Forrest leaned toward her, shutting his Camus. “Did Imogen lend you money?” he asked.
“No, she didn’t,” Jule answered truthfully.
“Did you want to sleep with her?”
“No.”
“Didyou sleep with her?”
“No.”
“Did she have a new boyfriend?”
“No.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“There are six hundred things I’m not telling you,” Jule said. “Because I’m a private person. And my friend just died. I’m sad and I’m trying to deal with it. Is that all right with you?”
“No,” said Forrest. “I need to understand what happened.”
“Look. The rule of you staying in this flat is, don’t ask Jule a million questions about Immie’s private life. Or about Jule’s private life. Then we can get along. All right?”
Forrest sputtered. “The rule of this flat? What are you talking about, the rule of this flat?”
“Every place has rules. What you do when you come into a new place is, you figure them out. Like when you’re a guest, you learn the codes of behavior and adapt. Yes?”
“Maybe that’s whatyoudo.”
“That’s whateveryonedoes. You work out how loud you can talk, how you can sit, what things are okay to say and what’s rude. It’s called being a human in society.”
“Nah.” Forrest crossed his legs in a leisurely fashion. “I’m not that fake. I just do what feels right to me. And you know what? It’s never been a problem, until now.”
“Because you’re you.”
“What doesthatmean?”
“You’re a guy. You come from money, you’re white, you have really good teeth, you graduated from Yale, the list goeson.”
“So?”
“Other people adapt toyou,asshole. You think there’s no adapting going on, but you’re fucking blind, Forrest. It’s all around you, all the time.”
“That’s a point,” he said. “Okay, I’ll grant you that.”
“Thank you.”
“But if you’re thinking through all that lunacy every time you walk into a new situation, then there is something seriously wrong with you, Jule.”
“My friend is dead,” she told him. “That’s what’s wrong with me.”
Immie hadn’t told her secrets to Forrest. She had told them to Jule.
Jule had realized the truth of it early on, even before Immie had told Jule her birth name, and before Brooke Lannon ever turned up at the Vineyard house.
It was the Fourth of July, not long after Jule had first moved in. Immie had found a recipe for pizza dough you made on an outdoor grill. She was messing around with yeast in the kitchen. She had invited friends, summer people she’d met a couple of days earlier at a farmer’s market. They came over and ate. Everything was fine, but they wanted to leave early. “Let’s drive into town for the fireworks,” they said. “We shouldn’t miss them. Hurry up.”
Jule knew Imogen hated the crush of people at crowded events. She couldn’t see over people’s heads. There was always too much noise.
