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“No. Sorry. No cyanide.”
“Can we get cocktails? You choose. And can you get crisps or something? Or one of those.” She points at a plate of assorted dips at her nearby table.
“Okay. Cocktails. Got it. I’ll be right back.” This time I do my best to sound upbeat. I splurge on two drinks called The Ciao with rye whiskey and Dom Benedictine, and throw in a plate of hummus and some olives. It takes two trips to the bar to bring it all back.
“So. Bronwyn,” she says, dipping a piece of bread into the hummus.
“What would you like to know?” I ask. Again, upbeat, like this is fun, this is two girlfriends catching up after work. This is not weird, at all.
“Well, you ran all over town getting her shopping list, you do a lot for her, which is really nice, I guess, lots of women wouldn’t. Then you’re at work and they’re at home enjoying themselves. There’s a story there, surely. How long have you known her? Is that okay if I ask? I’m so nosy, I know. Ask Dexter!”
I take a sip of my drink. It burns my throat. “We’ve known each other since we were twelve years old. We went to school together.”
“Wow, long time. Around here?” She picks up an olive.
“About thirty-five miles north of here. Northwest Everett.”
“Is it nice?”
She holds the pit of the olive between her teeth and looks around for somewhere to put it. I hand her a paper napkin. She takes it, spits it in the napkin, scrunches it up and puts it on the edge of the table.
“People say so.”
“But not you?”
I shrug. “It’s just where I grew up. I didn’t have anything to compare it with. I wasn’t a happy teenager, my mom died, my dad brought me up.” I don’t tell her that whenever I think of it, I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a precipice so deep with despair just looking down will make you cry.
“I’m so sorry, that must have been tough.”
“Yeah, but you know, you get over it.”
“Where’s your dad now?”
“In a dementia care facility.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. We were not close. He has no idea who I am anymore and that’s fine with me.”
“And Bronwyn? What was she like as a child?”
I shrug. “We were friends, for a while, then we had an argument over a boy called Jimmy. She wanted him, he liked me, she spread rumors about me, told everyone I was a slut, whatever. It wasn’t nice.”
“How awful. So how did you hook up again?”
“Bronwyn and I lost touch after high school. Then about three years ago, I was in a group portrait exhibition at a gallery in Bellevue.”
And just like that, I skip over two decades at least, including the part where Bronwyn and I were briefly in college together, except not together. We didn’t hang out. She waved at me once down a corridor, even said my name, and I pretended not to see her and that was that. I made a point not to take any class she was in, and I wouldn’t have anyway. She was enrolled in Feminist Studies which made me think that irony isn’t dead, while I was more or less permanently drunk in Art & Painting, lurching into self-destruction. I took every risk I possibly could. I snorted every drug I could lay my nostrils on. I cut myself, of course, what self-respecting death-wishing nut job doesn’t, I’d wake up on someone’s couch not knowing where I was or who I was with. If you’d asked me what the hell I was doing in college, I’d say the only reason I was there in the first place was because I’d had a scholarship to study art, and it meant I could sit at the back of the class with my head on my arms and nurse my hangovers in peace. I failed more or less every exam, often for not showing up, but I did love art, I loved the idea of making art more. And anyway, she was only there for the first year, and then she disappeared.
“She turned up to the exhibition with Jack. She looked stunning, even better than I remembered. There was a moment where our eyes locked and I did feel a twist inside me. It was a long time ago, but somehow Bronwyn and the boy we argued over, Jimmy, and my mother dying and my shame at having been shunned by my schoolfriend and branded aslut, they all merged together, jumbled up, so that at the sight of her for a moment I felt like she’d been responsible for my mother’s death, because in my mind, my mother dying meant my mother did not like me, even though deep down I knew it made no sense.”
I have no idea why I’m telling her all this. It’s like someone has turned on the tap and I’m just blurting whatever comes into my head. Maybe Dom Benedictine has untied my tongue. It must have something to do with it because I see now that my glass is empty. I rub my forehead. “If you think that sounds nuts, you should hear my friend Katie,” I snort a laugh. “She’s a psychologist,” I say, as if that explained everything. And maybe it does because Summer nods thoughtfully.
“Anyway, there she was in the gallery, and I wanted to turn away and run, but her face softened and she said, ‘Laura! Is that you?’ We talked a little, she admired my work. Then later Jack came over and gave me his number scribbled on the back of the room sheet. He said Bronwyn really liked my portraits and he wanted to commission one of her. I wasn’t remotely interested in doing it, but a few days later, he called me. He’d tracked me down, he thought I might have lost it. He offered me twenty-five thousand dollars to do the painting.”
Summer makes a low whistle. “Wow, okay, now you’re talking.”
“I said yes. The money was amazing, I started to fantasize about what I could do to her portrait. I would paint a really unflattering, ugly portrait, like a sad Egon Schiele, take the money and run.” I laugh.
