a reminder that they’d remained the kings of Calhoun just as I was written out of the narrative. With finality, right as I prepared to tell them all off in a glorious, Oscar-worthy monologue. God, the hubris. “Do you remember who?”
“Someone I thought you girls knew. I dunno. You’d know better than me if you were just rereading your diary.” He considered. “What, you think the rape charges are related to the fire?”
“Oh!” I said it like my teeny lady-brain couldn’t possibly have drawn such a connection. “I didn’t even think of that, do you think it could be?”
He grunted. “I don’t know. Maybe somebody didn’t like him for being a rapist. You shouldn’t rape people.”
“I agree. One should not.”
He let out a humorless ha.
“I was reading an entry about this warehouse party we all went to,” I tried, “like out on Knickerbocker or something. Remember those huge ragers that Kevin’s friends used to throw? Apparently one was carnival-themed and there were naked trapeze artists and shit. I was so scandalized.”
He laughed again. “That actually rings a bell,” he said. “Wasn’t that the party when Kevin spent the entire night trying to pull this dude from another band and then at the last minute the guy left with the douchebag in the marching-band cap who planned the whole party?”
“Ha, oh my god! It was like a drum-major cap! With the feather plume?” Thank god I’d reviewed those emails.
“And Kevin was sooo wasted and he kept going, ‘But I’m the drum major! I’m the major…of the drums!’ ” Alex said, laughing hard.
“And drumming on things! As we dragged him out of there!”
“That’s it! That’s it!” Alex said. He came down again, sighed. “God, that kid was funny.”
“Do you ever hear from him anymore?” For some reason, I didn’t feel like mentioning that I’d called Kevin a few nights earlier.
He made a noncommittal noise. “Jaclyn still sends him a Christmas card. I always figured he’d pass through New York at some point and look me up, but it’s been a long time now.”
“That makes sense,” I uttered when the silence between us ballooned. “Oh, so guess who I had dinner with last week.”
“Sarah?”
“How’d you know?”
“We don’t have that many more people in common.”
“Oh, I thought maybe you saw she posted about it or something.”
“No, but I think I saw she moved back to the city, right?”
“That’s right, for her husband’s job.”
“How is she?”
“Really good! It was nice to see her.”
He didn’t ask more and I could feel it, how he wanted to wrap things up, the same way the girlfriend widens her eyes and pats at her partner’s shoulder when she’s ready for him to stop talking to you. Why hadn’t Sarah been terrified of Alex? How could she run around claiming—to everyone, to Alex—that Edie had been murdered, when the deceased’s own arrogant, hot, seemingly-adult-but-actually-twenty-four ex-boyfriend had just declared that he wanted to slit her throat?
I want that bitch out of my apartment! His voice had sounded younger then, warbly and immature. Did he remember saying that? Did he know that others had heard it?
I cleared my throat and found my fact-checker voice. “Oh, there’s something I wanted to ask you. Have you—actually, is it okay if I ask you something about Edie? I’ve just been thinking about her a lot, with seeing Sarah and the anniversary coming up, but we totally don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” Another trick I’d picked up from my editor friends: Make the interviewee feel like not answering your question makes him the biggest dick in the world. It worked; Alex murmured me on. “Did you guys ever talk about either one of you moving out when you broke up? I was reading some stuff about…that period and how she and Sarah were over at my place a lot, kind of awkward in that Calhoun apartment…”
“Not really. We were broke and moving’s so expensive. And we had our own rooms, at least.”
“And she didn’t think to go stay with her parents or anything.”
“Well, no. But that doesn’t surprise me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just…I didn’t like them.”
“How come?”
“It’s a long story,” he said.
“I have time.”
“See, I kinda don’t.” It was so unexpectedly rude, I clutched a hand to my chest.
A new idea. “So I take it you don’t talk to them at all? I was just thinking, I came across some really great photos that I thought maybe they would—”