Francine
Tabitha stands over me with a pitcher filled to the brim with sparkling pink liquid. She gestures for me to hold out my glass. “Come on, Francine,” she says.
“Yeah, you’re drinking for two,” Mia says. “This is your bachelorette party and your wedding shower.”
“And your pre-divorce party!” Tabitha says. “And the congrats on your one-night-stand Vegas wedding that you totally don’t remember.”
“Ummm, thanks?” I say. I hold out my glass. I only let her pour an inch, and then I fill the rest with bubbly water. Hot Pink Barbie, her signature cocktail, has lord knows what in it, and it tastes like candy. I avoid alcohol when I’m in rehearsal mode. I like to stay sharp.
There’s a knock at the door and Noelle pops up to answer. News of my nuptials has traveled quickly around the building and even beyond to our friends who have since moved out. I’m kind of glad. It’s taking my mind off the possibility of my dream being utterly crushed.
Lizzie bursts into the room clutching her coat and a large white box. “I understand congratulations are in order!”
I raise up a hand. “Please,” I say. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“Don’t worry, we’re going to track down that missing Vegas husband of yours!” She sets the box on the coffee table and flings open the lid. It’s full of frosted cookies in the shapes of double bells. “Happy wedding! And impending divorce! Woo-hoo!”
Antonio, our resident hot Italian model, strolls in with a six-pack of beer and an eight-pack under his shirt. “Off the market,” he says sadly, adding something in Italian. He claps a dramatic hand to his chest. “My heart breaks, stellina!”
“Only a million girls left for you to serial-date,” I say. “Whatever will you do?”
Mia grabs a cookie. “The good thing about Hot Pink Barbies is that it’s the kind of alcoholic drink that goes perfectly with cookies. You have to appreciate that in a drink.”
“Agree!” Tabitha grins. “I appreciate it very much.”
Lizzie sets up her laptop at the kitchen table. “Okay, I brought all my stuff for a background check. You got his social for me?”
I slide the paperwork over to her and take a chair at the other side of the table.
Kelsey comes over and sits next to me. “Don’t worry, we’re going to figure this out. You’re gonna go on your tour.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t,” I say.
“Well, if you don’t go, at least your knee will be happy,” Kelsey says.
I give her a dirty look. “The knee is happy now. The knee is eager to tour.”
“Yeah, sure,” Kelsey says. “On the bright side, you got an unexpected day off!”
Kelsey’s a dancer, too—she’s in the big production of Anything Goes with Mia. She knows how brutal a dancer’s schedule can be—hours of classes and rehearsals, back-to-back. She knows what a knee injury can mean, but nothing is going to get in the way of my international tour. Unless we can’t get this divorce paperwork pulled together in time, but I don’t let myself think that.
Noelle is telling everybody what I said about Benny and his nerdy ways. I fill in with some additional Benny details. His glowering glare when I’d laugh with the other cast members. His sullen attitude at the morning meetings. The different types of extreme annoyance he would exhibit. “There was DEFCON level, nuclear level, quantum level, platinum level, though that’s not the order of extreme-ness.”
“You had names for his levels of annoyance?” Tabitha asks. “Hardcore!”
“We need a picture! Was he cute?” Kelsey asks.
“I can’t say.”
“How can you not say?”
“Because he was so…” So Benny, I want to say. “He was just this perfect grump, glaring out at the world through those big glasses. He didn’t give you a chance to decide if he was cute, you know? Even the way he spoke—no niceties, just so abrupt and rude. And he moved with zero grace.”
“Clumsy?” Antonio asks.
“No, more like, weirdly efficient and without grace. He typed hard and freakishly fast, and you’d look at the computer screen and it was all these crazy lines of code, like something from another planet. When he adjusted his little robotic things, his fingers would just fly, all knuckles and hard angles.”
I look down at my drink, remembering the way he moved through the world, all gangly intensity. But then he’d come up with such brilliance. People saw him as this nerd, but I knew his abruptness grew out of one-pointed intention, a singular passion that excluded everybody.
I could relate. Fixating on something to the exclusion of all else is the way I’d lived my life since the tender age of five. It’s how you have to be to rise to the top of the ultra-competitive ballet world.
So I spent a lot of time wondering what it would be like to be friends with him, wondering what it would be like to be lovers with him. I couldn’t help it. Something about all of that harsh passion.
“Features vaguely symmetrical?” Mia presses. “Hair color?”
“Umm…dusty-brown hair, bedhead style, like he’d fallen asleep at his keyboard and woke up with five minutes to spare. Tawny skin that would get bronze in the desert sun. Light brown eyes. He kind of had this whole tawny, dusty-brown color scheme going except for his oversized and very severe black glasses, all the better to glare at you through.”
“Literally glaring?” Lizzie asks.
“He even hated my weird T-shirts.”
“How can anyone hate your weird T-shirts?” Kelsey asks.
“You’ll have to ask Benny. Or maybe not.” I smile, remembering it all. “He hated nonsensical T-shirts the most. He’d be like, ‘What does that even mean?’ And I’d be like, ‘I know you want this T-shirt so bad.’ Whatever he hated, I’d pretend he wanted it so much.”
“I bet you did,” Tabitha says.
“The only time we really related was when he would say annoyed things to me. Well, we also had these fake humblebrag children that would compete.”
“Wait, what?” Kelsey asks.
I’m not sure if I should try to explain, but everyone’s staring at me now.
“One of our really mean stage managers would humblebrag all the time, so then I started humblebragging about my daughter, Monique, that I pretended to have. ‘Oh, I stayed up all night knitting while Monique translated the works of Balzac into Chinese for her third-grade project. She just wasn’t happy with the current translations on the market. She’s such a picky child!’”
“Seriously can’t imagine you doing that,” Noelle says—sarcastically.
“I’m lucky I didn’t get fired. But it was totally hilarious and people would always ask me about Monique whenever they were mad at this jackhole stage manager. Of course, Benny would just glare. It’s not that he liked this guy any better than the rest of us liked him, it was just annoyance. And then one day, Benny seemed so angry with me when I was humblebragging…” I’m grinning thinking about it. “I was going on like, ‘it’s so hard to know what to do with a child as brilliant as Monique—people don’t understand how problematic a gifted child can be. The French studies alone…’ And suddenly Benny goes, ‘My boy, Igor, is so creative he doesn’t want to have anything to do with French so I have enrolled him in Klingon language studies. It is so tedious, though, to have such a precocious child who doesn’t care to follow the herd.’ We were all totally shocked because he never engaged with us. And suddenly he’s humblebragging back to me. And it was good humblebragging, too.”
“And he never talked to you before that?” Kelsey asks.
“Not much! We were all stunned, like, does Mister Socially Awkward have a sense of humor? And it went on from there. We’d humblebrag-compete. I thought it was fun, but for him, I think it was more like an extension of his extreme displeasure with me.”
“Huh,” Antonio says.
“Sometimes, like if Benny was glowering at me, I’d do this fake concern about Igor having Victorian diseases. Like I’d ask about Igor’s scurvy, and he’d be like, ‘We were only grateful that Igor’s very mild condition didn’t become a case as tragic as Monique’s rickets. No offence, of course, we were all very concerned.’ I was stunned,” I say. “Chronically annoyed Benny Stearnes joining in on the joke!”
Noelle narrows her eyes. “So the main communication between you two was that you had imaginary children that would compete with each other?”
I nod.
Mia flops back on the couch. “So basically you were both weirdos with a weird sense of humor. That’s what I’m getting here.”
“Pretty much the only communication! Though there were also glowers and grumbles,” I say. “And I asked him to coffee this one time and he was like, ‘Huh?’”
Mia widens her eyes. “You asked him to coffee?”
“I just liked him, I don’t know. We had that quirky Igor and Monique thing going. Considering that he was the opposite of my type who found me annoying, I don’t know what I was thinking. I blurted it out one day. I was like, ‘That coffee place is having a two-for-one, you wanna go?’ and he was stammering out his no. He couldn’t say no fast enough.”
“So you asked him out even though he was the opposite of your type,” Mia clarifies.
“Yeah, I couldn’t help it, and then I felt like an idiot. My attraction to him was weird, anyway. And of course it would’ve deprived him of being able to criticize my dates when they came to pick me up.”
I explain how Beau Cirque had this cheap-rent deal with this apartment complex for the workers, so we all lived there. Benny liked to do work out in the courtyard, escaping a building full of loud theater people.
“I could always count on him to roll his eyes when guys picked me up,” I add.
I have everybody’s attention. I never talk about my Beau Cirque days, mostly because of how they ended: shamelessly glomming on Benny.
“You think he was jealous of your other dates?” Tabitha asks.
“No, it’s just how he was. He’d make these little comments like, ‘Somebody needs to check the hair product factories for recent robberies!’ Or, ‘Nice douchebag shirt.’ And I’d be like, ‘I love that shirt, and we’re going to have a fabulous night on the town.’”
“You goaded each other,” Tabitha observes.
“I guess.” I shove at the half-melted ice in my drink. “Or he’d be especially scathing if they came in limos. He’d be like, ‘Oh, look, you’re getting picked up in a low-self-esteem mobile…I mean a limo.’ He definitely ruined a few dates with his jackass opinions.”
“Record scratch!” Lizzie says.
“What?”
Everybody is just staring at me now.
“You dated guys in limos?” Mia asks, shocked.
“It was a weird time for me,” I say.
“I’m sorry, this is completely blowing my mind,” Mia says. “You think rich guys are the worst. All of them—millionaires and especially billionaires. In fact, I seem to remember you saying last year that billionaires are the scourge of the earth!”
My face goes hot. I did say that billionaires are the scourge of the earth, which is super embarrassing now that a few of my friends have hooked up with billionaires. “I don’t hate your billionaires,” I clarify. “Just the rest of them.”
Noelle snorts. “What do they care too much about?”
“Shut it,” I say. “I’m not gonna sit here ranting on your menfolk.”
Mia throws a pillow. “Tell us! What is the problem with billionaires?”
“Well, seriously!” I say, laughing. “I mean, a billion dollars? That’s how much money you had to make? This is what you’ve spent your time on?”
Noelle’s laughing and clapping.
“Have you ever heard of charity?” I continue. “A simple and honest day’s labor? Working with your hands? However” —I turn to Noelle— “you know I always make an exception for Malcolm. In spite of his rocky start, he is clearly one of the good guys. And fine, Theo. Max. Rex. The billionaires you have chosen, clearly they’re awesome. In fact, their good taste in choosing you somewhat redeems them.”
“But just somewhat,” Tabitha teases.
“Just somewhat,” I say.
Noelle is grinning. “Poor Francine. Every time you look away, a billionaire grabs up one of your friends!”
“It’s true! Is it too much to ask that maybe one of my friends picks a thousandaire? Thousandaires are amazing! Sexy bartenders, hot musicians, sweaty construction workers, amazing veterinarians. I mean, pullllease. Millionaires and billionaires.”
Everybody’s laughing. “That’s why we love you, baby!” Mia says.
Kelsey says, “I’m still having a hard time picturing you with a guy in a limo.”
“Seriously, I didn’t know which way was up! I’d been in strict ballet boarding schools since the age of ten.” I point a baby carrot at them. “While you all were going to prom and football games and keggers and sleepovers. The only music I knew by heart was written two centuries ago by men in powdered wigs. Suddenly I’m on my own in the city of sin without a ten-hour-a-day regimen? And there are no weigh-ins? I was ready to go to clubs and date glamorous men and eat whatever I wanted.”
“Like Rumspringa,” Lizzie observes. “When Amish kids go into the real world and sow their wild oats.”
“I guess, yeah,” I say. “And the dancers in Beau Cirque were so hip and fun and I wanted to belong, and suddenly I did. Unless of course you asked Benny, sitting there zeroing in on me, all scowly and judgmental. I knew I could crumble or could turn it up to eleven right back at him.”
“You know he was probably in love with you,” Mia says. “You know that, right?”
“No way,” I say. “You had to be there.”
“You’re the beautiful, vivacious, wayward dancer. He was the sullen misfit, desperately in love with you.”
“Totally not how it was,” I say.
“The nerdy frenemy, pining for you,” she continues.
“He was not thinking along those lines, I promise you. His all-consuming focus was on his little inventions and his nerdy pursuits.”
“And you,” Lizzie puts in.
“And then like a fool I get drunk and throw myself at him. Because I guess I love being rejected by him.”
“And don’t forget marrying him,” Kelsey says.
I’m shaking my head.
“I still can’t get over you riding in limos,” Mia says.
Lizzie looks up from the laptop where she was doing her research. “You just would die a grisly death before you’d date a billionaire, wouldn’t you?” she asks. “Did you not say that once?”
“Well, it’s true,” I say. “I would die a grisly death before I dated a billionaire.”
Lizzie fixes me with a huge grin. “But would you marry one?”
“Hardly!” I snort. “Again, nothing against your guys!”
“Would you die a grisly death before you married a billionaire?” she asks me weirdly. “A grisly and horrific death?”
I shrug. “What can I say?”
“Well, Francine,” Lizzie crows, “not only is this your wedding shower and your bachelorette party, but I’m afraid it’s your funeral as well!”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Benny Frederick Stearnes, born in Detroit, Michigan...” She fixes me with a big grin.
“Right, that’s him!” I say. “He was from Detroit.”
“Here’s Forbes Magazine, an issue from five years ago—Tech entrepreneur Benjamin Stearnes unveiled his new microrobotic particle scavenger last month to a frenzy of excitement. The reduction of its energy source is a significant advantage for the tiny robots, which are designed to clean particular matter in manufacturing and industrial environments. This new innovation is sure to cement the billion-dollar company’s market share over the next five to ten years.”
“You are so full of shit,” I say. “You are making that up!”
“I’m not making it up! You think I could make something like that up on the fly?” Lizzie turns the laptop toward me.
I scan the article. “Maybe there’s another Benjamin Stearnes from Detroit.”
“There may be another Benjamin Stearnes from Detroit,” Lizzie says. “But no other Benjamin Stearnes shares your Benjamin Stearnes’s Social Security number.”
“No way,” I say. “I’m gonna need to see a picture. This is just...no way. Benny?”
“Gasp!” Tabitha says, staring into her phone. “Heart-eyes!”
“What?” Mia goes over and sets her chin on Tabitha’s shoulder. Her eyes go wide. “Erp!”
“Let me see!” I say.
Kelsey crowds in. “Francine! You’ve been holding out. Your secret billionaire husband is quite magnificent. He might be hotter than Antonio himself.”
“Stellina, you kill me,” Antonio says, clutching his heart.
I hold out my hand. “Come on, lemme see.”
Tabitha keeps it hidden, clutching her phone to her chest, eyes sparkling. “Francine, my friend, I shall now present your husband, billionaire industrialist Benny Stearnes.”
I take the phone with a harumph.
And time stops.
There in front of me, glowering out at me from the sparkly frame of Tabitha’s phone, is my long-lost frenemy, Benny.
He holds himself erect, gazing down at the camera lens with his same old annoyed scowl, his wonderful lips in their annoyed configuration, which means they’re extra-plumpy in the vaguest of frowns. He’s all filled out—strong jaw, thick, corded neck, jaw set hard. And where did those cheekbones come from? Did his entire face undergo a tectonic event? Those glasses that were too big for his face, giving him the look of a beetle—a large, gangly beetle—have been right-sized and switched to pale brown clear frames that look amazing on him. He’s managed to tame his dusty-brown hair. He’s…objectively hot.
Benny.
“What’s an industrialist?” Kelsey asks, as if from faraway land. “Wouldn’t he be more of a microroboticist or something?”
“I don’t know, I just wanted to use that word,” Mia says, also from a faraway land, possibly a faraway planet.
“Entrepreneur,” Lizzie suggests. “Tech entrepreneur.”
At this point, I’ve basically stopped processing language. I don’t know what to make of this Benny that I’m seeing before me. I can’t quite square this guy with my old frenemy, pondering some little robotics thing, rambling on how he’s 72.5% sure some component will fall apart.
Tabitha comes up behind me. “Nerd no more.”
Lizzie reads on: “We caught up with the notoriously publicity-averse Stearnes one afternoon while he was directing the launch of a new product, marshalling his troops with the demanding perfectionism that he has become known for—a remote, driven, intensely private visionary at the helm of one of the fastest growing firms of the year. Wow,” she adds. “One of his homes is right here in New York City.”
“Really?” I say.
“Stearnes is based in New York City, with residences in Los Angeles, Manhattan and Lucerne,” she reads.
“He’s right here in New York?” I ask.
“Lucerne must be where he has the chalet,” Kelsey says, reading her own phone. “Where he keeps his mentally enfeebled wife.”
I frown. “Mentally enfeebled wife?”
“Where do you see that?” Lizzie asks.
“The comments?” Kelsey says. “It’s all the comments are about.”
“You’re reading the comments?” Noelle asks, aghast. “Why are you reading the comments?”
“Because they’re the most interesting part?” Kelsey says, reading on. “It’s what everyone’s saying in the comments. Keeps his wife locked in his Swiss chalet. Why doesn’t that jackass free his wife? The photographer should go in there and free the wife.”
At this point, we’re all gathered around Kelsey, reading the comments.
“Ask Billionaire Bluebeard about his trapped wife!” Lizzie reads. “Journalistic malpractice!’”
Mia slings an arm around my shoulder. “Married to Billionaire Bluebeard! How about that?”
“Not. Funny.”
“What’s Bluebeard?” Jada asks.
“It’s a folktale,” Noelle says. “Bluebeard is a rich dude who has a closet full of dead wives. He marries them and kills them.”
“And you question our taste in billionaires!” Mia teases.
“I’m sure the enfeebled wife trapped in a Swiss chalet is just bull,” Tabitha says.
“No, there’s a reporter taking the search for his wife seriously,” Kelsey says. “One of these blogs has aerial photos…lemme find it again…”
“A Vegas wedding doesn’t count,” I protest. “You can get a drive-through wedding in Vegas as easily as you can get a cheeseburger and an order of fries.” I stare down at Benny’s picture, blood racing. “What if he doesn’t want to give me the divorce?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to sign for a quickie no-strings divorce,” Lizzie says. “I highly doubt you two signed a prenuptial. Some women would take him to the cleaners, sue him for a big chunk of his billion-dollar empire.”
“Agree,” Mia says. “If you present him with a no-strings divorce, he’ll won’t be able to sign it fast enough.”
“I’m gonna need a really messed-up T-shirt for this,” I say.