“Jillian, why are you talking like that?”
Jillian cleared her throat, opened her eyes and mouth as wide as she could, and then called on the power of God. “Sorry,” she said in her normal voice.
• • •
It looked like Megan was smiling while she was talking to Carrie. Randy was watching her and felt nervous and noticed that Amanda looked nervous. But she probably just looked nervous because she and Megan hadn’t made up yet. Probably.
• • •
“Jillian, what do you want?”
“It’s not about what I want, it’s about what I need. I know what you think of me. I’m not completely oblivious.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Elena.
“Yes you do, okay? So let’s just get that straight. I need you to give me eight hundred dollars for Adam’s day care, and so that is what you are going to do. I need eight hundred dollars from you.”
“Jillian, I’m not going to give you eight hundred dollars. That’s absurd. If anything, you owe me one hundred dollars for all the gas I’ve been using getting your son off to day care, plus a little extra for my wasted time.”
“You shriveled, heartless little bitch, you will give me eight hundred dollars or I will go through with it.”
“Go through with what? You don’t have the guts to do anything to me. You’re weak and you’re too much of an idiot to come up with a way to hurt me. Jesus, Jillian, what are you thinking?”
“Okay, I’m telling, then.”
“Telling who?”
Jillian grinned and giggled, then whispered “God.”
She continued to giggle and whisper things that were not words. She drew herself up into a ball.
• • •
Megan said a few things that made Carrie laugh and they were getting along fairly well.
• • •
“I think you’re probably the most sick, ugly, hateful person in the entire world,” said Jillian. “And so now I’m going to spend the rest of my energy letting God and Jesus know how much I hate you and how horrible you are and how much you deserve to suffer. You help me and you use it as a way to mock me? You do that and call yourself a Christian and think you won’t suffer the eternal fire for the crime of blasphemy?”
“Jillian, this is absurd. I’m hanging up. I’m going to hang up,” said Elena.
“I hope I die soon so I can tell God everything you’ve ever done to me,” Jillian screamed.
Elena hung up the phone.
• • •
“Oh, god, you’re so lucky, you know?” said Megan, leaning in toward Carrie and smiling.
“I guess so,” said Carrie.
“I mean, you’re just so lucky that you get to turn your passion and your art into something commercial. You know, something you can make money off of.”
“Yeah, I love my job,” said Carrie.
Megan’s eyes flashed and she smiled wider. Amanda looked into that face and was frightened. She saw demons there. She saw through that smile and saw the poison in the eyes. Maybe it was the reflection of the Tiki Torches. Amanda drank from her beer and fumbled for a cigarette.
“It’s just so nice to see an artist make money off of their passion. Kind of makes us all feel like it’s not so hopeless after all,” said Megan.
Did Megan’s sentence trail off into a whisper, or was Amanda just transfixed by what she thought she saw in that expression?
“I have to go get another beer,” said Anthea. Megan straightened up. She had been hunched toward Carrie and grinning.
“Yeah, I kind of have to piss,” said Megan. She turned to smile at Amanda. The girls left. Carrie and Amanda looked confused.
• • •
Elena was standing, suddenly feeling creepy. She walked around her house to make sure all of her doors were locked. She put the safety stopper locks on the windows and called her husband to ask if he would come home. She went to the kitchen and leaned against the counter and put her hand to her mouth and shook. She did not shake for remorse, she shook for rage and fear for her personal safety. She imagined Jillian breaking into her house. Elena would decapitate her if she tried anything. She glanced at the knife drawer.
• • •
Megan tossed her empty into a trash can and walked up the back-porch steps. She had that kind of feeling that should probably be embarrassing, but is too overwhelming at the time to be embarrassing. That kind of studly, cinematic feeling that comes after a massive, psychic unburdening.
There was no one in the apartment. Megan pissed without turning on the light in the bathroom. When she was finished, she washed her hands with cold water because her fingers tended to get stiff and swollen in hot weather. She always wondered if that happened to everyone. She could hear the shrieks and chatter of the party outside. Someone started shooting bottle rockets.
• • •
Jillian hung up the phone and then lay down because she was already on her bed, so why not?
• • •
It was hard for Megan to make out what the living room looked like in the dark. The streetlights were visible through the open windows, and they had that hypnotic effect over Megan that bright things sometimes have over moths and the drunk. She walked to the windows. There were large plants in the living room and bookshelves and a television. A cat lay on the couch. If anyone came into the apartment she would say, “Oh, I’m just looking at the cat.” People love to look at cats.
She put her palms on the windowsill and looked out onto the street. Even though it was cooler now, a bead of sweat ran down her asscrack. A cyclist rode past and a guy stumbled around on the pavement. Megan zoned out. Megan turned to the cat.
“I envy you, you fucking idiot,” she said to it telepathically.
It squirmed and said, “Whatever.”
She sighed. She looked out the window and again thought about taking some kind of long road trip or maybe faking a fugue state or
