Bright Young Women(93)

Tina got a room next to mine, but she ended up using it only to shower. Back then most hotel rooms featured two beds, and we stayed up late into the night, the digital clock on the nightstand between us illuminating the time in that old phosphorous green, talking until we fell asleep.

The first morning back in Tallahassee, we woke early, arriving on Carl’s doorstep before he would leave for work. Tina knocked, looked over at me, and asked, “Ready?” I was nodding when Carl opened the door.

“Pamela,” Carl said, the blood draining from his face. I am known to have that effect on people. “What are you… How do you know where I live?”

I gave him a strange look. “You gave me your address so we could write. Though only one of us seems to be doing that these days.”

“Right.” Carl patted his hair into place, damp from the shower. “It’s been a busy time. Sorry about that.”

“I’m in town for the deposition,” I said. “Thought I’d pop by, see how the Colorado story was coming along.”

“Can we come in for a moment?” Tina asked.

Carl glanced over his shoulder in a clandestine manner. “Well, the place is a mess.”

“We don’t judge,” Tina said. Speak for yourself, I thought.

“Uh, sure. Just give me a minute.” Carl closed the door in our faces.

I turned to Tina. The hair that was growing back was inscrutably textured—not straight, like it was everywhere else, but not exactly curly either. Crimped, I’d realize when the style became a trend in the next decade. For the rest of her life, Tina would sport two unruly stripes on either side of her head, like an electrocuted skunk.

“He doesn’t seem guilty at all,” she said, deadpan.

“Not in the least,” I agreed.

We waited on the front stoop for several minutes, made to feel like traveling evangelicals, lifting our hands and waving sheepishly at a neighbor who ambled by on a morning walk with her dog. It was one of those archetypally perfect family dogs, a yellow smiling thing, and I watched as it took a hard left into Carl’s yard, where it hunched up and deposited a runny shit next to the azalea bushes. I was about to tell the neighbor not to worry about cleaning it up when a woman driving a white convertible turned into Carl’s driveway and climbed out of the car. The neighbor and the driver exchanged greetings and exclaimed over the dog together, who awaooed and pawed at the driver’s thighs as though he had missed her terribly.

The woman crossed the lawn, picking animal hair out of her clothing and smiling. “Hello?” she said to us curiously. She was older than Carl by about ten years, pretty in a faded kind of way, or maybe that was just my competitive side talking.

“We’re friends of Carl’s,” Tina explained curtly.

The woman wiped her shoes on the welcome mat and opened the door, calling, “Carl! You have guests.” She held the door for us. Tina hooked her arm through mine and took me inside with her just as Carl came jogging down the stairs. The house was cramped but lovingly maintained, and though the couch cushions needed fluffing and there were several pairs of shoes heaped in a pile next to the coat rack, the place was hardly a mess, even by my standards.

“Oh, okay. Yeah.” Carl was flustered. “Hey, Lynette,” he said to the woman as they passed each other on the stairs. The whole exchange was befuddling to me. Their dynamic did not seem romantic in the least, and yet they had to live together; otherwise, she wouldn’t feel comfortable going upstairs on her own. Roommates, maybe. His sister?

“There’s coffee made,” Carl said, clearly wanting to avoid the subject of Lynette. I had so many questions for him that I knew I had to pick my battles, and Lynette was not one worth fighting.

“That would be great,” Tina said. We followed him into the kitchen, sun-warmed via a sliding glass door that would be so easy to shatter. I stared at that glass door, quietly seething at the discrepancy in our threat levels, that Carl could write the fawning twaddle he did only because his was tuned so low.

“Milk? Sugar?” Carl asked, stalling before the open refrigerator.

“Sugar,” I said.

“Black,” said Tina.

Carl placed a dented box of white sugar on the kitchen table and poured us each a mug. Cold. On top of being a turncoat, he was a lousy host. This was the thing that undid me.

“What’s going on, Carl?” I asked bluntly. “You’re avoiding my calls. You stopped answering my letters. And what you’re writing about him—I thought journalists were supposed to be unbiased.”

Carl returned the carafe to the coffeemaker and faced me slowly. “Do you not see, Pamela”—he was speaking in this pandering tone that made me want to throw my cold coffee in his face—“the irony in saying that to me when you’re so clearly biased?”

“You wrote that he was working his way through law school,” I pandered right back. I didn’t need to scream and shout; I didn’t even need to raise my voice, the facts were that loud. “But working where?” I made my eyes big—this wasn’t a rhetorical question. I wanted him to give me an answer.

“I’d have to check my notes,” he said.

Tina groaned like someone had made a corny joke.

“I’ll save you the trouble,” I said. “He was collecting unemployment checks, Carl. And stealing antique rugs from nice hotels on the side.”