I’m the one who used the bolt cutters to get through that chain, remember?”
“What I remember is you flailing around like a newborn giraffe until I handed you the bolt cutters. Which I brought.”
I entreaty the ceiling, “Why must everything be a competition?”
Max chimes in, “Because you were Ms. Crabtree’s favorite. She’s never forgiven you for it.”
I remember our glamorous ninth-grade teacher at boarding school, and say, “Oh god. Carolyn Crabtree. I wonder what she’s doing now?”
Fin says, “Still slaying young men with her crystal blue eyes and masses of wavy red hair, no doubt.” Her smile falters. She says more softly, “Young men and women.”
Gazing at Fin fondly, Max says, “You always were a sucker for a ginger.”
“And you always were a sucker for anything with a dick.”
“They do have their charms.”
“Name one. I’ll wait.”
Fin and Max grin at each other, while I lie on the floor, emitting plaintive moans. “Xanax!”
“You know we don’t keep Xanax in the house, dummy.” Max comes to sit cross-legged on the floor next to me. She takes my hand and pats it. “But I’ll let you borrow my vibrator.”
I close my eyes and heave a sigh. “So gross.”
Fin sits down on my other side and takes my other hand. I say warily, “Are we about to start a séance here, or what?”
“More like group therapy,” says Max, making me moan again.
“No. No therapy. I don’t want to talk about this. About anything!”
No one says a word for a while. Fin starts to brush her fingers through my hair. The silence is heavy with anticipation.
I insist, “I’m not talking about him. I don’t even want to say his name.”
“Hmm,” says Fin, exactly like a therapist would.
I open my eyes and glare at her. “He’s a criminal! There’s nothing to talk about!”
“Nothing except your deeply conflicted feelings about him and what he does to your libido.”
I close my eyes again, wishing I were a hermit who lived alone on a tropical island and my only friends were a parrot and a tree snail.
A mute parrot and a tree snail.
When the silence grows so pregnant it’s about to give birth, I relent. “Fine. Who’s going first?”
“I am,” says Fin briskly, already in interrogation mode. “Max filled me in on the unicorn pony situation, but I want to backtrack to before any of this started. To the very beginning. How did you pick him for the job in the first place?”
“I saw him on the news a year ago. He was being arrested. Led in handcuffs up the steps of the courthouse by a bunch of federal agents. Except it looked like he was leading them. Ugh. You’ve never seen such confidence. Such conceit. Even his hair looked smug. It really, really pissed me off.” Thinking about it, I’m getting pissed off again.
“I remember that,” muses Fin. “He was let go pretty quickly, right?”
“Literally the same day. No charges filed. The government nabs the guy after months of intense investigation, and not one of the charges they slapped on him stuck for even twenty-four hours.”
Max nods. “You were indignant.”
“Righteously indignant,” adds Fin, her tone soothing.
“Hell, yes, I was! Here was this man—”
“This incredibly gorgeous hunk of man. This extreme example of uber-manliness. This scorching hot, barn burner of a man, who can produce spontaneous orgasms in whole swaths of the female population with merely a smile.”
I direct my glare to Max. “May I continue?”
She has the decency to look bashful. “Sorry. It’s just that he’s freaking beautiful, Jules.”
“No one is denying the man is attractive. Panthers have lovely, strokeable, furry torsos, but nobody is dumb enough to stick their hand close enough to cop a feel.”
“Point taken. Proceed.”
“Thank you. As I was saying…what was I saying?”
Fin says, “You were indignant.”
“Yes! Thank you. I was indignant. Here was this man, this infamous criminal, oozing self-confidence and superiority like sap from a tree. I hated him on sight. It’s like he knew he’d get off scot-free. I could see it on his face. That…that…”
Sounding impressed, Fin says, “Boldness.”
Sounding dreamy, Max says, “Élan.”
“Give me a break here, girls. I’m running out of glares.”
They apologize, and I continue. “Arrogance is the word I was looking for. Arrogance was coming off him like fumes. And not only that—entitlement. He knew he’d get off because he is who he is. Because he thought he deserved to. Because for a man like him, nothing in the world is impossible or out of reach. The heartless bastard.”