Welcome, Evan
âSir, do you need a bag?â the cashier asked as she paid, his words firm like a steel pipe.
Edie shook off the cashier. She didnât begrudge the manâhow could he know? But she felt a pinprick of shame, for both herself and the man. She didnât want to embarrass anyone; that was often the problem.
Outside, Angela waited in line for a small specialty market that limited entry to two customers at a time. Edie held out the bottles of wine for inspection. Angela was an expertâa sommelier by training, though she didnât like using the term. The people who called themselves sommeliers reminded her of detectives slapping their badges on counters, demanding respect. Edie had been nervous to purchase the wine alone, but Angela insisted she trusted her.
She nodded at the bottles. âDo you know what theyâre planning to cook?â
Edie didnât.
âThese should be fine,â she said, and they both broke into laughter. âI really mean it!â
âI know, I know,â Edie assured her, and wrapped her loosely in her arms.
A man sprung out the door of the market with his shirt pinched over his nose. He exhaled as if breaking the oceanâs surface after a dive. He was thin, unexpectedly bearded under the neck of his T-shirt. Edie hated the man in a way that had become familiar. It was so easy to read malice into forgetfulnessâat worst, selfishness, a feeling Edie believed she understood a little too well.
The man looked to Edie for solidarity. âBarely made it out alive,â he said.
Edie tightened her mask over her nose.
Rejected, the man moved to a bench. His wife stepped outside carrying a paper sack by its twine handles. She gathered her husband and offered an apologetic nod to everyone waiting.
Edie and Angela bought cheeses and rosemary crackers for the friends they were seeing that evening. Friends. Was that the word for a couple you met on the Internet? A couple charging Edie money to see them?
As they walked to the rental car, a white hatchback pulled into the lot, and Edie nearly dropped the wine. Angela asked what was wrong. Edie waited until the driver stepped out of the car before she said, âNothing.â A young woman wearing a baseball cap locked her car with the fob. Her ponytail hung through the back of the capâLucy would never have worn her hair in this fashion; the two women looked nothing alike.
âIs that her?â Angela asked.
âI thought it might be,â Edie answered. âIâm paranoid for no reason.â
âNo reason,â Angela said. She reminded her to not minimize things.
Edie punched directions into her phone, and over the short driveânot even twenty minutesânight fell like a sheet. The pavement grumbled into dirt until the car was crawling over a dusty, divoted road. âYou have arrived,â said the phone, as they pulled into an unlit driveway and, as per the email instructions, came to a stop under the car porch.
*
Edie met Lucy Kay at a writing conference on the Florida coast when she was a man and Lucy was her teacher. She was leading an intensive novel workshop where the students met every morning for one week, three hours a day, to discuss chapters from their unpublished novels. They traded praise and enthusiasmâencouragement was encouraged at the conference.
The first morning, Lucy entered the classroom a few minutes late wearing a baggy, cable knit sweater unfit for the weather and frayed denim shorts that ran a little close to pajamas. âHello my loves,â she said, her tone flirtatious and ethereal. She drank coffee from a small white mug with the name of the conference glossed on the side. Edie had been reading Lucyâs work for years and admired her deeply, especially the excerpts from her most recent book that had been appearing online. But in person she seemed wary and needy, like a disgraced pop star unsure how to act when she wasnât on camera.
She was only five years older than Edie but had already published four books to her zero. Until recently, she taught creative writing at Columbia but abruptly quit to find herself, she told anyone who would ask, though she ignored most follow up questions. Speculations surrounded her departure. She had left too quietly, too quickly, to have quit on her own terms. Surely a scandal was waiting to surface. Or, perhaps her hasty departure was proof the decision was hersâno hearings or student committees dragging on for months. These kinds of rumors were not new to her. Her first novel teased at her upbringingâher parents had scammed the entire population of a small Colorado town out of their savingsâand readers scraped the details of her novels looking for truth underneath, as if they were taking nickels to lottery tickets. She seemed to relish the infamy. Like a porcupine relished its quills.
In class, a landscape description was praised. A mother needed further development. Lucy seemed underinvested and embarrassed to be in the room. It wasnât her first time teaching here, and perhaps she no longer felt the need to prove her value to students. Months later, she would confess to Edie that she wasnât supposed to teach at the conference that year. Another instructor dropped out at the last minute and she was invited as an alternate. âAfterthoughtâ is the word that she used. Once the relationship ended, Edie wondered if this was her reason for treating her how she did. Her star had faded and she wanted to matter again, to feel powerful, even if only to one person.
*
Riley knocked on the driverâs window. He was wearing a white disposable mask that resembled the bill of a duck. Edie rolled the window down two inches and accepted the package of rapid tests. âSnap a photo when itâs ready,â said Riley. He returned to the house to await the results.
âWe can always tell them weâre positive,â Angela said. She mimed drawing a second line on the results box.
âDo I seem that nervous?â
âYou donât not seem nervous,â she said.
Edie sent Riley a photo of their negative tests. âCome on in!â he texted back.
They lugged their suitcases over the dirt driveway to a pair of sliding glass doors that opened into the kitchen. Riley greeted them with a handshake that clobbered into a hug. He was a few inches taller than Edie and twenty years older, his mop of brown hair smeared with tufts of gray. His beard was a neat layer of puff dyed the color of syrup. His wife, Marguerite, waved from a barstool at the kitchen counter. She had a smooth, plum-like figure; her legs dangled like streamers off the seat of the chair. Her head was buzzed and Edie spotted sun marks darkening through the fuzz of remaining hair. She said, âItâs for the wigs,â as she stood to greet them.
âWhat is?â Edie asked.
âThe wigs are important,â Riley added. âFor verisimilitude.â He studded every syllable with a little medallion of pride. It was clear he loved presenting the word like a favorite child.
Marguerite beckoned for Angela to follow her, and the two women rolled the suitcases to the guest bedroom. Angela flashed a faux grimace at Edie, as if she were being led to her death.
âShould weâshould I pay you?â Edie asked.
âYou know this isnât all about money for me,â Riley said. âThis is my passion. Helping people live their best lives.â He opened the freezer and collected a pair of large round ice cubes and dropped each one into its own squat glass. âGin and tonic okay?â
âWe brought wine,â Edie said, and bent down to retrieve it.
âWeâll do that with dinner.â
âGin and tonic sounds great.â
Riley nodded at a thin stack of papers on the counter. âFlip through that and see if itâs in order. Weâre planning to start with the beach in the first trailer, couch in the second, then the bed, and end with the walk to the bar. Four total. Does that sound right?â
Dread thickened to the edges of Edieâs body. She glanced at her fingersâa grounding technique taught to her by a former therapistâand focused on her nails, painted road sign orange that morning, to match the desert sun. âI think so.â
âYou think so or you know? This isnât horseshoes. Weâve gotta be one hundred percent.â
âIâm sure,â Edie said. âSorry. Iâm nervous.â
âNervous for what? Youâre about to get better.â Riley winked and passed her a glass. He tipped his forward to clink. Edie held in a cough tasting the heft of liquor that Riley had given her; she was relieved to blunt her nerves. âYou sign on the last page. And put someone other than your wife for the emergency contactânot much use if sheâs here.â
âSheâs not my wife,â Edie said.
âYou know what I mean.â
âItâs been about a year,â she said. âSheâs been great about everything. Compared toââ
âCompare and despair my friend.â
âThirty-six hundred?â she asked.
âFour thousand. With the room.â
âOf courseâyou said that.â Edie didnât remember him saying that, but there was no point arguing after coming all this way, after having already obtained so much money in cash. She squatted to retrieve the envelope out of her backpack pocket. Inside was only thirty-six hundred. âYou donât have an A-Tâgod of course not.â
âThereâs one in town. You can pick up the rest after your hike.â
Edie thanked him, then passed the envelope over.
âNormally Iâd call this whole thing off, you know. Itâs not worth it for me if I canât feel like I trust the person, and moneyâI hate to say itâis the fastest way to build trust in this world. Donât think I like it. I wonât say that. But sometimes it is how it is.â
âShould we find another place to stay?â
âWhat Iâm saying is normally I need money to trust a person. But youâre different. Thereâs something about you.â
âPeople donât normally take me as trustworthy,â Edie said.
âIâm not saying you are,â Riley said. âBut youâre scared. Youâre scared of me. Which is weird because Iâm not a scary person. Iâm very nice. Ask Em. Em, am I a scary man?â
âThe scariest,â Marguerite said, as she and Angela returned to the kitchen.
âOh sheâs biased,â he said.
Angela came up behind Edie and wrapped her arm around her waist. She sniffed at the gin and tonic, took the glass from her hand. âIâm not scared of you,â Edie said.
âThis is a site of honesty, Edie.â
âMaybe a little,â she said.
âThere we go,â Riley said with a laugh. âMuch better.â
*
A few weeks before they broke up, Edie and Lucy flew to Joshua Tree to check on a house Lucy wanted to buy. It was November, the desert cool and polite; daylight was pinched tightly between sunup and down. Lucy had wanted a house in the desert for years, and after the sale of her latest novelâher fourthâshe had the money to buy one outright. It was a squat stucco ranch without running water; in the photos online, dirt showed through cracks in the floor. It would take months of remodeling before it felt like a home. It was not the most elaborate or stylish house, and it wasnât supposed to be. It was a house where writers could live, cheaply, writing their books.
âWhat do you think?â Lucy asked when they parked at the end of the driveway. They both got out of the car and leaned against the passenger side.
The current residents werenât home to let them tour the inside. Edie squinted to get a look at the house from the road. âIt looks like the pictures,â she said.
âSee that covered porch in the back? You can put a table out there and spend your mornings writing outside in the shade. Weâll hike in the afternoons. You can do whatever you want. Thereâs not much waterâwe wonât be showering much. The sex will be sticky and gross.â She laced her fingers through Edieâs. âNo phones. No Twitter. No stupid Internet fights and dumb shows on TV. Just the landscape and us and our books. Everything you wanted.â
Lucy liked to remind Edie what she wanted. What she wanted, Lucy insisted, was a long career writing books, and, living with Lucy, she could write as much as she wished. It was the perfect opportunity for her to build a career. Edie wouldnât have to worry about money. Lucy would pay for everything. She would have toâEdie was down to a few hundred dollars after failing to find work in Denver, where she had moved to live with Lucy.
Lucy already paid for meals and groceries and trips to the movies and had even bought Edie a new bike after hers was stolen. She had a bad habit of allowing arrangements like this. Whenever a friend offered to buy a round, she accepted; she never argued when told not to worry about paying someone back. This was how Edie had always existed, beneath the circling palm of othersâ beneficence. It seemed foolish to refuse generosity. Now, though, she worried what might happen if Lucy changed her mind. Would she really let her live there forever? Did she even want to?
âHow does that sound?â Lucy asked.
âThat sounds wonderful,â Edie said, but she angled away from Lucy. After only a few months in Denver, she felt tethered and possessed, even as Lucy encouraged her to branch out into the world and discover who she wanted to be. She was no longer confused about who she wanted to beâat least, not as confused as sheâd been after coming outâbut she was scared to leave the safety of knowing for the reality of experience.
She wasnât an idiot. She knew the risks of pursuing the life she desired, and had already lost so much. People in her life loved reminding her of the things she would lose, as if it never occurred to her. She kept a running tally of what she would lose: stability, finances, pickup basketball, how handsome her jawline looked beneath a fine mist of stubble, safety.
Edie moved across the country to live with Lucy because she longed to live authentically. In Denver, in the home Lucy was renting, Lucy had given Edie makeup and old dresses and nail polish and encouraged her to dress as herself in her home, but that freedom had begun to brush against obligation. Lucy presented herself as a caring and safe person. However, standing beside her surveying the ranch house in the desert, the house they could very well share for the rest of their lives, it occurred to Edie that she hadnât felt safe since Lucy entered her life.
That evening, at their cabin, Lucy was drunk. Edie lounged on the couch wearing a black cotton dress and sheer tights. She had shaved her legs that eveningâpartly because she wanted time away from Lucy and could get it by taking a bathâand kept rubbing her knees together, pleased by the sensation. Lucy squatted in front of the fireplace drinking a cooled can of beer. It was her fourth, so Edie had switched to water. The fourth drink always fractured something in Lucy, and her anger emerged more easily, like cold air through a broken window. Edie had learned to drift back toward sobriety in these situations, should they stumble into a fight.
âMaybe Iâm just a way station for you,â said Lucy.
âYou canât really mean that.â
âIâm a stop on your journey. We canât be everything for everyoneâIâm not deluded.â
âThat doesnât make me feel better,â Edie said.
âIâm not trying to make you feel better,â she said. âIâm trying to make me feel better. I brought you all the way out here, Iâm offering you whatever you want, and you canât even say youâll come with me. What more do you need?â
Edie apologized. Lucy was rightâshe had given her everything she had wanted and had asked for so little in return. The dress she was wearing belonged to Lucy, so did the eyelinerâLucy even applied itâand she ought to be grateful. Wasnât this the life she wanted? A world where she could write unimpeded? Where she could be her true self?
Lucy stepped to the couch and stood over Edie. âI just want you to appreciate all that Iâm doing for you,â she said.
âI do,â Edie assured her.
âThen you need to show me,â she said.
Edie unbuttoned her jeans.
*
Angela and Edie left for the hike shortly after sunrise. Angela planned the excursion using a dusty guidebook she found in the bedside table in their guest bedroom. The grayscale maps inside appeared to have been drawn by hand and photo-copied haphazardly, pitched onto the pages at troubling angles. At the trailhead, Edie checked the publication date. The book was more than thirty years old.
âThirty years is nothing in geological time,â Angela assured her. âThe boulders havenât moved. The dirt didnât blow to the other side of the desert.â
âOkay, okay,â Edie said, but it was too late to stop her.
âThe cactuses are still in the same positions.â She stretched her arms to the side, one bent up at the elbow, the other bent down, her face frozen in a cactus' gaze.
Edie kissed her on the cheek, a white flag of a kiss, and Angela laughed victoriously.
Last night, theyâd finished the wine and nearly all of the gin, and now their legs were heavy, faces puffed, their words emerging without precision. Edie didnât own the appropriate clothesâshe had never owned hiking clothesâand the closest approximation she found in her closet, before leaving New York, was a pair of black running pants and a blue sweat-wicking shirt, both of which had been gifted to her by Lucy. So much of the present seemed to belong to Lucy, as if every part of Edieâs life had been rented from her and could be repossessed when she least expected. Edie was here, though, in the desert shelling out four thousand dollars, plus the cost of plane ticketsâhers and Angelaâsâand a rental car, to gain some control over the present. She wanted to be in the desert with Angela, her partner of nearly a year, and not trapped in a grain silo of memories, sinking ever deeper the more she tried to climb out. But she feared it might be impossible to ever get out, that the best she would ever accomplish was not escape but dragging another person into the silo beside her.
The terrain was flat, the path squeezed tightly between sage brush and the extra-terrestrial limbs of Joshua trees. Even at eight in the morning, the air was unforgiving and dry. Edie worried they were drinking too much water, too early, but Angela insisted it was best to drink when you were thirsty, without worrying how much they had leftâthey had more than enough.
In her early twenties, after college, Angela had worked as a trail guide in Sedona. She took the job on a whim because she wanted to get as far away as possible from Cambridge, where she had sat in a series of smaller and smaller rooms over the course of four years in order to obtain an economics degree she found arbitrary and suffocating. She wanted to be irresponsible, and moving to the southwest, where she knew no one, to pursue a career for which she had little experience, was the least responsible thing she could do after college.
She lived in the desert for two years, the only Asian trail guide in Sedona, she joked to her friends when they asked how she liked it, because she wasnât sure whether she liked it. Liking it seemed beside the point. She needed a break from the path she had put herself on, and there was something fitting about finding herself on a series of literal paths, from sunup to down, pointing out landmarks and rattlesnake holes to the kind of people she had nearly become.
The sky was a wide, breathless blue, and by ten Edie was soaked in hangover stink.
âItâs not much farther,â Angela said.
âWhat is?â Edie asked.
âThe Wonderland of Rocks,â Angela said. âI told you a thousand times.â She didnât get angry often, so it was easy for Edie to recognize when she was.
âMy mind is elsewhere,â she said.
âWe should eat something,â Angela said. They rested on the smoothed foot of a boulder, sliding down as they shared handfuls of nuts. She said, âI canât keep waiting for you.â
âWaiting for me to what?â
âYou know.â
âTo move on from being assaulted?â
âItâs unfair when you say it like that.â
Edie knew she was right.
âWeâre in a relationship,â Angela said. âOr we should be, but I never feel like youâre with me. Youâre always in some other conversation or some other moment, talking to memories, ghosts, whatever you want to call them, while Iâm right here, trying to have a life with you, and youâre not anywhere in it.â
âIâm in it with you right now.â
âWhere are we going?â she asked.
âWeâre on a hike.â
âTell me the name of the place where weâre going. The place I keep bringing up.â
âIâm bad with names,â Edie said.
âNo youâre not,â Angela said.
âThe Rock House.â
Angela took a long drink of water. âI am a very patient person. If I werenât, I would have ended this months ago.â
âI guess I should be more grateful,â she snapped.
âBut I love you. Thatâs why Iâm patient. Iâm not trying to threaten you or make you feel bad, but you keep tossing me aside for people who havenât been in your life for three years.â
âWhy come out here with me then if thatâs how you feel?â
âBecause I want to support you. I want this to workâwhatever this is, whatever youâre paying that kook to perform. I donât want to start over with someone else. But if I have toâI will. I want you to know that.â
Edie was ashamed for not seeing this sooner. Would she have put up with similar treatment? That wasnât the point. The point was that sheâd never knowâshe was always the one to have drama. She was a heavy person, emotionally, and she regretted making Angela carry the weight she had placed on her. âHow much longer to the Wonderland?â Edie asked.
âBad with names, huh?â Angela laughed.
Edie kissed her chastely on the mouth, their lips too dry for anything more. They packed their bags and continued.
*
âWhereâd you get all this sand?â Edie asked.
âThatâs a Riley problem,â said Riley. âYou need to focus on Edie problems.â
Her problems included getting comfortable in the trailer, where Riley had piled a few hundred pounds of play sand to create the impression of a beach. Marguerite was sitting beside her wearing a green one piece like the one Lucy had worn the day after the conference, when she brought her to her friendâs beach house. The color was offâLucyâs suit was a richer, shinier green, and there had been frills over the waistâbut it was close enough to matter, and Edie was impressed by the care they had taken in trying to get it right. The wig Marguerite wore was uncannily accurate, the exact length of Lucyâs rib-length hair, its tangled, yellow-cake blond.
As Riley set up the projector, Edie took a stab at small talk but Marguerite didnât respond. She inserted a small black earpiece into her left ear so that Riley could feed her her lines. Angela watched from outside the trailer with her arms crossed.
Riley flicked on the projector and a blue blanket of light coated the wall. He connected his phone, counted to three, and the blue transformed into rippling waves spotted with children and parents flouncing around in the water.
âIâll leave you two to it,â Riley said.
Angela rushed in to give Edie a hug. âLove you,â she said.
Riley slammed the door behind him, and Edie and Marguerite were alone.
âItâs so beautiful here,â Marguerite said. She angled a little closer on the towel they were sharing. The scene had begun. âDo you want another one?â
âSure,â Edie said. She crossed her arms over her bare chest, still so flat and dotted with the few stray hairs she hadnât caught shaving that morning. She planned to start taking hormones when she returned to New York, after completing the exercise. Starting estrogen before her trip to the desert, she feared, might hinder her chances of obtaining closure. Riley had said nothing to make her believe this, nor had any of her friends back in New York, but she maintained an unwavering faith in this notion, out of fear and intuition alone, as if she were living 4,000 years in the past and terrified of enraging the sun.
Edieâs body was slender and firm as a diving board, and that afternoon she wore the same swimming trunks she had worn to the beach and no shirt. Iâm topless, she thought, which she hadnât thought the day Lucy brought her to the beach, so she tried to put that thoughtâthat feelingâout of her mind, in service of the exercise.
Marguerite opened a beer and passed it to Edie, in such a way that their fingers grazed during the exchange. She took a sip and set the can to her left. Marguerite tilted her knee so it rested against Edieâs. âWe didnât touch,â she whispered. Marguerite removed her knee without speaking.
âItâs getting pretty late,â Edie said.
âWeâre nearly out of beer,â Marguerite said. She opened a square mint tin and pulled out a joint. âDo you want to split this?â
âHow many have you had?â Edie asked.
âThis is our third,â she replied.
âWill you be able to drive?â she asked. âBack to my hotel?â Edie only agreed to join Lucy at the beach on the condition she take her back to her hotel. Though agreed is too strong of a word for what happened. The day after the conference, following a late night of flirting, Lucy texted Edie to ask if she wanted to go to the water. There was a riverfront downtown home to a stretch of restaurants and shops, and Edie assumed that is what Lucy meant by âthe water.â In the car, Lucy passed the exits for downtown, and when Edie asked where they were going she said, âTo the beach. Iâm housesitting my friendâs place on the water. Itâs stunning out there.â She promised her she would return her to her hotel that evening, and Edie accepted this arrangement because she liked Lucy, and she liked that Lucy liked her, and, she would later have trouble admitting, she wanted things from Lucy, things like professional advice and book edits and praise for the novel she was currently writing. Lucy had agreed to put in a good word with her editor. Edie feared Lucy might revoke this promise should she make a fuss.
âI was thinking about your hotel,â Marguerite said.
âItâs an hour drive,â Edie said.
âI really need one more joint,â Marguerite said. âAnd Iâm not sure Iâll be able to drive all that way if we smoke it.â She was reading from a scriptâthe very same script that Edie had provided to Margueriteâbut Edie was rattled to hear these words, words sheâd replayed in her head in the same particular voice for three years, from a stranger.
âBut I need to get back tonight.â
âDo you really?â
âIâd like to, yes.â
âSo youâd like to, but you donât need to.â
âI paid a lot of money for that room.â
âHave you ever heard of sunk cost?â
At this point, three years ago, Edie had deflated. Sheâd agreed to stay on the condition that she sleep in the guest bedroomâonly after Lucy sweetened the deal by offering to buy her dinner, saving her another thirty dollars she would have wasted ordering room service.
âIâm not interested in what you want from me,â Edie told Marguerite.
âAnd what do you think I want from you?â she asked.
Edie was aroused, and covered herself with her left hand.
Marguerite noticed. âAre you sure you donât want anything from me?â
There was a time, after Edie ended things with Lucy, after she moved back home to live with her parents, when she would spend entire nights, midnight until six in the morning, pacing around her childhood home replaying this scene on the beach. As she paced, she repeated, âYou promised to take me to my hotel. Take me to my hotel.â She attacked herself for not saying something so simple and true to Lucy when she had the chance. How much better her life would have been, she believed, if only sheâd stood up to Lucy; she was ashamed of relenting, because it seemed to imply that she wanted this, that Lucy had seen something inside of her she failedâor refusedâto admit to herself.
âOkay,â Edie said.
Riley pried open the door.
âThatâs it?â she asked.
âThis isnât easy,â he said.
âYou were so good,â she said to Marguerite.Â
âThat ladyâs a true professional,â Riley said.Â
âYouâre doing amazing,â said Angela, back at the entrance.Â
Riley heaved the door closed.
The second time, Edie told Marguerite what it was she wasnât interested in doing with her. âI donât want to hook up with you,â sheâd said, her voice as earnest and small as a succulent, and Marguerite had replied with laughing indignity.
âThatâs what you think of me? Iâm your teacher. Thatâs wildly inappropriate of you to even suggest it. My god. This is my livelihood. This is my career. Do you really think Iâm the type of person to trade sex for professional favors? One of those balding tenure-track creeps preying on freshmen. How old are you? Thirty? Youâre not a child, okay, and if I wanted to have sex with youâI canât even believe you would accuse me of thatâI would ask you, like an adult, because Iâm an adult and weâre both adults, I wouldnât play whatever manipulative trick youâre insisting Iâm playing on you.â
Edie apologized. They started the scene over again. The third time, she gave up as soon as Marguerite handed over the beer. The fourth time, she relented when asked to split a joint.
âHave you ever heard of sunk cost?â Marguerite asked for the fifth time.
âI have,â Edie said. Her exhaustion had mutated into anger.
âSo you know itâll be easier if you stay. We can hang out more, have dinner togetherâon me. How does that sound?â
âIt sounds like youâre a predator,â Edie said.
âIâm sorry?â
âA predator.â
âYou do know what Iâve been through, right? What Iâve done for womenâfor victims.â
âI saw the stories,â Edie said.
âI bought a billboardâout of my own pocket. Stop Rape, right outside the Stanford campus, a week after that predatorâthat real predatorâgot off with a slap on the wrist.â Margueriteâs performanceâthe sly mix of disbelief and aggressionâno longer impressed Edie; instead, it disturbed her how easily she fell into this persona. âAnd who are you to accuse me of that? Predation. Youâre just some studentâI brought you here because I feel sorry for you, because you have talent, but youâlike so many âwritersâ your age are so obsessed with bringing down the people who paved the way for you to have a career. Itâs sad.â
âYouâre sad,â Edie said. âYouâre pitiful. Youâre an accomplished writer. Youâve published four books. Youâve won awards. You taught at Columbia.â
âEveryone teaches at Columbia.â
âAnd youâre so insecure you hit on your students, the people you promise to help, because theyâre the only people who donât yet see you for who you are. Itâs sick. Itâs humiliating. I donât want any part of it.â
For three years, Edie imagined bursting into tears had she said this to Lucy, the very speech she had practically liquefied through countless iterations, but when Riley pulled open the door, clapping for Edie, she felt a bursting, unsatisfied rage she had never known in her life. She wanted to keep screaming at Marguerite, to sand her down with misplaced resentment, and, perhaps sensing this, Angela came to her and stepped in front of her rage like a mother rushing between a car and her child. âIâm so proud of you,â she said. âBring that to the next one.â
In the next trailer, which had been fashioned to look like Lucyâs living room inside the home she owned in Denver, Marguerite straddled Edie on the couch. They were both in their underwear, as stipulated in the contract, and when Marguerite lifted her left hand to Edieâs throat, tightening her thumb and middle finger around the base of her neck, Edie slapped her hand away. âWhat are you doing?â she asked.
âI think itâs hot. You donât think itâs hot?â
âNo, I donât think itâs hot when you choke me without asking permission.â
âCan I choke you?â she asked, in a sheepish, ironic voice.
âYou canât,â Edie said.
That was it. Riley entered the trailer. âRecord time,â he said. âI donât think Iâve ever seen someone get through it so quickly. You can feel how itâs working, right?â
Edie nodded. She knew he was praising himself, not her, and that endorsing his praise of himself was built into the cost.Â
In the third trailer, Edie and Marguerite lay together in a king-sized bed, the edges of which pressed against the walls. âGoodnight,â Edie said, and pretended to turn off a lamp. Marguerite shut off her nonexistent lamp and scooted closer to her under the covers. She wrapped her top arm around Edieâs chest and lowered her hand to her waist while kissing the back of her neck.Â
âIâm too tired,â Edie said. Marguerite slid her thumb under the waistband of her boxersâcareful to not touch her where they had agreed to avoid but was close enough to make Edie aroused and frightened. âIâm tired,â she repeated. But Marguerite continued, guiding her fingers delicately along the inner edge of her thigh. Edie wanted her then, and was repulsed by wanting her, this imitation of Lucy doing the very things she despised Lucy for doing. Edie wrenched Margueriteâs hand out of her boxers. âWhat donât you understand about Iâm too tired?â
âYouâre tired?â Marguerite said. âYou shouldâve told me.â
âYou heard me.â
âYouâre always so quiet, youâre practically whispering. You need to tell me when you donât want to.â
âI told you, and Iâm telling you now.â
âAre you sure?â
âIâm sure,â Edie said. âIâm very sure that I donât want to be raped.â
âPlease,â she said. âDonât just throw around words.â
âGo sleep on the couch,â Edie said. It was more than sheâd planned on saying.
âExcuse me.â
âI wonât sleep in the same bed as you.â
âYou know this is my house, right?â
âIf I go downstairs Iâm calling the cops.â
âSo youâre blackmailing me?â
âIâm protecting myself,â Edie said, taking more pleasure in saying this than she expected. âYou have ten seconds.â
âYouâre a psycho,â Marguerite said.
âNine seconds. Eight. Seven.â
Riley slid open the door. âGoddamn! You two are like . . .â He made a chefâs kiss gesture. âImpeccable chemistry.â
In the fourth trailer, Marguerite and Edie paced from end to end, simulating a walk longer than the space allowed. The walls had been painted to resemble the restaurants and stores that Edie and Lucy had passed the first night she went out dressed as a woman.
Edie still owned the dress she had worn that eveningâa slim, knee-length dress the color of black cherriesâand was wearing it now, in the trailer. Lucy let her keep it after she left.
Marguerite asked Edie how she felt to be in the world this way, and she told her she was excited but scared. They continued speaking without saying much, passing time until Marguerite said, âYou know, I was talking to my friends last weekend, everyone who came over, talking sex stuff, and they were getting so bent out of shape about consent, and I told them I donât even believe in verbal consent. I think itâs all so over-determined. I said I do stuff to you all the time without asking, and afterward we decide whether it was okay. I think thatâs how it should be. But they acted like I was some kind of freak.â
âIs that what you want? To do whatever you want to me?â Edie asked.
âOf course not,â Marguerite said. There was a tremor in her voice. She pulled her hair back, nervous, and knocked her earpiece loose to the floor.
âWithout asking?â Edie said.
âWhatâs the phraseâbetter to ask for forgiveness than permission.â
âI think itâs the other way around.â
âThere are things that I want,â Marguerite said. âThere are things that everyone wants.â
Edie wanted this conversation to end. And she could end itâRiley had made that very clear to her, during orientation. She had a safe word. But she did not want to use it prematurely, not when she was already doing so well and was so close to the end.
âI want you when I want you,â Marguerite said.
âThatâs just not possible.â
âYou get me when you want me.â
âWhat are you saying?â
Marguerite crouched to retrieve the earpiece but accidentally kicked it into the corner.
âYou assaulted me, Lucy,â Edie said. âMultiple times.â
âIs that the story youâre telling yourself?â
Edie spied the earpiece and wondered whether Marguerite was wearing a second one. She no longer sounded like Lucyâor not entirely like Lucyâbut a blend of the two women. Edie couldnât tell whether she was imitating Lucy or speaking as herself.
âDo you know the types of things that Iâve been subjected to? What happened to my mother? To my grandmother? To every single woman in my life? And youâre acting crazy because I accidentally grazed your neck during sex.â
âIt wasnât an accident.â
âYou could kill me, you know.â
âWhat does that mean?â
âIf you wanted to.â
âMarguerite?â
âIt would be so easy for you. Youâre so much stronger than I am.â
âPlease, Marguerite.â
âItâs what men do when theyâre angry. They kill their girlfriends. They choke them. The women never choke back. I dare youâtell me one story of a woman who chokes a man back. So donât pretend like youâre scared of me when Iâm the one who should be scared of you.â
Edie didnât realize sheâd pushed Marguerite until the woman was falling. She lunged to grab her, as if she might yank her back into a stand, but by the time her hand was lowered Marguerite was already on the ground, in a fetal position, protecting herself.
âYou back the fuck up,â said Riley. Edie hadnât heard him open the door. He crouched over Marguerite and removed her wig, inspecting her head for abrasions. âYouâre not bleeding,â he told her. She landed on her backside and braced the fall with her forearm; as he examined her, she turned her wrist in circles to lessen the pain.Â
Edie let out waves of apologies, not one of which was acknowledged.
âYou should already be gone,â Riley said. âAnd if you even look at me like you want a refund Iâll sue you to the end of the earth.â
*
At the nearest hotel, Angela requested a room with two double beds.
âShould we push them together?â Edie joked, as they set down their stuff.
âIâm gonna take a shower.â Angela disappeared into the bathroom.
As the tub faucet ran, Edie listened for the sound of the showerhead screaming. What she heard was water splashing in water. Angela was taking a bath. The faucet stopped running. Water sloshed as Angela slipped into the tub.
Edie flicked on the TV and mindlessly climbed the channels, passing home remodeling shows and trash pickers scraping through repossessed barns and chefs competing for prizes to pay off medical debt. She clicked until the channels reset to the hotelâs directory page. Gentle piano music played over a slideshow of local attractions. At the bottom of the screen, in large bold script, were the words Welcome, Evan. Edie shut off the TV.
Angela unplugged the drain, earlier than expected, but remained in the bathroom. Edie tapped her knuckles against the door and entered before Angela answered. She lay naked in the empty tub. Her hands were over her face, knees bent at a soft angle. âAre you okay?â Edie asked. Angela inched to the far wall to make room. Edie eased herself down beside Angela, still wearing the loose T-shirt and mesh shorts she put on to sleep. She kept one leg spidered over the rim of the tub, foot flat on the tile. Eventually, she fit her arm under Angelaâs waist, and Angela draped herself over Edieâs stomach, head resting on her neck. They remained this way, until the discomfort became too much to bear. âŚ
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