Necessary People

by Anna Pitoniak

  The evening crept by. After glancing up one too many times and jumping at my reflection in the dark windows, I’d finally drawn the curtains. The quiet house gave me the creeps. It was made worse by the fact that I didn’t know why I was here. Like a bad riddle, or a video game: what was the goal, anyway? What was I playing for?

  Around midnight, my phone buzzed. From Jamie: Where are you?

  I had forgotten to tell him that I wasn’t coming into work that day, but he could put two and two together. I explained the impromptu road trip, Stella’s need to get away from it all. Back in the city by Sunday, I think, I texted.

  There was comfort in knowing that, soon, this weekend would only be a strange memory. Sunday morning, we’d be in the car driving south. Monday morning, we’d be back in the office. It ran through my head as I splashed water on my face, rummaged through the linen closet for a towel, pulled back the covers on the guest bed: I had a life to return to. I would be done with this, soon enough.

  My phone wasn’t there when I reached for it. Darkness, disorientation, strange sounds from downstairs. I had no idea how long I’d been asleep.

  This time, the door to the master bedroom stood wide-open, the lamps inside blazing. “Stella?” I said tentatively, peering in. The bedroom was empty, and a mess. The contents of her bag were splayed across the floor, there was a stain of red wine on the carpet near the bed, and several cigarettes were stubbed out on the windowsill.

  The closet door was open, and it caught my eye. Inside the closet was a safe, and the safe was open, too. I took a step closer. The safe looked empty. I was curious what had been inside, although I wasn’t about to crouch down and start examining it. What if she came in, and caught me snooping? When Stella was in a mood like this, anything could set her off.

  But when I turned around, the answer was on the nightstand. Right next to the wineglass Stella had knocked over. A compact, metallic shape that clarified into a gun.

  My heart thudded. Why did she need a gun?

  Loud music was thumping through the ceiling. Downstairs, it smelled like cigarettes. I found Stella in the kitchen, perched on a stool at the counter. There was a bottle of vodka in front of her, an empty glass ringed with lipstick, a square of rolling paper that she was fashioning into a joint. She was wearing a silk bathrobe—shell pink with a pale lace trim, the knot lazily tied, the curve of her breast visible beneath the loose fabric. Jamie had bought it for her birthday just a few months ago. He’d asked for my help in picking it out.

  “There you are,” she said, raising her voice over the music. The deep bass caused the ceiling to vibrate. “I was wondering when you’d finally join us.”

  She stared skeptically at the faded pajama pants and oversize T-shirt I slept in. I crossed my arms over the lumpy, braless softness of my chest. “Us?” I said.

  “You’re very popular.” She gestured with her cigarette to the counter: my phone. I must have left it on the couch. “Jamie hasn’t responded to any of my texts. But maybe he doesn’t need to talk to me. He has you. You can just tell him everything I’m doing.”

  “He only wanted to know why I wasn’t at work.”

  “Well, why don’t you call him?” she said. “Right now. Call him and explain.”

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I knew you’d say that,” she said. “You always have an excuse, don’t you?”

  When I stepped forward, Stella snatched my phone away. “Not so fast,” she said. Then she laughed. “You do realize you’re a guest in this house, Violet,” she said. “You have to do what I ask. It’s only the polite thing.”

  “Give it back.”

  “What else is in here, hmmm?” Stella said. “Your texts with Jamie. Your e-mails. Everything you’ve been saying behind my back.”

  “You’re being paranoid,” I said. A picture of Willow flashed through my mind, in her little house outside Panama City. The clean living room, the business classes, the gun she slept with. I felt a smoldering curl of anger. There were people who actually needed protection. People who actually feared for their safety. To Stella, this was all just a game.

  “Why are you here?” she said. “Really, Violet, why?”

  “Because you asked me to come with you,” I said. “Seriously. Give it back.”

  “Did I?” She tilted her head. “I don’t remember asking you to come. But there you were, with your sad little duffel bag. You just can’t let it go, can you?”

  “I’ll leave if you want me to leave.”

  “Ugh,” she said. “See, this is your problem. You’re no fun. You give up so quickly.”

  “Jesus, Stella, what’s fun about this?”

  She looked momentarily confused. She was actually surprised that I wasn’t going along with her routine, despite how twisted it had become. In the time she took to gather herself, the phone in her hand buzzed. My phone. A smile spread across her face. “Well, well, another text from Jamie. Ahem,” she said. Then, in a simpering voice: “Let me know how you’re holding up.”

  “So I guess he’s awake,” Stella said. “Should I call him, Violet? Should we just—”

  I lunged for the phone. I managed to grab Stella’s wrist but she twisted it away and sprang up from the stool, which tipped over and hit the tiled floor with a loud smack. She ran through the door and into the cold night air. “What are you doing?” I shouted, but she was already halfway down the sloping lawn. The frozen grass was cold and rough against my bare feet as I ran after her. At the bottom of the hill, she reared her arm back and threw the phone as far as she could.

  The night was dark. Cloud cover, no moonlight. I couldn’t see where it had landed.

  “You want it so bad?” She spun around. “Go find it.”

  “You’re horrible,” I said, as she walked past me, back to the house.

  “Fuck you,” she shouted over her shoulder. “Do something by yourself, for once.”

  In the summer, there were buses in town that ran south to Portland and Boston, but service ended after Labor Day. There was a local taxi service, but when I called that Saturday morning, their phone just rang and rang. Without a car, you were virtually trapped.

  And the next morning, when I woke up, the driveway was empty. Stella’s pattern was to run away after a fight, lick her wounds and disappear for a while. Hours, or days, depending on how much she wanted to punish the person who had mistreated her. She wasn’t answering her phone, but she surely wasn’t gone for good. Her clothing was scattered across the bed, her shoes across the floor. The nightstand still held her Cartier watch, and the gun.

  Over the years we had argued and bickered and squabbled, but never had we spoken so plainly. Never had we been willing to look directly at the problem, and call it what it was. Despite her paranoia, despite being stuck in this house, I felt strangely relieved. The friendship was ending. Even if Stella’s star continued rising at KCN, that was fine. I could endure envy. It was the in-between that drove me crazy: pretending to love her, pretending to be happy for her, when the whole thing was a slow torture.

  As the shadows grew long and the sun sank toward the horizon, there was the crunch of tires over gravel and the slam of a car door. When Stella came into the house, she looked strung out. She’d slept even less than me that weekend. In the kitchen, she pulled a bottle of wine from the wine rack, and twisted the corkscrew into the neck. The cork emerged with a soft pop. She took two glasses from the cabinet, and held one toward me.

  “Aren’t you going to drink with me?” she said.

  “I’m not really in the mood.”

  “Come on.” Her tone was one part teasing, two parts pleading. “Be a friend.”

  A few minutes later, when she had emptied and refilled her glass for the first time, I said, “Do you want to talk about what happened last night?”

  “Not really,” she said. She pointed at my glass. “You need to catch up.”

  I took a small sip. The wine was expensive, set aside for a special occasion.
But that was Stella’s way. It didn’t look like alcoholism when you were drinking fine wine instead of rotgut vodka. Money could disguise just about anything.

  “Are we leaving tomorrow?” I said.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” Stella said.

  “Okay. I can find my own way home.”

  “I don’t think so.” Stella laughed harshly. “I think you do what I tell you to do.”

  She finished the bottle and drummed her fingers against the counter. “I’m bored,” she said. She stood up, tucked another bottle of wine under her arm, put the corkscrew in the pocket of her jeans. “Come on.”

  “Where are you going?” I said.

  “Jesus,” she said. “When are you going to stop asking so many questions?”

  It was dusk by now, the last light fading from the sky. I followed her down the sloping lawn, toward the water. The ocean was a deep, dark shade of blue. The wind had picked up, and there were whitecaps in the distance.

  Attached to the dock was a boathouse, where the Bradleys kept their watercraft: kayaks, paddleboards, windsurfers, and the speedboat. Stella hauled the door open with a long, loud creak. Inside, the speedboat was rocking in its berth. Stella undid the ropes that tied it in place. The slosh of the water was louder in here, echoing off the walls. It smelled like cedar and paint and gasoline. Stella pointed at the door at the other end of the berth, which rolled up onto a track, like a garage door. “Get that open, will you?” she said.

  “Is this such a good idea?” Nightfall, the wine, the whitecaps.

  “Just do it,” she said.

  Stella climbed into the boat and started the engine. Even half drunk, she deftly maneuvered it out of the berth. I hesitated for a moment. But when you were with Stella, it was easier to go along. To get swept up, and follow the path of least resistance. I knew that better than anyone.

  She was glaring at me, waiting. At the last second, I jumped into the boat.

  Stella revved the engine. The boat accelerated so suddenly that I was thrown from my feet. She whooped with glee, and behind us the lights from the house shrank to a pinprick. The high whine of the engine was punctuated with the thunk, thunk, thunk of the boat slamming against the swelling waves. By now we were far beyond the shelter of the peninsula, in the open ocean. Twilight had given way to nightfall, the first stars glittering overhead. After a long time, Stella finally slowed down and cut the engine.

  The silence came as a relief, and then a menace.

  The only sound was the water slapping against the boat. Stella let go of the wheel and opened the wine she’d brought along. She drank directly from the bottle and, this time, didn’t offer any to me. She stood in a wide-legged stance, her knees bending reflexively when the boat dipped up and down from the waves beneath.

  Minutes passed. Finally, she said, “You knew, didn’t you?”

  “Knew what?”

  “That Jamie was going to dump me.”

  And there it was: this whole weekend had been a game. A chance for Stella to bat me around, like a kitten with a ball of string. Who had held her as she sobbed on the couch? Who had been there for her, no matter what, over the last seven years? But it didn’t matter. It was easier for Stella to blame someone else for this anguish. It was easier to ignore her broken heart and focus instead on my betrayal.

  I chose my words carefully. “I knew that he wasn’t happy.”

  “And you let me embarrass myself,” she said. “You should have told me, Violet.”

  “It’s not my business. I didn’t want to interfere.”

  Stella laughed. “Now you’re definitely lying. You interfere all the time.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s creepy. Everyone sees it except for you. You’ve been following me around for years. You think it doesn’t freak me out? The way you’ve attached to my family like a leech? I mean, seriously. With you around, I feel like I need a goddamn gun to protect myself.”

  She took another long pull of wine. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” she said. Her voice was thick and slurry. “Aren’t you going to defend yourself?”

  “You’re drunk,” I said. “You’re being an idiot.”

  “No. You’re jealous. You’re jealous of me and Jamie. You wanted him all to yourself. So you ruined it. This is your fault.”

  “He was my friend first, Stella.”

  “I knew it!” she shrieked. “I knew it. You’ve been jealous the whole time. But you realize that I’m the one he’s been fucking.”

  “Stop it.”

  “I’m the one who’s had his dick in my mouth every night.”

  “Shut up!” I shouted.

  “Oooh, look. I made Violet Trapp mad!” Stella laughed. She took another swig of wine and wiped her hand across her mouth. Her gestures were getting looser, messier. “You think you’re so smart. So in control. Don’t you?”

  “Not all of us can afford to have other people clean up our messes.”

  “That, see?” She pointed at me. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You’re so smug. Everyone’s beneath you. No one is as smart as you. Well, then, riddle me this. Why did I get the Danner interview and you didn’t?”

  “Because you got lucky,” I said. “Because pretty blondes rate well.”

  “Of course you would say that. But I made that happen. Me. It was all me.”

  “No, it wasn’t, it was the—”

  “Remember when you told me about the story, at the restaurant? And you made me swear not to tell anybody?” She smiled. Her teeth glowed white in the darkness. “That was a mistake, Violet. See, my father knows the Danner CEO. So I got in touch with him. I knew he would never agree to an interview unless it was with someone he could trust. And he trusts me. I planted the idea.” She laughed. “Not bad, huh?”

  The blood was roaring in my ears. My throat was tight, my eyes pricking with tears. The hatred I felt was like an annihilation. I had to get away from her. Not just now. Forever.

  “Oh, little baby Violet.” Her voice was a sickly sneer. “Am I going to make you cry? Am I being too mean?”

  “Take us back,” I said.

  “Not until I feel like it.”

  I stood up. “Give me the keys.”

  She stepped back, pressed herself against the windshield. “Fuck off.”

  “Give them to me!” I shouted, grabbing for them. She yanked her wrist free from my grasp, then scrambled over the windshield, standing on the bow. Our friendship had devolved to one long game of keep-away. The boat was rocking side to side from the waves. She slowly stood from her crouch, straightening her legs, towering above me.

  Stella dangled the keys with a jangling metallic sound. “You want them so bad?” she said. “But you wouldn’t even know what to do with them. You’re just a leech, Violet. You’re a suck-up. You’re the world’s biggest fraud and everyone sees it.”

  What was even happening? I felt dizzy and light-headed, though I’d had no more than a few sips of wine. I clutched the edge of the boat to stay upright.

  “Oh, sure,” she said, her face shadowed in the starlight. “I’ve let you hang around. Because I’m nice. Because I pitied you. And I thought you’d show some pride, eventually. But you never did.”

  “Why, Stella?” I said. “Why are you saying this?”

  “Because it’s true!” she shouted.

  A wave walloped the boat, knocking Stella from her feet. She grabbed the windshield to keep from falling overboard. The wind had picked up, and the waves were growing larger.

  “Stella, get down,” I said. “You’re going to kill yourself.”

  But she had stood back up triumphantly, her loose bun unraveling, her hair blowing wildly in the wind. She had managed to hold on to the wine bottle this whole time, and now she lifted it, draining the last of the liquid, the glass reflecting the moonlight. She threw it overboard, and the bottle landed in the water with a loud plunk. I heard it, but I couldn’t see it, because a cloud had moved in front o
f the moon. The night had gone pitch-black. The waves crashed and sloshed against the boat. Bile churned in my stomach. “See,” Stella said, her voice detached from her body in the darkness. “What I can’t stand the most is that—”

  It happened in slow motion. Like a dream, or a nightmare. A swelling wave passed beneath. The clouds moved; the moon reemerged. The boat tilted at a steep angle, the bow raked up. For a moment it looked like Stella might, miraculously, keep her footing, her bare feet affixed gecko-like to the sloping surface.

  But then the boat reached the apex of its tilt, and as it crashed down, it launched Stella into the air like a catapult. When she came back down, her head hit the edge of the bow with a sickening thunk. Even in that split second, I saw her body go limp. She had been knocked out cold, just before she rolled into the dark water.

  There was a thick pool of blood visible against the boat’s white paint.

  This was where instinct was supposed to kick in. A surge of adrenaline: haul her out of the water, stanch the bleeding, race back to shore. But there was nothing. No instinct, no urgency. Only the echo of the words she spoke moments earlier.

  Leech. Suck-up. Fraud.

  Why are you saying this?

  Because it’s true.

  Leaning over the edge of the boat, at first I saw nothing. Then, the bubbles breaking on the surface. Then a movement in the water. A thrash. A pale white arm reaching blindly for the surface, looking for something to grab hold of. A body fighting to stay alive.

  Sometimes, standing on the platform and waiting for the subway in New York, I’d feel the strangest impulse. The sparkle of headlights in the tunnel, the stirring air. As the subway roared into the station, I felt the urge to jump. It wasn’t that I wanted to die. It was a kind of curiosity, testing the limits of personal freedom. What would it be like, to do the worst possible thing?