had a real failure of leadership," Ex said, "and that seems to underlie a lot of the trouble we've been having up to now too."
A failure of leadership. The phrase was like a gutpunch.
"We've been having trouble?" I said, trying to make it a joke.
"We have," Ex said. "For instance, let's look at the division of labor. Jake and I are setting up a secret hideout to hold off the bad guys, and you're... what? Clubbing? Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't seem like a very good use of time."
"Hey!" Aubrey said, frowning.
"That wasn't my idea," I said. My voice was higher and tighter than I'd expected it to be. "Karen suggested it."
"And there's another example," Ex said. "Karen. Was she the boss back there? Or were you? Or was Aubrey?"
"I think we should-" Chogyi Jake said, but Ex barreled over him.
"Everything fell apart because no one was in charge. Myself, I thought that since Karen was the one that called us in, she would at least be consulted before we went in and screwed everything up."
"What is your problem, Ex?" Aubrey said. "You're talking like everything that's gone wrong here is Jayn茅's fault."
"Well, there's a hypothesis," Ex said, his lip rising in a sneer. "Why don't we explore that."
Something in my brain hit overload, and the pain and shame and sorrow all shifted into rage. Ex was attacking me, kicking me when I was down. I was betrayed.
"Why don't we not," I said. "This was a bad idea. The postmortem can wait."
"And now, just like that," Ex said and snapped his fingers, "you're the boss again."
At the bar behind Chogyi Jake, an older man turned to look at us. The volume of our conversation was starting to rival the television. My hands were on my knees, fingers digging into my legs.
"Why are you doing this?" I said, keeping my voice down.
"I understand that you wanted to be like Karen," Ex said. "Karen's a very accomplished, experienced, wise woman. She's in control of her own sexuality in a way that nobody who's barely out of high school could be."
"My sexuality? How the fuck did my sexuality get into this?" I said, my voice buzzing with anger. "Jesus! Who's feeding you these lines? Is this Karen, because I'm pretty sure she already chewed me out."
"Just let me finish," Ex said. "I think you owe me that much. Karen is powerful, and she's sure of herself. It's perfectly understandable that someone who wasn't would overcompensate."
My rage topped out. It felt like calm. The exhaustion of travel, the humiliation of failure, the hurt of Ex's ambush-all of it fell away like shrugging off a jacket. The sound of the bar and television faded. I think I laughed.
"Walk away from this table," I said.
"No. You owe me at least-"
"Ex, you're fired. Now walk away," I said. All of us were silent for a heartbeat. "That powerful enough for you?"
Ex went pale, then flushed red, then pushed back from the table and stalked out into the terminal, his black shirt and pale ponytail vanishing into the river of humanity. None of us spoke. I finished Aubrey's rum-and-coke, walked to the nearest restroom, and sat in the stall with my head in my hands until it was time to board the plane.
Ex didn't make the flight.
I WOKE up in an unfamiliar room. The bed smelled like dust. The ceiling was canted oddly, like the dormer of an old house. Cream-colored paint took on the orange of the soft, translucent curtains. I didn't know who or where I was, and I had the sense that I didn't want to. I lay on my pillow, savoring the moment of sleep-induced amnesia. Something on my arm itched-a wide, ugly cut. And then like a lead weight pressed on my sternum, it all came back.
We'd reached the Savannah house after midnight. An envelope with the keys had been waiting for us under the front mat. We hadn't spoken on the flight. We barely talked on the way in. I'd walked through the house once to quell my only semirational fear that something or someone might be hiding in it, then found a bedroom, stripped down to T-shirt and underwear, curled up, and collapsed. My clothes were still in the pile by the door, and I pulled on my jeans before venturing out.
The bathroom was just down the hall, and someone had laid out my travel pack and robe. I showered, brushed my hair, brushed my teeth. All the little