career as you worked at different magazines. And…and then one time you mentioned you were going to a reading and I decided to go, just to see you in person all those years later. Once I looked different enough, thanks to the hair and the nose job…and when I was sure you didn’t remember anything.”
A nose job! This feels wrong, a dirty trick.
“And maybe you could tell how much I wanted you to talk to me or something, because you came right up to me! You remember, you were there.” She chuckles. “I was so fascinated by everything you had to say.”
“I remember that,” I offer. “It was fun! And then we got lunch.”
“Fraunces Tavern on a weekday. It was fun.” She rests her chin on her palm. “There was also this weird feeling that as long as I was there with you, I had a better shot at staying hidden. I could keep closer tabs on what you knew, right?”
Has the friendship really been that one-sided, me blathering away, her taking it in like a drain? “So the way we became friends is kind of crazy,” I say, “but I still wouldn’t trade it for anything. You’re my best friend, Tessa.”
She stares at me, then breaks into a little smile, and then starts to giggle. “I never liked having to go by my middle name, you know,” she says. “You don’t even know my name, Lindsay.”
I don’t know what to say, so what comes out is, “Well you don’t know my real name, either,” which isn’t true and doesn’t make any sense, but it does shut her up.
“Sorry this is taking so long,” she says, like she’s a hostess at a restaurant, like the table should be ready by now. “I just don’t really wanna…I can’t think this through until you’re out. For good, not for two minutes like before.”
I focus all my attention, thinkthinkthinkthinkthink, then remember a question.
I signal toward the computer with my chin. “You look pretty happy in that photo with Edie,” I say, because I’m wily, Wile E. Coyote, oh shit that’s why that’s his name. “You were roommates, right?”
She gazes at it. Finally, a nod. “I knew her before that, through Sarah,” she says. “Sarah and I were roommates first, with these two other girls. Then one moved out and Edie moved in.” She whips her head toward me. “I was pretty happy with Sarah being several states away. I was not thrilled to hear that she’d moved back.”
I work on it like a knot until it comes loose: that old apartment in Calhoun, the one pre-SAKE, with Sarah and Edie and two other women in it. One of them here in front of me.
“And you guys were friends?”
“I thought she was so cool, with her pretty hair and that gap in her teeth.” I meant Sarah, so it takes me a minute to realize she’s referring to Edie. “Out of everyone in the apartment, she and I were closest,” Tessa is saying. “We’d stay up late at night after everyone else had gone to bed, drinking and talking. It was like a sleepover all the time.”
“So what happened?” I prompt.
“We…I fucked up.” Tessa’s hand floats up to touch her collar, her eyebrows, her words finally slithering out from between her fingers. “She started dating that loser, Greg. Did you know she met him on Craigslist?” She waits for me to respond and I shake my head, shooting my eyebrows up like I’m astonished. “He was, like, ten years older than her and basically this sugar daddy, buying her nice stuff and taking her out for nice meals and never wanting to hang out with us—never wanting her to hang out with us. She just acted so different around him, so on edge. She was so busy trying to impress him that she stopped going to school, which is about the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. And he never made any effort to get to know us. Like Calhoun was this disgusting cesspool and we were these stupid little pieces of shit living inside it, weighing Edie down.”
“And you hated her for picking him?” I offer.
“I didn’t hate her,” she says, like I’m an idiot. “I hated how he treated her.”
“So you tried to break them up?”
“In the sense that I tried to help Edie realize how lame he was, sure. But you know how she was.” She nods knowingly, conspiratorially, like we’re war buddies gossiping about our commanding officer. I imagine