ACT ONE

(In which FENN finds distance makes the heart grow restless rather than fonder in trying times. Scene: Pitlochry and Santa Monica, as bridged by Zoom.)

There are some people who find the true test of their mettle in times of confusion and despair. Some rise to the occasion, plunge past the panic in their hearts, and are sources of strength for those around them. Julian is not that person. Like his hero Donald Trump, Jules is capable of making truly global events that touch the lives of nearly every human being alive into personal attacks on his existence. Not only is his business feeling the pinch of recession — he’s had to furlough and lay off staff in Long Beach and Seattle — but with the border effectively closed to the UK, the virus has laid waste to his personal life as well.

Not that I should know any of this, but it’s Julian, please. He sends me texts on the regular, as he always has, since he relies on me even now to have answers to questions prosaic (“what was the dry cleaner we used in Pasadena I think they still have my trousers”) and existential (“do you really think I am incapable of love anymore like Miranda said”) and ridiculous (“are there more calories in hard boiled eggs or soft boiled eggs”). But now with the virus raging, I am now an expert on other topics:

does the new immigration order mean my father can’t get his green card — he’s going to kill me

(Answer: yes, at least in the short term. And he can’t kill you when he can’t get into the country.)

will I get the rona from my building’s HVAC system

(Answer: extremely unlikely. I struggled with telling him the truth about this for some time, as I reveled in the image of Julian camping out on the yoga terrace, petrified that the vents were going to poison him. In the end, I settled on pretending I hadn’t seen the text for six hours.)

how can I get Fenn to commit to me???????

(Answer: I didn’t give one.)

The last of these was the one I could not approach in humor or otherwise. My divorce from Julian was no great loss, supposedly. It was my liberation, after all, or so I’d told myself, so others reminded me. And yet when he left, when he found out that at least some of what he suspected was indeed true, I thought I’d never heal the wound his departure inflicted. In time, the sutures were removed, the terrible scar began to fade, and some days it’s hardly visible at all. But I can feel it, feel it itch and sting; sometimes it’s a particularly hot and shifting throb within me. Despite all I know, there is one part of me still that loves Julian, or at least the promise of what we were supposed to be.

Only a week and half ago Fenn pinged me for a call. Just a wee chat, catch up, you know. Awfully lonely up here right now, could do with sisterly advice. Her use of the word “sisterly” put me on guard — when Cora had used it in a Zoom room the week prior, encouraging us to connect more during lockdown, Fenn had delivered an eyeroll a 15 year old having to watch her father dance at a wedding to “Livin’ La Vida Loca” would have envied. Alex, sitting beside me on the (now confirmed) fake Danish modern sofa, pointed a finger at the screen, ready to berate his sister for her adolescent poor form, but I swatted at his hand. No use in forcing her, I told him after while he grumbled over a cup of tea. She’s just like you — can’t get you to change your mind unless you come around to it yourself. (I got a swat on the behind in turn.)

I couldn’t help myself though — the temptation to know the nature of the “wee chat” was as alluring as a cool, dew-damp glass of IPA on a sweltering Valley afternoon. You’re up? Sure, I tapped on my phone. I’m around now. A pale streak of sunlight filtered through the grey clouds that had hung low in the sky for much of the day and hit the cranberry glass vase I’d picked up in a charity shop before the shutdown. Complete steal, I almost felt guilty for paying as little as I did for it, but I chatted merrily as I passed $5 over the counter, pretending I didn’t know its real worth. It threw a pale pink cast on my arm, picking out the hairs in bright relief, while I reached in the fridge for the open bottle of Sancerre.

Her reply flew in almost immediately: Where’s Al?

Working. I thought better of the simplicity of that reply, and added: The door is closed and he’s blasting Mogwai. Which was completely true. From inside one of the walnut cabinets I selected a single wine stem — a lighter crystal than the Baccarat Julian had always preferred — and poured myself half a glass. Wouldn’t do to really indulge before the sun went down; the hands on the kitchen clock were barely about to nudge 4.

Lol, that shite. I’ll send you a link to a Zoom room in a few, just have to put some proper clothes on. Last time I’d had her on a video call that was just the two of us, she’d been sitting cross-legged on her bed in a flimsy green tank top and powder blue satin tap pants, her hair caught above her head like a great black cloud with the red lacquer chopstick she’d stolen from my A-frame studio. It was entirely too much skin to be showing in early April in Scotland, though I was pleased the sodden old heap of a house was finally warm enough that she didn’t have to encase her body in multiple sweaters until July. I was also pleased that since Andrew had moved into Balcraigie, he’d appointed himself in charge of heating the place and I no longer had to negotiate over the phone with cranky Highland firewood suppliers.

After a quick peek in the hallway mirror (hair smooth and presentable, concealer still adequately disguising my stress acne), I listened outside Al’s closed office door for signs of life. Nothing but moody post-rock, punctuated by the occasional resonant snore. Excellent. Glass in hand, iPad under arm, I settled in the new Thayer Coggin recliner I’d bought for Alex as a replacement for the much-unmourned (by me) disaster of a Harris tweed chair I’d forced him to give away to that Berkeley frat.

In my inbox was a link to Zoom with Fenn — I stared at the invitation for a good 30 seconds before clicking. Whatever she had to say wasn’t going to be a “wee chat” and whatever advice I was going to give was almost certainly as Julian’s ex-wife, not as Fenn’s sister-in-law. I’d seen her Instagram posts over the previous week, not her usual works in progress or candid photos of her mother running in Wellington boots and a prairie dress as she swatted capercaillies out of the garden. Instead, she’d posted a black and white photo, a man in silhouette, the saturation tuned that what shown of his features was obscured, bleached out in a flare of light. But I knew it was Jules, as I knew it was her gentle coming out to the world that this was her person. Julian was her person, and she was edging towards wanting us all to know.

Fenn’s face appeared, ghostly pale on my screen, a flash of bluish-white in an otherwise dark room. I could just about make out the heavy Edwardian dressing table behind her, the one where she kept the family ring that should have been mine tucked in an empty jar of Charlotte Tilbury Magic Cream. “Oh, hullo Mel. You look a bit spotty.” She blew her nose into a tissue with a sharp honk and inspected the contents briefly before throwing it over her shoulder. “Allergies, that’s all. Jules was worried I have the virus but I assured him it was just tree pollen.”

“Everything else okay?” I passed by the dig at my complexion — being cooped up with less sunlight and more existential fear of looming annihilation than usual had caused a bright bloom of coronacne on my right cheek — and took a sip of the Sancerre.

“Bit early for a glass of wine there, isn’t it?” Fenn took a healthy swig from her own glass and pushed a long black curl behind her right ear. I clocked the large diamond lotus leaf earring hooked in her lobe — easily two carats clustered in a bright starburst. Flashy but with some attempt at restraint, and therefore likely to be Julian’s selection.

“I wouldn’t normally, but these are strange times.” Strange hardly taps at the door of our reality in this plague year — I’ve found myself doing things I don’t normally do, like talk with my sister several times a week about topics weightier than whether Gwyneth really does look as good in those no-makeup pics all over the internet as the gossip sites would have us believe, or if it’s simply “fake beauty news.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s good training to become a Carr,” she mused. “Mummy starts around 3 these days unless Andrew kicks up a stink.”

Andrew Kil-whosit (Kilmartin, sorry), watching keenly events in Italy and Spain, had moved into Balcraigie two weeks before Boris Johnson did a 360 and said right, everyone indoors, nevermind what I said about going down the pub. Fenn had told me that Cora had been fretting that Andrew’s predictions of “essential house arrest” might actually be right, and forced separation for an indefinite length of time was simply unacceptable to her. “She adores him, you know. And not just for the money, though she’s quite grateful for that as well. But Andrew’s not like Alex. He actually requires Mummy to be pleasant to him in order for his wallet to open.”

It wasn’t just the macabre lighting and Fenn’s indoor moontan that lent her a cadaverous glow — there was no missing the dark circles under her eyes. “So. Sisterly advice?” I was going to tread cautiously here; although I’ve drawn the line at giving any tips on what Jules likes in bed (just no), I can’t help but gawk at what should be a disastrous pairing. It’s like gorging myself on an eclair — not really that good for me, but how delectable to consume, how wretched the self-loathing when the one eclair turns into a whole tray of them, quite without thinking. Because there’s only oversharing with Fennella Carr when it comes to Julian, and I compulsively consume every morsel she places before me.

Fenn blinked twice at me before reaching offscreen to turn on a lamp, its rosy glow casting aside the corpse-like translucence the laptop’s screen glare had leant to her. The dressing table snapped into view: unlike the chronic disorder of her greenhouse studio, where bottles of india ink oozed onto the terra cotta tile of the floor and sheets of half-thoughts of drawings on Bristol paper littered the mostly-broken grey chaise longue, her cosmetics were displayed carefully, almost artfully. Scent was decanted into vintage bottles and atomizers, greys and lilacs and brilliant aquamarines, most of which had been Nana Elizabeth’s. One was (allegedly) Lady Fennella Dysart’s, a milky pistachio green, nearly smothered in tarnished gold filigree. On a blush pink ceramic tray rested a matched silver brush and comb — these I knew to be Fenn’s alone, a gift from her grandmother Primrose and thus particularly precious.

Fenn squinted at me through the screen and dabbed at her nose again. She clutched lightly at the neck of her old Fair Isle sweater, the one she’d loaned to me when we’d gone for a walk into Pitlochry towards the end of my last visit. It smelled of Beast, their Irish Setter, and damp, with just a hint of Penhaligon Blenheim Bouquet. “I feel wretched asking you, but… Mummy just is impossible when it comes to Julian, you know. I could never go to her for fair advice when he’s involved.”

“Fenn,” I warned, “you know I’m not exactly fair when it comes to Jules either. I really don’t want to know –“

With a glance over her shoulder, she lowered the boom. “He asked me to marry him,” she whispered.

My breath caught somewhere between lungs and exhalation. Too soon, too soon. He needs to drown in gallons of misery, oceans of loneliness.

“I said no, if you’re wondering.” She would not catch my gaze, preferring to pick at the split ends at the end of her long braid.

“Oh, thank god,” I said before I could stop myself. “I mean, I’m sorry, Fenn. I hope he was at least a little kind to you when you told him it was over.” I was already imagining Alex’s awkward dance of relief, complete with fist pumps and repeated shouts of “yeah!” when I shared this good news. In lockdown time, any fillip of spirits is a welcome treat.

Fenn favored me with another of her adolescent eyerolls. “Don’t be silly. I didn’t break up with him. I just… I don’t think I want that. So I told him.”

For a moment I imagined a marriage where I’d set parameters for Julian, for our relationship. Where I’d said “no!” and been respected instead of mocked. Look at you, telling me what I should do and who you are, he would have said with a condescending smile. How endearing.

Fenn pressed on. “He said he’d been thinking on it for months, ever since our Christmas together, and it just made sense to him. It even made sense when he told me, he was ever so persuasive. We’d wanted to be together for so long,” (you had?) “and now we had the chance. It’s not like Mummy needs me at home now she’s got Andrew, and my career seems to be pointing me towards Los Angeles at the moment. And all this flying back and forth is exhausting, I have no idea how you put up with it for my brother, who’s infinitely more infuriating than Julian is. And of course we love each other, or at least enough to give it a shot.”

In a charitable flash of a thought: Perhaps there really is someone for everyone. “But I thought you said no,” I protested. “I thought you didn’t want to get married. To him or anyone else.”

Fenn had long said that marriage did little for women that they could not do for themselves with far less hassle. “Weddings are fun but marriage looks boring,” she’d told me as she helped me slice apples for a crumble in Balcraigie’s kitchen. She knew Alex was going to propose that afternoon, and perhaps she was trying to steer me away from yoking myself again. “At least what I’ve seen of it. Mummy got stuck with all the hassle of this house when my father died, and Aunt Delia puts up with Uncle B’s shite only because she needs someone to help her pay for that country house in Ayrshire he insisted she wanted. Naw, pass.”

“Not changed my mind at all,” Fenn clucked, lifting her chin as though to challenge me. “I said he made sense, but I’m not convinced. Not really. I’d only do it if I didn’t have to do all the tedious social nonsense he made you do.”

A-ha. “And that’s why you’re calling. You think I know how to change Julian’s mind about anything?Sorry, can’t help. And I already told you, I don’t feel comfortable having these sorts of conversations.”

“Oh poo, you’re no fun,” Fenn sulked. “But that’s not what I meant when I said I needed advice. He wants me to come to America when this is all over and…” She tapped one of her long fingers beneath her lip with a pat-pat-pat as she searched for the right phrase. Like me, Fenn is constitutionally incapable of keeping her nails polished and shaped without professional intervention, certainly another thing she’d have to change if she ever wished to please Julian. “He wants me to take him on a test drive, he says.”

I couldn’t help myself — there was too much that was amusing in that to stop the whoop that leapt from me. And that whoop morphed into the kind of lung-bruising laughter that makes your whole chest burn for air. Tears started leaking from my eyes at the thought of Julian letting anyone else dictate the terms of any relationship with his consent. Though I tried to stop cracking up, every time I could prise open my eyes as I broke down in giggles I saw Fenn’s huffy and reddened face, framed by the dark curls she’d started pulling from her braid in indignation, and the laughter only kicked up again.

“I don’t see what’s so funny about that,” Fenn groused as I finally tightened my grasp on composure. “It’s just an idea. And I wanted to know if you thought Al would want to see me or not. If I come. Which I probably won’t. Maybe.”

“How are you going to make this work in the first place? The border is shut right now to the UK, for one. And you even if you could make it in, what, you’re going to say you’re here to take your boyfriend on a ‘test drive’?” When the phrase came out of my mouth I couldn’t help cracking up again, which only made her scowl even further, the corners of her mouth drawing down and down. She looked precisely like Alex when I’ve caught him being an idiot in a way he knows is idiotic, and yet can’t help himself from doubling down.

“It’s not that funny. Or a bad idea,” she protested. “You did your own test drive yourself, don’t forget. Yours was six months over here!”

On the other hand, maybe doubling down wasn’t such a bad tactic for Fenn, as she was completely correct. Still, I pushed on, explaining that Julian’s plan to keep her in Mexico for two weeks to get around the travel ban wouldn’t work — Miranda had thought she could sneak in for a few weeks in splendid isolation in a remote AirBnB outside of Billings if she holed up with her cousin Veronica in Mexico City first, but no dice.

“But he sounds so lonely,” she whined. “He said he can’t bear this time without me, without knowing when he’ll hold me again.”

“Well, why doesn’t he fly over to see you?” I’d finished my half-glass of wine by this point, and drifted into the kitchen to give my glass a judicious top-up. “They have to let him in, not like you coming in here.”

Fenn put down her own glass out my line of sight. “I did ask him, but he said he’s just not willing to take the chance. He’s a super-smeller, you know, and he worries it might make him more susceptible to picking up the virus on the plane.”

“Christ, you bought that?” I chortled. “First of all, he’s not, as much as he says he is. Second, that… defies all logic. Shit, how much have you been drinking?”

“Fine,” Fenn groused. “It sounded foolheaded to me, too. But if I were to come, and do my test drive, I’d want to see Al, and I just don’t know if he’ll see me.”

Alex? Well, he’d always see his sister, even if it were only to take part in a two-handed yell-a-thon, trying to shout her down into comprehending how Julian isn’t a suitable partner for her. “If I have to hear one more word from her about how that dribbling cocknozzle is somehow magically reformed, I’m taking your father’s car and driving down to that fucking shitgibbon’s apartment where I will finish what I started in England,” he’d ground out after his last conversation with Fenn. When I pointed out politely that Julian lives in a building with a concierge desk that would never let him get upstairs to perform the throttling Al so wanted to dish out, he replied, “There’s a sodding Starbucks on the ground floor of his building. I know how to wait.”

By the time Alex flung open the door to his study (I’ve asked him to be a little more gentle), seeking one of the pieces of shortbread I’d made that morning like a guided missile hellbent on destruction of baked goods, Fenn had accepted she’d not be in the US for her test drive in the near future, but she refused to abandon the plan altogether. “Honestly, how fucking awful could it be, spending the summer in LA with Julian? It’s hardly like there will be any Trump rallies he can drag me to, and the beaches will be reopening again soon. And it’s not like I’m planning to be much of anywhere but our bed anyway.” (Yuck.)

“Fenn,” I hissed at the iPad, ducking down below the breakfast bar. “Your brother is walking in. Ixnay on the Oolianjay.” The shortbread was fanned on a bright yellow platter on the dining room table, no need for Al to come into the kitchen, where I now pressed my back against the dishwasher.

She was too busy tipping back the last drops of her glass of red wine to hear me, I think, since she felt no hesitation in bleating, “And if I don’t come, he’s just going to ask Amanda. He already told me one of us is going to have to –“

I didn’t look up when a pair of Fair Isle-stockinged feet slid into the kitchen. “Mel.”

“Hm?” I stared down at Fenn’s face screwing up into a frown as she looked past me, and up at her brother. Her lips tightened into a sour knot of a moue.

“Why are you Zooming with my sister from the kitchen floor? I’m not even going to ask about the wine.” Alex was being charitable about the last part — I’d not grabbed my glass when I dropped below the granite counter, but the bottle itself. His big toe nudged me in the thigh but I looked to his sister, not him, to save this. Which must have been the wine talking.

“We were talking about me visiting, if you have to know, which you do not,” Fenn replied tartly. I knew that look — it was quite similar to one Alex had given me earlier that morning when I’d mentioned I thought he should let me trim his ever-lengthening hair. (“Do not touch my coronacurls,” he’d bit out, tucking one behind each ear. “The virus is my excuse to have my hair as long as I like, for a change.” My comment that he was looking more and more like Charles II in his fully-bewigged Restoration pomp was ignored.)

Alex reached down and in a single swift tug raised me to my feet with one hand and swiped the iPad from my grasp with the other. “I’ll be having that, sweetest.” With his free arm around me, holding me close to his side, he pivoted the screen to face us both. “Why, if it isn’t Fenn the Hen. What the fuck are you talking about? Visiting? There’s a sodding pandemic raging here, you know!”

Fenn’s eyes rolled again, this time accompanied by a long exhalation of disgust. “Ugggggggggggggh, I know. I’m not a fool, no matter how much you like to paint me as one. And before you say it — because I can see you want to, I know you — I know there’s no entry to anyone coming from the UK. But we thought –“

“What she means to say,” I broke in, “is that she was thinking she could just self-isolate in a third country for a couple of weeks. Like Mexico. But I convinced her this was a terrible idea, right?” I gave her a hard stare to accompany that final thought.

“It’s not a terrible idea, in my opinion.” Fenn worried her lower lip between her fingers, then swatted her own hand away with the other one. “Two months into this shite and I still can’t help but touch me damn face. I was coming because I’m bored.”

“You’re always bored.” Alex sounded unconvinced; he began beating a slow tap-tap-tap with his fingers where his hand began to rove on my side.

“But I’m going to stay with Mummy after all. She needs me, don’t know what she’d do without me, even with Andrew about these days.” Her mouth quirked up on one side. “Well, I do know. She’d be having him on the kitchen table, that’s what.”

Silence as Alex’s fingers drummed on my ribcage, and I tilted my head at last in time to see the glower I’d expected to see take hold of his face melt into a snicker, then a bark of mirth. “Gross,” he laughed.

Fenn’s feathery giggles floated through the speaker. “Gross, but true,” she edged out between titters.

Wriggling out of Alex’s clasp, I mimed a quick “out for a walk” with my fingers before snatching my purse from where I’d hung it on the back of a dining room chair. I grabbed a clean mask from the neat stack I keep on the sideboard and slipped out the blue front door. Fenn was better these days about shutting her mouth around her brother when it came to anything involving Julian Cranford (particularly Julian’s matrimonial plans), but I didn’t want to be around in case the penny dropped for Alex.

As the elevator slowly churned its way to the ground floor, I tapped out a text: I have time now if you do too

By the time I passed through the foyer onto the grey slate walkway to 5th Street, I’d had my reply: I have time and wine. You need to hear this.

ACT TWO

(In which JULIAN makes a friend. Scene: Santa Monica and Downtown LA, via Instagram and cellphone)

Yes. I do know I’m something of a hypocrite. You wouldn’t be the first to tell me, and I highly suspect you won’t be the last. Let’s examine the record. Well, of course, there’s the glaringly obvious one, the one where I didn’t fight at all to be with the man I truly wanted to be with again and again and again, and yet I spent years railing against the pretty little prison I’d let Julian lead me into with my own consent. And of course there’s the private hand-wringing about Julian’s affairs, or flings, or whatever they were, purely physical unions, while I lost my heart throb by throb to Alex. Plus my jealousy of Miranda and her platonic love for my husband-to-be, when I’d not been nearly so chaste when he was her partner. Oh, those are merely the highlights of a career working in finely detailed hypocrisy, painting multiple self-portraits in subtle gradients of phoniness.

And now? I tell everyone to wear a face covering in public, wash your hands, carry hand sanitizer, and practice social distancing. I have told people at the Bristol Farms in West Hollywood to pull up their masks; I have limited my long solo walks to the early morning, when hardly anyone is up. I always have a tiny bottle of Purell, and I know eight different 20 second ditties to sing while I wash my hands vigorously, with bar soap if possible. I use a nail brush and hardly touch my face at all these days. I take the virus seriously, I tell everyone, especially my mother and Alex.

But last week I cracked. I hadn’t planned to — there was nothing particularly dangerous about what I’d set out to do, nothing out of a pattern of consistent fidelity to the CDC and county health guidelines. Alex and I take a walk with Jenn on the nearly-empty Promenade at least once a week, always with masks, always six feet apart (or at least, Jenn stayed six feet apart from us). We’d peer into the storefronts of shops full of goods but devoid of life, messages of strength and perseverance posted on Xeroxed flyers in the windows. “WE CAN DO THIS!” “TOGETHER WE ARE STRONG.” “love and peace to u all!” “F_@* COVID-19 WE LOVE YOU SANTA MONICA!”

Last Monday, Alex had to beg off a late afternoon stroll for a conference call with his former colleagues in San Francisco — they were trying to bring on a new client, a private investor who was itching to make a placement with the Santa Monica team’s new fund. Alex was there primarily to be Dave’s brain — whenever Dave can’t remember some key number or explain the mechanics of an algorithm, Alex steps in with, “What Dave means to say is…” Dave looks smart for bringing Alex down south, and Alex gets to lap up the glory of being one of the cleverest in the (virtual) room. Win-win, they say, and for all of Alex’s moaning about his new boss, he and Dave have developed a closer bond since all of us hit Santa Monica with a bang, only to see that wallop peter out into the whimper of lockdown.

“Go, go,” Al had assured me as I laced up my Keds and selected a turquoise face covering from a freshly-laundered pile. “Get some air with Jenn. You’re both going mental inside. I’ll just about live without you for an hour.” He pushed my handbag over my shoulder and leaned down to slide his lips over mine. It felt shockingly erotic for a Wednesday afternoon kiss — not the usual peck I got when I popped out to pick up tampons or Eucerin at CVS, nor the brush of his mouth on my forehead before he went to his Thursday physical therapy sessions in Brentwood for that ankle that had never healed quite right. I felt his need for me as his tongue parted my lips and he pressed his mouth on mine. Without breaking his kiss, he pulled me up to straddle his hips as he leaned back on the counter. He grasped me tight about the waist, drawing me closer to him. I was illuminated by my greed for him, nearly breathless, his mouth pulling away from mine to plot a trail from my mouth to my ear and down to where my shoulder was exposed by my boatneck top.

You are not ready to know what that feels like.

The old criiiick of anxiety tightened my chest, the rush of cold fear spiralled around my torso, down, down, down. I was back in Josh Brookes’ BMW, Little Melissa again, petted and stoked into a blaze of lust as his mouth and hands devoured me, his acolyte, until my own desire tripped his fail-safe switch.

You can’t make me lose control like this, Melissa. You can make me do things I should never do.

And Alex wasn’t my sweet boy, the brave Duke Alexander in that moment, though I knew — I knew — it was his lips that coaxed heat from me. No, he’d become Josh, his passion curdling inside him, his violet eyes blurring with the need to bring me beneath him. Control and sex are intertwined, like a double helix, winding about each other, needing each other for support.

Alex’s coffee-scented breath brought me back, but it was the sour note of a cup from an hour ago that hung between us, not the rich and earthy aroma I’d smelled earlier as I’d poured us both a cup, freshly ground for a change, from the French press. The acrid tang nearly made me retch — I’d smelled the same on Josh’s breath on that sunny day in Palo Alto.

“Sweetie,” I groaned as I plucked his fingers from my waist and slid down his long body. I patted his chest, a dismissive there there, before pushing the green leather tote further onto my shoulder. I’d not let it fall as he’d embraced me, and I felt oddly proud of that. “You need to brush your teeth.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.” Alex looked genuinely shocked, dark brows raising in an inverted “V.” “I wasn’t asking for a shag on the counter. I’ve got a fucking meeting in 10 minutes! ‘You need to brush your teeth.'” He mimicked my voice, high and pleading and more nasal than I hope I’ve ever sounded. “Don’t pretend for a minute there’s not something bothering you, Mel. I know you.”

Caught me, I thought, but would not say, not yet. “It’s nothing, I’m just a little tired. I need the walk with Jenn. I’m too much with myself in here.” The velvet hairband I pulled around my wrist earlier felt too tight, a restraint, and I snapped it twice, letting myself feel its mild bite.

“I want to believe you.” Alex’s voice was too quiet as his hands fidgeted with a wine cork I’d neglected to throw away. “So I will. Get out of here before I start breathing on you.” He grabbed me as I made my way to the door, tucked my head beneath his chin, blew out a frazzly breath — haeeaaaaaaaeeeh! — on the crown of my head. “There. Now you smell like me and no other man will want to come near you. My job as a man is complete.”

Jenn was sitting on the low grey wall dividing our building from the Christian Science Reading Room next door by the time I made it to the street. Only she could carry off a magenta holographic lame face covering — I’d have looked like I was trying too hard, but she looked like a badass, as usual. “Where’s Al?” she asked, jumping from her perch. I felt decidedly dowdy in my t-shirt and jeans — even if they were from James Perse and Rag & Bone — compared to her olive green utility jumpsuit and crocodile loafers.

“Meeting. Just the two of us today.” Jenn fell into step beside me, two old friends accustomed to the pace of each other’s stride — six feet apart of course. Arizona Avenue that afternoon was particularly empty, even for lockdown, and we passed only a young couple walking a hyperactive miniature dachshund and a teenage girl in a hot pink crop top and acid wash mom jeans roller skating down the side of the road.

“WEAR A MASK!” Jenn cried at the girl, who was videoing herself skate-dancing, whipping her head around in a circle and flashing peace signs at the camera with her free hand. “Do you think ‘wear a mask’ is the ‘pull up your jeans’ for this particular moment in society?” Jenn asked, but through the mask it was a mushy mumble.

When Alex and I had decided on our apartment, it wasn’t just for the Italian restaurant on the ground floor, helmed by a Michelin-starred chef who made fresh gramigna and casunziei daily, or the two-minute walk to the Promenade and the library. The salty-musty sea air that flows in our unit gives my body the washed-out, blissed-out, over-and-out feeling I was most familiar with from hours on the beach as a little kid. Sure, we could have paid more for marble bathrooms instead of tile and quartz, or for a rooftop pool and barbecue lounge area — the price wouldn’t have stung.

But here I was barely a quarter mile from Jenn, as we’d planned when we were 12. Oh yes, young Mel and Jenn envisioned a future when they would return from their glamorous jobs working as an Oscar-winning screenwriter and fashion designer (respectively) to their luxury bachelorette homes mere blocks from each other in Beverly Hills. Or the Hollywood Hills. Or Malibu. Or really anywhere but Turdbank, as we called our hometown then. We’d gather nightly at her Spanish-tiled hacienda around the cerulean pool, sipping tropical drinks in our matching bikinis. We’d have brunch on my bougainvillea-covered balcony, sipping tea from the blue willow teaset my Grand–mère had gifted me on my 11th birthday, picking at raspberry scones. There were never any boys in these fantasies — Jenn and I were living in an ultra-femme paradise where they were simply distractions, unnecessary to our pleasures.

Life didn’t hand us the careers we’d imagined for ourselves, or the homes for that matter. And there was the small issue of there being a boy in my apartment these days, a grown up boy who often distracted me from Jenn — a distraction I welcomed, most of the time. As we approached the blue-tinted glass and steel of her building, I groused through my mask that I felt cheated: barely two months after we’d moved to 5th Street, we’d all been ordered inside. Jenn and I had only attended one session together at the yoga studio on the ground floor; we’d never lounged poolside with mai tais; never watched the sun set in a fury of orange and red and dusky purple from the roof deck.

“What if we went up?” Jenn had stopped so suddenly I nearly passed by her. She was shoving her blue-gloved hand deep in her jumpsuit pocket and pulled out her keyfob with a flourish. “You know, sit on the deck. Six feet apart, of course.”

“But –” I tried to think of what harm it might cause but my desire to do something, anything, like normal life won out. I can convince Alex this is fine, I assured myself. Why would he disagree?

“Plenty of that fresh air and sunshine President Lardass says will kill the virus d-e-a-d. And I can bring up the wine sippy cups and a bottle of Sauv Blanc and we can shove the straws under our masks.” Jenn was now jabbing her fob towards the entryway security box; the door unlocked with a discreet cleunk and brrrr. “Text Alex if you’re worried about it.”

So with Alex’s approval — it’s his health at risk, just as much as mine — I’d spent that afternoon with my feet tucked beneath me on a white rattan papasan chair, splitting a bottle of wine with Jenn and shoving Cheez-Its in my mouth under my mask (we each had our own box, for safety’s sake). It felt singularly naughty, partly for the minimal risk it posed, partly for the day drinking, partly for the very normalcy of it all in a time when pedestrian pleasures are spread out more distantly than the width of our socially distanced bubbles of public personal space.

Which is all to say that I felt fully justified in leaving Alex Zooming with his sister on the kitchen floor to practically sprint down Arizona to Jenn’s. Not only for the splendid commonplaceness of it all — the menu was chardonnay (not my fave) after all, with individual bags of parmesan Goldfish crackers — but because Jenn had dangled an irresistible bauble of a lure: gossip.

The first text came in while I was thinking a little too hard about whether I wanted to add capers to the tuna salad I was making for lunch. You’re gonna love this. Who do you think are #coronabesties now????

When TF did coronabestie become a thing, I tapped out in reply before returning to the caper conundrum.

You’re not curious? WHERE IS MEL AND WHAT DID YOU DO WITH HER?

Better be worth it. I’d decided in favor of the capers — I’d throw in some finely diced red onion for an additional kick, plus some chopped parsley to cut through the zest of the lemon.

I leave you with this: this virus is making strange bedfellows. I’m not saying they’re bedfellows, but who knows, life is weird right now

As it turned out, Alex hated the capers, and I wasn’t overfond of them either. (Too salty.)

I wasn’t thinking of the tuna capers or Bon Appetit’s suggestion that they were a necessary component to its “Best Tuna Salad” recipe (lies! I should have stuck to my usual unfussy and single addition of red onion) as Jenn buzzed me into the building, or even in the elevator to the rooftop deck. Coronabesties? Bedfellows? I’d been observing some low-key Facebook flirting between Caitlin and Sean’s cousin Mike, who’d moved to Oakland in the middle of the pandemic and was looking for tips on what were the best places to order from off of Postmates. Maybe Cait and Mike had…

“It’s not Cait and Mike, by the way.” Jenn’s mask was off, and I thought to chide her, but decided instead to take my seat at the other end of the long granite table. “Your refreshment awaits, madame, prepared by freshly-gloved hands.”

“What did you actually do to ‘prepare’ a bag of Goldfish?” I guided the metal straw of the wine tumbler beneath my mask and took a long sip.

“It’s a figure of speech. What’s up with Al? Why didn’t he come?” Jenn patted at the silver comb catching up one side of her curls. Jenn had decided to take the pandemic as an opportunity to grow out her natural hair, and it took every atom of my white girl self to resist asking to touch it. (“Nuh uh,” she’d told me years ago. “You only get to touch it if you’re helping me do something with it. Do I ask to touch your hair?” She had a point.)

“Mm, Fenn called.” I popped a single cracker in my mouth under my face covering. I couldn’t stop myself from envying Jenn blithely cramming Goldfish in her gob, unburdened by a mask.

“HA!” Jenn’s laugh was a tart hoot. “Honestly, I can’t believe you don’t know already because this is 100% your wheelhouse, not mine.”

“Coronabesties?” I had to say it twice, because the first was muffled by the blue flannel interior of my mask. (Many thanks to Aunt Jane for sewing us a dozen, but they are kind of warm now as SoCal’s excuse for spring is in its early throes of expiration into a stifling summer.)

“I take it you’re not looking at IG these days.” Jenn tipped a little more wine into her glass — no need for a sippy cup when you’re mask-free, really. “Although I don’t know where the algorithm would put her posts in your feed compared to mine, seeing as I basically stalk her.”

At my therapist’s suggestion, I’d curbed the social-scrolling in general. I was jealous of how much fun everyone else was having during lockdown, Charlie excluded. The few times he had posted on Facebook about the hell of being an NHS doctor during a raging pandemic in country with a leader with no discernible way out of its national nightmare, I’d felt ashamed for thinking I was taking too many naps when I could be learning Pashto or sewing masks for healthcare heroes.

“Who? Is it Jen?” I ventured. In the spirit of “together, apart” (I can see I was prescient in using this phrase last year and should really have trademarked it), Sean had brokered peace between the Jen(n)s a couple of weeks ago. It’s not exactly #coronabesties time (yet) but Jenn is nearly to a point where she can accept that Jen might know her own heart better. (No one expects Jenn to ever accept that she strong-armed Jen into divorce, even though all of us know it to be true.)

“Close, but not exactly a Montecristo.” Jenn brought her fingers to her mouth and let free an imaginary puff of cigar smoke. “Want me to tell you or you wanna open your IG?”

I scrambled in my bag for my phone and slid my finger through its unlock pattern. “Who am I looking for? I mean, I haven’t opened the app for a while. Oh! Did you see Ashley Finnegan’s had another baby?” A tiny, wizened, peachy face looked out at me from my phone — a pang of loss for a baby I hadn’t exactly mourned flicked at my consciousness.

“Yeah, just as ugly as the last one she had with that loser she married,” Jenn crowed through a mouthful of Goldfish.

“JENN!” (It was true, though.)

Jenn shrugged. “Just search for the hashtag. You’ll find it. I’ll say this for her — she managed to choose a hashtag that nobody’s cornered the market on. Yet.”

While I tapped it out, Jenn hummed what sounded like Janet Jackson’s “Nasty.” “Is it with an ‘s’ or a ‘z’ at the end… OH.”

“Mmmmmmmm. You told her to call him for some advice, right? Looks like no good deed goes unpunished, huh? More wine?”

I shook my head. There was Kayla Mackenzie, soon-to-be ex-wife of our very own Jeffrey Mackenzie, posing in a director’s chair in a black satiny robe, piped in pink. On the breast pocket were stitched in matching pink script the words “Best Bitch.” Affecting an air of shock, her bubblegum pink lips rounded into a nearly perfect “O,” overgroomed eyebrows shooting to the ceiling. One suspiciously well-manicured hand pressed her right cheek, the other grasped an oversized bright yellow cocktail. She had enough gold highlighter on her face to be visible from Alpha Centauri. And behind her, sporting a red canvas apron and the blue latex gloves that are simply de rigeur in the era of COVID-19, painting a carefully-sectioned portion of Kayla’s hair dark brown, was Julian.

The caption? “When life hands you lemons, why not make lemondrop martinis? Jay thought it was time for a makeover! #lockdownlife #coronabesties #brunetteshavemorefun #onlythebest #loftlife #quarantini #jayandkay #bestbitches”

I thrust out my hand. “Gimme the wine.”

At Jenn’s suggestion/insistence, I clicked through to the other photos she’d included on the post. A selfie of Kayla and Julian, slightly out of focus, clinking glasses. *click* Julian, feet up on the Milo Baughman coffee table, watching Fox News, mugging slightly for the camera as he gnawed on what looked like a Slim Jim. *click* A five-second clip of Kayla shimmying for the camera, finishing with a coy toss of her newly-brunette waves.

“She calls him ‘Jay‘?” was the only thing I could manage through the bitter red mist that crept over me. How dare he have fun right now? How dare he have fun at all?

“And she’s ‘Kay,’ if you weren’t paying attention to the hashtags.”

I looked at the caption. “She posted this today? Are there any others?”

“Nope. This is the debut of the ‘Jay and Kay’ show on her end. And I take it Julian hasn’t posted any, or we would have heard a barbaric yawp from Scotland by now.”

Rage surged in me, roiling my blood, pulling down the billowy scarlet curtain of fury. I glugged as much chardonnay as my sippy cup could hold and unhooked my mask. “I need to know what the FUCK he’s playing at.”

“Mel, leave it. Let them be covidiots together. Don’t choke on those Goldfish you just shoved in your mouth because I can’t exactly give you a socially-distanced Heimlich maneuver.” Jenn sipped thoughtfully from her glass as she scrolled through her own phone. “They’re loving it in the comments.”

Kayla’s friends — including CeeCee from Kreation Juicery — ladled on the praise for her newly-chestnut locks. QUE RICA jajajaja! and The bitch is back and hotter than evar and WHERE CAN I GET THAT ROBE BITCH TELL ME OR I CUT U! and cute couple!!!!

That was it. I felt the full Irish spleen of Patricia Anne Sullivan de Mornay surge in me and crest over the seawalls I’d built carefully over so many years to keep the passion in check. “Anger isn’t attractive, Melissa,” I was told by Mrs. Kinsey, my fourth grade teacher, when I’d thrown a fit over losing a spelling bee to a boy whose name eludes me now, because I spelled “theatre” with an “-re” rather than an “-er.” (Maybe his name was Bo.) I was right, she knew I was right, and yet I was in the wrong for feeling cheated, and worse, for saying what I felt. My education in lessening myself expanded that day.

“I’m calling him,” I hissed, hitting his name in my favorites list. (Yes, it’s still in my favorites list.)

From the other end of the table, Jenn cackled. “Put him on speaker. It’s been too long since I’ve heard his slimy voice, and I could use a laugh.”

I started to point out she was laughing (inappropriately, in my opinion) already, but Julian answered first. “Darling!” (He sounded entirely too blithe for late afternoon during the plague times, especially when I knew his company was hemorrhaging money — thank you, Fenn, for your complete lack of discretion on Julian’s finances.) “I wasn’t expecting a call at all, but lovely all the same. Now, how is my feckless little sweetheart?”

Now, the Goddess Ishtar-Melissa yearned to let loose her vengeance, extract her blood-payment from Julian. She wanted to scream, It’s not enough to pressure Fenn into marriage, it’s not enough to convince Amanda that all she deserves is to be second-best to a woman whom you want more, you can’t even be faithful in your unfaithfulness, hound? But Ishtar-Melissa lost out to the Good Girl, whose power lies in her very weakness, after all.

“I… I’m fine. We’re fine. Al’s doing well, he’s talking to Fenn.” (God, can you just get to it, Mel?)

“Oh ho ho, I get it now!” Julian chortled. In the background, I could hear The Weeknd’s “Heartless” (fitting) punctuated by the occasional punch of a bubbling giggle. “You’ve been chatting with Fenn, too.”

“I have, but this isn’t about Fenn and her ‘test drive.”

Jenn waved her arms wildly, the gauzy magenta of her kaftan floating in the light breeze of the late afternoon. “What test drive?” she stage-whispered.

“Who’s with you?” he spat. “I’m not speaking with you if he’s there. We end this now. That was the agreement — you let Fenn and me work it out, and I won’t bring charges against your brute for what frankly bordered on GBH at the wedding.”

Jenn started to speak but I put up a hand in warning. “No one. I’m outside right now, getting some air. This is about Kayla.”

“Kay? She’s right here if you want to speak with her. Must say darling, she’s about the only thing getting me through this wretched time. Kay! Get your fat arse over here!” Julian laughed, a genuine one, so light and loose. Like the ones we shared before I even went on that first date with him, before that evening at the Hatchet with Alex. Something gentle and free.

“O.M.G.! Mellllllllll!” Kayla’s voice was the aural equivalent of a Facebook reaction GIF of two kittens hugging while they projectile-vomit heart-shaped balloons. “Thank you soooooooo much for having me talk to Jay. Isn’t he the best?”

“Aw, Kay,” Julian sounded almost embarrassed, which was even more astounding to me than the fact that he allowed himself to be referred to as “Jay.”

Across the table from me, Jenn mimed barfing into her open bag of Goldfish. I was with her in that regard.

“No, really, Mel!” Kayla continued, her voice a high trill. “Jay really helped me understand that I was wasting my life with someone like Mack who’s so afraid of making the wrong decision that he doesn’t make any at all. And I deserve more than that, right? Didn’t you tell me that?”

“No offense to Mack,” Julian butted in. “I always liked him. Trusted him with you, Liss. Good man, just not very forceful. I explained to Kay here that life is too short to waste on people who are frozen in their indecision, particularly when it comes to love. I should know better than most.”

“HEY JULES!” Jenn cried out from the other end of the table, raising the eyebrows of one of her neighbors who’d come to soak in a bit of the afternoon sunshine himself. (I’d come to learn later that afternoon from Jenn that this neighbor had a tendency to lounge in a banana-hammock, so I was grateful there was a slight nip in the air that afternoon which occasioned his wearing of jeans and a sweatshirt.) “Go fuck yourself!”

Julian’s laugh ripped out of my phone. “Jenn! What a pleasant surprise, never thought I’d hear your voice again. Tsk, tsk, Liss. I thought you said you were alone. I don’t mind if you have company. After all, you’re a free woman these days. Speaking of which, has Alex got you that ring yet? Seems such a pity he missed his chance. Fenn’s keeping it safe, she assures me. Just in case she changes her mind.”

No matter how shitty I felt about Fenn contemplating that test drive, I was still pissed off Julian was flaunting her in front of his new… hookup, fuck buddy, whatever. “Pretty crass to talk about Fenn in front of your new girlfriend, even for you.”

Kayla was the one to scream with laughter first, though Julian brought up the rear quite rapidly in a low chortle. “Oh. My. GOD!” Kayla bubbled, each word its own saccharine burst of a juicy sugarplum. “We’re not going out, Mel. Hey Jenn!” (Jenn grunted out an almost-passably pleasant hello.) “Jay and I are, like, coronabesties. We’re friends, you know? He’s so much fun, absolutely hysterical. And so smart. He’s hooked me up with an amazing lawyer to handle the divorce.”

“Who’d you get?” Jenn couldn’t resist asking, and she grumbled her approval when Kayla clued her in.

“I cannot thank you enough for sending Kayla my way,” Julian broke back in. “I thought I’d be doing my good deed for the day” (the day? how about lifetime?) “by being a sounding board for Kay. But as it turns out, we rather like each other’s company. She needs a little spoiling, and I appreciate how she doesn’t play games. We can just… relax.”

“It’s uncomplicated,” Kayla added. “No pressure, because, I mean, no offense because you married him and everything, but he’s really not my type.”

“Hey! I’ve got an ego here!” Julian teased. “No sexual tension, Mel. Not a drop. She’s a gorgeous girl, Kay –“

“Oh, thank you!” Kayla cheeped.

“–but no, nothing. Not to say we didn’t think about it, I will be honest. But hey ho, not every peg is meant to fit into every hole.”

(Unnecessary.)

“So there’s nothing going on between you,” I puzzled.

“Is it so hard to imagine your monster of an ex-husband made a friend? I suppose for someone who couldn’t keep it ‘just friends’ with her own husband’s best friend it must be quite difficult, I will give you that.”

I didn’t dignify the jab with a response.

“Is there anything else we need to discuss, or can I get back to binge-watching Outlander with Kay?”

Well, I guess you do learn something every day — even Julian could make a connection with a human being that didn’t involve manipulation, bullying or bribes. At least on his side. COVID-19 is making the world a truly strange place.

***

Apologies for the very long delay in posting. I’ve had so much happen recently, and yet nothing at all, much like everyone else. My 35th birthday came and went in lockdown; I’ve learned how to make a perfect loaf of white bread; Alex and I have begun planning the wedding, as best we can in a time where so much is uncertain.

And much of what little brain bandwidth I have had recently has been occupied by my reaction to coming face to virtual face with Joshua K. Brookes for the first time in 15 years. If you, like me, are a survivor of sexual assault, do not assume that time will have smoothed away the jagged edges of your pain. Do not feel that you are not entitled to still feel raw. Your reaction is your reality, your truth. And I must speak of my own truth — the circle of truth must be drawn more widely. I am ready to be done with him for good.