Chapter 8 #3
“And smart,” Alana continues. “I mean, a head negotiator. She’s not just pretty, she’s substantial.
That’s the thing. I need a friend who’s substantial.
Someone who gets it. She matches my vision board perfectly.
That’s the kind of friend I deserve.” She pauses, and I take this as an invitation to respond, but before I can, she adds, “And her eyes, Rodrigo. Did you see her eyes?”
This is a trap, I think. Do not fall into the trap. But of course I noticed Billie’s eyes. They’re impossible to miss. They are dark brown— almost black— like the night sky, with flecks of gold patterned throughout, an infinite fractal around her irises.
I keep my gaze on the road. Straight ahead. The light at the intersection turns yellow. I brake early.
“I wasn’t paying attention,” I say.
Alana makes a sound that says she does not believe me.
She doesn’t pursue it. She goes back to her keynote.
“I think Billie is exactly what I’ve been manifesting for a maid of honor.
Like, exactly. She’ll look so cute standing next to me, but also won’t overshadow me.
Perfect balance. Did I show you the vision board section for best friend energy? ”
“It takes up our entire wall,” I say, shocked that she has no sense of scale. “How could I miss it?”
“Well, Billie is in it. There’s a model who looks like her in one of the pictures, almost exactly. She fits my plans just right.”
I think about where Alana’s plans tend to lead.
I have been in warehouses in Barcelona and a parking garage in Zurich that I am not going to describe here because the statute of limitations may not have run out yet.
I have watched Alana make decisions about people, and I know as someone who has been along for too much of this that the world Alana moves through is not safe for a woman whose face is like a baby deer.
Billie Harper's face is open, and kind. I could see this within approximately two minutes of meeting her. She has the kind of face that belongs on a person who tells the truth at inconvenient times and believes, still, against all available evidence, that things will work out if you are simply good enough to people for long enough– even when they don’t deserve it.
This is not the face you bring to uranium warehouses.
“We’re planning yoga tomorrow,” Alana says, “and then next weekend I want to take her to dinner. Somewhere nice. And then I want to bring her to Budapest.”
“No,” I say, my heart racing.
Alana looks at me. “You haven’t even?—“
“Budapest?” I say. “Where you’re going to be for work? No. Billie doesn’t belong in that world. Don’t you dare.”
She studies me for a moment.
“We’ll see,” she says, which is not the same as agreeing with me. We both know this.
I think about Billie. I think about what I could do.
What would a warning even look like? I play it out.
I imagine pulling Billie aside somewhere— maybe calling the number I don’t have and wouldn’t know how to get— and I imagine saying: that woman who wants to be your best friend?
She sells weapons to people you don’t want to think about.
She kicked a man in the face in a meat-packing warehouse last week for making a joke about her hat.
She has a vision board on our wall with a spot cut out specifically for you.
She will use you for her own selfish purposes, then throw you away the minute you need her most.
I imagine the way Billie would look at me if I told her. Those eyes. The gold flecks. She'd probably ask me to repeat myself.
And then— and this is the part that gets me— I think she might actually believe me.
There is something in her that doesn’t flinch from truth.
I sensed it in the twelve minutes we spoke at that party, in the way she kept her voice level when I was cold to her, in the way she watched me with that patient, considering look that said: you are being rude to me and I deserve answers, because I’m a person who just wants the truth.
She’d probably believe me, and then she’d have a whole new set of problems— problems that involve knowing things about criminals, and knowing them about Alana specifically, which is its own category of dangerous.
So either Billie doesn’t believe me, and I look like a lunatic, and Alana has me handled within the week. Or Billie does believe me, and I’ve handed her a problem worse than the one I was trying to save her from. Both roads go somewhere bad.
I drive.
Alana finishes her summary of Billie’s virtues, cycling naturally into a new topic— something about whether the electric scooter will fit in our storage unit.
Chicago moves past the windows in its winter way— a grey and amber blur of storefronts and streetlights.
I think about Billie Harper, who is probably driving home right now— to wherever she lives, to whatever apartment, to whatever version of her life she came from tonight.
She went to her best friend’s baby shower.
She played a baby picture game. She made a new friend who hugged her like she meant it and told her she’d been waiting to meet her, and she went home smiling, probably, from an evening that turned out better than expected. She has no idea what she’s mixed up in.
And I can’t tell her.