American Girls(60)

“You can’t do that,” I said. “What are you doing? Stop it. Both of you. Stop!”

I truly believe they had forgotten I was there.

“That was harmless,” Delia said, avoiding my eyes. Roger looked about as sorry as a dog rolling in shit.

“It was not harmless. You would never do that in front of Dex. Why are you screwing your life up? Dex loves you.”

He’d never said so, and neither had she, not around me, at any rate, but I knew that it was true. And if my lunatic sister had the sense God gave an ant, she would have loved him back. But it looked like she didn’t, and didn’t again. I thought that I knew what it was like to hate my sister, but I had been playing around. This was the real thing.

“What is it you would have me do with my life? Get married and have kids and give up on my dreams?” She chugged her scotch and gestured for another.

“What are you talking about? Who said anything about any of that? I don’t care if you have zero or a million babies. I just want you not to make out with your ex-boyfriend. Are you going to lie to Dex now?”

Delia flipped her hand in the air, waving me off like what I’d said was the droning of some pesky insect she needed to squash. Forget her stalker, I was ready to cause some trouble of my own. I moved her scotch in my direction. She reached across the table and yanked it back. Roger seemed to think it was all hilarious. I was ready to let him have it as well.

“Or should I say, keep lying to him? No wonder that producer has some porno zombie leaving slut-mail on your front door. I’d love to see the kind of movie you made with him. I guess the only big surprise is that the rest of LA hasn’t figured out your address.”

And the way Roger quit smiling and fast, I knew she hadn’t told him, either. Forget sister fights, this was going to be a sister war.

“Roger, go get me a drink,” she said, pointing at the bar. “Now.”

“Yeah, Roger, go get her a drink. You might want to wash your mouth out. She is the spokesperson for herpes, if you hadn’t heard.”

If we had been in a high school cafeteria, they would have been clearing tables and giving us room to rumble.

Delia lowered her voice and narrowed her eyes. “Have you been going through my things?”

“No.”

“So.” She leaned in closer. “What is it that you think you know?”

“I know that the red car came from that producer’s house, and if it was from an actress, then you must have beat her out for some kind of role.”

She pointed at an imaginary pile of my clothes, at some suitcase she was hallucinating. Like this was improv class and not her actual life.

“The minute we get home, you can start packing. I should have known, once a thief, always a thief. Do I need to check my credit card as well?”

“What is wrong with you, Delia? What if that guy decides to have you murdered?”

“You don’t know the whole story,” she said, scanning the bar to see if Roger was coming back with her drink. “You don’t know anything, really. It’s not him, it’s his wife, okay? She thinks something happened between us that didn’t, and I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. She’s unbalanced, but not dangerous. He says she’s medicated and seeing someone about her issues. He even forwarded me an apology that she wrote during one of her therapy sessions the other day. Did you find that on my computer?”

“An apology? Why are you talking to her?”

She ran her finger in the bottom of her glass and licked the dregs off her fingertip.

“She thinks I’m the reason her awful fraud of a husband can’t stand her, that we had some kind of passionate affair.”

“Did you?”

“Hardly.”

“You’re lying. Once a liar, always a liar.”

For a minute, I thought she was going to haul off and slap me.

Her hand flinched and came down hard on the table.

“I’m not lying. You want the truth? The truth is, it’s none of your business. He promised me a role in a film, a real film, and the film isn’t even going to come out. What happened was immaterial. It was before Dex and I started dating, if you’re putting together a timeline for the rest of your inquest. I have no idea how his wife found out; she must have found something he was shooting and come to the wrong conclusion. Whoever knows what goes on up there? I didn’t even know he had a wife at the time—he said they were divorced, so if there’s a liar in the equation, it’s not me. Maybe, in your universe, that makes all of us disgusting people, but you know what, you just made my universe your universe. So maybe you should shut up and stay out of other people’s lives.”

I felt like I was going to scream or cry; there weren’t enough words to let her know how selfish she was, how much she took for granted about who we both were. Even in an argument Delia had to remind me that hers was the bigger story, that no matter what I did, my life would never be interesting enough to measure up to hers.

“Why doesn’t anyone seem to understand that this is my life too? You act like everyone is some kind of bit player in your drama, but I’m living my life as well. This is my summer too. Cora is my mom too. Birch is my brother too. That song you just played? That’s my song. I love that song, and you just ruined it forever. And Dex is my friend too, not just your boyfriend. And maybe it’s not interesting enough for the rest of the world to care, but I care. I like Dex. He’s taken me to work all summer. I have friends on that set.”