. But it can’t be, because we cannot be; we are professionals, perhaps friends, but definitely not a “we,” not in this sense. If nothing else, there is a professional brick wall of a Vogue article standing between us, even though, truth be told, I enjoy peeking over that wall every now and again, just to see what I’m missing out on.
“Unfortunately, you’re stuck with me now,” he says. “Like Elle and Emmett. But, you know, less white.”
“Oh, Tyler.” I extend my bottom lip as though I pity his delusional thinking. “You’re not nearly smart enough to be the Emmett to my Elle. You can be Bruiser, though.”
This time he laughs in surprise, and I just know that my smile is bordering on psychopathic.
“Wow, that’s what I’ve been demoted to? A chihuahua?” He cocks his head. “You do know I graduated from Yale’s drama school.”
“Look, buddy, either you’re Bruiser or you don’t get a role in the movie.”
“Well, Bruiser is Elle’s best teammate and she takes him everywhere, so,” he says, winking and hopping out of the car without waiting for my reply, which is just as well, because it would’ve been something absurd and embarrassing along the lines of, Is that what we are? Teammates?
The next morning, I spot the car before the lot gate is even fully raised. I do a quick visual sweep, and, not seeing anyone I should be looking out for, power walk to Tyler’s trailer.
“Morning!” I chirp as I enter.
Tyler catches my eye in the mirror, script in one hand. “Morning!” he says, and whirls around. “You arrived just in time. We’re starting early.”
His team excuses themselves as they slip past me and out the door I just walked through. By the way he’s pretending to fumble with his shirt while sliding me the occasional deliberate stare, it’s obvious we’re both trying to find a moment alone to talk about the cop car currently parked outside. However, by the way Tun is holding the door open and muttering into his headset, I know he’s fully intent on delivering Tyler to set ASAP.
We step out, May and her team exiting the trailer opposite at the same time. We’ve only taken a few paces when a voice that makes my eyes reflexively squeeze shut calls out my name.
“Detectives!” I say as the two men catch up. “Morning.”
“Morning!” Detective Htet grins, and my stomach roils not just because he is, generally speaking, the personification of the word “slimy,” but because there’s a glee in his eyes that can’t be good news for me.
“We’re about to start shooting,” Tyler says.
But neither of them move. “This’ll just take a moment,” Detective Zeyar tells him before turning to me. “Khin, you take notes in a notebook, right? With a pen?”
I don’t catch my startle in time. “A what?”
“Your notes.” He nods over at my tote bag. “I noticed that you carry a pen and notebook with you all the time, right?”
The roiling in my stomach is out of control, like a boiled pot that’s overflowing, water and foam spilling and sizzling all over everything, everywhere. “Why?” I ask.
He shrugs. “We’re trying to figure out where a piece of evidence came from.”
“What kind of evidence?”
There’s a crinkling sound as he reaches inside his front pants pocket to withdraw a small clear ziplock bag. A bag that contains what is one hundred percent, undoubtedly, unmistakably, my pen. To be specific, my Cartier pen that I had bought for myself after one full year of freelancing full-time. It had cost nearly $400, but I’ve used it every day since—at least, until it fell into Kandawgyi Lake with a middle-aged white man attached to one end. Even through the wrinkled plastic, I instantly recognize the sleek blue-steel lacquered body with the silver palladium finish.
I would feign ignorance and ask why they think this pen has anything to do with me, but I don’t, because I know the answer. It’s capitalized in the classic Cartier CG font and was a complimentary service, and I was spending four hundred American dollars on a pen so why the hell wouldn’t I have gotten it monogrammed?
But of course, Tyler doesn’t know this, so he shakes his head and asks, confused, “May I ask why you’re questioning Khin about this? It’s a pen. Everyone on set has a pen.”
Detective Zeyar’s smile remains cool—a lion confident in the knowledge that their prey is trapped. “That’s true,” he says with a small nod. Then, lifting the bag, he pinches the pen between his thumb and forefinger and brings it closer to Tyler. “But this one has ‘KH’ engraved on the clip,” he says with a cutting stare in my direction.
This is how I come undone, isn’t it? I think as Tyler squints at where the detective is pointing with his thumb. Over a pen. The headline is going to be a stupid play on “pen,” isn’t it? Something like “Crime and Pen-ishment” or “The Pen Is Mightier than the Sword.”
“Where did you find this?” Tyler asks. He’s still trying to sound exasperated, but his tone doesn’t have quite the same bite anymore.
“My colleagues and I returned to where the body had initially been discovered, and somehow our team had missed this the first time around. Probably because two-thirds of it was submerged in the sand, or the crime lab had initially dismissed it as some random lost pen.” Then, “Khin,” Detective Zeyar says, bringing the pen to me in what feels like slow motion. I work to keep my facial expressions neutral even though he’s reading me with a magnifying glass. “Is this your pen? KH. Those are your ini—”
“ Holy shit! ” May’s screech makes everyone literally jump. “You found my pen!”
What? I think.
“What?” both the detectives ask.
May bounces over and opens her palm, gesturing at the ziplock bag. “May I?” she asks sweetly. As though in a trance, Detective Zeyar hands it over.
Her grin expands as she turns the pen back and forth in her hand. “I thought I’d lost it! Thank you so much, Detectives!” she says, beaming at the two of them.
Detective Htet shakes his head and points to the bag. “This is your pen?”
Snapping out of his temporary hypnotic state and realizing that he’s literally just handed over evidence, Detective Zeyar reaches to retrieve the bag. However, May either doesn’t notice or pretends not to, and instead passes it over to her assistant, Kyi Kyi, who is now clutching it to her chest as though she would protect it with her life if it came to it.
May flicks her hair behind one shoulder. “Yes! I lost it on the first day of filming. I was taking a walk around the lake before we started shooting, you know, to work off the nerves. And the purse I was using that day is expensive and pretty but definitely not practical,” she says, rolling her eyes. “My phone rang and as I was digging around inside, a bunch of stuff fell out. I thought I’d gathered everything, but I didn’t realize until I got home that night that I’d lost my pen. It must’ve rolled off the boardwalk and into the water.” She throws her hands up in the air in glee. “But you guys found it! It’s a miracle!”
Detective Zeyar gives a short Heh, but his attempt at a smile fails miserably. He looks at the pen, at May’s grinning face, at my own face which is doing who knows what at this point, then back at May. “But KH—” he stammers, and scratches his head, bewildered. “That stands for…” He trails off, his gaze on me silently finishing the sentence.
Except it doesn’t, because May says, “For Kiss Her ! I got this pen to celebrate my first Oscar nomination.”
The detectives aren’t pretending to play it cool anymore; I don’t think they can. They’re just standing there, mouths open, two invisible thought bubbles that scream, What the fuck is happening? hanging over their heads.
“So it… Khin…” Detective Htet frowns over at me, then, admitting defeat, asks point-blank, his earlier coyness nowhere to be found, “‘KH’ doesn’t stand for ‘Khin Haymar’? That’s not your pen?”
I think before I answer. Technically, I haven’t told them a lie up to this point. I’ve definitely fudged the truth and omitted some facts, but I haven’t lied. “I—” I start, then clear my throat, buying some more time while I try to remember what the typical sentence is for lying to an officer of the law.
“Detectives.” May’s laugh interrupts us. “This is a four-hundred-dollar pen. I don’t know any freelance journalists who make enough disposable income to waste four hundred dollars on a pen. No offense, Khin,” she says to me with an apologetic smile.
I shake my head. “None taken,” I say. I turn back to the two men who I can tell are torn between wanting to interrogate me further, and not wanting to offend May Diamond. And also, she has a point. Who else but an actress who paid twenty million dollars for her latest house in a single cash transfer would be ridiculous enough to drop four hundred dollars on a singular pen?
With clear trepidation, Detective Htet says, “Still, you… can’t take the pen back.”
May’s smile drops. “Why not?”
“Because it’s… evidence?” His voice goes up at the end so that it sounds entirely like a question and not a blatant fact.
“But it’s my pen,” May says. This has dragged on long enough that she’s no longer cheery, America’s sweetheart May Diamond, but a formerly purring cat now flashing her fangs. “Am I a suspect in the case? Because my lawyers weren’t informed of that.”
“No!” You can see the sweat stains forming under his arms in real time. “You’re not, we’ve cleared you.”
“So why can’t I have my pen back?”
“Because—”
“If I’m not a suspect, and this is my pen, which it is as we’ve established, then it isn’t evidence, right?”
“Right,” Detective Htet agrees. He licks his lips like his tongue is physically scrambling for words. Any string of words that won’t result in May’s team of lawyers calling his boss and demanding to know why the hell he didn’t give back her most beloved pen. Without warning, he redirects his attention to me. “Khin, we need your fingerprints.”
“Why?” May and I ask in unison.
“Because—” He’s not looking at May. Coward. “We lifted fingerprints off of that pen, and if—”
“This is ridiculous, ” May states. Her tone is biting, bordering on threatening. “Detective, I can guarantee you that there are hundreds of fingerprints on this pen, because lots of people have used it, as is the nature. Of. A. Pen. My fingerprints will be on it.” She points at Tyler. “ His fingerprints will be on it. Any wandering child who picked it up at the park and then tossed it back into the sand’s fingerprints will be on it. What, are you going to fingerprint the entire city? This entire crew? Every single person I’ve ever worked with throughout my career?”
The detectives’ jaws hang very, very low.
“We’ve established that this is my pen and that I was nowhere near the scene of the crime, and I have a long shooting schedule ahead of me, and this much sun exposure is already making me start to sweat off my makeup, so can we please get on with our day?”
In one final attempt at maintaining a shred of procedure, Detective Zeyar asks once more, “You’re… sure this is your pen?”
At that, Tyler leans forward. “If I may,” he says, “ I can confirm that’s May’s pen. In fact, it’s her favorite autograph pen.”
“It’s all in the tip,” May explains. She straightens and, shaking out her scowl, addresses her and Tyler’s small entourages. “What a great omen! I knew today was going to be a good one. Let’s bring this energy to set!” She shoots the detectives one final showstopping smile and repeats, “Thank you again soooo much,” before turning and marching off to work.
Despite our collectively perceptible what the fuck just happened mentality, we all scurry on behind her. Kyi Kyi has the ziplock bag pressed up against her chest, her clipboard shielding it from anyone who might dare try to take it.
“Four hundred dollars?” I hear Detective Zeyar say behind us. “That’s, what, seven hundred thousand kyats? On a pen ?”
“Actors are weird,” Detective Htet mutters.
Tyler whips out his phone and concentrates on reading something, his gait slowing until he’s fallen into step beside me. “We might have a problem,” he mumbles.
“What the hell was that?” I whisper out of the side of my mouth. “Does—” I hesitate, not knowing if I want to know the answer to my next question. “Does May really have a Cartier pen with ‘KH’ engraved on it?”
Because I mean… it’s not a wholly implausible possibility. KH. Kiss Her . It had been the movie to shoot her career into the stratosphere. And she does sign a lot of autographs, so—
“May knows.”
My brain malfunctions. Forgetting about being covert, I swing my head in his direction. “Huh?” I ask, realizing I’d already half convinced myself that I had gotten lucky and May and I had just happened to have the exact same pen that we’d both lost in the exact same lake on the exact same day. (Okay, when I frame it like that, I hear how delusional it sounds.)
Tyler tucks his phone into his pocket and gives me a breezy smile as he repeats, “May. Knows.”
And just like my precious four-hundred-dollar pen on that godforsaken night, my stomach plummets down, down, down.