“I know you were with her. I know you were at her hotel,” she said. “Your phone’s allegedly broken, but what about hers?”
“You were there when she said it: she threw her fucking phone in the Seine!”
“Riiiiight. Right right right. How could I forget? And so no way to be in touch until you got to a pay phone. No other solution.”
“You don’t have the high road here,” he said. “I’m sorry. You’re giving me shit for being at her hotel. You’re hitting me for not figuring this out sooner. I waited till the rain stopped and then I walked straight back here. You’re the one in his apartment. You’re the one who could’ve walked right back over again, who doesn’t pick up when I call because you’re passed out in his big fucking bed.”
“Don’t do that,” she said. “There’s only one side of this where the person’s eyes are falling out of their head every time the object of his greatest desire slips into the frame. Don’t try to put that same shit on me. I went back to his apartment, I slept on the couch. In the living room. A different room. Who knows if the same can be said for…whatever the fuck you did last night. Whatever fantasy you played out before you got back here—if you’re even telling the truth about that part.”
“What are you doing?” he said. His face was stricken with a hot rictus of disbelief. “What is it about her? Seriously, what is it about her that makes you so fucking crazy? I would never ever ever do that, okay? It makes me insane that you’re making me even say that to you.”
“It wouldn’t matter if you had,” she said. Her face was strained in its own characteristic ways: pink, puffy, brittle around the eyes. “I hope you know that. You had one left. We’re still here, it’s not technically over. I couldn’t say anything if it happened, so just tell me the truth, okay? Just tell me the truth, and there’s nothing I can say about it.”
“Whitney…What is wrong with you? I don’t even know who the fuck I’m talking to right now. Nothing happened. Nothing would ever happen. We did this already. 1-2-3 is over. I would never—” He stopped himself short. “Or is this just your way of giving yourself cover for what actually happened between you two last night? Is there something you’re trying to tell me?”
“Don’t put it on me to take it off you.”
“It’s okay, Whit. You only had your two as well, right? Apparently by your understanding of the rules, your third is still on the table. Still free to cash in your third until you get on that airplane? Fair’s fair. But you’d have to tell me about your third. You’d have to say it, ’cause that’s part of the rules, too.”
She was silent. It was the first time either of them had drawn a conscious breath since she’d walked in the door. She hadn’t even sat down yet. They’d been standing the entire time near the entryway. She moved to the couch.
“I understand that,” she said.
“Well?” he said.
“You think I fucked him.”
“I have no idea. I truly didn’t until you started getting weird about it.”
“I didn’t.”
“Okay,” he said, “then why do I feel like you did all of a sudden?”
“You don’t believe me?” Her eyes were bloodshot. Her face had a sort of directionless disdain.
“You tell me: Is there anything else I should know?”
“What are you trying to say?” she said.
“I’m saying: You have a third guy waiting for you out there unless you spent it last night. Or unless you already spent it before, in which case JJ Pickle is way off—”
“1-2. Two guys,” she said emphatically. “Just like I told you the other night. Can you say the same thing to me?”
His eyes were redder than hers. Red lightning, red saucers. He hadn’t slept for longer than thirty minutes at a time all night, cracked phone on the pillow beside his head, committed to not missing her call if it miraculously sprang back to life. It had made him go nuts. Hour after hour after hour after hour. He was scared for her at moments. He hated her at others. Now, he was so dehydrated. He moved to the kitchen. He poured two glasses of water, and two glasses of whiskey.
He sat at the opposite end of the couch from her, just out of arm’s reach. He stretched forward to give her her drinks. She sipped from the water glass. She smelled the whiskey and her eyes articulated that it was the last thing in the world she wanted, and then she took a mouthful anyway.
“Well?” she said. “Answer the question.”
“What question?” he said.
“What happened between you two?”
“Nothing happened.”
“How do I know that?”
“Because I’m telling you.”
“But how do I know she didn’t hypnotize you? Didn’t just put you under her deceitful little spell? How do I know she didn’t turn you into a pathological liar, too?”
“She is a confirmed pathological liar. But I didn’t have sex with her. I would never do that to you.”
“You didn’t have sex.…Did you kiss her? Did you get to feel up those glorious tits? Did she suck your cock?”
“Whitney.”
“Do you know who her father is?” she said. “It’s not who she says, you know.”
“Is it a Mr. Silverstein?”
“You knew all along?”
“I don’t know anything, I just know that was the name she was under at the hotel. That’s what she responded to when the concierge called to her.”
“That little twat. All that crap she spun to you the other night, to all of us, everything’s bullshit. Bob Silverstein. She’s Bob Silverstein’s daughter.”
“Come on…”
“It makes sense, even if you don’t think about it too hard. The way she moves through the world. All the dots connect.”
“The hotel was way nicer than I expected. I thought it must’ve been some deal, some last-minute clearance. But that means she was lying all afternoon, too. This new shit about
