“It’ll be, like, five minutes of exposure. It’ll barely touch us if we’re quick.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works…” she said. “But, okay, I’ll be right—”
He opened the door and eyed the storm as though it were a raging river he intended to ford. Then, on some private mark of go, he hit the street like a golden retriever. “Now!”
They splashed along the sidewalk and were drenched at once. By the second street crossing, Whitney was soaked through. By the third she couldn’t get any wetter, and so slowed to a stroll and watched Jack gallop along in the direction of the beach, toward the glass high-rise she’d eyed that morning from the hotel bar. Just the one she’d suspected. Her feet were slipping from her sandals and she worried she might break a strap if she didn’t remove them. So she went the rest of the way barefoot, careful to avoid the broken glass that showed itself every so often. The wetness gave Whitney the feeling of swimming in the rain, no amount of water making a difference, the temperatures of the water on her body and the water in the air close enough to be indistinguishable.
He was waiting for her in the lobby with a towel. It was a luxury building with a doorman who kept freshly laundered linen beneath the front desk. She searched with her eyes for the lobby bathroom, but he’d already called the elevator and was holding the door.
“Sorry,” he said. “Because the building’s big, I always think it’s a little closer.”
She flexed her eyebrows and dried her hair silently.
“I have a washer and dryer, so you can at least get your clothes back in shape. I’m really…I just needed to get some air and get back here. I think it sorta hit me all at once.”
She saw his muscles decompress as he stepped through the door of his apartment. The unit wasn’t huge but it was sleek. It had the sharp lines and neutral shades of a boutique hotel room. He offered her a robe with the name of the building stitched on the breast. He pointed her in the direction of the bathroom and told her she should feel free to warm up in the shower if she wanted.
Her hair was dripping wet. She hurried to the bathroom and the lights came up automatically when she stepped inside. There was a shower with a glass door and oversize black squeeze bottles of male shower goop. There was shaving cream and antiperspirant gel and toothpaste streaked in the porcelain bowl of the sink. She peeled her clothes off and felt her skin grow pimpled, the light air from the vent above the toilet dropping the temperature just enough to frost over her skin. Her nipples were shades darker than she’d seen them since winter and her fingertips were already withered. She wrung out her hair on the shower tiles and decided to turn on the hot water.
She rinsed quickly and then wrapped herself in the robe. She felt instantly better, lifted, her head high from the terrycloth and the lingering suds sloshing around her brain.
In the living room, he was sitting enamored with his phone, shirtless in a fresh pair of shorts. He was dry on the surface but still clearly waterlogged. His hair had been combed back on his head by his hands.
“You know what bugged me most?” he said. He was reading about the movie, she could tell from his face. He was reacting to reviews. “The way it was so thirsty for, like, every country to have their star in it. I didn’t know the Chinese guy, but he’s their biggest movie star right now, apparently. And the Russian woman. And the Nigerian woman. And the Italian. It’s one thing if it makes sense—like, I get it, you bring together this dream team of pilots from all over the world, and yes, there are going to be some from other countries, not just Americans. And that’s great. But then you just leave them in there to say dumb shit?”
“I could barely follow it, either way,” Whitney said. “But I’m not entirely blaming the movie—I got up to pee three times. I think I missed every explanation of the science and how the jump to Mars worked.”
“I promise you you didn’t miss anything helpful. They just sort of skipped over it, assumed we’d go along with whatever. Anywho…”
“Anywho?”
He was skimming around on his laptop, too, several tabs pulled up.
“No fucking way…” he said. “That makes it even funnier.” He looked up at Whitney. “Jenna’s dad was one of the executive producers.”
“What do you mean?” Whitney said.
“He wasn’t the sole guy, but one of a dozen or whatever.”
“I thought her dad was a stay-at-home something or other—a part-time caddy.”
“Yeah, that’s what she told me that first night, too. Another one of the…Her dad’s this guy Bob Silverstein. He—”
“Bob Silverstein?”
“He’s a—”
“I know who he is. What do you mean that’s her dad? She said her mom’s some businesswoman and her dad’s a deadbeat layabout.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I heard a bunch of different versions.…She said she doesn’t like people to know. She said she started doing it when she was little, telling the other stories. She didn’t want people to know about him. I guess the caddy guy is her stepdad, maybe? Or who the fuck knows, maybe he doesn’t exist at all.”
“Isn’t her name Jenna Leonard?”
“Mom’s name. After the divorce. Started using it in college.”
“You’re kidding me. What a ridiculous person. So all that stuff…all that stuff she said the other night was bullshit?”
“I dunno…some of it?”
“Bob Fucking Silverstein.”
“He’s a big deal?” he said.
“You have no idea.”
So she was even more the thing that Whitney envied and loathed. Admired and detested. Attraction, repulsion. She’d been born to the professional caste Whitney most strived for. It was Jenna’s for the taking. She could leapfrog the Whitneys of the industry at will, when useful,
