Followers Page 24

  Jerry put one hand on Orla’s and the other on Gayle’s. Orla looked at their hands on hers, their faces turned toward hers, toward where she sat, at the place that had always been hers. She was the point toward which they had aimed their hopes and modest resources for twenty-nine years. She had forgotten this feeling—the feeling of being someone’s primary focus, rather than a secondary character.

  Her mother smiled and said, “I made chicken cacciatore, too. Would you rather have that?”

  Orla nodded, though just the thought of chicken cacciatore made acid rise from her stomach, and she knew then that she could never tell them she was pregnant. She was not finished being their child. They had been sitting here every night since she left for college, trying not to look at her empty chair, and all that time she was mostly ducking their calls, mostly ignoring their texts. She owed them, at the very least, the absence of heartache. She owed them permission to keep hoping that she would amount to something, even if—she thought of Marie Jacinto, her tongue streaked with cheese filling as she rejected Orla’s efforts—she never actually did.

  After dinner, Orla went up to her childhood bedroom and threw up into her Tweety Bird trash can. She sat back, when she was finished, and looked through her watering eyes at her bedroom door. Over the last decade, Gayle had slowly replaced her bedroom fixtures with things that were more mature, corralling Orla’s old collages and photo negatives into linen cubes, replacing her Joe Boxer bedding. But Gayle had left the door alone. Still stuck to it, with aging loops of masking tape, were wallet-sized school photos of people Orla didn’t talk to anymore. There was Ian, who had the parties; there was JC Kraus, a handsome year-older quarterback who once tossed a handful of his pictures into the air and watched the girls scramble for them. And in a larger-sized photo—indicative of their best-friend status—there was Catherine, her blond hair worn down for picture day, arranged in two neat swaths on her shoulders. Her smile was extreme, uncharacteristic, but Orla remembered she had wanted to show her teeth off that year. The braces that Orla still pictured her in had been removed over the summer.

  What was it Catherine had said about her on television, the morning after Anna died? The sight of her former friend nodding into the camera was so disorienting, Orla almost fainted. “So she was sort of a shady character, even then?” the anchor had cut in, impatient with Catherine’s rambling. “Yep,” Catherine had answered. “She always acted so innocent, but...” Catherine tucked her hair behind her ears and narrowed her eyes at the anchor. “She thought she was better than everyone else. That she deserved more. She was ruthless, in her own way.”

  Beneath Catherine’s picture on the door was Danny’s. He wore a blue Structure T-shirt with a thick red stripe across the front. Orla smiled at the stripe. She could see the younger version of him pointing at it, hear him saying, “Yeah, this is my fancy T-shirt.”

  Of course it had been easy to long for him then, when maintaining their personas was their full-time job, when the right quip or band tee or book in common was enough to make them fall for each other. She saw now that she had built her life around a flawed hypothesis. She had believed that Danny had reached for her hand in his car that night because he knew, deep down, they were meant for each other. But really—realistically—it could have been anything. Boredom. Blanket horniness. Whatever he’d drunk. It could have even been an accident.

  She saw, too, why she was able to leave him alone for a decade, even when she thought she was pining for him: because this, the school-picture Danny, was the one she had wanted. Why would she want to keep up with him, to hear how things were going? Things only went one way.

  Orla turned the picture over. She felt sure that he had signed it, inscribing a reference to an inside joke. But except for the photographer’s watermark, the back of the photo was blank.

  * * *

  Orla went back to New York the morning of her doctor’s appointment. Gayle and Jerry hugged her tightly as the bus belched gas behind them. “Whatever you need, sweetie,” Gayle kept saying. “We’re here.”

  Mrs. Salgado’s folding chair stood sentry, empty, at the doorway to Orla’s building. Orla dashed inside. Anna’s mother was probably in the bodega across the street, buying a Diet Mountain Dew. Orla had seen her in there before, laughing with the cashier.

  Upstairs, Floss was sprawled in the living room, back from Bali. When Orla came in, she leaped off the couch, spilling a full bag of chips onto the floor, and threw her arms around Orla’s neck. “I missed you so much,” she said. She was wearing a shroud-like dress, moss green, in a canvas kind of material. “Isn’t this madness?” Floss said when she noticed Orla looking at it. “Like forty blind nuns made it or something.”

  “Wow,” Orla said. “So Bali was good?”

  “Bali was life-changing.” Floss whirled in a circle and dropped herself back onto the couch. “You have to go. I mean, you’ll have a reason to go, because I’m almost definitely moving there.”

  Orla put the bag of leftovers from her mother down on the counter. It had been straining against her hand all the way back from the subway, the plastic handles pulling apart like taffy. “Did you get some good footage?” she said.

  Floss shrugged. “We did this thing where I pretended to lose my pendant on the beach,” she said. “Mason made me cry. But, like, by the time it airs no one will believe it, because it’ll seem so materialistic, and after this trip, I’m telling you, I’m over possessions.” Floss’s eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open. “Omigod,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  Orla realized she was crying, tears falling fast on the front of the Mifflin Panthers T-shirt she had worn back from home. She pressed her palms to her eyes. When she took them away, Floss was frozen, staring at her.

  “I’m pregnant,” Orla said. “I’m fucking pregnant.”

  Floss didn’t hesitate. She put her arms around Orla. She let her cry into the work of the forty blind nuns. “We’ll figure something out,” she said. “We always do.”

  * * *

  Orla had imagined that, at the appointment, she would have her stomach spread with jelly and see something like a tadpole flickering on a screen. But there was no jelly or tadpole—there wasn’t even a doctor. Just a gravel-voiced nurse who made her sign dozens of forms, then stacked them hard when Orla was finished. She gave Orla a folder of badly photocopied handouts with spaced-out women and storks on them. She asked Orla the date of her last period, then flicked a small cardboard wheel that reminded Orla of the one her guidance counselor had used in high school, to tell her what she should be when she grew up. (“Something in forestry, distribution, or otherwise concerning data and things,” the counselor had said. “Things?” Orla had repeated.)

  The nurse held the wheel up to her glasses and said, “Eleven weeks. Almost three months along already. You’re due Christmas Day!”

  Orla raised her hand, as if she was in class, and said, “Is eleven weeks too late to...?”

  The nurse looked at her. She took off her glasses and rubbed them on the hem of her scrubs. “No,” she said. “No, you have time. I can—” She rummaged in a drawer and found another handout. She pushed it across the desk: a single sheet, sober black and white. “There you go. Some resources.”

  Orla nodded and stood to go. She gathered all the papers. “You don’t need to take the rest of those, if,” the nurse said. Orla put them back down.

  Across the subway car on the way home, Mrs. Salgado looked like she was curious about where they had just been. They walked in tandem back to the building. Orla, so dazed she forgot to be afraid of the woman following her, let her eyes meet Anna’s mother’s as she reached to open the door. “See you later,” she murmured.

  Mrs. Salgado nodded and spoke to her for the first time, her Staten Island accent filing down the r in Orla’s name. “Goodbye, Orla,” she said.

  * * *

  The sun had just set on the night
before Orla’s abortion when Floss burst into her room, rattling the partition, and said, “Look at this shit.” She held up her phone.

  Together, on Orla’s bed, they watched Aston crying live to an audience of millions. He was sitting on a small rug somewhere, staring straight into a mounted camera. “Spent every penny I had on this place,” he was saying. “In memory of Anna. I mean, it’s true I need somewhere to live for a while. It’s true that me and the Bowery Hotel...parted ways. But I’m not gonna live here for long. I’m gonna give this place to Anna’s family. They could live here. They could sell it. They could come for vacation and shit, I dunno.” Aston chewed on his lip. “I haven’t heard back from them. I guess they hate my guts right now.” Aston got up and disappeared for a moment. The camera wobbled, then panned around the apartment. Orla held the screen closer to her face. The apartment was empty except for dozens—no, hundreds—of burning candles, sitting right on the floor, wax pooling and rolling down them. Beyond the flames, Orla could see the jagged outlines of a breathtaking Midtown view.

  “He bought a place at One Fifty-Seven,” Floss said dryly, reading Orla’s mind. “He has lost it.” Orla knew the building. It was a bratty new fixture on the skyline, crystal clear and built to dizzy heights over Central Park.

  Aston sat back down in front of the camera. He glared into it. “You see that?” he said. “A candle for every one of you assholes who liked the comment about Anna killing herself.” His voice began to wobble. “Two hundred and eight. Monsters.” He tore his shirt off and flung it out of frame, pulled his knees up to his chest, and sobbed.

  Abruptly, Floss forced the phone down to Orla’s comforter. “I can’t be here right now,” she said. And Orla, who had been torturing herself by wondering if the quakes in her stomach were the work of a desperate fetus, sending up flares, felt the same. When Floss headed for the door without mentioning where she was going, Orla got up and went with her.

  * * *

  They ended up at the rooftop bar where they used to eat brunch before they knew better. They sat at their old table in their new Yankees caps—Floss had one, too, it turned out, though she wouldn’t pull it down as Melissa had instructed. They ordered drinks from the same waiter who had seethed on the day that they sat there forever, then skipped out on the check.

  “He doesn’t remember us,” Orla said, after the man took their orders with a smile.

  “He doesn’t recognize us, either,” Floss said. “But they do. These hats don’t do shit.” She nodded at a group of good-looking Middle Eastern guys. The tallest one was pointing out Floss and Orla to a bachelorette party of Southern blondes. Orla heard one of the girls’ voices trailing toward them across the banquettes. “You wouldn’t think they’d be out,” she said. “They’re, like, villains now, right?”

  The waiter returned with their drinks, and Floss held hers up. “To being a villain, I guess,” she said tonelessly.

  Orla touched her gin and tonic to Floss’s tequila, but couldn’t bring herself to take a sip. She watched the men and the bachelorette girls flirt. One of the women was wearing a sash that said “#TeamBride.” She was pointing at something beyond the wall with great excitement, and now the rest of the girls clustered in on her to see. The men did, too, pressing against them.

  “It’s a bachelorette party,” Orla said to Floss. “Who isn’t Team Bride?”

  Floss didn’t answer. She was perfectly still, her mouth slack, her eyes tracking the stare of the bachelorette girls and the guys who were buying their drinks. Orla twisted around. Everyone in the bar was now looking north, past Team Bride’s finger, at a building twenty blocks or so up. The tower, thin and glassy, could hardly be distinguished from the twilight. Most of its units were dark, so the sky bled into the bedrooms and kitchens, turning the building bluish gray from top to bottom—nearly. Just beneath the penthouse, the tower had a wound: one square was startling orange. Inside it, a fire ebbed and raged.

  Floss stood up suddenly, knocking her chair into the one behind it. “That’s—” she said. She looked at Orla wildly. She pumped her arm in the direction of the burning building.

  “What?” Orla stood, too, frightened by Floss’s flailing hands. By the time she was on her feet, she had put it together herself.

  “Aston’s building,” Floss said. “The candles.”

  Orla grabbed Floss’s phone from the table and took herself back to the browser, back to the window where they left Aston crying on the floor. This livestream has ended. She thumbed the screen. She tried to call him instead. Voice mail picked up promptly. “Aston? It’s Orla,” she said into the phone, raising her voice above a sudden chorus of sirens below. “Aston—we’re worried.”

  Across the roof, Team Bride crossed herself with great fanfare, then turned and sobbed into the blazer of one of the Middle Eastern guys. “It just looks so much like 9/11,” she warbled, then drew her face back, sniffling, and peered up at the man. “No offense.”

  Orla watched the girl who was getting married lift her drugstore veil from her eyes. “Y’all, I know it’s fucked up,” she said softly. “But from here, it’s kind of beautiful, too.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Marlow

  New York, New York

  2051

  At eight thirty, Honey tapped the door of the guest room and pushed in without waiting for an answer. Marlow, who had been dozing, uncurled herself and looked at her. Honey was wearing a strapless white jersey jumpsuit. Her hair had been ironed and slicked straight back. She carefully set down on the bed a gold tray that held a clear drink, a pair of white leather ankle boots, a folded square of white silk—a dress, Marlow supposed—half a dozen silver tubes of lipstick, which wobbled as the tray touched down, and a white mask, the kind that covered just the top half of the face, with winged ends pointing upward on either side.

  Marlow sat up and touched one finger, gently, to the rim of the glass. The smell of mint and lime rose from it as the ice cubes gently rearranged themselves. “I’d rather red wine, if you have it,” she said.

  Honey snorted. “And risk a spill?” she said. “You can’t afford to reupholster my couch.” She nodded at the lipsticks. “If you use any of these, please do it over a sink.”

  Marlow looked at the lipsticks—beautiful, all of them, in dark raisin and eggplant and pewter and even an old-fashioned red. “I don’t wear lipstick,” she said. “Not a fan.”

  “No?” Honey raised her eyebrows. “And you decided that?”

  Marlow rolled her eyes. “Yes, Honey, I decided that.” Such a believable assertion—I decide what I like and I don’t—and yet she had a feeling Honey could tell it wasn’t true. Marlow had been in the midst of deciding whether or not she was a lipstick kind of person when she met Ellis, years ago. He had mentioned nonchalantly, on one of their early dates, that he couldn’t stand lipstick, that it reminded him of Stella the clown, that fixture of Constellation childhoods. His vote had made up her mind. But her followers were skeptical. That whole lipstick speech he gave you? one of them commented after the date. BullSHIT. His last girlfriend SLEPT in the stuff. Homeboy’s just toeing the company line. Think about it: the Hysteryl peeps don’t want you drawing ANY attention to your mouth—brings back memories, CHOMP! I mean, why do you think you don’t wear lipstick already? Floss has only given it to you 128,913,291,003 times!!!!!!! Because I don’t really like it, Marlow thought, but then something else occurred to her: one of the things that turned her off about lipstick was that she always seemed to lose it. Later on, she thought of this again, after they were married and Ellis complained about a clear gloss she put on. That night, she had stolen out of the house during off-camera time and sneaked into her parents’ home, where she went into her old bedroom and cleared out her glitter-stuck dresser drawers. She found plenty of other things that she was sure had disappeared, but she didn’t come across a single lipstick.

  Uneasy, Marlow picked up her drink
and tasted it. Ice-cold, vaguely minty, and strong. Strong enough to make her gums ring. Maybe she’d have just the one, to put her at ease, to blur the last two days. She drained half the glass in a sip.

  Honey nodded approvingly. The sounds of the apartment beginning to fill with people—whispering, laughing, finding each other in bursts of happy recognition—wafted down the hall. Honey got up and smoothed the front of her jumpsuit. “See you out there,” she said, almost grimly, then strode away with the gait of a woman on a mission, spike heels pummeling the dark floors.

  Marlow got dressed, worming her feet into Honey’s shoes, tugging gently at the dress’s purring zipper. The mask was rubbery and warm. It had neat cutouts for her eyes, so she could keep Honey in her sights. It left her nose and mouth free, too. Technically, she could breathe easy.

  * * *

  David intercepted Marlow at the end of the hallway, just before the living room. He held out a gray-screen tablet with minuscule printing—a contract—and asked her to sign with her finger.

  “Standard nondisclosure,” he said. “Nothing leaves this room. There’s no recording, no messaging, no mapping allowed at Honey’s gatherings. No devices at all, actually. No one’s to tell anyone they’re here.” He nodded, approvingly, at Marlow’s bloodied wrist.

  “And no one can say I was here,” Marlow said.

  David nodded. “Not if they don’t want Honey’s lawyers to ruin their lives.” He lifted her hand to the tablet gently and pointed at the empty line.

  There were about fifty people in the living room, waiting, fidgeting, gripping their drinks. Like her, they were all wearing white, and the masks. It took her a moment to place what the room was missing. Every guest, to a one—she thought of Elsa’s smirk—was pale-skinned. When Marlow emerged from the hall, they all looked up at the sight of someone entering the room, dropping their conversations instantly. She braced herself for the looks of recognition, afraid that the mask she was wearing wasn’t enough to hide who she was, that the temptation to cash in on the hunt would trump some partygoer’s fear of Honey’s NDA. But all she saw was disappointment; she was not who they were waiting for. It was somehow true, she thought, her mood warming with the booze—she was safe. The best place to hide in New York was in a crowd that only cared about Honey.