The plastic bag Elsie handed her in the manager’s office holds a wall charger and an extra battery from the GPS monitoring company. She plugs it into the living room wall, then plops down on the sofa with a heavy sigh. It feels good to sit on something not made entirely of metal, but the ugly black band around her ankle feels strange. She can only take it off for fifteen minutes a day to shower, and the mere thought of constantly having it on makes her skin itch. If Jimmy were here, he’d say something funny, make some kind of joke to lighten her mood.
She looks over at the door, half expecting him to be there. It feels like he could let himself in at any minute, wearing his palm-tree swim trunks, a towel around his neck, his hair wet from the hotel pool as he tosses his key card onto the table. Babe, hurry up. The breakfast buffet ends in thirty minutes, and they got an omelet station.
The sadness radiates throughout Paris’s whole body, filling her up and hollowing her out at the same time. She might feel some relief if she could just cry, but the tears refuse to come. You don’t stop with that baby shit I swear to God I’m going to punch you in the face.
She breaks off a banana from the basket and pokes through the shopping bags Zoe has left for her while she eats it. She has to admit, Jimmy’s assistant has come through. She bought Paris a new iPhone, still in the box, with her new cell number scrawled on a sticky note. There are also T-shirts, leggings, pajamas, underwear, and all her regular toiletries and skincare products. She even went to the post office and picked up Jimmy’s fan mail, which is what’s in the large cardboard box.
Everything but the fan mail is great.
Paris is confused. Zoe was the one who called her a murderer and screamed for the police to arrest her. So what the hell is all this? An apology?
She hears a soft ping coming from the box with her new iPhone in it. Zoe must have set it up already, which shouldn’t surprise her, because this is the exact kind of thing Jimmy paid her to do. Her job was to anticipate Jimmy’s needs, and now she’s doing the same for Paris.
She plucks the phone out of the box. There’s one new text message.
Hi Paris. I hope you have everything you need. I know I made things worse yesterday, and I am so sorry. Jimmy would be disappointed in me. Please call or text me anytime if there’s anything I can do for you. I’m still on the payroll, and Jimmy would want me to help you. Stay strong.—Zoe
Aha. Finally, that explains it.
Zoe, who’s technically an employee of Jimmy’s corporation, doesn’t want to lose her job. After all, she can’t get her five million dollars until the will is probated, and Elsie explained that won’t happen until after the trial. In the meantime, she still has bills to pay, and she must think Paris has some kind of say in her employment. She’d be wrong. Paris has never been involved in any part of her husband’s business, and she has no idea what will happen to Jimmy’s corporation now that he’s gone.
But Zoe doesn’t know that.
Paris starts typing, then rereads her text to make sure it’s worded exactly right. Short and sweet. She hits send and allows herself a small smile. Oh, this feels good.
Hi Zoe. Thanks for the phone. You’re fired.
* * *
After a room-service dinner and a long, hot shower, Paris puts on her new pajamas and turns on the TV in the living room. She’s managed to avoid the television up until now, but she’s too tired to read and too anxious to sleep. A movie might take her mind off things. She flips quickly past the news stations, afraid she’ll see herself, only to realize that it’s not just the news she needs to worry about.
It’s Kimmel.
Despite her brain screaming at her not to watch, Paris stops on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and turns up the volume. The talk show host—her Jimmy’s favorite Jimmy—is showing the audience Paris’s arrest video from TikTok as part of his monologue. It looks even worse than she feared, especially when Kimmel freezes the video and zooms in on her slippers, with their stupid pink feathers blowing around in the breeze.
“Three hundred dollars for a pair of Fraggle Rock slippers,” Kimmel crows. “That’s insane. If a crime has been committed, it’s on the ostriches who are walking around naked.”
Big laughs from the audience. The irony is, Jimmy would have found the joke hilarious. Things like this never bothered him. It’s a compliment when they roast you. It means they give a shit. If that’s true, then Paris is a few days away from being a Saturday Night Live skit.
She turns off the TV and looks out the window. The lights of the city are pretty, but the view is nowhere near as nice as the one she has at home. It’s too dark to see Mount Rainier in the distance, but it’s comforting to know that it’s there. Just like Jimmy used to be.