Chapter 4

4

She doesn’t need to knock. I can sense her. I can smell her, somehow. Her signature smoky vanilla perfume. She says it makes her feel like a sexy campfire.

I’m at the door as the shuttle pulls up. I open the door and there she is.

She wears a faux-fur bucket hat, a 1970s denim halter jumpsuit with wide bell-bottoms, cowboy boots, and her Penny Lane jacket—orange suedette with fuzzy pink trim. Her long black hair is in a thick braid that falls down to her ass. The only makeup she has on is some metallic green eyeliner, artfully smudged. No lipstick. No mascara. No foundation—she doesn’t need it.

We stare at each other for a moment, and then she tackles me to the floor in an aggressive hug.

“I’m going to fucking eat you!” she yells into my hair as her arms wrap around my neck.

“I’m dying,” I say. “Help! Help!”

“Sorry. Do I smell like I’ve been traveling for twenty hours?” she asks, letting me go.

“You smell like you.”

She gasps. “Do I always smell like I’ve been traveling for twenty hours?”

“Stop. You smell famous and you look like a Spice Girl.”

“Aw, I’m blushing.”

We sit up, catch our breath. Her hat was knocked off in the wild embrace. She picks it up and puts it on the couch, goes back outside for her massive suitcase and an obnoxious carry-on that I doubt fit in the overhead bin.

“Do you need help?” I ask her.

“Yes, generally speaking,” she says. “But not with this. It’s my cardio. My strength training. Joseph Pilates can suck my— Ooh, I like the length.”

She reaches for my hair, then grazes my collarbone with a manicured nail. “Shorter. Edgier. It looks good. The color, too. Going more strawberry than blond. Closer to your natural.”

“Is it edgy? I worried it was too suburban.”

She cradles my face in her warm palm. “You never post pictures of yourself. Last time I saw you, you were platinum.”

The last time we saw each other was at Levi’s birthday party. Joel and I drove six and a half hours to Brooklyn for what turned out to be a sort of grunge rave in a Bushwick warehouse. The music was so loud it hurt my bones. I saw Naomi for about ten minutes, as she dragged me to the bar to take a shot of something, told me she loved me more than salt and missed me like candy, and that she’d be right back. I didn’t see her again until the next day, when we had an awkward brunch at one p.m. Lee didn’t show, Joel was anxious to get on the road home, and Naomi had to excuse herself to go throw up in the bathroom. I followed her in to hold back her hair.

She apologized profusely. “I never get hungover. You know this.”

“I know.”

“It’s him,” she’d said. “I swear it’s not me. It’s him .”

I didn’t have to ask her to elaborate. I knew she meant Lee.

Naomi’s trouble on her own, but with him? Fire, gasoline; gasoline, fire. They have that sort of wild passion that makes you roll your eyes, scrunch your nose. That makes you so jealous you don’t know what to do with yourself. They’re good for each other in that sense, because they understand each other, can keep up. But sometimes Naomi needs someone to reel her in, like I can. Levi can’t do that. I appreciate that she’s with someone who never tries to turn down her volume, dim her light. But now and then, I worry he’ll turn her up so high that she’ll explode.

They’ve been together on and off for a decade, and sometimes I wonder if they’ll ever get married, elope. Other times I wonder if they’ll kill each other.

His party was almost a year ago. A scary thought. The older you get, the faster time goes, as if the sand becomes finer the longer it sits in the top of the hourglass.

“You look the same,” I tell her.

“Is that a compliment?”

“Yeah. Of course it is.”

“Well, shucks. Are my nips out?” she asks, reaching into her jumpsuit to adjust. She looks around the room. “This place is very…”

She pauses, tilts her head.

“Not into it?” I ask. “I won’t be offended. Joel picked it, not me.”

“Pinterest chic. Luxe basic. Like, coming down the hill and seeing that mansion, I was thinking, okay, we’re going to drink fucking hot toddies and layer scarves and flirt with the ghost of a railroad tycoon. Like, asking reception, who was that man at the bar last night? And they’d be, like, what man? Pan up to the portrait of him on the wall; he’s been dead for a century. That whole thing.”

“Right.”

“But now, here, this is a different vibe. This is, like, drink hot chocolate, hashtag so blessed . Like, someone who would ask to speak to a manager wouldn’t need to here, because this place was designed specifically for them. Like—”

I interrupt her because otherwise she’ll just keep going. “There’s funky wallpaper in the bedroom.”

“I mean, go figure,” she says. “But is there a ghost we can tag-team?”

“I don’t know, Nay. Did you bring your Ouija board?”

“Fuck! Knew I forgot something,” she says, grinning. “Is that real fruit?”

She walks over to the basket of apples and picks one out. She tosses it up in the air and catches it with the other hand, then takes a confident bite.

“Is it plastic?”

She shrugs. “Might as well be.”

“How was your trip?” I ask her.

“The tour, or coming here?”

“Both.”

She takes another bite, then sets the apple down on the counter. “Good. Bad. Fun. Exhausting.”

“Band must be doing well, though.”

“Yeah. Don’t get me wrong—I’m grateful. ‘Kitchen Floor’ pays the bills. But if I hear that song one more fucking time…”

She turns to me, puts a finger gun to her temple, and pulls the trigger.

“It’s still weird to hear Lee on the radio,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says, sighing. “The song is so thoroughly mediocre. I can’t wrap my head around it. That’s their big hit? Depresses the shit out of me.”

Thoroughly mediocre is generous. “Have you had the talk yet? About them getting someone else?”

“Not yet. Mm. I gotta get that authentic fruit taste out of my mouth,” she says, pulling a handful of Dum-Dums from her coat pocket. She started with the lollipops to help her quit smoking. They were effective in that she doesn’t smoke anymore, but she’s been on a lollipop a day for about three years now. “Want one? Think I’ve got a cream soda.”

“My favorite!”

She hands me the cream soda–flavored one and selects a blue raspberry for herself.

I appreciate the treat but suspect it’s a means of deflection from talking about work. Naomi studied photography in college and had some success working in fashion after graduating. She started managing PR for Levi’s band as a side gig, to be supportive. But then Data Ave took off and took over both of their lives.

For the past year or so, she’s expressed to me some dissatisfaction in working with Data Ave. With Lee. She’s talked about wanting to get back to being an artist. When I asked her why she couldn’t do both, she lost it.

“Because it’s not fucking possible! It’s not a part-time thing, Sloane. It’s consuming. Twenty-four seven, for years now. How did I end up on my boyfriend’s payroll? How did I end up in this position? Where my life revolves around him?”

I didn’t know what to say, how to respond. I could sense in that moment that I was failing her, but I couldn’t figure out what to do about it. What the right advice was.

“I’m sorry,” I’d said, finally.

“It’s fine. It’s fine. Never mind,” she’d said, changing the subject.

Like she does now.

“So, what do you want to get up to?” she asks me. “You look hot. We should go out. You want to go out?”

“Whatever you want,” I say, unwrapping my lollipop.

“Let’s go into town,” she says. “It’s so cute and quaint. We can walk around, get some dinner. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds pretty PG.”

“Well, we’re doing a mountain of cocaine first,” she says. Joking, maybe. “Where’s the bathroom? I have to pee. Takes me, like, fifteen minutes to get in and out of this jumpsuit.”

“Just there.” I point, and she twirls away.

“Thanks, birthday girl!” she says. “Ah, damn. I forgot your crown.”

“No Ouija board, no crown. What’s even in that giant suitcase, then?”

“My victims,” she says, cackling.