Last night had been exhilarating. Not the sex—Nick had been altogether too stoned and too floppy. But the entire evening had been a revelation. She’d been Helen. She’d actually been her.
What had at first disappointed Florence about the scene—the shabbiness of the surroundings, the charmlessness of the company—had turned out to be the perfect environment in which to incubate her new self. Disdain, after all, has always been a useful stepping-stone to confidence, and that was what was required of her now. Something verging on hubris, not her usual muck of insecurity and self-doubt. Among the Helen Wilcoxes and Amanda Lincolns of the world, Florence was used to feeling small and inadequate. But last night, she’d had the sense that Meg and Nick and that girl who’d asked her for writing advice had actually been impressed by her. The power had been in her hands for once.
Helen had loved power. Not physical power; that was irrelevant. Emotional power, psychological power—that was her currency. She’d enjoyed exercising it just as a musician or a dancer takes simple, sheer pleasure in his craft. In conversation, Helen had dictated the direction and the tone. She constantly withheld information for no good reason, and she’d loved to throw Florence off guard with outlandish assertions. Even Mississippi Foxtrot was, at its heart, an exploration of power—first the power that lecherous Frank wields over Ruby, and then Maud’s, after she wrests it away from him in a single act of violence.
Florence’s own attempts to master interpersonal power dynamics had often floundered. Her friendships in middle and high school had been based on little more than a shared fear of absolute alienation. In college, she’d made friends in her English classes but none that she developed any particular closeness with. She’d always needed to retreat into solitude after spending a few hours in anyone else’s company.
This, then, was someplace she could practice a new way of being in the world; a way of relating to people not as a supplicant but as the object of supplication herself.
Just calling herself by a different name, a name that was for her associated with such magnetism and strength, had retuned the whole tenor of her being. She’d felt…transfigured. Even among people who didn’t matter, who didn’t know that Helen was a world-famous writer; even alone in the back of the taxi on the way home. Putting on the guise of Helen, she really had felt more commanding, more interesting, more worthy in every possible way. Oddly, she felt more like herself—more like the woman she had always suspected was somewhere inside her.
She’d even seduced Nick, just to see if she could. She, who’d only ever been the mark, if rarely that.
Florence took a sip of orange juice and swished it around her mouth to get rid of the nicotine taste. She moved from the breakfast table to the desk inside where the laptop was set up. There was another email from Greta, this time to her own account:
Hi Florence,
How’s Maud doing today? Think she can get on the phone? I don’t want to bother her while she’s ill, but I just found out that TPR would want to publish the interview in the Fall issue so we’re working with a bit of a time crunch here.
It dawned on Florence: TPR was The Paris Review, the quarterly literary journal known for its in-depth interviews with famous authors.
In her earlier email Greta had said she wanted to discuss TPR “in further detail.” Did that mean Helen had agreed to do an interview? Florence frowned. That didn’t make any sense. Helen had no need to justify herself or her work. She wasn’t that type of person. Was she going to use her real name, reveal her identity? The Paris Review had published an anonymous interview before—using just the writer’s pen name—but only once.
She did a quick search of Helen’s inbox; there were no other emails that mentioned The Paris Review. She went upstairs and rooted around Helen’s room for her personal laptop; she’d caught a glimpse of it in Helen’s carry-on at the airport. She found it fairly quickly, in the drawer of the bedside table, but when she opened it, she was thwarted by the same password request that had stopped her when she’d been snooping in Cairo. Florence typed in a few feeble attempts: MississippiFoxtrot, Jenny, Ruby. None of them worked.
Back at the computer downstairs, Florence wrote to Greta:
Maud’s still sick, unfortunately. But she did say that she’s having second thoughts about the interview.
There was no way she could do the interview.
A few seconds later, an email pinged back. She looked at her watch. It was five in the morning in New York. On a Sunday.
Florence, can you give me a call?
Florence clenched her jaw. She hated talking on the phone. There was no time to plan and refine what you were going to say. Maybe that’s what other people liked about it; Greta didn’t seem like a person who self-edited. Florence trudged reluctantly into the kitchen where the house phone was and dialed the number Greta had included in her email.
“Hi, Florence,” said the familiar husky voice.
“Hi, Greta. It’s early there.”
“Oh, I never sleep past five. One of the hazards of getting older. So what’s going on with Helen?”
“She ate some bad octopus.”
“And she can’t even come to the phone?”
“She basically hasn’t moved from the bathroom floor in twenty-four hours.”
“That doesn’t sound good. Have you called a doctor?”
“Yes, of course. He just said to keep her hydrated.”
“Twenty-four hours is a long time to be that ill. I think you should consider going back to Marrakesh. I can call the hospital there and tell them to expect you. I can’t imagine the one where you are is much better than a Civil War tent.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“You’ve been?”
“Oh. Yeah. I took Helen yesterday.”
“And?”
“That was when they told us to keep her hydrated.”
“Hm.” There was a long pause. “You said something about Helen having second thoughts about the Paris Review interview.”
“Yes. She said she changed her mind. She doesn’t want to do it anymore.”
“Interesting.” She paused again. “You know, she hadn’t even agreed to it yet. I was still trying to convince her that it was a good idea. So her mind, it seems, is unchanged. If I have my facts straight.”
Fuck. “Oh, really?”
“Really.”
“That’s weird. Maybe she misspoke. She’s really out of it. Kind of delirious.”
“Hmm.”
Another pause.
“Florence, I’ll admit it, you have me worried. You say that Helen is delirious, she can’t come to the phone, she hasn’t moved from the bathroom floor. None of this sounds good. I really urge you to go back to Marrakesh to get some treatment. Lauren would be happy to make arrangements for you. I could have a car come pick you up today.”
“No… She’ll be okay, I think. I’ll ask her, but she’s been pretty adamant about staying here and finishing the research.”
“From the way you’ve described it, it sounds like perhaps Helen is not in the right frame of mind to be making these decisions for herself. Listen, Florence, you’re young, and Helen can be intimidating, I know that. But making sure Helen is taken care of and gets healthy is more important than being on her bad side for a few hours.”