Page 48 of The Favorite Sister

Vince wraps his fingers around my wrist, removing my hand from his boxers and setting it on the mattress with a consolatory pat. For a few long moments, that is that. I’m about to retreat to myside of the bed when Vince changes his mind, flipping me onto my back, then waiting, unhelping, while I wiggle out of my pajama bottoms. He does lean down to kiss me—there’s that—but it’s a wet, cold kiss, too many front teeth, and we abandon pretense to focus on getting his dick inside of me, which hasn’t happened since I went off birth control three months ago.

Vince is humping the seam of my inner thigh, wheezing, working dutifully for an ember. This outlives my capacity for dirty talk, and there are only so many times one can say,I want you to fuck me, before its rehearsed timbre incurs the opposite of its intended effect.

Vince slams onto his back with a sharp cry of frustration. He pounds his temple, a caveman’s show of self-flagellation. His angry breathing moderates into soothing neighs. “It’s not you,” he assures me. “I just drank too much tonight.” He drags me onto his pale, wimpy chest, nuzzling the top of my head and rubbing my back, like I’m the one who should be upset, even though there is nothing wrong withme. I should be the one consolinghim Yes, dear, it’s perfectly normal that I have cashmere sweaters harder than your dick. “You’re so beautiful,” he continues, moronically. “I want you so much.”

“Thank you, babe,” I say. I prop my chin in my hand, my elbow sharp above my husband’s fickle heart. “You tell all the girls that when it doesn’t work?”

Vince doesn’t even call mecrazyas I roll onto my side, my turn to punish him with my back. My intelligence isn’t worth insulting anymore, apparently.I can say anything, I realize. I can really be crazy now.

“No reservation, you said?” The hostess consults her seating plan. She’s the only other black person in the lobby besides me.

“Right,” I tell her for the second time. “But I just want to eat at the bar.”

“We take reservations for the bar.”

“There’s nowhere that’s first come, first serve?”

The hostess looks up at me. She is wearing no makeup exceptfor goth lipstick, no jewelry except for a jade bangle. “You can see if there’s anything open.”

I tip my head at her. “So the bar is first come, first serve?”

“Only if it doesn’t have a place setting. If it has a place setting it’s being held for a reservation.”

“Eleven Madison isn’t even as tough as this.” I smile easily, letting her know I’m no stranger to the vagaries of posh restaurants.

The hostess is unbelievably annoyed. “Huh?”

“It’s in New York,” I say, pathetically.

The little bitch shrugs. As if New York is over and the dining room at this four-star boutique hotel in Phoenix is where it’s at. She looks like someone who would watch the show, but she certainly doesn’t recognize me. I find myself wishing I told the camera crew to follow me to dinner (they went back to their hotel—a three-star chain—after my reading), so this haughty newborn would realize she should be clamoring to make nice with me. Not that I have any right to complain. I avoided the other two black kids in my class studiously. On my own, I was a refreshing breeze. Two would have been a twister, everyone in my town hiding in the basement.

I remember my Chanel bag as I follow the hostess’s unhelpful directions to the bar, adjusting it on the chain so that it rests flush against my pelvic bone. When in doubt, lead with Chanel.

The bar isn’t immediately visible at the foot of the stairs, and I walk around a second dining room space like an asshole, wondering if Brett would have gotten an escort, and if it would have been for her star or for her skin. When I finally locate the bar, it’s empty and unset.

“This okay?” I ask the bartender, hoisting myself onto a stool.

“You drinking or eating?”

“Eating.” I rethink my answer. “Both.”

He smiles in a way that makes me feel stupid for asking. His hair is slicked back and his beard is unkempt. His bow tie is baby shower pink. “Then this is okay.”

I’m set up with a placemat and menu and silverware, then ignored for several minutes until a red-faced man in a rumpled suittakes the stool two empty seats over from mine. He is immediately given the bartender’s full attention; to his cocktail order I manage to tack on a request for a glass of white wine.What kind?the bartender asks, and I shrug, because I have no idea, only that I am desperate to feel the way I felt that day in Jen’s apartment, like nothing could ever go wrong again.Surprise me, I tell him, kittenish.But, like, he says, all business,dry, fruity, what?I weigh my options before telling him fruity. Who wants to drink somethingdry?

The bartender tends to our drinks in the order that they are placed, though I know from Vince’s bartending days that you are almost always supposed to pour a glass of wine or beer before assembling a more complicated cocktail. The man gets his beverage and the bartender retreats to the other end of the bar. I’m forced to raise my hand to remind him I’m still waiting. He waves back with a patient smile that says,Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten you. After drying a rack of wineglasses steaming from the dishwasher, he opens a bottle of fruity white for me. He fills a glass to the top and empties the bottle into a mini wine carafe that he presents to me on the side with aDon’t tell anyonewink.

“Sorry about that. I’m the only one back here tonight and we were out of clean glasses.” He flings a bar towel over his shoulder and folds his arms across his chest. His shirt cuffs are rolled to his elbows; his thick, veiny forearms say farmhand, his watch says Trust Fund Baby who dropped out of SMU sophomore year to start his own T-shirt line. He has warm, green-flecked eyes. People whose licenses list their eye color ashazelare usually reaching—they’re brown, just say brown—but in his case, I’d allow it. What are the genes needed to produce a child with eyes like that? I uncross my legs, thinking just how far Phoenix is from New York, how unlikely it is that this not-brown-eyed gentleman watches Saluté.

“What can I get you to eat, miss?” he asks.

Just as I’m no stranger to the vagaries of posh restaurants, I’m also no stranger to poor service with a smile, that ensuing whiplash of indignation and clemency. The moment you are sure this isitis always the moment you’re brought a free glass of wine, the moment that thehandsome bartender offers his heartfelt apologies,miss. So you adjust your blinkers and you say, “The beet salad to start and the salmon.”

“Excellent,” the bartender says, forgetting to collect my menu before he walks away.

I find my phone and open my email. The glass is hot from the dishwasher and the wine tastes like a wedding bouquet, nothing like the crisp elixir poured for me in Jen’s apartment a few weeks ago. No matter, tomorrow I will be in L.A., where I’mall set for dinner with the Oscar-Nominated Female Director at 8pm at Bestia. Exciting!my motion picture agent’s assistant added.

Next is an email from Gwen, my editor,Re: Stephanie Simmons’s AQ.Every writer fills out an Author Questionnaire pre-publication. It’s distributed to different departments to help develop publicity and marketing plans.Steph,I need you to pull the AQ on Stephanie Simmons’s memoir first thing tomorrow morning. Thanks.I have to read this several times before I remember that Gwen’s assistant is also named Stephanie, and that she must have sent this to me in error. Still, what does she want with my AQ?