Bad News

When I finally get her on the phone, Tara says she can meet me tonight before she goes to the Dry Martini, a place with one of the signs she’s using for her gallery show. It’s a big blue neon martini glass jauntily tipped, with a blinking green olive inside. She’s taking a bunch of pictures of it tonight after work. She tells me to swing by at 6:30 and we’ll head over and have a drink and talk. I tell her I’ve got some bad news.

“Are you okay?” she says.

“Sort of,” I say.

“What is it?”

“I was robbed,” I say.

“But you’re okay?”

I tell her, yes, I’m okay. And I’m touched that it was her first question. But then I tell her everything, about the tape and it being copied and sent out into the world.

She takes in a breath of recognition. Then she laughs.

“Jesus,” she says. “What if Jenny sees it?”

I tell her if Jenny were browsing the puking section of a porno-video store, I don’t think she’d have a problem.

“I guess you have a point,” she says. I hear her breathing slowly, like she’s trying to stay calm. “This is just great,” she says. “How many copies?”

I tell her what Scooter told me.

“Fuck,” she says, and laughs again. “I can’t talk about this now,” she says. “I can’t even think about this right now.”

I start to say something and she says, “Look, we’ll talk tonight, okay? I’m at work and I can’t go into this here.”

Before I can give an answer, she’s off the phone.