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You are so gross. I remember why I moved now. To get away from you.
There’s my girl.Angie sent three kiss emojis.You can do this! Seriously though, let me know if you want me to come down there and I’ll steal an airplane (JK, FBI!). Love you, boo.
Donni felt tears prick her eyes.Love you, too.
She had met Angie on the set ofSatan’s Key. The studio had hired an adult film actress to perform as a body stunt double, and since there weren’t a lot of actresses of color ineitherindustry at the time, Angie—Malyasian-Chinese, short, totally dissimilar to Donni in every possible way—was what XXXceed Entertainment had produced.
Donni had grown up sheltered, with a mother who, while not religious herself, had been raised in a strict religious household, and some of those tenets had watered down into Donni’s old home. So it had admittedly been a shock to meet Angie, who approached the world with her tireless, oversharing optimism.
“I’m Angelina Deville,” she’d said, pumping Donni’s hand like a man. “But my real name’s Angie Ng.”
“I’m Adonica Bamberg. But I go by Donni Blake.”
“Cute,” Angie had chirped.
They had chatted a little between takes. Angie had grown up in Fullerton. Her father was a doctor and her mother was a homemaker. She had gotten into pornography because one of her friends had done it, and she’d heard the money was good. Her parents were both bitterly disappointed in their daughter’s choice of career, “but they’re getting over it,” Angie had added with a wicked smile.
Back when Johnathan Steel had been mostly producing pulp, the grossed profits weren’t quite enough to accord actors with anything more than a shared trailer and a table full of Safeway-brand donuts. So she and Angie had gone out for lunch on their own dime, trying various hole-in-the-wall restaurants that would gradually fade away like dying moths.
Donni was very much aware of the producer-director’s watchful eye during these excursions. The other day, in the trailer, Johnathan had asked her—casually, which had made it sting even more, because it felt so incidental—if she had gained weight.
“Right now, you’re not exactly leading lady material, Donni. Your tits—now, they’re just fine. But the rest of you looks like you’d be more suited to what Angie’s doing.”
Ever since then she had been fretting about her costume every time the too-tight sweater pinched under her arms, feeling the ghostly impressions of Johnathan’s hands beneath her clothes.What Angie’s doing, kept echoing in her skull like a gong.
It had made her feel dirty, like she was doing something wrong.
But she had never seen him call Angie into the trailer for a “chat.”
Her phone chimed again and Donni snapped out of her trance, her heart pounding. There was a strange, metallic taste in the back of her throat.
She wasn’t an eighteen-year-old girl anymore. Now she was a forty-year-old woman with a dead husband.
The notification hadn’t been a text this time, she noted. It was a calendar reminder for the Riachuelo Women’s Book Club. She’d RSVP’d weeks ago.
Back when my husband was still alive.
Donni bit her lip, wondering if she should go. The group had a Meetup page, so new people were constantly popping in and out, but the core group was Poppy Olsson, Opal Walters, Irene Mendes, and Elizabeth Banner, although Donni privately called them the ‘Desperate Housewives.’
The only woman in the group she actually liked was Poppy, a light-skinned Black woman with a Swedish husband who worked a foreman. One on one, she was pleasant and easy-going, but when she was with her friends, she subscribed to the dynamics of the group. And unfortunately, the dynamics of the group was Opal being a bitch and Irene being an even bigger bitch. Plus, Elizabeth’s husband had been killed by Marco’s wine, and would likely be waiting with claws out if she went.
I shouldn’t go, she thought.
But wouldn’t that be the coward’s way out? If she didn’t show, it would be good as telling the lot of them that she had something to feel shameful about and they could feel justified in their dislike of her.
She had lost a husband in this, too, after all.
If she went, she could get a sense of how bad the judgement was going to be. Better to deal with it now than to have their loathing be a surprise she was too busy to deal with at the funeral. The meeting was going to be at Opal’s anyway, and she and Opal were practically neighbors. It wouldn’t take a whole lot of effort to make herself decent and drag herself over there.
It would take even less effort to leave.
Slowly, she lowered her hand to the counter, the cold chill of the granite anchoring her to the present. She half-expected to see one of those strange white-hot flashes again, but they appeared to have subsided for the moment.
Upstairs, in her bedroom, she heard her dog, Powderpuff, bark at someone out on the street. Her uneasiness from earlier returned. When she’d been out in the garden tidying up, it had felt like she was being watched. Was someone outside the house?
Donni peered out through the living room blinds, catching a brief glimpse of a jogger in a black hoodie pausing to catch their breath before running on.
Just a jogger, she thought.
