The Best of Enemies (34 page)

Now that we’ve convinced the girls to join us at our table, I assume Jack will take over from here.
After all, she’s the trained journalist.

Ha!

Five minutes into her White House Press Corps, impeachment-grade, rapid-fire questioning, I have to drag her into the black-walled, smoked-glass, unisex restroom by her ponytail.

“You are blowing it!”
I hiss.

“I’m not blowing it!”
she hisses back.

I cross my arms over my chicken cutlets.
So buoyant!
“You’re blowing it and you know it.
I thought you were a journalist!
I thought you knew how to finagle information out of people!
I thought you understood how to infiltrate a community by posing as a member of the community.”

She begins to twist a strand on the long tail.
“I’m used to straightforward fact-gathering.
Pitching hardballs.
I’m less comfortable with the clandestine, undercover business of investigative reporting.
Despite my respect for writers like Barbara Ehrenreich and Pam Zekman, I guess I’m no Nelly Bly.”

“No kidding.”

As we glower at each other, men and women filter into the dark restroom, a few to use the facilities for their intended purpose, but most to either couple in the stalls or sniff cocaine off of house keys they’re dipping into small vials.
Every time the door opens, we’re hit with a blast of electronic dance music.

“This is fascinating!”
Jack says in a low voice, attention diverted by a mesh-shirted, muscled man partaking of the booger sugar.
“I always assumed one needed a white suit and a mirrored table to snort lines Scarface-style, but that’s not true.
While I’ve toured the poppy fields where Afghans harvest the raw opium from inside the seedpods, which is the first step in making heroin, I’ve never seen—”

I clap my palm over her mouth, which she instinctively bites.

After the screaming and subsequent wrestling, I rinse the now tender flesh under the faucet.
I tell her, “Stop.
Talking.
You’re killing our game here with the earnest Lois Lane thing.
Fact.
If we didn’t spring for three flavors of Cîroc—you’re paying for those, by the way—they’d have already bolted because you’re coming on like Demented Diane Sawyer.
Or Crazy Katie Couric.”

She protests, “But—”

I dry my hands on a paper towel before generously slathering the bite with sanitizing gel.
“Nope.
No.
Don’t want to hear it, Batcrap Barbara Walters.
The new plan is, I’m in charge.
You will sit there quietly and drink premium flavored vodka when you’re not busy dancing.
No, do not give me that face.
Yes, you
will
dance—this is a nightclub.
People dance.
You are people.
But mostly, you will drink and be quiet.
If you are addressed, you may offer one of the following responses: ‘OMG,’ ‘WTF,’ or ‘STBY.’
Do not share opinions.
Do not mention semiotics.
And for crying out loud, say
nothing
about Malaysia.
I am not negotiating; this is how we’re rolling.
You had your chance to lead and you failed.
Kitty’s in charge now.
Not Jack.
Get it?
Got it?
Good.
Let’s head back now before they realize something’s up.”

She follows me out the bathroom door into the pulsing music of the club, where the bass is so profound I can feel it vibrate clean through me.

She asks, “What’s STBY?”

“Sucks to Be You, which is what the code means, not a personal opinion.
You, zip it.
Not kidding.”
When we approach our table, I grin at Hallee, Shay, and Blake, Ingrid’s roommates.
I have to raise my voice for them to hear me.
“’S’up, bitches!
Edina needed a little breakfast cereal to turn it up.
Don’t worry, she’s legitamittens now.
Totes sorry we didn’t bring enough to share with the rest of the class!
Tear!”

Blake, Shay, and Hallee nod while Jack gawps at me openmouthed, which earns her a solid stomp on her instep under the table.
She kicks me back.
I pinch her and she elbows me in the chicken cutlet.
I grab ahold of her ponytail and that immobilizes her.
By way of explanation, I say, “She always gets a little violent before she starts to roll.
Ignore her.
If she convulses, we’ll shove a spoon in her mouth so she doesn’t choke on her tongue.”

Jack removes my hand from her hair, offering us a terse, “OMG,” in response.

What’s interesting to note is that
I’m
the Mata Hari here, not Jack, because it’s me who turns the conversation to the information we solicit.

“Have you guys ever had, like, a bad roomie?
I had one in college a couple of years ago.
She was the woooooooorst.
Mean it,” I say during a quieter part of the music, while avoiding Jack’s poisonous glare.
“Total she-male, but that didn’t stop her from banging my boyfriend.”

“Like, I don’t even have time for more bad roommates,” Hallee says.
“So we share a place with this basic bitch named Ingrid, right?”

Jack relaxes a little bit when she sees that my line of questioning is headed somewhere.

Hallee continues.
“So last week, she’s all boohoo, but then on Tuesday morning?
Hashtag gone girl while we were all at work.”

“You have
jobs
?”
Jack asks and I pinch her.
“OMG!”

“Um, yeah?
I’m a receptionist, Shay does graphic design, and Blake teaches spin classes, hashtag SoulCycle.
Anyway, Ingrid took none of her good shit, either.
Left her jewelry, her major electronics, and her shearling coat, hashtag mine now.”

“Are you worried?”
I ask, ignoring how Jack’s pinching me back.

“Hells, naw!
Bitch Bogarted all my sluttiest La Perla thongs,” Hallee huffs, one eye on us, one scanning the crowd for attractive potential bathroom partners.
“She’d best stay gone girl, far as I’m concerned.”

“Right?”
Shay added, giving her leopard-print tube top a judicious yank.
“I don’t like to throw shade, but I haven’t even
worn
the new gingham Juicy Couture bikini she took.
And she, like, tore off the tags and left them on my bed for me to clean up.
I can’t even.
I’ve been texting and texting, but all afternoon, it’s been all Message Error, Message Error.
She’s oh-tee-gee.”

“Is it your opinion that she seemed to have left in a hurry, and if so, what precipitated this act?”
Jack asks.
I deliver another ninja table kick and she clears her throat and says, “I mean, WTF, STBY!”

“For reals,” Blake agrees, sweeping a curtain of straight, tawny hair over one shoulder.
“What I don’t get is why go off the grid with my duffel bags?
I’m not here for it, you know?
I have a bunch of them for the gym and for dance practice and work and stuff and she snatched ’em all.
I mean, yassss for her not stealing my Kate Spade suitcases, but they were right next to each other in my closet.
Why grab the ones with stank on them?
Like, I get she was upset over her boss buying the farm and all, but to take off two days later, with our premium shit?
I’m all, ‘Cuntasaurus Rex much?’”

When the girls go dance, Jack pounces on me.
“So Ingrid went from mourning Trip to stealing new bikinis and skimpy underwear in a matter of less than a week?
Why?
And where did she travel that’s out of text range?
Cell phones work all over the world, but outside of the US only with an international plan, which tells me (a) she’s likely away from the continental United States as of this afternoon and (b) her trip wasn’t premeditated.”

“What does it all mean?”
I ask.

Jack’s words come out in a rush, as she tries to finish her thought before the Beyoncé remix ends.
“I’m trying to connect the dots.
Why would Ingrid leave valuable possessions, but take multiple heavy canvas bags?
Did she grab said bags on Trip’s instructions, perhaps to ferry large amounts of cash?
That’s my best guess.
But where might he have stashed the cash?
Through the Foreign Accounts Compliance Act, the IRS has cracked down on US citizens hiding money in offshore accounts over the past few years.
Even places like the Caymans and Switzerland are beginning to comply, so money deposited in a bank seems somewhat unlikely—”

“We need more information.
We have to get into the apartment.
We’ve got to see what’s on her computer,” I say.

“Affirmative,” Jack says.
“Breaking and entering?
On it.
But I’ll probably need to change shoes first and put on underwear.”

“You’re not wearing underwear?”

“I’m exposed from hip to thigh.
Where would I put them?”

I shudder.
“Thank goodness my lessons about sitting like a lady finally sank in.
Also?
Eww.”

She twists a bit of her fake hair.
“Yeah, tell me about it.
Once on assignment I went a month without a shower.
This feels worse.
Far worse.”

“Well, sorry to hear it.
Mean it.
Anyway, I have an idea.
How much cash do you have, Jack?”
A cocktail waitress comes by to police up our empties.
She points at the empty Cîroc Coconut bottle and I gesture for one more.
On Jack’s tab, naturally.

“About three hundred bucks?
Plus a debit card and other assorted plastic.
Why?”

I look over both my shoulders to make sure the waitress is gone.
“Go buy us some drugs.
We need bait.”

“
What?
Are you
crazy?
How about (a) no, and (b) how would I even go about purchasing illegal substances?”

I grab the back of her ponytail so she has no choice but to look at me.
“Let me get this straight—breaking and entering is fine, but buying three grams of ecstasy from a guy in the bathroom is out of the question?
Do you want to help Betsy or not?
I got us this far, Jordan.
Do your part.
Bring this home.”

Jack stomps off to the bathroom, ponytail swinging, and returns five minutes later.

“I’m both pleased and disheartened at how easy it is to buy drugs here,” she says, gesturing toward what looks like a bag full of Skittles in the top part of her thigh-high boot.

“What the actual hell, Jordan?
There’s like sixty pills there!”

“You said to buy three grams.
This is what three grams looks like.”

My bad.

“I thought three grams equaled three doses,” I admit.
“Way off on that, eh?
I should probably reread my
Big Book of Keeping Your Kid off the Horse
.
I feel like I may have missed an important part.
The metric system is hard, right?
The pills look a lot like Razzles, though, don’t they?
Remember?
First it’s a candy, then it’s a gum?”

“Clearly, you’re the one who is high, Carricoe.
They’re smaller and aren’t bumpy.
These much more closely resemble SweeTarts.”

“Oh.
Em.
Eff.
Gee.”
We notice Blake standing over us, gazing down into Jack’s boot.
“You two need to bring your bestie Molly to an after party at our place, like, right now.”

I whisper to Jack, “Mission accomplished.”

She replies, “Who’s Molly?”

•   •   •

“Anything?”
I whisper to Jack.
A few minutes ago, she excused herself to use the bathroom off of Ingrid’s room, where she was supposed to search Ingrid’s computer.

“Password protected.”

“Damn it.”

“All y’all bitches need to get turnt!”
Hallee shrieks, waving a bottle of tequila.
I feel like she’s not going to be at her sharpest behind the reception desk tomorrow.
“Body shots!”
She cranks the music and flips on a strobe light.
My goodness, I hope none of the clubgoers who joined us here are epileptic.
Seizure city.
Crowds of guests begin to hop around in an approximation of dance.
Wow, I’d hate to live downstairs.