Page 82 of The Favorite Sister

“Where are you going?”

“I’m packing you up.”

“Vince,” I say, but he continues on his way. “Vince!” I yell, sharply, but he doesn’t stop like he used to. I jump up and follow him. Chasing after my estranged husband. Not the look I was going for this morning.

Vince is tossing my products into my toiletry bag in the downstairs guest bathroom, chucking glass bottles at glass bottles, like he is trying to break them.

“Vince,” I say, closing the door behind me. “Vince.” I put my hand on his arm. “Please listen to me for a moment.”

Vince stops with an anguished cry, reaching into the Duane Reade bag and producing a Jimmy Choo shoebox.For Gary, I’d written in black marker across the top before leaving it on my front stoop for—plot twist!—Gary, the photographer from theNew York Timeswho has been staked outside my window for the last few weeks. Not only is Gary from the most reputable publication of the lot, but he’s the one who has so far displayed the highest degree of professionalism. No, he doesn’t work weekends. None of them do. I’m not that big of a story. (That’s about to change!) But he is always there, bright and early on Monday morning, before the rest of the pond scum trickle in for normal business hours. Monday served my purposes better, anyhow. I needed Gary to discover the package and watch the clip in question after I did what I am planning on doing today. If this got out before the brunch at Jesse’s, I don’t know if I’d ever be in the same room with these prostitutes again. Thescene today would be canceled. What is on that tape is that much of a bombshell.

I can tell that Vince has watched the footage by the injured expression on his face. “I saw you leave on the Ring,” he says, referring to the security camera we have for our front door, “and I thought I’d try to get some more clothes out of the house while you were out. But then I found this and—” His voice breaks off, emotionally. How dare he. How darehebe hurt byme.

“You were going to let this get out?” Vince continues, woefully. “You were going to let my family see that? My mom?”

I eye the hot curling iron on the sink, which I forgot to unplug last night. Bring up that red-hat-wearing bitch one more time and I’ll—

“You know,” he goes on, “you were not an innocent bystander in this marriage either, and I’m not going around flapping my mouth about it onstage at Talkhouse. I’m not shilling videos of your affairs to the paparazzi.”

It’s the most honest thing he’s ever said to me. There is an honest thing to say back, in an iron,don’t fuck with metone, but it is not time to be honest yet. I have to say whatever it takes to get me to Jesse’s house. I take a deep, fortifying sigh, steeling myself for the industrial load of bullshit about to come out of my mouth. “I know,” I say, making my voice as gravelly as his. It doesn’t take much. After my stage performance last night, my vocal cords are shot through. “You wouldn’t do that to me.” You would just fuck the one person who I thought was safe, and so I told her everything—about feeling so invisible and so unmistakable, about neurotransmitters, about how hard it was to be a daughter to my mother, about what Vince does when I’m not around and how I did it too but only to keep the deep and abiding feelings of inadequacy at bay. I showed that bitch my belly because I thought I never had to worry about losing her. I thought Vince couldn’t be attracted to that and even if he was, it wouldn’t matter becauseshewasn’t attracted to that.

“I miss our life together,” Vince whispers, wiping away a crocodile tear. He presses his back against the wall and sinks to the floor of the bathroom, hooking his arms around his shins and dropping his forehead to his knees with a contrite moan.

Well, of course you missour life together, you dolt. You are a thirty-two-year-old failed actor living in a brownstone on the Upper East Side with a megababe. You hit the jackpot with me and you fucked it up something fierce.

Eyes on the prize,Steph. So I lower myself to the floor alongside Vince, slowly, as though I am settling into a hot bath. I rest my head on his shoulder, mostly so he can’t see my face, which is warped with revulsion for him. “I miss our life together too.” I eye the Jimmy Choo box in his lap, the GoPro still inside. How am I going to get that back from him? And who am I going to give it to now?

Vince lifts his chin, his face full of promise. “Then why are we doing this?”

I raise a hand for his benefit,I don’t know anymore. “I was angry, Vince. My ego was bruised. I guess I was just trying to hurt you like you hurt me.”

Vince reaches for my hand, stroking my palm in a gentle motion that makes me want to rip my skin right off. “Do you really want a divorce?”

I clench my toes and grit my teeth. “I want to make it right. All of it. Us. The book. The show. That’s why I came out here. This scene at Jesse’s—it’s my last chance to redeem myself. I have to go. And you should come too. We can tell everyone we’re calling it off. We’re going to stay together. Prove to everyone that we are stronger than the show.”

Vince hooks a finger beneath my chin, the way I did to what’s his name from last night. I learned that move from Vince, come to think of it. How sweet. “I would like that,” he says, right before he leans in and brushes his lips against mine, teasingly, as though to say—this is what you’ve been missing. My hangover makes itself fully known.

And then—like a very good gold digger, using sex to get whatshe wants—I do my husband on the bathroom floor, one last time. As I dutifully hump that little jalapeño pepper, I say a prayer that what’s his name gave me crabs, or something really nasty, like syphilis. Not that Vince would have long to suffer.

There is a funny standoff in the driveway. Jen is adamant that we not take her car to Jesse’s, and I am absolutely adamant that we do. Kelly’s car is a hunk of junk, and not in the intentional, nineties army green Defender way, the car Jesse bought off eBay and drives out here, her dyke hair not blowing in the wind. I need Jen’s emissions-free douche-mobile that goes from zero to sixty in four point two seconds, that starts without having to press a button or put a key into the ignition, but when Vince approaches the passenger-side door, Jen makes a lame excuse.

“It’s just.” Jen falls silent a moment. “I feel a little dizzy today. From the heat. I really don’t feel up to driving.” She clamps a hand to her forehead, overselling it.

“I’ll drive,” I volunteer, impatiently. While I was “showering,” I shared the GoPro footage to the app on my phone, then I hid the GoPro in the back of a closet in the guest room. A tasty treat for Jen to find one day! I smell like a party bus after the party and two different men’s loads. Not the aromatic memory I’d like to leave behind, but I couldn’t risk taking the camera with me and having Vince discover it on my person. He hasn’t been able to keep his hands off me since we consummated our “reconciliation.”

“It handles differently than what you’re used to,” Jen says to me. “We should really take Kelly’s car.”

“Ummm.” Kelly laughs. “I don’t think we want to do that. My car doesn’t have AC.”

“I’d rather go in Kelly’s car too,” Lauren says, slowly, staggering into the shade of a tree. The sunlight is relentless this morning, as if furious about its captivity yesterday. I say a little prayer it doesn’t blind the shot. That would be the real tragedy.

Vince leans onto the hood of Jen’s car, resting his palms on the curve of the trunk. “You look like you could use some AC,” he tells Lauren with a wry, empathetic smile, assuming she’s hurting from the night before. But I’ve seen Lauren hungover before, and this isn’t Lauren hungover. On another day, I’d think harder about why it is she’s acting so weird.

Lauren is wearing tiny round sunglasses, pushed low on the bridge of her nose, full-throttle nineties nostalgia. Above the thin wire rim of her shades, she stares at Vince’s hands on the trunk of Jen’s car, her lips parted in confusion. “I don’t want to take Jen’s car,” she says, again sounding as though she’s speaking to work out something for herself more than to any of us.

I toss up my hands—Fine, I can make this work even in Kelly’s car—and lead the charge, planting myself in the middle so as to avoid another tantrum from someone whose legs are too long or whose ego is too inflated to sit in the bitch seat. Lauren gets in to my right and Vince to my left, grumbling,This makes no sense.Jen takes the front-passenger seat next to Kelly. The car smells like chewy, fruit-flavored candy. I look up to see a Strawberries & Crème air freshener dangling from Kelly’s rearview mirror. But of course.

Kelly sticks the key in the ignition and turns. The engine bears down, wheezing,trying, before giving up with a woman’s cry. Kelly drapes her arm around the back of Jen’s chair and regards us over the brim of her neon blue sunglasses, the kind that everyone was wearing last summer. “Well,” she says solemnly, “she lived a good life.”