Chapter 12
Imust not be cut out for genuine alcoholism because a liquid lunch just did not do it for me. So before returning to my desk, I beelined to the cafeteria’s sandwich station to grab a BLT.
One might wonder how I could eat at a time like this, but I needed to eat because I needed to think. Fucking Emily Johnson. We’d done it, we had crossed the finish line, and she had to go and screw it all up by telling someone. Ginger Lloyd, who was obviously terrible.
This was what I got for letting my guard down, for thinking Emily was my friend. And for believing, even for an instant, that anything could go right, ever.
I ordered my BLT as usual—heavy on the B, light on the L and T—then scanned the table area for the standard sights: the four sharp corners of suited power lunches, the anxious outer perimeter of interns unpacking brown-bag PB picked up my mouse; spit on its ball; rubbed the thing down on her combat pants; tossed it back onto my desk; and barked, “Now it works.”
“Well, fuck, Lily,” I said. “You told crazy Wendi Chan? Is she the only person you told?”
Lily began to partially asphyxiate once more. “Yes. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
I covered my face with my hands.
“Oh dear,” Lily said. “Oh aah well, I realize I’ve upset you, but would you be willing to speak to her?”
“I don’t know,” I said into my palms, which still smelled of pickle brine from the bar. “I need to think.”
“Oh aah well, but would it be all right if I give you her address?” Lily pulled a slip of paper from her cardigan pocket and passed it to me. “She wanted me to tell you that she’ll be home tonight and she’d like you to go see her.”
How was this my life? I was supposed to be an island. Hell is other people. Hell is other people!
I had lost all control of this situation, and I needed to be in control.
“That’s Wendi’s address there,” Lily whispered. “Please go and see her tonight if you can.”
—
I stepped into my apartment after work to find Emily and Ginger Lloyd on my kitchen floor surrounded by markers, glitter, glue sticks, and towering stacks of various Titan magazines.
Home Beautiful, Architecture Digest, Lush Décor, Mode, French Mode, Mode Teen, Mode for Men, Yachts and Yachting, Fancy Fish.
“Are you guys making dream boards?”
“You’ve got to be able to see what you want in order to have it,” Ginger called to me while gluing down a picture of a Marilyn Monroe look-alike in a fur coat driving a red Ferrari.
She had arranged it so that the Ferrari was headed straight for a picture of Glen Wiles.
And she’d creatively pasted the Target logo over Glen Wiles’s receding hairline.
Emily held her board up for me to see. It was far less ordered than Ginger’s, less of a homicidal narrative and more of a Jackson Pollock–like splatter of jewelry and swimming pools.
“It’s not too late to change your mind,” she said. “I got you your own piece of paperboard just in case.”
I was inexplicably touched that Emily had considered me while stealing art supplies from the Titan office supply room.
“And look at this.” She reached across the floor to a copy of Millennium Foodie and turned to a page she’d marked with a glitter pen.
“This is the FleurBurger 5000,” she said.
“It’s a hamburger they have in Las Vegas that contains foie gras and a special truffle sauce.
It’s served with a bottle of Chateau Petrus, poured into Ichendorf Brunello stemware.
It costs five thousand dollars, but we’ll be able to afford it! ”
Staring down at this full-page spread of charred meat on a brioche bun made me realize something vitally important: Emily and Ginger were going to run their scheme with such moronic ostentation that they would get themselves caught in a matter of days, possibly minutes.
And then I would be caught because the paper trail of forged documents would lead right back to me.
“Don’t you like it?” Emily asked.
I took the issue of Millennium Foodie from Emily’s outstretched hand, closed it, and set it down on the kitchen table.
“You have to stop this,” I said as gently as I could.
“Don’t you think if the two of you start showing up to work draped in blood diamonds and Birkin bags that people are going to start asking questions? ”
Without warning, Emily grabbed the nearest issue of Ultimate Houses and chucked it at my feet. “I picked that burger out for you myself!”
“I appreciate that, Emily, but I can’t let you do this. You’d be putting me at risk. Even if I don’t cooperate with you.”
I ducked out of the way of a soaring glitter pen, then a glue stick, and, most egregiously, a pair of scissors. In Emily’s defense, they were at least safety scissors.
“You put yourself at risk when you cashed that check!” Emily Frisbeed a double issue of Fine Wines straight for my forehead.
Fortunately, I was a seasoned flying-object dodger on account of my parents, so Emily had yet to land a blow.
Ginger, meanwhile, was calmly cutting the crotch out of another picture of Glen Wiles.
It was a known Titan fact that Glen Wiles was a serial sexual harasser, so I could only imagine what it was like for someone with Ginger’s cup size to be his assistant—but still, she was a little too entranced by rendering him a eunuch.
“You’re killing our good-energy vibe in here,” Ginger said without looking up. “I think you should take your negativity elsewhere.”
A box of crayons ricocheted off my collarbone and I knew I had no choice but to go. Only after I slammed the door shut behind me did I realize I’d just been driven out of my own home.
My cell phone tinged and I was sure it was Emily calling me, to tell me that her psychotic break had ended and it was now safe for me to reenter my own apartment without a helmet.
Instead, it was a text from an unknown number: I’m waiting for you—WenDi.
How did Wendi Chan get my cell phone number?
Immediately following that text came another: I’m still waiting.
Then a third: Still waiting. I’ve got all night.
Lucky for Wendi Chan, I had nowhere else to go anyway.