The Town
Some people were on the patio outside, where the bar was set up. Others were in the living room. (People marveled at the white furniture : Didn’t Taylor and David have a small child ?) The kitchen, of course, was a popular spot, as it is at every party, and what a kitchen this was! Top-of-the-line everything,
as you’d expect. Somebody pulled out a drawer to find that it was a warming drawer; another, an extra-cold drawer to supplement
the refrigerator. Another, a stand-alone ice machine like you’d find behind a bar. At an actual bar.
Someone saw Shelly and Taylor deep in conversation on that long, white couch. Dangerous, when you consider the potential spilling
of the blueberry cocktail, but there you have it. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? A deep conversation with a relative stranger
at a party. Sometimes in these conversations we find ourselves going deeper than we do with our closest friends. We put everything
on the table. Not on that table, though, because it was also white, and made of a nubbly texture. There was nowhere to rest a glass. Who buys a nubbly
table? Only people, we supposed, who had so many other kinds of tables to choose from that it didn’t matter if one was purely
for decorative purposes.
Shelly Salazar was, to put it delicately, wasted. She had eaten only one meal that day (the Shoreline Toast from The Cracked Mug, highly recommended, and try it with an oat milk cappuccino) but that was hours and hours ago. Then she’d ridden her bike out to Cooneymus, just for the heck of it. The day had been hot; the ride was hilly; she’d forgotten to bring a water bottle. Quick shower before the party, and here she was, lightheaded, underfed, really quite drunk from one drink.
Not long after they started talking, Taylor swung the conversation around to Juliana. Taylor had learned about Shelly’s connection
to Juliana at the dinner at her house, and now she wanted to mine that connection for gold. “Tell me again when you guys graduated
from college?” Taylor asked.
“Twenty fourteen,” said Shelly. She pumped her fist in the air. “Go Eagles!”
Taylor put on her interested face, the one she used in client meetings. She said, “What was Juliana like in college?” She
paused and gathered herself. “I’m always so interested in women entrepreneurs, you know, being a woman in business myself.
And she’s so successful!”
“Sure,” said Shelly. “I get that.” For a moment, she seemed to disengage from the conversation, looking off into the middle
distance.
Taylor said, “So...?” and eventually Shelly came back to Planet Earth.
“To be honest, I really only knew her freshman year. I was good friends with her roommate, Mary Ann. She was around, but she
wasn’t like around around, you know? She was pretty shy. She didn’t really fit in.”
Taylor made herself look concerned and said, “Oh, no. Why’s that?”
“I don’t know?” said Shelly. “She just wasn’t all rah rah rah, BC , you know. I’m not sure I ever saw her at football games. She was on scholarship. She studied a lot. She had some internship.
She couldn’t afford to fall behind. And to see the business she’s in now? Fashion? We never would have imagined it. Her clothes
back then were very uninteresting.” Then, musingly, like she was talking about a dream she’d had the night before, Shelly said, “Of course, she wasn’t Juliana George back then.”
“Well no, of course not,” said Taylor. “She didn’t become Juliana George until she started LookBook. In the same way Phil Knight wasn’t Phil Knight until he started Nike.”
Shelly giggled. “No, I mean she really wasn’t Juliana George then. She had a different name.”
“Whoa,” said Taylor. “Wait. What did you just say?”
Shelly clapped a hand over her mouth and said, “Ohmygod, I wasn’t supposed to say anything.” She looked a little panicked.
“I forgot.”
“You don’t have to worry about me ,” said Taylor. She oozed succor. “I promise. I can keep a secret. Anyway, that’s so interesting. So, just out of curiosity,
what was her name in college? Was it like same first name, different last name? Or different first name, same last name?”
“Both,” said Shelly. “Both were different. Her name when I first met her was Jade Gordon.”
“How fascinating!” said Taylor. She was still playing it cucumber-cool, though she remembered the weird story at dinner at
her house, something about Juliana, about jewels, about Jade. “Why’d she change it?”
“I don’t know!” cried Shelly. “Why does anyone do anything?” She swung her cocktail glass, and Taylor tried not to notice
when a drop flew out and came so close to hitting the white couch, but missed it, and instead landed on the living room rug, which, alas, alas, was also white.
Betsy: Less than a week after that the woman walking her dog found the body, at Dinghy Beach.
Evan: It was a weird time on the island. A weird, weird time.
Lou: It was a westerly wind, you know. That’s why the body washed up at Dinghy. Southerly, and it would have been the clam flats.
Kelsey: I don’t like to think about that. I don’t like to think about any of it.
Lou: Did she have it coming to her? No.
Betsy: Lou!
Lou: What? I said she didn’t have it coming to her. But looking back, could someone have seen it coming? Maybe.
Evan: Yeah. Maybe.
Kelsey: Well, maybe not exactly that. But you could have seen something coming. Possibly something.