Chapter Twelve
Twenty-three days till the show
Jazz’s house was just as impressive as Annie remembered: a turreted three-story Victorian painted in sun-faded pink and purple, with a gable roof, wrap-around porch, and decorative woodwork curling around the windows.
The grounds had surrendered to wild, beautiful chaos—ivy tangled around the porch railings, jasmine curled up broken trellises, rosebushes spilled over a mossy stone path.
An abandoned swing hung from a sugar maple, swaying gently in the early-evening breeze.
The lawn was a meadow of tall grass and wildflowers, unruly but vibrant.
Even a little weathered, the house wore its eccentricity like a crown.
Annie walked up the creaking porch steps, pausing on the doormat to take a grounding breath. Find the courage to knock.
Okay, so rehearsals weren’t going swimmingly.
They were going drowningly. It wasn’t just the rust of not having acted in decades.
It was Lola. Playing opposite her meant unsheathing herself.
Letting the feelings and deception Annie had buried rise to the surface.
She was trying, she really was. But honesty?
Complete, ruthless honesty? Was that possible?
Annie imagined revealing it. Confessing the truth about what really happened, and why, to Lola.
She pictured the stunned silence. Lola’s tears. Then her anger. Cruel words, a cold goodbye, tires screeching as she left. Well before opening night. The show could definitely not go on without its only headliner. The show that was the central tenet of the plan to save a town on the brink.
No. Annie shook her head. Honesty wasn’t possible. And it wasn’t exactly a lie—it was a strategic omission. The kind you make when the truth could ruin a life.
She just needed to muddle through, survive the show, and let this whole summer fade into a fever dream of costumes and coin tosses and stage makeup. And right now that meant enjoying a casual taco night while pretending things weren’t extremely awkward with her movie star ex.
Annie knocked on Jazz’s front door. No one answered. It was unlocked, so she let herself in, stepping into the front room.
And almost laughed out loud in delight.
Three sofas, two settees, and a worn leather armchair were arranged haphazardly around two coffee tables: a seventies-style funky shape made from mint-green glass, and a refurbished wagon wheel.
On the coffee tables: a stack of feminist zines, salt and pepper shakers of two mustached leather daddies, an ashtray shaped like a pair of breasts, a hunk of sparkling amethyst. One, two, three bookcases, all overflowing: Sister Outsider and The Beauty Myth sandwiched next to the collected works of Lynn Nottage and William Shakespeare.
A curiosity cabinet full of china plates and more colorful tchotchkes sat next to an old-fashioned writing desk stacked with handwritten letters and a crystal ball on a faux-gold stand.
In the corner, a mannequin was draped in a jeweled and feathered iridescent-green gown that Annie recognized as Titania’s, from the Rhodes Players’ production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Each wall was crowded with artwork: black-and-white photography of a student street protest; an energetic, expressionist painting of two women making out; a poster from the Hilma af Klint retrospective at the Guggenheim. A funky 1998 Wigstock poster was signed in red lipstick by Lady Bunny.
Even though it was cluttered, the room still felt homey. Like Gloria Steinem and RuPaul shared a lease and zero storage solutions.
“Hello!” she called.
“In here!” someone yelled back.
Annie followed the sound of chatter and jaunty jazz, passing a formal dining room dominated by a polished-wood, twelve-seat table piled with half-melted candles and tins of vintage silver cutlery.
The light fixture overhead was a birdcage filled with fairy lights and paper cranes.
Then a library with leopard-print carpet and even more books, more play scripts, more armchairs and floor cushions, all evidence of Jazz’s expansive heart and curious brain.
The kitchen was painted a bold sunshine-yellow, the backsplash a crooked display of decorative Spanish tiles.
Hanging plants tumbled from hooks on the ceiling.
The counters were cluttered with spice jars, vintage canisters, and open packets of coffee and tea.
A black marble statue of a jaguar still arched a paw in one corner.
Dylan was at the stove, cooking something sizzling in a cast-iron pan.
Vicky chopped a tomato with the force of someone who considered murder a form of stress relief.
Lola sat at the kitchen island, a glass of white wine in front of her. She was the first to see Annie in the doorway. They locked eyes and Annie’s heart did a swan dive. For a second, the sounds of the others grew faint and it was just the two of them, staring.
Some people just settle into your bones and feel like home. Despite everything, Lola was still one of those people.
“Annie, hiiiii!” Vicky’s screech popped the moment like a pin to a balloon and Annie dropped back into the busy kitchen with a thud.
“We’re making tacos,” Dylan announced.
“With fake meat.” Vicky made a face.
“I told you we could get beef!” Dylan exclaimed.
“I told you I’m fine with seitan!” Vicky insisted.
“Are you on a diet?” Dylan asked this as if it was an impossibility.
Vicky gasped in offense. “Excuse me?”
“Honey.” Dylan slung an arm around Vicky, which she elbowed off with an eye roll. “I’m not saying you should be on a diet, I’m just trying to figure you and your fake meat out.”
“Well, stop,” Vicky said with a huff. “There’s nothing to figure out!”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” drawled Dylan, eyeing Vicky with suspicion before turning back to the pan.
“Let the lady have her secrets,” Jazz told Dylan, bustling by to retrieve five mismatched plates from a cabinet.
“Oooh.” Dylan ground pepper into the pan. “There’s a secret?”
“No!” Vicky exclaimed. “There’s not!”
Lola met Annie’s gaze as she held a bottle of sauvignon blanc poised over a glass. A pink rose was tucked behind one ear. The hem of her hippie-ish white maxi dress brushed the floor, like a barefoot summer bride. “Wine?”
“Please.” Annie put the bottle she’d bought on the counter, hoping the others wouldn’t identify it as one of the cheaper brands and feel sorry for her. Or, even more humiliating, try to help. Being broke was bad enough—being a burden was unbearable.
Annie gratefully accepted the glass Lola handed her. “Cheers, queers.”
“Cheers!” Lola and Dylan chorused, raising their glasses.
Dylan looked to Jazz, then Vicky. “You want some?”
“When we eat,” Jazz said, filling a wicker basket with tableware and tapered candles, like a woodland witch preparing for a midsummer supper-slash-séance. “Off to set the table!” Their hostess headed for the back door.
“None for me.” Vicky massacred lettuce with vengeance. “I really shouldn’t be drinking so much.”
Dylan lifted their hands. “Why not?”
“None of your business!” Vicky shot back.
“They’ve been like this for hours,” Lola whispered to Annie, her hazel eyes shimmering with amusement.
“Decades,” Annie countered, hopping up on the stool next to Lola. The kitchen island was cluttered with dog-eared cookbooks, mini potted succulents, and jars of dried herbs. She addressed Dylan and Vicky. “How’s your week been?”
“Awesome,” Dylan enthused. “Set up a bunch of site visits for Marlowe.”
“And I’ve gone to two yoga classes,” Vicky bragged.
“You did yoga?” Dylan spun to stare at Vicky. “The woman who once told me that yoga is to exercise what karaoke is to Broadway?”
Vicky tossed a defiant handful of nuts into the salad bowl. “People change!”
Dylan raised their palms in surrender, then switched off the burner. “Help me carry the food outside, Lols?”
Lola and Dylan balanced bowls of seasoned ground seitan and sour cream and plump black beans, disappearing out the back door and leaving Vicky and Annie alone in the kitchen.
Squeezing lemon over the salad, Vicky flicked Annie a casual look. “So, how are rehearsals?”
“Yeah, good…” Annie lied, pretending to be absorbed with a hunt for the hot sauce.
“No lingering sexual tension?”
Vicky spoke jokingly but Annie could tell her friend was fishing. “Nope.”
Vicky spun to face her, eyes glittering like the lawyer she was. “But you guys were so close back in the day. What happened?”
Annie froze. Of course Vicky just asked. “We, uh, drifted apart?”
Vicky scoffed. “No, you didn’t. You spent every waking second together. You were disgustingly in love.”
Annie’s insides tightened, a warning without words. She gave a weak laugh. “We thought we were.”
Vicky raised a disbelieving brow.
Annie exhaled, feeling trapped. “Lola and I—we just…didn’t make sense. We couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“There were…other factors.” Even to her own ears, she sounded shady. “Something I can’t explain.”
“Try,” Vicky said softly. “Just try.”
Annie stared back. Opened her mouth, the truth right on the tip of her tongue.
A sound at the doorway.
Lola. Standing still, one hand braced on the frame. “Just grabbing the salsa,” she said, voice quiet as she picked up the jar.
Annie’s pulse misfired, then began to gallop. By the time she caught her breath, Lola was already gone.
· · ·
In the soft purple dusk, Annie and the others sat around the backyard’s weathered wooden dining table in an odd assortment of primary-colored plastic chairs.
They built their tacos and ate with their hands.
Jazz told stories about riding out the pandemic on her ex-wife’s ranch in Northern California.
Days spent under a stretched blue sky, mucking out the stables and tossing grain to fat chickens.