I said—and it’s not as if I’d thought about this much, I was doing the math for the first time—“Did you hear these stories before she died, or after?”
“After? I guess? But—”
“Right. Because everyone wants to be part of the action. Something like this happens, and everyone has a story, one time they saw something important.” Like me, with the dumpsters.
Fran said, “Or maybe it was one of those things it turned out everyone knew all along. And Bodie, remember: There was DNA.”
“Right,” I said. I’d actually forgotten, for a moment. “There was DNA.”
A Honda Civic pulled up, flashed its lights.
Fran said, “That’s Amber. And listen: I love you even when you’re a mess.”
29
Here’s a joke for you.
Two girls and a boy walk into a bar. They’re not supposed to be there.
One of the girls is a round-faced quasi goth; one is loud and laughing, frumpy in overalls, Sharpied mandalas on the backs of her hands. The boy is wiry and alert, always tilted forward, looking for his next wisecrack like an animal watching for prey.
The bar is in Kern, and while it’s indeed a bar, they also serve fried cheese in baskets, mountains of nachos—so at least until the drinks are in front of them, the kids have plausible deniability.
The punch line is coming. Wait for it.
The boy bellies up and orders, because although he’s short he has a full chin of stubble, a decent fake ID, a voice like a rolling barrel of rocks. He orders three gin and tonics and the nachos, returns triumphant with his fingers around three glasses full of what might, passably, be Sprite and lime.
He says, “Give me your swizzle sticks,” and tosses them under the table.
The loud girl says, “Is it supposed to be this sweet?”
The teacher who drove the Dragon Wagon into Kern has told them she’ll be at the Chinese restaurant, that if they’re not back at the van in the Hannaford lot at eight sharp she’s leaving without them, although they can’t imagine this is true.
The boy is worried the teacher will stop by the bar.
“She has to stay put,” the goth girl assures him, “because if she, like, roves around town, no one can find her in an emergency.”
Other kids have taken off in other directions. A group of girls went into the grocery store; two boys went Lord knew where to smoke; some kids went for pizza; the star skier and his girlfriend headed in the direction of the diner that’s only good for pancakes.
But: Here they are now. A skier and a dead girl walk into the bar. The dead girl doesn’t know she’s dead.
“Oh, shit,” the loud girl whispers, and the three of them angle into their booth and away from the bar, where the dead girl and the skier stand to order, but they still watch what happens.
The skier’s hand is on the small of her back, as it so often is. （“It’s great that he offers her such lumbar support,” the boy whispers.）
The skier speaks to the bartender, and the bartender leans forward, both hands on the bar, asking something, eyebrows raised. The skier is arguing now, the bartender laughing, shaking his head. He’s not going to serve them, no way. The skier pats his empty back pocket; the dead girl makes a show of looking in her little blue purse. Nope.
The boy in the booth says, “How does Serenho not have an ID?”
The dead girl pulls the skier’s arm; she wants to go. He pushes her hand away, says “Get the fuck off me!” loud enough that these kids hear it.
The dead girl storms past the booth to the bathrooms. The skier turns on his heel and leaves.
The kids in the booth whisper about what happened, but they’re on other topics by the time the dead girl emerges, glassy eyes scanning the bar. Then she sees them and composes herself, stops at their table.
“How are you all?” she says. Poised, nearly passing as happy.
She picks up the boy’s glass, sniffs it, takes a sip. “Naughty, naughty!” she says, and wags a finger at him. “How did you—”
The boy turns red. He says, “I can, uh—I actually make fake IDs. I have a laminator in the darkroom. If you ever—”
The dead girl laughs. Then she says, “Oh my God, wait, could you make one for Robbie?”
“Yeah.” The boy shrugs. “I’d just need him to come in for a picture.”
“Shoot, no,” she says. “I want to surprise him. What if—what if I brought you a picture, like from an old bus pass or something?”
“It would be way less convincing,” the boy says, “but I could try.”
His friends know he usually charges fifty dollars a card, but he doesn’t mention money.
She says, “Could you do it by next weekend? Because next Monday is his birthday.”
The boy nods. “I’ll be there all day Saturday. I can do one for you, too, if you want.”
When the dead girl leaves, the loud girl will say, “Oh my God, you were like, Come pose for me! Be my muse!” and the goth girl will crack up.
But right now the dead girl is thanking him, saying a week is surely enough time to find a decent photo of the skier, or maybe she can take one herself on some pretext. She says, “Did you see where Dorian went?” and the goth girl feels a fist in her stomach at the name, at the suggestion that she would track Dorian Culler’s movements. She knows he went to smoke, but doesn’t say it. “I’m gonna go find Dorian,” the dead girl says, as if making up her mind to do something wild and brave. “If Robbie comes back, tell him that.” She says, “Okay, Geoff, next Saturday.” Then she walks out the door, and as soon as she’s gone, the boy’s friends launch into imitations of her and him both.
Oh, wait, the punch line:
The dead girl will never get her ID, because by Saturday she’ll be dead.
30
If you’re going to drink too much and feel like crap the next day, the least your body can do is pass out early so you can sleep it off. But mine refused. I ran a bath and sank into it with a sheet mask on, the room dark except for my phone. My head was a mess.
Twitter had been busy—a new post had dozens of retweets, some tagging me:
Jerome Wager paid for my drink, when I had NOT asked him to, at an offsite event @ArtBasel Miami, then informed me 2x he’d paid for said drink. Implications were clear.
This sounded plausible in all but the interpretation—the kind of thing Jerome might have done when buzzed. He’d have seen himself as a humble underdog begging the attention of a beautiful woman. She might have seen him as an established artist asking for an exchange.
Another woman had written:
After a friend of mine had her baby, #JeromeWager complimented her figure “snapping back” and looked at her stomach in a way that made her feel sexualized and belittled. I won’t name her unless she wants to be named.
Oh, Jerome. I would have stopped him if I’d seen that, would have explained on the way home why that was inappropriate.
I did have some follow-up questions that would never be answered. Did he stare? Did he glance? Did he ogle? Did he corner her alone at one a.m. in a bar? Or did he say this in front of other people, other women who might have joined in the chorus? That last was the likeliest. Jerome had a habit of talking like he was one of the girls, something fairly normalized for men in the art world.