Necessary People

by Anna Pitoniak

  “Oh my God,” I said. “Is this why everyone is so jumpy?”

  “It’s a surprise,” the assistant said. “For after the show tonight.”

  Jamie was finally back at his desk, looking frustrated and rubbing the side of his neck. “I think I pulled something,” he said. “I knew it was too heavy to carry.”

  I was so relieved that I almost laughed. “Something for the birthday girl?” I said.

  “Twenty-four bottles of Veuve Clicquot. Eliza wouldn’t even let me take an intern to help. She has them all working on decorations.”

  In that morning’s meeting, Rebecca swept into the conference room with a smile on her face. But the glow dimmed when we failed to greet her with anything beyond an ordinary hello. “Nice of you to join us,” Eliza said, looking at the clock.

  “Well, ex-cuse me,” Rebecca said. Her hair was freshly blown out. She was wearing a new dress, a particularly flattering red sheath. An outfit to defy the gravity of a fortieth birthday.

  After the meeting ended, with Rebecca flouncing out and saying that she had to meet her husband for lunch at Jean Georges because today was a very special day, Eliza loosed a gale of laughter. “Oh, she is pissed,” she said. “She is going to waste that three-hundred-dollar lunch yelling at her husband about how awful I am.”

  “I thought Rebecca hated her birthday,” I said.

  “She says she does,” Jamie said. “But she hates it more when people forget.”

  “Not that she’d believe me if I pretended to forget,” Eliza said. “So I told her last night: ‘Listen, Becks. I know you hate your birthday. So we’ll just do a quiet drink after work. Nothing fancy.’ She was trying so hard to pretend that just a glass of wine and my company would make her happy.” Eliza laughed. “Yeah right. She’s turning forty. This woman wants a fucking party.”

  I’d pitched Eliza on a story that morning, but she asked for more information before green-lighting it. By this point, I’d produced several serious pieces. It didn’t really get any easier—pitching an idea in front of a big room, asking Eliza to divert resources to my story, bracing myself for rejection—but I was getting better at bearing the pressure.

  Eliza saw me in the doorway and beckoned me inside. There was a voice on speakerphone: Ginny. Eliza said, “So I was planning to say a few words, welcome everybody, and then hand it over to you to make the toast. Sound good?”

  “That’s fine,” Ginny said. “I’m going to practice my speech in the car.”

  “Where are you, anyways?” Eliza said. Simultaneously she was reading the paper I’d handed to her, circling things and jotting notes in the margin.

  “Out on Long Island.”

  “For work?”

  “No,” Ginny said. “A personal errand. I had to look into something.”

  “Got it.” Eliza handed the paper to me, scrawled with notes, and gave a thumbs-up.

  “If the traffic isn’t too bad, I’ll be back in a few hours,” Ginny said. “I’m leaving Sag Harbor now.”

  “Huh. Sag,” Eliza said, after she’d hung up. “And I always thought Ginny was more of an East Hampton lady. You got what you need, right?”

  Maybe it’s a coincidence, I thought. But on the walk back to my desk, my hand had a fine tremor, the paper vibrating like a leaf in the wind.

  When Rebecca went down to the studio for the broadcast, the newsroom sprang into action. Space was cleared for tables and tablecloths. The caterers hurried in with platters of crudités and cheese and rows of glass flutes for the champagne. Balloons were inflated, decorations strung up. Someone had made a paper crown from a repeating pattern of golden Emmys. Seven in total, which was the number that Rebecca had won.

  As the show drew to a close, with minutes left to go, we turned off the lights. In the darkened silence, we could hear their voices as they walked upstairs—Rebecca complaining to Eliza about how third-rate the guest was in that last segment. When they reached the top of the stairs, Rebecca said, “Oh, good God.”

  She looked genuinely stunned when the lights came on and everyone yelled “SURPRISE!” Rebecca wheeled around toward Eliza, who was laughing. Rebecca was laughing, too, as she whacked Eliza on the arm.

  Later, Ginny clinked a fork against her glass. It was objectively strange that Ginny was the one giving the toast when Eliza was Rebecca’s best friend, her partner, the only one who could skewer her with affection. But this party was also an exercise in appearances, a way for KCN to show how much it valued its prime-time star. Ginny was the boss, which meant she took the credit. So she spoke platitudes about what an honor it was to work with Rebecca, how she was an inspiration to us all.

  After Ginny’s toast, Rebecca lifted her glass. “I have to take a moment and thank all of you,” she said. “And there’s no teleprompter in sight, so forgive me as I wing this.”

  But when Rebecca began speaking, it was clear that she’d written this ahead of time. Maybe her show of surprise was just that: a performance. Her words were beautiful, thoughtful, precise. After she thanked Ginny in a suitably lengthy manner, Rebecca turned to Eliza.

  “Lize,” she said, a catch in her voice. “What can I even say? Except that I hope everyone in this room gets to experience what we’ve experienced. You’ve made me so much better. Every single day, you challenge me and fight with me and push me to work harder. It may not be pleasant, but as I get older, I see the truth, which is that I need you. I’d be nowhere without you.”

  Eliza smiled. She put her hand over her heart, mouthed, “I love you.”

  Rebecca laughed, lifting a finger to catch a tear before it spilled into her makeup. “I’m getting soft in old age,” she said.

  “Wrap it up,” Eliza said. “Thirty seconds ’til commercial.”

  The room rippled with laughter. “See what I mean?” Rebecca said. “Okay. I’ll stop, because brevity is the soul of ratings. Right, Ginny? I just want to say thank you. Life is about the people we surround ourselves with. And I feel so lucky to be surrounded by all of you.”

  At that moment, the lights dimmed, and two assistants emerged from the kitchen, bearing a cake covered in flickering candles. When Rebecca leaned forward for one long moment, she was the only thing illuminated in the room. After she blew out the candles, and everyone applauded, she leaned into Eliza. Just for a second, she rested her head on Eliza’s shoulder and closed her eyes. Eliza kissed the top of Rebecca’s head, an automatic and unthinking movement. The two of them, their friendship a version of unconditional love.

  I blinked and shook my head. Standing beside Rebecca and Eliza was Ginny. She was staring at me. It was clear that she had been waiting for me to notice her.

  She knew.

  And, I realized, I wouldn’t be able to avoid this forever.

  “Want another drink?” Jamie said. “I’m empty.”

  “Actually, I need to…” I glanced around the room. Ginny was now talking to someone else, laughing in a fake way, her hand lifted to her chest like a prim Victorian lady, her fingertips resting lightly above her heart.

  “I forgot,” I said. “I have to run an errand. I’ll be back.”

  “Now?” Jamie said. “Violet. Where are you going?”

  It’s not like I was stupid. I knew I needed an insurance policy.

  The week before, I visited an unassuming public library branch out in Queens, to use the free online browsing on their clunky computers. I wore a baseball hat, my hair tucked under the cap. My cover story (I was in med school, and my laptop was broken, and I was writing a paper about heart arrhythmias—specifically, the chemical triggers of ventricular fibrillation) wasn’t necessary. The library, with its dusty afternoon light, was a place of purposeful anonymity.

  When the police were investigating Stella’s disappearance, they found the drugs she brought to Maine. But they never found her stash in New York, beneath the loose floorboard in the back of the coat closet. That night, I left most of it where it was. I only needed a tiny amount, the plastic bag practically wei
ghtless in my pocket. The human heart is a delicate thing.

  When I returned an hour later, the party was dying down. Half the crowd had left, responsibly avoiding hangovers, and the half that remained was drunk. Jamie was one of the responsible ones.

  The room emptied as the clock neared midnight. Rebecca left, and then so did Eliza. There were a few diehards in the corner, clutching beer bottles in one hand while steadily attacking the remaining birthday cake with the other, gossiping at a careless volume, their eyes too glazed with booze and sugar to notice me at my computer.

  Then Ginny appeared beside my desk. “You’re still here,” she said.

  “It seemed like you had something you wanted to talk about,” I said.

  “I think this conversation requires a drink,” she said.

  At the bar, she poured two Scotches. “It’s time to go home,” Ginny said sternly to the drunken cake-eaters, who scurried away in shame, leaving us the only people in the newsroom.

  Ginny led me into the spare office. She sat behind the desk, and I took the guest chair. “I was in Sag Harbor this afternoon,” she said. “Kyle, that was his name. Detective Fazio was so quick to dismiss him, but I wasn’t so sure. It bothered me.

  “And then,” she said, swirling her Scotch, releasing the peaty aroma. “After the police found the boat, I thought to myself: something doesn’t add up.”

  She took a slow sip of her drink. “You’re very quiet,” she said.

  “I’ll let you finish,” I said.

  Ginny’s upper lip curled. “People are impressionable, especially in the face of power. You know what it means to lead the witness? That is exactly what Fazio did. He showed a picture of Stella to Kyle, and he said, could this be her?

  “But what he should have done,” Ginny said, “and what I did today, is say to Kyle, describe her for me. Forget about the pictures you’ve seen. Close your eyes and tell me exactly what this person looked like—this person who you remember as Stella Bradley.”

  Ginny smiled. “Well, Violet, this man has quite a remarkable memory. Dirty-blond hair, parted on the left. About five foot seven. Brown eyes. Bitten-down fingernails. And a scar, just above the right eyebrow.”

  She touched her forehead, mirroring the location of my scar. It was small, but clear enough if you were looking for it.

  “He told me about the first time you met,” Ginny said. “Thanksgiving, several years ago. You told him your name was Stella Bradley. You told him about your family. He remembered everything about your little… encounter. With affection, in fact. Which is why he was so upset to hear you’d been lying to him.”

  “It was an old game we used to play,” I said. “Stella and I switched names all the time. Haven’t you ever given a fake name to a man hitting on you?”

  “Then why not clear up this simple confusion? Why not explain to Fazio that the bartender, in fact, spotted you that night?” Ginny paused, noting my silence. “Because it’s not simple confusion, is it?”

  “Maybe it’s embarrassment.” I met her gaze, level and straight. “That’s all.”

  “I doubt that.” She arched an eyebrow. “From what I can tell, you lack the gene for shame.”

  “Ginny, honestly, I don’t understand where this is coming from.”

  “Stella has been driving that boat since she was eight years old. Her grandmother started drilling her in swimming even before that. She practically grew up on the ocean. She knows what she’s doing. So what happened? She simply fell off the boat? She drowned, as the police seem to believe so fervently?” Ginny laughed harshly. “I don’t buy that for a second.”

  “You seem very confident,” I said. “But what if Stella had been drinking?”

  “There’s no evidence of that.”

  “Well, I was there. And I can tell you, Stella had been drinking plenty that weekend.”

  I set my glass of Scotch down, leaned back into the chair, recrossed my legs. Ginny’s confident expression slackened. She looked, for the first time, vaguely apprehensive. She didn’t know where this was going.

  “I saw those pictures in your office,” I said. “You loved Stella. You never had a family, but she was the closest thing you had to a daughter, wasn’t she?”

  Ginny twitched, but stayed quiet.

  “It’s so sad,” I said. “It happened with Anne and Thomas and Oliver. And now it’s happening to you, too. The grief is driving you crazy. You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”

  “This isn’t going to work on me,” Ginny said.

  “Think about it. The police have been investigating for months. If there was foul play, wouldn’t they have found evidence by now? Even a shred of it? You have to twist yourself into knots to think that she was murdered.”

  “No,” Ginny said, sitting up in a confident posture. “That’s exactly my point. It’s not complicated if you were on the boat that night. And you were, weren’t you? What do they always say?” Ginny counted on three fingers. “Means, motive, opportunity. The ocean is the perfect place to hide a dead body.”

  “She was my best friend,” I said. “What motive are you talking about?”

  Ginny gestured, indicating the newsroom outside. “Do you know what makes me good at my job?” she said. “I can recognize ambition. That’s why I poached Rebecca, years ago. It didn’t matter what we had to pay. She was worth it. You can see it in a person’s eyes—that thing. Stella had it, too. So the idea that she’d give it all up? The idea that she’d make a mistake like this?”

  Ginny let out an exasperated laugh. “That is ridiculous. We were in the middle of negotiating her contract. Stella wanted to be the next Barbara Walters.”

  “Stella was fickle,” I said. “The only thing she really wanted was attention.”

  “And you think Barbara Walters doesn’t?” Ginny smirked. “All of these people want attention. They thrive on it. If they didn’t, they’d go work at a newspaper. But that desire makes them good at their jobs. It means they’ll do whatever they have to do to stay on top.”

  “You make it sound like Stella was the one willing to commit murder,” I said.

  “Let me finish. That’s one kind of ambition,” she said. “But there’s another kind. It’s the person who doesn’t show her cards. She’s willing to let other people think she’s there to help them. Her ambition isn’t so naked. It cloaks itself in teamwork and niceties. It’s the more dangerous kind. And I’m good at recognizing that, too.”

  “Niceties,” I said. “Aren’t you describing yourself?”

  Ginny shook her head. “There’s a difference between you and me. I come from a good family, Violet. I have a reputation to uphold. I have a sense of shame, you see? But you don’t. You come from nowhere. And a woman with nothing to lose—I don’t trust her for one second.”

  She paused. “I’m going to show you something,” she said. “You talk about motive. I wonder what the police would think of this e-mail.”

  Ginny’s purse was on the floor, beside her chair. She leaned down, her head ducked low while she rummaged for her phone. Her half-drunk glass of Scotch, lipstick rimming the edge, sweated into the paper napkin beneath it. It took me only a second to do it, slipping my hand into my pocket and passing it above her glass in one fluid motion. When she sat up, I had rearranged myself to look perfectly normal.

  “From Stella,” she said, sliding her phone across the desk. “The police are so fixated on that last e-mail she sent to me. But she sent this one, too, a few days earlier. And this one, I know that Stella wrote for sure.”

  one more thing, can u make sure Violet has nothing to do with my new show? i need to pick my own producers. she is insanely jealous and will make things complicated. nasty attitude on the danner story. cld be an issue for us.

  “Why show me this?” I said.

  “Because I want you to know that I’m not joking.”

  I laughed. “No offense, Ginny, but no one ever thinks you’re joking.”

  “What you’re doing right now,�
�� Ginny said. “That arrogance? That will be your downfall, Violet. But soon enough, I’ll look back on this moment and savor it.” She lifted her Scotch toward me. “I was here before you, and I’ll be here long after you’re gone.”

  She took a last, long swallow of her drink. Her eyes were glimmering and satisfied.

  “I guess that’s true,” I said. “And speaking of, I should get going. I have to pack.”

  “Skipping town?” Ginny said, smugly.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “I have a job interview. In London.”

  “You what?” she said. But I stood up and walked out of the office. Turning my back on her, ignoring her, was exquisitely satisfying. She followed me out and said, her voice tight with anger, “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few days to wrap everything up. Assuming all goes well with Ashley Fong.”

  “Ashley Fong?” she sputtered.

  “Yes. Would you like me to give her your regards?”

  Ginny’s breath, through her flared nostrils, was ragged. “I pick up the phone tomorrow morning,” she said, “and the interview is off.”

  “Oh, sure. You can try that. But as Ashley explained, she doesn’t report to you. The European bureau has its own mandate. They’re very independent over there.”

  “I’ll take this all the way to Mr. King,” Ginny said. “You are not getting that job.”

  “You know, I wondered for a long time—why didn’t you just fire me? I’m just a low-level producer, after all. But you’ve got this flaw, Ginny. You care too much about what other people think. You won’t tell anyone about your sister. You won’t admit that your beloved Stella was a narcissist with a drinking problem. And if you fired me, people would talk. Because I’m good at my job. They know I’m good.” I cocked my head. “What would they say? Is Ginny threatened by Violet? By this nobody from nowhere?”