Season 20, Episode 6 PB&J Sandwich #2
With a resigned sigh, she lightly touched my shoulder and left me at the table.
I was surprised by her validation (plus how much it meant to me) and prayed it wasn’t too late for her and PB.
Thinking of them then, rooting for them, I found myself involuntarily missing Barnes for the first time in weeks.
Before I’d left for Italy, there’d been a moment every day when I couldn’t sustain my rage.
It was always in the spare minutes after 5:50 a.m. when I would snooze my alarm.
I’d wake up, his side of the bed untouched in the night as if protected by a circle of salt, my body still unconsciously making room for him beside me.
I would imagine him asleep, curled there like a cat, one hand beneath his pillow, the other balled in a fist under his chin.
That was when I grieved my husband. I missed those rare moments of his silence, when he was unaware, unthinking, those moments when he was mine, in the intimacy of our bed, both of us convinced—for better or worse—we were dreaming the same dream. And living it too.
Rain grazed the windows as I entered the penthouse gym, hunting PB but only finding Shawn and Imogen. “What was the big secret?” Shawn called from the treadmill.
“And why do you look paler than usual?” Imogen asked.
Before I could respond, Melange shuffled in from her confessional taping, the oversized silk train of her lilac imperial gown bunching around her bare feet.
Topping off her ensemble was a highlighter-pink wig, its taut bun pinned by sparkling chopsticks.
“Good Lord, why didn’t you just dress up like a fortune cookie and do a musical number? ” Imogen sighed.
Melange magically produced a giant fan and slashed it open, little fortune cookies painted across it. “Because I prefer props, and the bitch can’t dance.”
“Where were you even hiding that?” Imogen marveled. Grinning cheekily, Melange perched on an exercise bench, peeling off the wig to extract the hairpins scoured across her scalp.
As if on cue, PB furtively blew into the room, Troy and his camera team trailing behind. “Okay, I have a voting plan,” he began. “It’s Episode 6, right—”
“Actually, can I talk to you first?” I wanted to be as delicate as possible, pulling him into the hall to relay Jiamin’s message.
Troy kept the camera tight on us, PB listening dispassionately until the revelation of her fertility obliterated the facade.
“She told you that after stonewalling me for weeks?” he asked bitterly.
“Okay, if that’s how she wants to play this. ”
“Slow down. Getting angry won’t make this better.” I carefully took him by the shoulders. “I know you love her. You can quit…”
He shrugged me off, eyes glazing over. “None of you can vote for her.”
“PB, just talk to her before—”
“JIAMIN!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, voice echoing throughout the penthouse. “MESSAGE FUCKING RECEIVED.”
“… You go nuts,” I sighed as he barreled back to the gym, rapidly updating the others.
Imogen watched me uneasily throughout his tirade before finally addressing him.
“I swear this brings me no joy, PB, but I’m voting for Jiamin.
I know it doesn’t feel like it, but this might be your chance at a fresh start,” she said.
“Take it from someone who tried and failed: you owe it to yourself to at least try.”
I snagged on her words. How unhappy had her life been off the show to justify returning if she disliked it so much?
“All I do is try, Imogen. Never goes my way,” PB replied, all ice. “But since you’re jonesing to see me in a Trial so badly, then vote me in instead. It’s Episode 6, anyway.”
I threw up my hands in frustration. “Why do you keep saying that? So what?”
“The Trial’s always trivia in Episode 4 or Episode 6,” Shawn said quietly.
“Didn’t see trivia in Italy, did we?” PB asked. “So I’ll do it.”
Imogen’s eyes narrowed. “And you’ll pick who to go against? Not Jiamin and Aspen?”
“No, I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” he fired back. “We have an opportunity here. Vote me and Greta, and we use the brain game to eliminate everyone’s biggest physical threat.”
“You mean Fortune and Erika?!” I gasped. “That’s not happening.”
Melange’s fist tightened around her collection of hairpins. “PB, Erika’s with us.”
“She’ll be fine,” he dismissed. “Jiamin’s leaving regardless, right? There can’t be an uneven number of men and women with the pairs. They’ll partner Erika with Aspen, and we’ll ditch the wrecking ball.”
I glanced at Troy, whose poker face betrayed nothing. “That’s a big gamble,” I said.
“Would you rather vote in Camdon and Tati? They’ll go straight for Queen Amidala and Cabbage Patch here,” he snapped, nodding at Melange and Shawn.
“We could take them,” Shawn said, but PB just laughed incredulously.
“Voting me in is the only way to protect the people in this room,” he continued, temper rising. “I am asking you all to do something for me, for once!”
“I’m not letting you risk Erika,” I said.
“Jesus, you’ve handled her with kid gloves long enough. There’s too much money on the line for you to worry about the optics of voting off the trans girl.”
“Do not go there!” I snapped, stepping toward him, stunned he’d make it about that.
His pupils flickered, evaluating me. “Oh, I’m an idiot. That’s not what this is about. Luke, it’s been ten fucking years, you have to move—”
“STOP!”
Melange darted between us. “PB, get out before you do something you can’t take back.”
He recoiled, shaking his head. “Just remember I haven’t steered anybody here wrong once. Unlike the rest of you, I know my role.”
He stormed out with Troy’s team following, and I whipped to the others. “We’re not jeopardizing Erika.”
“Of course not,” Melange agreed. “And she needs to know PB’s off his leash.”
“Okay, you and Shawn do that,” I said. “Imogen, you’re still the only one who might convince Camdon to vote for Jiamin or at least burn his vote. Make him see this is how he gets out from under Aspen’s thumb.” I dropped my voice. “You know, with the pancakes…”
“You seriously believed that?” Imogen asked. “I once saw Aspen get his own age wrong. I don’t quite buy him as a secret kingpin.”
“She’s right. Homeboy’s a walking piece of candy corn,” added Melange.
I breathed deep. “Then it’s time to cross the Iron Curtain and find out for sure.”
After thirty minutes, Aspen was still kicking away, furiously swimming laps in the hotel’s indoor pool.
He’d been middle of the pack every competition, but in the water he was a different athlete.
I languished with a barely cracked copy of Marco Polo’s in-house magazine in a deck chair, zoning out as the creamsicle dolphin did laps and dreading this whole reconnaissance mission.
At last, he hauled himself from the pool, glistening in his comically tiny white Speedo.
My moment had come. “Wow, Aspen, look at you go!”
He halted, hackles rising in suspicion. “Where you want me to go?”
Just when I thought I’d hit rock bottom, I found the sub-basement. “I just meant you’re great in the water. Did you train in swimming as a kid—”
“I will not fuck you,” he stated. “No matter how much you watch me.”
I winced, humiliated my lurking had yielded that conclusion. “I… don’t want you to. Actually, I wanted to talk about the game. We may have some things in common—”
“Nothing in common. I play quiet, you play loud. I show no cards, you show all cards. I like pussy, you are cocksucker,” he said, matter-of-fact as could be. “All different.”
“That’s hard to dispute, but have you talked to your partner? She’s volunteering—”
“For Trial, yes. It is what is. I will fight whether she does or not.” He shrugged.
I genuinely couldn’t tell which of us was worse at this. Hail Mary time. “I know what you did with Camdon and Royce.”
He frowned. “You know nothing.”
“I do, and you might be in big trouble if that info gets out.”
“No,” he spat, agitated now. “There is no footage.”
Finally an admission. “It could still get you banned from the show.”
“Nobody bans you and the porno boy!”
“Wait—what?”
He charged close, his voice a furious hiss. “We three were drunk in bathroom once, two years ago! No kissing, just the jackoff!”
“… I see.” A clandestine circle jerk hadn’t been what I expected to uncover here.
“Fuck your gray letter!” he snarled.
“My gray letter?”
“Your gray lettering.”
Ah. “I wasn’t trying to blackmail you—”
But he was gone, the glass door swinging behind him as I dug my fingers into my hair. If there even was a bribery ring, Imogen was correct to doubt Aspen had initiated it. Had PB cooked up this fiction just to keep us in line? And if so, how many other lies had he told me?
“You are very not smooth.” A throaty voice simmered behind the potted palm several chairs down. Tati emerged in one of her troll kaftans, hair pulled back and a sketchpad in hand.
“Tati, I didn’t know you were here.”
“Clearly,” she replied. “Aspen is not a gay. Trust me.”
“I… don’t have an opinion.”
“Then why threaten him with banning?”
“… I heard he was using steroids from Vanessa. Before she left.”
“Pfft! Consider source. She is nutty squirrel.”
“Honestly, I was trying to make an alliance with him,” I lied. “And failing.”
She crossed her arms, displeased. “You all the same. You men never bother to ask the female cast about deals or politics. We are just little chess pieces in your boy games, and you never take us serious. I am trained artist, and you still go to dumb-dumb Aspen before me. But maybe you are dumb-dumb too, eh? All you do is prance for cameras like rooster, flaunting your muscles, your new boyfriend, your children,” she ranted, on a tear now, exposing all my tender spots.
“You think you are only person here with kids? So special with your little daily calls. I have three sons I get to talk to once a week.”
How had this never come up? “Tatianna, I genuinely had no idea you had kids.”