I didn’t like the movie.
It was one of those art house films about a girl who was different, growing up, brave enough to be herself. It kind of made me nauseous how earnest and quirky and well done it was. I was supposed to love it, I knew. Jane and Winnie would have loved it. And this was why I had a job in finance. Why I was not in the arts. I was way too fucking cynical. I would rather have a chase scene in my movie. An actual movie star. I would have taken a black character, for fuck’s sake. The sidekick best friend was overweight instead. She was cute actually.
Rachel Klein, of course, loved the movie. Jonathan Klein kept looking at his phone. He sent more than one text, which was very bad movie behavior. Something was going on with him, obviously. There had been no crisis at work. The woman in the row behind hissed at him every time.
“Cunt,” my boss whispered under his breath.
It was a bad choice of words, not that I wasn’t used to it. Guys at work, this language, it was all the time. I could give a shit. I felt bad for Rachel, because this was her father and she must have heard him. It was terrible to have to realize that your father was a shit. My father had died when I was in high school and maybe because he was dead, he had been become perfect in my mind. A saint. The very best dad. He had married a black woman before it was okay to marry out of your race. But our whole childhood, somehow, it had been okay. Life in a midwestern college town. A happy bubble. I had had a happy childhood. My father would never have called a woman a cunt.
I guess I did give a shit. It was at that moment, when my boss thoughtlessly cursed a woman under his breath, using a word that derogatorily described her genitalia, that I realized I didn’t like him. I realized I might want to get another job. After I got my bonus.
In the taxi on the way to the theater, Jonathan had said how glad he was that his daughter had met me. He said that I was a good influence. This, of course, was after he learned that I was a lesbian. But I did not give him points for that. It was okay that I was a lesbian because I was the femme kind. It was the same way that I was black, the good kind, attractive and well educated. I wanted to say something to blow his mind. I wanted to channel some radical Kristi rhetoric and bust out some Angela Davis black feminist manifesto, but I didn’t have the vocabulary.
“She doesn’t know what she is majoring in,” Jonathan had said, as if this were a real problem.
This clearly annoyed his daughter. A recurring conversation. Rachel glared at him. She was wearing a black T-shirt and tan Capri pants, her long brown hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, a style as boring and nondescript as clothes could be. Still, she was pretty. She was young and she was effortlessly pretty in a way that suggested she did not know how pretty she was. She was not what I would have expected. I had always been suspicious of rich kids. Rachel Klein seemed all right. She was, I realized with a start, the student, the one Zahid had messed around with. I felt something catch in my throat. Poor kid, I wanted to say, then and there. I wanted to kiss the top of her head. Zahid should have known better.
I gave her my business card.
“Because I am, like, a mentor figure and all that,” I said.
I didn’t think she would ever call me.
On the way home, I stopped off at a bar in my neighborhood. I wanted a drink, two drinks, maybe possibly three. I felt loose and free, glad to be away from the Kleins, my boss and Rachel, with her sad kitten face. I had a feeling that anything that involved Zahid Azzam would turn to shit.
This made me want to protect Jane. She somehow believed she needed his next book. This was the dumbest thing I had ever heard. She was a great editor, the editor of many successful books. Jane did not need Zahid. I knew the real Zahid. I had seen him puke all over his own home.
I had not heard from Jane in a couple of days. I did not know what the rules were. Obviously, Jane wanted to maintain some distance, and I would respect that, stupid as it was. I was waiting for her to call me. That was why I’d gone to the movies.
I was not going to go home with anyone I met at the bar, no matter how cute she was, because I was with Jane. But I could always buy a woman a drink. I was making up rules in my head when I opened the door and saw Jane and Winnie, deep in conversation at a booth in the back of the bar, sitting next to each other instead of across the table. Jane’s hand was stroking Winnie’s hand, a hand that was on Winnie’s knee. The intimacy of this told me everything, explained why Jane had not called, had not answered my texts.
Jesus fuck. Fucking hell. I had put an end to that. I had taken Jane home from the literary party and she was with me.
I was going to turn around, leave, but they saw me.
“Oh,” I said.
Winnie waved me over. Jane removed her hand from Winnie’s hand. Honestly, this kind of shit did not happen to me. I was tall and biracial and sexy. But then there was Winnie. Her blond hair fell straight like a pane of glass. This was who my Jewish babysitter wanted? I had planned on seducing Winnie, with the idea of making Jane jealous, but had gone home with Jane instead. No more games, I had thought, and now this. This. Motherfucking fuck.
I stood there, just inside the bar, where I had so desperately wanted a drink. The air-conditioning felt much too cold. Kristi had been so psyched for me. She had understood. The babysitter, she’d squealed, and I had squealed with her. I had told Kristi about Jane and I had fucking sabotaged myself. I knew better than to tell Kristi anything anymore and I’d told her anyway.
After all these years, Jane still didn’t see me as a person. I was still that little kid. I remember giggling, reading books, snuggling under the covers, refusing to let her go, begging her to stay in my bed with me until I fell asleep. I remember Jane kissing my nose, kissing my ears, kissing my toes. Go to sleep, sweet Khloe, she said, and I would beg her to kiss me some more. Fuck, I was blinking away tears.
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do.
Get a drink and bring it over to the booth in the back.
Get a drink and sit at the bar.
Turn the fuck around.
That seemed like the best option. Even though they had seen me. Even though I desperately wanted that drink.
“Khloe,” Jane said. “Come here. Come sit with us. Let’s talk. This is fine. This is okay. We are all friends. Come here.”
Oh. So we were supposed to be mature. That was how we were supposed to play it.
“Please,” Jane said. “Please. Come sit down.”
I walked the fuck out of the bar.
I got a text message.
I thought it would be from Jane, apologizing.
It was from Rachel. Rachel Klein.
How the fuck did she get my number?
I had given her my card.
I was back in Zahid’s apartment, drinking beer. I’d finished an entire beer in three sips and then opened another.
Rachel: I figured out who you look like.
Me: Who?
Rachel: This writer I love. Kristi Taylor.
I spit out my beer. First popcorn, then this. Fuck.
Me: I am her twin sister.
Rachel: Holy shit. Identical?
Me: I dress better.
Rachel: I didn’t know she had a twin.
This had already happened to me a couple of times this summer. Kristi had always acted like she was famous, she talked about that literary prize as if it should mean something to me, but I had never believed her until I’d moved to Brooklyn.
Rachel: This may sound weird. But would you want to go out for coffee?
I thought about Jane and Winnie at the bar, Jane’s hand on Winnie’s knee. I cracked open another beer. If I had to pick between beer and coffee, I would pick beer. I felt good about this. I nodded to myself, as if I had made an important decision. I would rather drink beer.
Me: Drink?
Rachel: Sure. If you’re buying. I am ever so slightly underage.
Me: How old?
Rachel: 19
I could deal with that. I had no interest in drinking coffee as a social activity. Going out for coffee was a cultural activity I did not understand. A waste of time.
Me: Sure. I will buy you alcohol.
Rachel: I could get you in trouble at work. With my father. Not worth it?
I stared at my beer. I was not the kind of person who got cheated on. I was also way the fuck hotter than Jane. I was just as hot as Winnie. Hotter. Fuck. I made more money than both of them. Still, she had not chosen me.
Now I had this little girl sending me texts. Leading me on and then cautioning me. What the fuck? I was not a child molester. I was better than that.
I was not going to fucking get into trouble.
I was not an asshole like Zahid.
The boss’s daughter. Why was she writing me? I wouldn’t fuck her. I could be like a mentor, couldn’t I? Isn’t that what I’d told her? I could steer her out of the arts before it was too late. I could steer her away from playboys like Zahid. I could help her, sure, but why would I do that? I didn’t need to get involved with the boss’s daughter, even if I wasn’t going to fuck her, even if she had read the novel written by my twin sister, a book Kristi never should have fucking published, a book about the year I came out. It was my coming-out story, including flashbacks about me and my babysitter, tuck-ins and trips to the lake. Things I had told Kristi never realizing that she would one day write about me. I didn’t know what Jane thought of this book, if she had recognized herself in any way. I had never asked her. My twin sister had stolen my fucking life for her career. She thought I wouldn’t care, since I didn’t read books or hang out with people who read books.
I cared.
Of course I’d read the book. I had read the reviews, too, critics pronouncing the main character, based on me, to be unsympathetic. Cold. Calculating. Amoral. Borderline sociopath. In the book, I had been molested by my babysitter, but that was not what had happened. Not exactly.
I wondered why I talked to either of them.
Jane.
Kristi.
I was done with them both.
We were over. I had decided, even if they had no idea. I stared at my phone. I was done waiting for Jane. My involvement with all of these literary people was starting to affect my judgment.
And then, Rachel? She was the student who’d taken in Zahid’s dog. Was she sleeping with him, still? Zahid was taking walks with the girl’s mother. Why the fuck was this something I was even thinking about? If I could change one thing in my life, I would not be a fucking identical twin.
My phone vibrated on the table.
I looked.
Again, not Jane with a forthcoming apology. Not that I would forgive her. It was Rachel. Again. I wanted it to be Jane.
Rachel: Forget drink. Want to go to the beach? Come to Ct? It’s not far. You can take the train. It’s pretty here?
The beach? With Rachel Klein. Not a chance.
But I had not been to the beach once this fucking summer. Not one single fucking time. I had been working and I had been drinking and trying to seduce my babysitter and working.
Me: Maybe. I might. Sure.
Why the fuck not? That is what I told myself. I got up and took another beer from the refrigerator. It was cold and good. I was getting drunk. I was still waiting for that text from Jane. Fuck, I was waiting for a knock on the fucking door. The bar was just around the corner. She should be here by now, begging me to forgive her. Begging to get into my bed.
The knock did not come.
My phone vibrated.
It was from Rachel Klein, again, a link to train schedules. I was not going to hear from Jane. So I opened Facebook. I went to Jane’s FB page. There was a link to some article about one of her writers. Then a picture of her cat. She was a fucking lesbian posting pictures of her cat. I scrolled down and, yes, there was another fucking picture of her cat.
I scrolled farther down and someone had tagged Jane in a photo. It was a picture of Jane and Winnie at some book party, their arms around each other. This picture had been posted a week and a half ago. They were both wearing black dresses. I recognized the dresses. They were from the night I went home with Jane.
But they weren’t a couple, they were co-workers. Winnie was experimenting. She had a boyfriend. The night we met, she had told me about her boyfriend. She had shown me a picture of him on her phone and he was as handsome as she was pretty. I was the one who was in love with Jane. I had been in love with Jane since I was five years old.
What the fuck?
Was I supposed to go to sleep?
How was I supposed to go to sleep?
I closed my eyes and I could see Jane’s hand on Winnie’s knee. I scanned my Facebook feed. I had three hundred–something friends; I didn’t even know who the fuck they were. I was almost never on Facebook.
Somehow, all the posts were about guns.
Not again.
I am praying for Texas.
26 people.
Gun control. Blah blah blah. Something had happened. What else was new? So I went to The New York Times. There had, of course, been another mass shooting. The shooter had been another white man. Fuck white men. But I knew this already. I was a lesbian, for fuck’s sake.
The news of the world would get you sick. I tried not to read it, except for the business section, which told me everything I needed to know, anyway.
I didn’t click on the actual article. What the fuck did this shooting have to do with me? I drank more beer. Fucking guns. Fucking white men. I worked almost exclusively with fucking white men.
Why had I chosen this work? I wanted the money. I loved money. I loved a stack of fresh bills. I loved buying white silk shirts from French designers. Three-hundred-dollar shirts. They gave me a thrill.
Still.
Fuck.
I finished my beer. How many beers had it been?
I was drunk and I was heartsick.
She did not love me.