by Emily Belden
ready tried breaking and entering earlier this week. I’m pretty sure she has it in her to steal from you.”
“But why, though? What could Debbie Austin possibly
need that money for? I feel like she carries that amount in
cash with her at all times.”
“Perhaps her financial status is just like everything else of
hers: a facade. Probably needed the cash for a facelift. Speak-
ing of, I need to wash this facemask off before it sticks to my skin for good. You back in for the cruise, or what? Personally, I think it’ll be a great distraction for you and I promise I’ll help you hack her financials, or whatever, as soon as we get home.”
I pull Debbie’s name up on my phone for the second time
this week, but before I commit to pressing Call, I remind my-
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self to breathe. It’s not my style to confront someone without
all the facts. So while I can confidently accuse her of stealing from me, it’d be nice to have time to research what she used
that money for and have the full story.
“Fine,” I concede to Casey, determining I owe that much to
the person who just helped me figure out Debbie has wronged
me for the last time.
The apartment looks like a pseudo sorority house as Casey
and I take turns sharing the mirror in the bathroom. As of
five seconds ago, I’ve affixed the last hot curler in my hair
with a bobby pin. It’s funny, I haven’t put curlers in my hair
in nearly five years. Granted, I chopped ten inches off right
after Decker died, but still I never found myself back in the
routine even once my hair grew out.
Because these things have to set for at least twenty-five
minutes to create the soft but polished waves I am looking
for, I’m using the time my hair is tied up to do something
useful with my hands. Right now, that means googling the
Austins’ lawyer. I’m not sure if they’ll have it posted, but if I can find out their retainer fee, perhaps I can link it to the missing withdrawal amount.
After Decker’s accident, his family filed a bullish wrongful
death civil lawsuit against the organizers of the race. Attor-
neys warned them from day one the judge was likely to throw
the case out since Decker had PFO, a birth defect. Assuming
Casey is on to something with the Austin family financials
not being all they’re cracked up to be, they could have tapped
into the policy money instead of having to use their own so
there’d be nothing to lose if the case went cold, which is ex-
actly what it did.
“So if I send you the link to his Facebook profile, can you
run him through the wringer?” Casey is standing in the hall-
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way wrapped in a towel with wet hair. She is staring at me,
more like through me. In one hand, she’s armed with a piece
of peanut-butter-covered matzo and in the other, she’s hold-
ing her cell phone.
“The what?” I say, looking up from my phone screen.
“Your app thingy. The one you funnel all your guys
through.”
“Yeah, I know what you’re talking about but that…that’s an
incredible name for it. Drop the ‘w’ and call it The Ringer.”
Suddenly, the smoke clears from the bullshit research I was
just doing, and I repeat the name at least three more times
in my head. The Ringer. The Ringer. The Ringer. According to Warren, I still need to figure out how a user can filter by
breast size and land on a name. Sounds like I can check one of those off the list.
Finally having a name for my app takes the branding of it
to the next level and gets me one step closer to actually mer-
chandising this thing. I set my phone down and stare into
space. I go on to imagine all the fonts and color schemes
that will go best with my future company’s newly appointed
moniker. Truly, there could be no better name for a product
that is designed to drill down into the people who use it and
spit them back out with a ring on their finger—The Ringer.
I freaking love it.
“So will you run him through it or not?”
“In exchange for complete ownership of the naming rights,
sure. I’ll do it,” I zone back in and wait for her to agree.
“In exchange for the naming rights? God, you’re so fuck-
ing weird, Rosen. But fine. I just sent it, FYI.”
“Who is this guy anyway?” I ask, going back to lining my
lips like it’s a paint-by-numbers project. My phone dings, con-
firming receipt of Casey’s hella on-it cyber stalking.
“His name is Justin. I met him last night at a Web-Toes
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Anonymous meet-up deep in The Valley. Super cute librar-
ian during the day, drummer in a band by night, looks like
Pete Wentz, and… I just so happened to spend the night at
his house. So, can you just run him already and tell me how
many babies we’ll be having?”
I’ve never ran my app for anyone but myself. But I sup-
pose if I plan to make The Ringer a universal product, War-
ren was right—I need beta testers. And there’s no reason that
Casey and Justin can’t be my first guinea pigs. I will just need to swap her info in for mine and then plug in his profile at-tributes. All in all, this should take me far less time than it takes for curlers to set my hair.
“Yes, I’ll do it right after I finish getting ready,” I concede.
“You know better than I do, these lips won’t line themselves.”
“Pro-tip,” Casey says, grabbing the pencil away from me.
“Line just above your natural lip line for that Kylie Jenner
look. There. All set.”
As Casey trots off to her room to change for the cruise, I
get an incoming text from Brian. He’s at my place. I remem-
ber now that I hadn’t really responded to him yesterday when
he’d offered to come over, but I guess he assumed it was fine.
I call down to the doorman and tell him to let him up.
Moments later, I can hear Leno’s toenails clicking against
the hard surfaces as he goes to greet his favorite long-lost
friend.
“Knock, knock?” his voice says from around the hall.
“I’m in here!” I shout from the bathroom.
“Well, aren’t you just a vision,” Brian says from the door-
way.
“Thanks. You’ll have to excuse the whole Medusa thing
I’ve got going on right now,” I say in regards to the curlers.
For the record, he looks good, too. In his golf polo and
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plaid shorts, he looks like he’s just finished walking the Top-
man runway at Fashion Week.
I scurry my way out of the bathroom, still in my robe and
fuzzy bunny rabbit slippers. I spring onto my tippy toes to fetch a water glass down from a cabinet above the sink. Brian’s six-foot-something frame towers over me, off
ering me the assist.
We both exchange a silent smile at each other.
“Want some matzo?” I ask as I rehydrate. “My mom sent
me a bunch of boxes.”
“No thanks. I’m not hungry.” Brian takes a seat at one of
the bar stools by the kitchen counter.
“You seem kind of quiet.” I break off a piece of matzo. “I
thought for sure by now you’d be telling me about the kid
you saw yesterday who was throwing up Windex.”
“Sorry. I’m just exhausted. Last night was…brutal.”
“Lots of runny noses, eh?”
“No. I wish. A four-year-old choked on an apple slice in
day care. The workers weren’t certified—botched the Heim-
lich. We worked on her for a while, but couldn’t save her.”
Is he just trying to trump the time he told me his patient
had the bubonic plague?
“I’m serious. It really sucks.” There’s a somberness to his
voice and I know he’s not kidding around. I know Brian came
over to lend a delayed ear to my urgent texts yesterday, but I
want to be respectful of the fact he’s exhausted, he’s sad, and now is not the time to start bringing any life insurance policy fraud evidence. So I table my own drama. For now.
“I’m really sorry to hear that, Brian,” I say.
“Who’s ready for a singles cruuuuiiise,” Casey sings as she
comes into frame. “Don’t mind me, just making a little pine-
apple-rum mixer. Anyone want one? Char, you of all people
may want to pregame before this. Loosen you up a little be-
fore we head out to Catalina.”
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Suddenly, three’s a crowd in our tiny kitchen, especially
after Casey spills the beans that I’m sailing out to Catalina Island with a bunch of singles for the evening. Not exactly the
most appropriate follow-up for just learning he had a rough
night at the hospital.
“You’re going on a singles cruise?” he asks with a hint of judgment in his voice.
“No. Well, yeah. But I didn’t sign up for it on my own or
anything. Casey won the tickets in a raffle. She asked me to go with her,” I say, trying to sound as neutral as possible. Instead, I sound like a car engine sputtering out its last bits of gasoline.
“Got it,” he says, without any further commentary.
I need to shift gears. I don’t like where this conversation
is going, so I make a move and head toward more familiar
territory.
“Hey, can you help me with something??”
“Sure. What is it?”
“I wrote a check for a donation to the frat fundraiser. Here.
Could you give it to the treasurer? I’m sure you’re still in
touch with all them. It’ll save me the trip to USC. I don’t
trust mailing it.”
As he looks it over, there’s enough of an awkward silence for
me to wonder: Is he mad at me? Suddenly, I feel compelled to
go back into how the cruise wasn’t my choice, I don’t even re-
ally want to go, I only agreed to it because I’m about five years behind on hanging out with my roommate, and so on and so
forth. But instead, I just keep quiet. I know myself and when
I don’t have time to process the data and I’m put on the spot
I’ll just end up spewing things off that I don’t really mean. I remind myself: this is a harmless outing with my roommate,
and he and I are just friends.
“Got it,” he says, folding up the check up and putting it
in the front pocket of his polo shirt. “Sorry again about not
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being able to come over last night. What did you want to
talk about?”
Well, since he asked.
“I was trying to make a transfer from Decker’s life insur-
ance policy to the fraternity’s PayPal for the donation. Long
story short, turns out that ten grand went missing from that
account and it really jarred me.”
“Did you find it?” he asks.
“No. At first I thought it was someone random who went
through my trash and stole my identity, but then Casey sug-
gested it could actually have been Debbie, and now I kind
of agree with her. I mean, there was this one time she came
over, and—”
“Never a dull moment, Charlotte,” he announces, hopping
off the stool in my kitchen as his pager goes off. “I’ve got to get home and ready for work. Do you want me to take the urn? I
figure you’re probably not going to want to lug it on the ship
and if you’re both gone, then who’s playing security guard?”
We both look at Leno, who is ripping the stuffing out of a
toy I just bought him.
“That’s actually not a bad idea,” I say. “You don’t mind?
Can you bring it back—”
“First thing in the morning. Yes.”
I put the urn in a Trader Joe’s reusable grocery tote and
hand it over to Brian.
“You two have fun tonight,” he says before he goes to let
himself out.
“Brian, wait,” I say. “Is everything good?”
“With?”
I go out on a limb: “Us?”
“Yo, Rosen. Our Uber is five minutes away. You need to
get dressed,” Casey says, coming around the corner wearing
red patent leather platform shoes, fishnet stockings, and a T-
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shirt as a dress as if she’s off to Coachella. She’s holding up a preselected outfit for me—a revealing minidress I forgot I
even own.
At that, Brian flashes a soulless smile and makes a satiri-
cal saluting motion with his hand at his head before letting
himself out.
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Confession: I didn’t wear the minidress. Assuming I would
have been able to get it over my left thigh, it’s a dress that reveals a little more skin than I’m comfortable exposing to the
type of people who voluntarily go on a singles cruise to Cata-
lina Island. It was, however, a good reminder that one of these days I should focus less on paring down Decker’s things and
more on making a donation pile of my own.
Instead I went again with a comfortable fave, “summer
wedding chic,” which manifested itself tonight in the form of a halter dress with green palms printed all over it. With the Sea-Band and Apple Watch on my wrist and a dark-berry overly
lined lipstick, I look like a cross between a pin-up model and
Casey’s angelic alter ego. This is what happens when your dra-
matic life leaves you with five minutes to get dressed.
We get out of the Uber and immediately it’s a sensory over-
load for me. Hundreds of people looking like they are going
to some sort of adult prom are darting their way over toward
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a midsized yacht that’s rocking ever so slightly in the water
behind us. Cue my vertigo.
“Everyone must check in before boa
rding the boat! Come
get your name tags and your wristbands over here! Remem-
ber: no bracelet, no booze!” a woman shouts from the reg-
istration desk on the dock. She looks about my age, yet also
like she’s somehow made a career out of being a professional
sorority sister. Kudos to her.
“Come on, Char. Let’s check in and start drinking,” Casey
squeals, dragging me by the arm toward the registration table.
Her matte black, pointy fingernails are digging into my skin,
which I can feel is starting to crawl with every step we take
closer to the ship.
“That guy is cute,” whispers Casey about a man standing
in front of us in a line of about ten other singles waiting for their turn at the registration desk. He is, I agree. But right
now, all I can think about is the sinking look on Brian’s face
tonight when he heard I’d be spending my night aboard a boat
full of drunk single people. Even though I’m not interested
in hooking up with anyone here, at all, maybe for him this is what it was like for me when I found out he was having a
work picnic with Bella.
“Last name please?” the grown-up sorority girl fires off.
Upon closer inspection, I’m jealous of her hair, body, and
face-framing bangs.
“Rosen,” I say.
The woman proceeds to scan a row of preprinted name
tags that are laid out on a table behind a sign that reads: “Last Names N-Z.”
“Ahh, Rosen,” she repeats as she picks up a name tag. “Are
you… Charlotte?”
“That’s me,” I say with the enthusiasm of being called in
for root canal surgery.
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“Okay. Here you go,” she says, handing me the name tag
and a wristband. I’m awaiting further questioning, such as
blonde or brunette? College educated or entrepreneur? But I
guess they don’t take dating data as seriously as I do.
I stick the name tag to my chest and attempt to apply the
wristband on my own using a combination of my left hand and
my teeth. I guess I don’t go to enough outdoor music festivals
to have perfected the art of putting one of these things on.
“Need a hand?” says the cute guy from the line.
“Sure,” I say. “Thanks.”
The man, who’s named Jake according to his name tag, applies my wristband in about two seconds flat, smiles, and says,
