“This is Kensington Square,” the boy explained. “Kensington Court is over there.” He pointed.
“That’s confusing!” I laughed. He was so cute. “Thanks.” I started to roll up my window, but he took a step forward, motioning for me to lower it again.
“Wait,” he said. “That woman you’re looking for? Sheila Lott?”
I nodded.
“You know she killed herself, right?”
My vision went spotty. I gripped the steering wheel tighter, like the stress balls they give you when you donate blood. “When?” I managed, thunderstruck.
“Few months ago.” He shrugged, like the specifics weren’t important. “Something like that.”
“Do you, um . . . do you know why?”
He actually laughed a little. “Who knows. She was a little, you know . . .” He wound his finger next to his ear. Like Vince would later do whenever I asked him why he took his phone into the bathroom with him to shower. Stop being crazy, he’d laugh.
“Got it,” I said, weakly. “Thank you.” I pressed the gas pedal and the engine blustered. I’d forgotten that I was still in park. I yanked the gear stick into get the fuck out of here and lowered my foot.
And so that perfectly average and helpful boy, who was admittedly a little insensitive in his language around suicide, became A.J., even though he never laid a hand on me. Even though I never saw him again.
Vince snatches my wrist and draws me close. “I can destroy you if I want,” he says, not very loudly, but the cavernous Air France departures terminal amplifies the threat. His eyes dart over my shoulder, bulging, and he releases me at once. I turn to see Brett, Kelly, and a girl with Didi braids rolling some truly disgraceful nylon luggage our way. Lisa and Marc trail a few steps behind, Marc gripping the little handheld camera by the stabilizer like a pitchfork.
“Bonjour!” Brett does a little skip. “Bonjour, amis et—” She stops with a gasp when she gets close enough to see my splotchy face. “Steph. Are you okay?”
I wipe my wet chin on my shoulder. “I’m fine.”
“You look fine,” she laughs, because she can never be fucking serious, not even when it is serious.
“Stay the fuck out of it, Brett,” Vince snarls. “You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
Lisa gasps, positively delighted.
Brett lowers her head and presses her lips together, which is smart. Cowardly, but smart. Kelly steps in front of Layla like a soundproof shield, as though Brett Courtney’s niece has never heard anyone say “fuck” before.
“Well,” Vince says, with demented cheer, “have a magical trip, everyone!” He takes off, my suitcase clattering smoothly behind him, his knuckles white on the handle.
“Nice guy,” Brett quips, but there is a wobble in her voice. I feel queasy when I look at Lisa and find her studying Brett with ruthless curiosity. Does she suspect?
Brett turns to Layla and forces a smile. “We should get in line to check in, Layls.”
I gesture to the sign before us that says “Air France First-Class Check-In.” “We are in line to check in.”
“Layla and I are flying coach,” Brett says, chest puffed. She directs a quick, sanctimonious glance Kelly’s way.
“We’re donating the difference in a first-class ticket to the Imazighen women,” Layla says. The little do-gooding bitch extends her hand. “We’ve met before but I’m not sure if you remember me. I’m Layla. I’m a big fan of your work.”
Oh! How adorably creepy. How scientifically miraculous! I did not know that doctors had succeeded in transplanting the brains of thirty-year-old women into the skulls of twelve-year-old children. I take this Girl Boss Borg’s hand with unease, finding some comfort in the fact that next to her leggy niece, Brett looks like Shrek with nicer hair. Layla is tall and thin, yes, but this—this?—is the “runway model” I’ve been hearing about for the last few months? She has a fresh whitehead on her chin and an old angry one on her cheek and not a stitch of makeup to soften the blow. And for this, she gets to hear she is beautiful. Get me a cane to shake grouchily into the air, because in my day, not even actually being beautiful was enough.
I squeeze Layla’s hand until she grimaces, thinking, You have no idea about pain, girly. You have no idea what I’ve been through to get here You don’t want to know what I’ll do to stay.
CHAPTER 14
* * *
Brett
“The weak are always trying to sabotage the strong.”
“Huh?” Layla shouts.
“Shhhhhh.” I can’t help but laugh, slouching farther down in my seat. I tap the ear of Layla’s headset, reminding her that on a plane she has to speak at a volume she can’t hear. Layla has never been on a plane before. The passengers around us don’t seem at all bothered. A few actually chuckle. Because even on a red-eye to London in seats that don’t recline all the way back, Layla beguiles. How could she not? She looks like an off-duty model on her way to walk her first runway at London Fashion Week, and unlike her mother, she chose to fly coach so that an Imazighen woman could afford a loaf of bread to feed her children tonight.
“It’s a quote from this movie,” I tell her, touching the screen of her airplane TV. “You should watch it. It’s about female ambition, and the lengths people will go to extinguish it.”
Layla’s lips travel the synopsis of Election, silently. She mumbles an intrigued huh, and selects the play now option. Thank God. Aunt Brett needs some adult talky time with her ole buddy ole pal Marc, who is stomping his foot in the aisle seat, trying to get the blood circulating.
“This sucks,” I sympathize, tearing open a bag of sour cream ’n’ onion chips and offering it to him first.
Marc sticks his hand in the bag and rustles around. “I can’t believe you’re not in first.”
“I can’t believe they are. We are about to meet some of the most disenfranchised women on the planet. It’s like”—I explode a hand by my brain—“total disconnect.”
Marc snorts, popping a chip into his mouth. “Did you really think Queen Simmons was going to slum it in coach? She’s probably allergic to cloth seating.” He dusts his hands together, sending onion powder into the air.
I slide a chip into my mouth, unsure if a white guy calling Stephanie a queen is racist but unwilling to go to bat for her even if it is. I need something from Marc right now. I twist my Standing Sisters ring with slippery chip fingers, trying to figure out the most artful entry into this conversation. As director of photography, Marc sees and hears everything on both sides of the lens. If there are any rumblings, and if anyone is willing to share them with me, it will be Marc. “What, um. What do you think was going on with Steph and Vince back there?”
Marc sighs, sounding disappointed.
“What?” I ask, wide-eyed and innocent.
“Don’t do that, Brett,” Marc says. “If you want to have a real conversation about this, then let’s have a real conversation about it. But don’t pretend like you don’t know what Vince and Steph were fighting about back there. You’re not like that. That’s why we’re friends.”
Something about Marc that everyone knows but not everyone appreciates is that on the weekends, he plays bass in an eighties cover band called Super Freaks. This detail is traded mockingly by the other Diggers, but what they don’t know—because they would never deign to ask the crew anything about their lives—is that his band used to regularly sell out the Canal Room, and that twenty-two-year-old girls line the stage whenever they open at Talkhouse in Amagansett. My ex and I went to see them once, and afterward, we’d eaten slices at Astro’s with Marc and his boyfriend, who plays drums. I did all of this because I like Marc. But what if I didn’t like Marc? Would I still have sought him out like I did, knowing the producers can’t edit, for better or for worse, film that doesn’t exist? The answer floors me: Probably. Definitely. I am exactly like that.
“You’re right,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m just . . . I don’t know what you know. What anyone knows. And, well,” I glance
at Layla, making sure she’s watching the movie and not listening to us, “something happened that shouldn’t have happened, and I’m not sure what to do about it.”
Marc smiles at me, kindly. “Everyone makes mistakes, Brett. That doesn’t make me love you less. It makes me love you more.” He reaches for my hand and I let him hold it for a few moments, smiling back at him gratefully, marinating in my full stink.
Marc cranes his neck, making sure the passengers in our immediate vicinity are asleep or otherwise occupied. Determining that we have our privacy, he says in a low voice, “Lisa doesn’t think that you and Stephanie were fighting about you not passing on her book to Rihanna or whatever it is you’re saying.”
I swallow, tasting bile in my throat. I can barf in the chip bag if I need to. “What does she think it’s about?”
Marc bites his lip, checking our surroundings again. This time, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out his phone, and opens up the Notes app. I am practically in his lap, watching as he taps out the answer: She is starting to think you and Stephanie had a thing while you were living with her and it ended badly.
The words on my tombstone blur and come into focus, blur and come into focus. This is bad. This is really, really bad. I’m engaged. Steph and Vince might have the sort of marriage where they trade hall passes every other week, but Arch thinks more highly of herself than that. She will leave me if she gets wind of this.
Marc is opening the camera icon on his phone now, thumbing through pictures of his niece at the beach and expertly captured sunsets, arriving finally on a grab of what appears to be a page in a book. He offers me his phone, and I spring my thumb and index finger apart, zooming in.
It’s the title page from Stephanie’s third novel. The one I thought I had trashed in the clean-out of my old apartment. To the love of my life, she had written to me. Sorry, Vince!
“Where did you get this?” I ask Marc, my ears roaring.
“Lisa sent it to me. It was on the bookshelf at your old place. Where Kelly and”—he signals Layla with his chin—“are living. We were there to film and Lisa noticed it. She thought it was weird it was there, and she opened it, and then, well, she read that, and it just got her thinking and then—”
I hold up a finger to Marc—press pause on that thought. I motion for Layla to remove her headphones.
“Layla?” I ask, in a quiet, stern voice. “Remember that copy of Stephanie’s book that I put in the recycling bin?”
Layla swallows.
I nod. “Tell me the truth.”
Layla looks like she wishes she could disappear. “I was curious,” she whispers, her cheeks blazing. Curious about sex, she means.
I return her headphones to her ears, cursing my sister under my breath for banning Layla from watching Game of Thrones. Jon Snow could have sated that curiosity. This could have been avoided.
“Go on,” I tell Marc, digging my fingers into my armrests.
“Lisa started to think about it more, and she asked me to show her the film I took of you and Steph meeting up in Barneys.” Marc waits for me to remember. “And she noticed that Steph brought up your new tattoo on your foot.”
I feel my face contort into a confused scowl. “So?”
“So it had been a month since you and Steph quote unquote made up in the bathroom at Lauren’s event, and you got that tattoo just a few days later. We filmed it, remember? That means when you and Steph saw each other in Barneys you hadn’t seen each other in a month—but why? If you had really patched things up, and if it had been over something as insignificant as what you said it was about, why wouldn’t you two have been hanging out all the time again? But the nail in the coffin is that she bailed on your engagement party.”
“She was traveling.”
“No,” Marc says to my surprise. “Lisa checked her flight info. She was in New York that night. She chose not to come. Maybe because she’s in love with you and it would have been too painful for her to attend?”
I tip my head back, resting it on the seat, wishing I was asleep and this was all just a bad dream. “Has Lisa told anyone else about this yet? Other than you?” I hold my breath.
“I don’t think so,” Marc says, and I exhale, audibly. “I think she’s waiting to see if her theory has legs before she brings the others into it.”
I sigh, feeling unjustifiably sorry for myself. I’ve waited four years to take everyone to Morocco and a secret lesbian affair storyline is going to overshadow all the good we’ve come here to do.
“I will say,” Marc adds, “that it’s definitely another post to the pile that she saw Steph and Vince arguing like that. She thinks Vince knows and is pissed. Which is hypocrisy of the highest order given the way he’s been sniffing around your sister.”
“Oh, great.” I laugh, helplessly. “So I’m not the only one who’s noticed that.”
After my engagement party, I had to have a serious sit-down with Kelly. Did something happen with Vince? I asked, my throat tight, because I really was afraid to hear her answer. Kelly doesn’t date. She won’t allow herself to devote that much of her time and energy to anyone other than Layla and the business. Occasionally, she uses Tinder to screw. I’ve babysat for her on those nights. Have a good orgasm! I call after her as she heads out the door in a tight dress. Vince would have happily provided her such a service and saved her the effort of dragging her thumb across the screen. Kelly is all about efficiency.
She had responded to my question with hostile disdain. “You have problems,” she scoffed, and walked out of the room. No yes. No no.
“Jesse can call this episode ‘Incest Is Best,’ ” I mutter to Marc.
Marc raises his eyebrows. He’s never heard me take a jab at Jesse before, but I’m not so googly-eyed that I haven’t noticed her sense of humor, which all too often tries to appeal to the youths and all too often falls abysmally short. And her pun-y captions on Instagram—cringe.
Suddenly, the plane gets caught in a nasty ripple of turbulence. Layla, first-time flyer, seizes up in fear. I put an arm around her, tucking her into my side and assuring her this is normal, even though it feels like a shark has the pilot’s cabin in its mouth, like we are being shaken to death. I promise her that this is nothing to be afraid of. Nothing I haven’t seen before. I’m talking to her but I’m talking to myself, and I’m lying to both of us.
It’s early afternoon by the time we land in Marrakesh and taxi to the hotel, Marc swallowing yawns while trying to hold his handheld steady in the front seat. I’m in the first row of the van, squeezed between my sister and Layla. Steph and Jen are behind me and Lauren shares the third row with an arm looped over her luggage, which she insisted come in our van. Something about her grandmother’s silk scarves. Something none of us believed. I’m assuming she did her research and knows that in certain establishments in Morocco, women are barred from drinking alcohol, and took her own precautions.
I warn everyone against napping. The best thing to do is power through the day and let sleep snatch you only when you can’t run any further. I suggest that once we get to the hotel, we freshen up and meet in the lobby for a ride through the Jewish quarter on the SPOKE electric bikes, which have been shipped to the riad in anticipation of tomorrow’s field trip to the village of Aguergour in the lower Atlas Mountains. I do think this would make for a nice outing and my investors will be pleased with the prime product placement, but a part of me wants to keep the group together, under my paranoid eye. I don’t know who has heard what—about me and Steph, about Kelly and Vince. The last thing I need is the women splitting up, saying God knows what about God knows who on camera.
“Actually, there’s this spice shop I wanted to check out,” Jen says.
I close my eyes, briefly. Of course there is.
“The Mella Spice Souk,” Jen reads off her phone. Kelly twists in her seat, ears perked.
“Très bon,” the driver chimes in. “Est célèbre.”
We all turn to Lauren, who says to him, “Est
-il?”
He rattles off something else in French, and Lauren raises her eyebrows, nodding, making it clear she understands. “He said that market is like a famous market. Where the locals go. Tourists too, but not a tourist trap.”
Jen gets this smug smile on her face, as though she has bested my plans. “My yoga instructor told me about it,” she says. “There’s a Moroccan blend that’s supposed to increase the restfulness and renewability of sleep. I may integrate it into a new tonic.” She beams. “Rest is the new hustle!”
Oh.
My.
God.
“I think Steph agrees.” Lauren laughs, and Steph’s eyes pop open at the mention of her name. She had been dozing next to Jen, her forehead suctioned to the window.
“Sorry.” She wipes away some drool with the back of her hand, “What?”
“I was just talking about what we should do between now and dinner,” I repeat for her. “I wanted to take the SPOKE bikes for a ride through the Jewish quarter to test them out. Everyone is welcome to join.”
“I want to ride the bike again!” Layla declares, sure to let everyone know she already got to do it once.
Lauren leans forward in the back seat and addresses me. Already, she is making an impression on Morocco, as much for her aggressively blond hair as for her not-so-sly innuendo. No one has ever handled my bags like that, she purred to the driver when he met us at the curb. “They, like, do the work for you, right?” She grins at the driver in the rearview mirror. “I’m loyal to one kind of cardio and one kind of cardio only.”
Jen groans.
“You won’t even break a sweat,” I promise her.
“Then I’m in.” She gives me a flirty wink. Just a few months ago, Lauren stonewalled the trip to Morocco, convinced I was the one who sold her out to Page Six. But Digger alliances are like New Year’s resolutions—made to be broken. She even seems to have softened on Steph, her new projected mole, though her gentle ribbing doesn’t necessarily mean all is forgiven. She could just as easily be lying in wait. In some ways, Lauren is the most dangerous. A butcher with a blowout. You never know when she’s going to come for you.
The Favorite Sister Page 24
