“Are you kidding me? You’re trying to play off your malicious attacks as mistakes?”
“Have you never made a mistake that wounded someone? And take Emily here. She was just where you were not so long ago. She had made up her mind that I was some sort of charlatan who rounded up a bunch of teenaged girls with an improper motive. Nothing I could say or do would change her view on that. And then … well, tell them what happened, Emily.”
“God spoke to me.”
NOT TRUE.
“And He told me to start softening my heart, that the bitterness was what was causing my nightmares and depression and that if I just let go of it, He would guide me to healing. So that’s what I did. I released the bitterness and called Jimmy to apologize for the part I was playing in his persecution.”
“Prosecution,” Jessica corrected. “Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.”
“You know,” Jimmy said, “it pains me to think that you’d even entertain the possibility that what I’ve done was intended in any sort of malicious way. I mean it. It genuinely pains me to think of that. And I just can’t stand the idea that you might be going around perpetuating that false belief without giving me a chance to properly explain my actions to you.”
“I’m sorry you can’t stand that idea, Jimmy.” She wasn’t sorry. She was only sorry she hadn’t talked shit about him publicly more often. “And I’m sorry I wrote a mostly false book about my life and included a fraudulent foreword by you. Oh wait. That wasn’t me who did that. That was …”
Jimmy clucked exasperatedly. “Oh, come on, Jessica. We both know the judge will throw out the suit as soon as he lays eyes on it. Your claim is so entirely unbelievable! How are you going to write such a lovely introduction to my memoirs and then deny you ever wrote it?”
“Deny I—” She couldn’t finish. Or rather, she could, but it would be extra loud and assault the heightened senses at the tables around her. Instead, she hissed, “You’re so full of shit, Jimmy. One day, everyone will know it.”
Emily laid a hand on Jessica’s shoulder, and she swatted it off. Undeterred, Emily said, “I am so sad for you. Holding so much hate in your heart is a heavy burden. Just know that whenever you come around, I’ll be waiting here with open arms to receive you.”
“Didn’t I tell you, Em?” said Jimmy. “I told you she was just like how you used to be. Yes, I’m upset that you would dismiss me, Jessica. But mostly, like Emily, I’m just sad. Sad for you.” His voice shook. “You must feel so alone, thinking the man who helped bring you into this world would, what, exploit you? That’s what you think, isn’t it? That I exploited you? Deus Aper! You must feel so terribly, terribly alone.”
The word “alone” was the last one Jessica heard, but she was sure there were more. However, she’d grabbed Jameson’s hand and whispered for him to follow her out as soon as the Jimmilogue began, and Jameson was more than happy to do so.
They gave themselves away the moment they opened the door out of the dining area and light streamed in. But that was fine. They had a head start and could disappear before he followed.
On the drive back to her condo, Jameson asked, “Do you think it’s possible Jimmy is just misunderstood?”
“No.”
“Not at all?”
“Not even a little bit.” And yet, that conversation nagged at her. Even as she knew he was trying to manipulate her, the manipulation seeped in.
“Gah! I hate him!” She smacked the dashboard of her car.
The idea that Emily would go from patient zero of his scandal to his fiancée seemed so unbelievable that she must be missing some key bit of information. Was Jimmy blackmailing the woman? Obviously he wasn’t above that. But no, she didn’t get that feeling at all from Emily. The poor woman genuinely seemed to have had an impossible change of heart that convinced her that not only should she forgive Jimmy for taking advantage of her, but she should stop believing that he had taken advantage at all.
Could that be the case with Jessica? She did tend to assume the worst about everything Jimmy did. Benefit of the doubt was something she’d afforded Ice Cream Jimmy as a child, and Church Jimmy had cashed in on it when he’d invited her and Destinee to White Light. Since then, she’d assumed the worst. But maybe that was a mistake. Maybe if she’d given him more of a chance …
Then she remembered his fake resurrection in front of his congregation. And his memoirs. And how he got his followers to antagonize her at college. And, and, and.
“How does that happen?” she asked.
“What?”
“How does someone like Emily used to be turn into someone like Emily is now?”
Jameson sighed as they pulled into the parking garage for her condo. “You’re asking me to understand more about women than you do, Jessica, and it’s just not going to happen.”
“Fair enough.” She looked around. “Oh, are you coming up?” Usually he would drop her off at the curb, unless he planned to stay.
“If you want me to. I also thought you might like to be able to get inside without people seeing you.”
“Yeah, it’s been a nice change of pace being invisible again.”
“Oh, no. That’s not why.” Jameson put the car into park and grimaced as his eyes locked onto her chest. “You have a huge gravy stain all down your front.”
She looked down at her black blouse and saw the white gravy. A large chunk of it still clung, but the rest had dried and begun to crust. “Ah. Yeah. Probably don’t want to be seen with this.”
He shook his head. “Especially not getting out of the car with me.”
She grabbed her purse, then thought, Oh what the hell? “Come on up and we’ll order a pizza.”
Jameson grinned. “You better stop talking dirty to me if you’re not going to put out.”
“Ha!” She hurriedly opened the car door and jumped out, unsure what else to do in the face of a fantastic come-on that could never amount to anything.
Chapter Twenty-Six
There was a price to pay for everything. Jessica knew this. Even as she’d enjoyed her weekend and the late-night chat and drinks with Jameson that had felt remarkably comfortable and familiar and hardly awkward at all, she’d been aware that on the other side of it would be extra work and extra problems for her.
What she didn’t expect, however, was the envelope taped on the back door of It is Risen that she discovered upon arriving the following Monday morning. Probably a heads up from Destinee, Judith, or Rex, she figured, still floating on a high from the weekend. Maybe they were running low on flour and they weren’t sure she’d notice it on the inventory form before it became an issue. Something like that. The three of them had graciously taken full charge of the bakery while she was out on her adventures in celebrity, and in exchange for their overtime, she’d given everyone Monday off. It was all Jessica now.
Could she do it by herself without any help for an entire day?
The answer was simple: she had to. So she would.
The first thing that struck her as off about the envelope was that she didn’t recognize the handwriting. She knew her mother’s handwriting, and she was fairly certain this wasn’t Judith’s, though she couldn’t precisely visualize what Judith’s looked like. She was sure she’d seen Rex’s handwriting before outside of just Xs and Os, though, again, she couldn’t visualize it. No, this scrawl was unfamiliar, and the fact that her name was in the center of a large heart was further evidence that it wasn’t from Rex or Judith.
She pulled it off the door where it was taped at eye level and tore open the seal, pulling out a stiff, folded sheet of cream-colored card stock. Something tumbled free when she separated the letter from the envelope, and she stooped over to grab it from the ground.
It was a photo. She rotated it one-hundred and eighty degrees before she realized what it was.
“Motherfuck!”
She spun around, sure whoever had snapped this invasive picture was standing right behind her.
But no
one was, at least no one she could see through the pre-dawn darkness or in the small area covered by the security light over the back door.
Whatever was in this letter would still be there when she was securely indoors.
Fumbling with her keys, she cursed and missed the lock multiple times as she took her eyes off of it to glance back over her shoulder.
She slammed the door shut behind her and locked the deadbolt in the same motion as she flipped on the lights of the kitchen. Remaining absolutely still for a moment, she didn’t need a blind dinner to heighten her senses now. She listened for any sound of movement until her heartbeat slowed minutes later. She was too panicked to even go for her phone. The moment she looked down at her screen would be the moment someone attacked—that was just her luck.
She wasn’t sure why it rattled her so bad. There was simply a shapeless jitter running through her, like when she’d spotted a spider on the shower curtain the other day while she was washing her hair. Yes, it felt strikingly similar: caught by surprise, naked, on unsteady ground.
She glanced at the clock above the entrance to the cafe and realized she’d been standing against the back door, hardly breathing, for almost ten minutes.
Shit. The bakery wasn’t going to prep itself.
Only then did she remember that she still hadn’t read the letter.
The photo had been alarming enough, taken from the street looking up at her condo window. It featured her and Jameson Fractal entering into the living room after day one of the festival. Whoever had taken this had likely been one of those on the street only feet from her when she’d left the ride share before he (she had a firm gender bias on this one) had waited for her to go inside.
She’d sworn her blinds were shut, but she must have had the slats the wrong direction, allowing for slices of the interior to be visible from the low angle.
Whatever was in the letter was unlikely to make this eerie situation any less so. The best-case scenario was something like, “Hey, just a friendly reminder to rotate the blinds the other direction. Here’s what people can see from the street. I’m a totally normal person, but you might someday let a creep spy on you, so I thought I’d give a heads up.” But even that explanation would feel a little disingenuous.
She slid onto a stool next to the stainless steal prep table and unfolded the letter.
Dearest Jessica.
You deserve so much better than that pretty-boy scum. He is a rat and you are an ancient force, mightier than God himself. I see who you truly are, and I embrace it. Your power must be tamed and shaped, your wild passions broken, and I am the one who can do that. If you accept this gift I offer you, tilt your open sign to the right and I’ll see it and know. I eagerly await your answer.
Hard pass on that, she thought. She checked the bottom of the letter for a signature and only saw “Your Loyal Master,” which she assumed was not the sender’s legal name.
She inhaled deeply, granting her heart permission to slow the hell down.
This was creepy, yes, but it was only low-grade creepy. After seeing the picture, she’d half expected to open the card and find it written in blood or semen. It looked to be blue ink, though. Almost a let down. At least with the other substances she would have clear DNA evidence if it came to that.
Should she call the cops? This seemed like something someone might call the cops about, but then again, what were they going to do? Just show up, say, “Yep, that’s creepy as hell,” maybe tell her to have someone accompany her to and from work for a while? She could do that without wasting their time and possibly raising questions about why cops were seen at It is Risen in the early morning hours. Eugene Thornton could have a real field day with that.
It was probably nothing to worry about. After all, the sender seemed to like her. It wasn’t a “go die in a ditch, u antichrist cunt” like she occasionally saw in her filtered messages on Facebook.
Yet comparing the two was apples to oranges. Cyberstalking was perfectly normal; in-person stalking was not.
While everyone complained that the internet made the world a less safe place, she’d long suspected it was the opposite, that the internet had conditioned everyone to be too lazy to leave the house to properly stalk. Instead, they just stole people’s identities as a result of their obsessive need to control the target, and she’d happily give up her identity and assume a new one. It was the closest thing to an erotic fantasy she had the energy for nowadays.
Another ten minutes had slipped by while she considered the letter, and now she was super screwed on time. She’d have to drop a couple of the sweeter items from the menu today, but that was no big deal. Sales on sweets were always down on Mondays as everyone repented from their weekend diets and decided to turn over a new leaf for a few days. Meanwhile, things like oatmeal raisin cookies and the spinach empanadas were hot sellers.
After double-checking that the open sign wasn’t tilting even one degree to the right, she did her best to put the letter out of her mind.
She prepped the food and got the first trays in the ovens before heading over to the shelf by the telephone where she kept all her paperwork. This was not the first time she’d considered having a beer before six am, and it wouldn’t be the last. At least not until she could catch up on the bills and taxes. She’d had to prioritize what expenses were paid on time, and she’d opted for paychecks. But now, staring at all the unopened envelopes, she wondered if she’d made the right choice.
It wasn’t like she didn’t have the money flowing in. In fact, in the days since she and Jameson had first been spotted frolicking about with each other, the bakery had seen record sales numbers. The money was there, she simply didn’t have the time now to move it to where it needed to be.
And there was the crux of the problem. More time with Jameson meant more money, but it also meant less time to be a proper business owner. Was there a balance where she could have enough time and money to keep this business open, or was she doomed to teeter-totter from one deficit to the other?
She tossed the stalker’s letter and photo in with the rest of the litter and went to check the empanadas.
The imbalance of her work and personal life was highlighted the moment she finished setting out the pastries in the glass display case and looked up toward the front windows of the bakery.
No, surely all those people weren’t lining up for this place.
The line extended beyond the view of the windows, and she hoped they weren’t wrapping around to the back of the building, because she’d spent zero time making that a friendly place.
After a glance at the clock, which showed that she still had ten minutes before her official opening time of six a.m., she considered her options. Open now and try to hurry some of the line through, or give herself ten minutes to mentally prepare for the shitshow that was to come?
Of all the days to be working without help.
It should have been good news that the demand for her gluten-free goods had risen to this. The whole point of running around with Jameson all weekend was to drum up gossip, interest, personal brand value, and therefore, sales, wasn’t it?
And to have fun.
It’d worked like a charm on all fronts, and now she wished it hadn’t.
Typical.
She split the difference, deciding to give herself five minutes alone in the back to suck down another cup of coffee, which was just a little too watered down from the amount of ice she had to mix into it to keep it from scalding her mouth.
ASK FOR HELP.
Fine. Please help.
OH. UM. THIS IS AWKWARD. NOT FROM ME.
What, you can’t help me?
I CAN. IT’S NOT THAT.
What is it?
I ALREADY PROMISED A LITTLE ERITREAN BOY I WOULD KEEP HIS ENTIRE FAMILY FROM BEING SLAUGHTERED TODAY.
There it was. The Almighty Guilt Trip.
Whether God had actually made that promise with any intent to keep it would never be known. Jessica hoped He would, obviousl
y.
Then maybe you ought to be in Eritrea, not breathing down my neck.
I WAS JUST ABOUT TO GO, MOM. JUST ASK FOR HELP, OKAY?
Who do I ask? I already gave all my help the day off.
But God had left the building. And if He was doing His job, He’d also left the continent.
The immediate face that leapt into her mind when she tried to think of who to call seemed equal parts ridiculous and brilliant. Ridiculous because there was just no way he’d ever worked a job like this in his child-star life. But brilliant because probably no one would care if he knew what he was doing and he was the reason the line was stretching down the block anyway.
She called Jameson, who she’d obviously woken, and he agreed to come immediately.
“Wait,” she said before he hung up. “Better to come a few minutes later and look your best.”
His voice was deathly serious. “Of course. What should I wear?”
The dress code at It is Risen was incredibly loose, and she was willing to make it even less restrictive for him. “Jeans that cost more than my car and a designer tee you don’t mind getting dirty.”
Before heading back into the cafe, she paused at a mirror by the door and smiled. Nope. Too forced. Whenever she forced a smile, only half of her face was on board. She needed full facial compliance to pull this off. She focused on the fact that she was about to have Jameson Fractal working for her, and that did it.
She made for the front door to unlock it but paused when her eyes caught sight of the small dry-erase sign she’d stashed underneath the register.
Photos with Jessica McCloud: $10
She grabbed it, pulled the marker from the drawer and replaced the ten with a fifteen. Then she added “Photos with Jessica and Jameson: $20” and set it back up on the countertop.
In the Details Page 20
