10. Hell Is Other People （driving Around in All Their Cars） #2
I felt a pang of sadness—people should take her seriously. She should have a daughter she could share that news with. Someone she trusted to celebrate her success.
But shouldn’t I have those things, too? Maybe sometimes you simply reaped what you sowed.
“I’ll be home late,” I said. “Have to stop off somewhere after the store.”
“Coffee,” she said, her voice clipped. Then she left.
“So, wait,” said JR, interrogating me from the passenger side later that night as I drove us back from our shift at the store. “He has … a demon? But I thought you said it was epilepsy.”
I bit my tongue on the reflexive retort—they said that.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him, JR, but I’m not going to talk him off a roof a second time.
Or go chasing him through Hollywood again.
” I flicked my blinker on as I drove the few blocks back home from the store.
“Something’s off, whatever it is.” I still felt sure there was a more rational explanation, though not sure enough that I wanted to find out. “I’m not getting caught up in that.”
“But you’re literally going back right now,” JR argued, his brow stitching together with confusion so painfully visible that I, just like my mother, had a stray paranoid thought about whether this degree of earnestness could slyly mask an art performance of some kind.
The weather had progressed from sweltering wind to muggy, heavy, slightly soiled. Somewhere there must have been a fire. The setting sun was like an over-easy yolk, palm trees backlit by a plume of red sky. Even with the windows down, nothing seemed to help the heat. I felt mummified.
“I’m picking up the money I’m owed, that’s all. I have a plan.” I’d already asked Teddy if he could do it for me, but he said he had no power where Emmanuelle was concerned, especially given that he wasn’t even employed by her. He worked for Ara, not that she cared.
How about this, he suggested. meet me tonight for a drink? that way you can have an excuse not to stick around. i’ll even call you with an sos if things get urgent.
I’d already checked the picture of me he posted from the party the night before, which had a lot of likes.
He may have been obsessed with me since high school, but the people who followed him now didn’t know his reputation beyond him being the son of a director who sometimes shared his photography on her page.
Lighthearted versions of new gf?? and hard launch!
!!! dominated the comments, and my own follower count had jumped substantially.
So it was kind of hard to conjure up my usual disclaimer of I’m not really looking to date right now.
From a place of curiosity, and also vanity, I’d checked the post again before replying to him.
This time, I noticed that behind me, off in the distance, was the woman I’d seen talking to William de Witt the night before.
The one with the tall boots, the crescent moon on her elbow.
She was arguing with someone, though I couldn’t see who.
Before I put much thought into that, though, I realized that Teddy’s mother (@AriNeri.Finch) had liked the photo.
Then, fingers flying over my screen with haste, to the point where I hit the wrong tab twice, I checked my own page and realized she had followed me.
(!) My heart went off like a burst of confetti, my vision suddenly cotton-candy pink, like an LA sunset.
sure, I replied, a very cool girl with very cool emotions.
“Yeah, but still.” JR disrupted my thoughts with the usual thing he did, where he pointed out obvious things with an air of social ignorance. He was playing a game on his Nintendo Switch at the time.
“How’s Tavis McDonald?” I asked him.
“Anderson,” JR corrected me at once. “He’s got a hen that’s perfect for Alistair. Very smart. Plus extremely strong resistance to disease, I’ve heard.”
“Have you ever met Tavis in person?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know he’s not some weird old man catfishing you on the internet?”
“That’s not really the kind of situation I find myself in,” he said. Again, like an alien who’d never been to earth before.
“Fine.” I exhaled audibly before pausing on the curb outside our apartment building. Immediately, JR undid his seatbelt. “What does he eat, exactly?”
“Is it okay if we do this another time?” JR asked, throwing the car door open. “It’s really hard to be away from Alistair.”
“Right, sorry.”
He paused with one leg outside of the car. “Plus, you don’t care.”
“I care,” I insisted weakly.
“Well, beans and barley are pretty standard,” said JR. “High protein diets ideally. For optimal plumage attraction.”
“Yes,” I said. We both knew the word was empty of feeling.
“It’s okay. I know you’re trying.” He patted me awkwardly on the shoulder and got out, hurrying off with his backpack slung over one shoulder.
I, meanwhile, made my way to the de Witt villa, taking the winding roads once again. It came into view like some half-imagined hillside castle, materializing from a dream. Up here, the air was thick with smoke.
When I arrived, there were once again signs of a party. Again I parked in the front of the house. Again Genesis met me at the front door. “No phone,” she said.
“Genesis, I swear, I’m just—”
She held out her hand.
“I’m not working tonight,” I said. “I just came here to tell Emmanuelle—”
She arched one brow.
“Fine.” I slapped it into her hand and made my way gruffly through the house, emerging onto the patio with a fire lit inside me—one of the vindictive streaks my mother claimed I had. She always thought the worst of me, but this flaw was real, from time to time.
“Oh, Anya darling!” Of course—of course—that was the moment Atticus caught sight of me, looking up from where he was chatting with—again, of course—William de Witt.
“There she is,” Atticus called approvingly, gesturing me in closer as if to take me under his wing. “This one’s an absolute star, Will. But you know that already.”
William’s eyes slid to mine. Again I felt the impact of them, that crash of a morning wave.
Close up, the impact was more obvious. He remained as breathtaking as he’d been the previous time, though something about him seemed slightly waxen, as if he’d been put back into the kiln.
There was a glaze to his skin, a jaundiced sheen that could have been lighting, or maybe illness.
When he turned his head, I noticed the area stretching from his eye to the bridge of his nose was visibly discolored.
Below his eye was a linear, uneven bar of purple, then a mottled splash of Cabernet.
“Quite a shiner,” I observed, then regretted it for its commonality, its lack of originality, the way his gaze drifted disinterestedly from mine. “But you must be tired of hearing that.”
“Disastrous day on set,” he said, only partially paying attention.
I could tell I was being punished for being tiresome, part of a chorus of redundancy, no different from the others.
He’d expected more from me and, likewise, I wanted to be more, to be different.
“Collecting dents to add to my authenticity.” Yep, I’d lost him.
“Will!” Someone called out to him, and he seemed glad of the excuse to turn, acknowledging them with a nod. Flakes of white ash drifted toward us on the wind, like God lethargically flicking the butt of His cigarette.
“Ara’s latest investor, Fred Dennings,” Atticus explained in my ear, perhaps thinking my frequency of distress at losing William’s attention came from a place of confusion about present company. “I’m sure you’ve heard of him. He helps with William’s charitable endeavors.”
Like Emmanuelle, Atticus seemed less than delighted by Fred Dennings’s presence; it was the energy of someone greeting their own saboteur, social tolerance owed to the latest favorite.
“Right, yes,” I acknowledged aloud. Accompanying Fred was the woman from the previous night, the one with the crescent moon tattoo.
She wasn’t dressed for a party now. Instead she wore jean cutoffs, a tank top, a pair of flip-flops.
She was arguing with him and he was guiding her over, coaxing her with one hand on her arm.
Briefly, the expression on William’s face tightened.
“Duty calls,” William offered to us in pseudo-apology as Fred approached with the woman.
He gave Atticus a salute with his glass and I resigned myself to getting nothing, but in the end William’s eyes strayed back to mine with a noticeable sense of lag.
Like he’d told himself no, don’t look at the pretty girl, and ultimately been unsuccessful.
Which might sound full of myself (and probably was; my mother would be the first to tell you humility was not one of my virtues) but I’d had about a decade’s experience with those kinds of looks by then.
There was a reason I believed—and behaved—as if I’d one day be famous, and it didn’t come from a place of humility. Certainly not from failing to notice when a man found me attractive.
(A prayer: If I fail, let it be because my looks decay and not because I waste them.)
Okay, so I hadn’t lost him yet. But I noted that I would need a different character to hold his attention.
If things stayed as they were, I’d be nothing more than the irritating feminine chorus, the woman who served as a set piece, crafted to suggest the outlines of the world and its expectations rather than occupying the story in any meaningful way.
THE FEMININE CHORUS
If only she knew.
I couldn’t see William’s face as he approached Fred and the woman; only the muscle that jumped along Fred’s jaw in reply, acknowledgment of something.
The woman with the moon tattoo, by contrast, seemed relieved.
She calmed almost immediately, allowing William to steer her somewhere quieter, Fred following with an air of forced pleasantry at their heels.