Genuine Fraud(2)

“Good rubbish. Silly and loud.”

“Okay. Yeah, all right.”

“Good,” said Jule. “We’ll kill it. You’ll be glad you took a vacation. I’m strong on superheroes, spy movies, YouTubers, fitness, money, makeup, and Victorian writers. What about you?”

“Victorian writers? Like Dickens?”

“Yeah, whatever.” Jule felt her face flush. It suddenly seemed an odd set of things to be interested in.

“I love Dickens.”

“Get out.”

“I do.” The woman smiled again. “I’m good on Dickens, cooking, current events, politics…let’s see, oh, and cats.”

“All right, then,” said Jule. “It starts at eight o’clock in that lounge off the main lobby. The bar with sofas.”

“Eight o’clock. You’re on.” The woman walked over and extended her hand. “What’s your name again? I’m Noa.”

Jule shook it. “I didn’t tell you my name,” she said. “But it’s Imogen.”





Jule West Williams was nice-enough-looking. She hardly ever got labeled ugly, nor was she commonly labeled hot. She was short, only five foot one, and carried herself with an uptilted chin. Her hair was in a gamine cut, streaked blond in a salon and currently showing dark roots. Green eyes, white skin, light freckles. In most of her clothes, you couldn’t see the strength of her frame. Jule had muscles that puffed off her bones in powerful arcs—like she’d been drawn by a comic-book artist, especially in the legs. There was a hard panel of abdominal muscle under a layer of fat in her midsection. She liked to eat meat and salt and chocolate and grease.

Jule believed that the more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle.

She believed that the best way to avoid having your heart broken was to pretend you don’t have one.

She believed that the way you speak is often more important than anything you have to say.

She also believed in action movies, weight training, the power of makeup, memorization, equal rights, and the idea that YouTube videos can teach you a million things you won’t learn in college.

If she trusted you, Jule would tell you she went to Stanford for a year on a track-and-field scholarship. “I got recruited,” she explained to people she liked. “Stanford is Division One. The school gave me money for tuition, books, all that.”

What happened?

Jule might shrug. “I wanted to study Victorian literature and sociology, but the head coach was a perv,” she’d say. “Touching all the girls. When he got around to me, I kicked him where it counts and told everybody who would listen. Professors, students, the Stanford Daily. I shouted it to the top of the stupid ivory tower, but you know what happens to athletes who tell tales on their coaches.”

She’d twist her fingers together and lower her eyes. “The other girls on the team denied it,” she’d say. “They said I was lying and that pervert never touched anybody. They didn’t want their parents to know, and they were afraid they’d lose their scholarships. That’s how the story ended. The coach kept his job. I quit the team. That meant I didn’t get my financial aid. And that’s how you make a dropout of a straight-A student.”

—

After the gym, Jule swam a mile in the Playa Grande pool and spent the rest of the morning as she often did, sitting in the business lounge, watching Spanish instruction videos. She was still in her bathing suit, but she wore her sea-green running shoes. She’d put on hot pink lipstick and some silver eyeliner. The suit was a gunmetal one-piece with a hoop at the chest and a deep plunge. It was a very Marvel Universe look.

The lounge was air-conditioned. No one else was ever in there. Jule put her feet up and wore headphones and drank Diet Coke.

After two hours of Spanish she ate a Snickers bar for lunch and watched music videos. She danced around on her caffeine jag, singing to the line of swivel chairs in the empty lounge. Life was bloody gorgeous today. She liked that sad woman running away from her sick father, the woman with the interesting scar and the surprising taste in books.

They would kill it at trivia.

Jule drank another Diet Coke. She checked her makeup and kickboxed her own image in the reflective glass of the lounge window. Then she laughed aloud, because she looked both foolish and awesome. All the while, the beat pulsed in her ears.





The poolside bartender, Donovan, was a local guy. He was big-boned but soft. Slick hair. Given to winking at the clientele. He spoke English with the accent particular to Baja and knew Jule’s drink: a Diet Coke with a shot of vanilla syrup.

Some afternoons, Donovan asked Jule about growing up in London. Jule practiced her Spanish. They’d watch movies on the screen above the bar as they talked.

Today, at three in the afternoon, Jule perched on the corner stool, still wearing her swimsuit. Donovan wore a Playa Grande white blazer and T-shirt. Stubble was growing on the back of his neck. “What’s the movie?” she asked him, looking up at the TV.

“Hulk.”

“Which Hulk?”

“I don’t know.”

“You put the DVD in. How can you not know?”

“I don’t even know there’s two Hulks.”

“There’s three Hulks. Wait, I take that back. Multiple Hulks. If you count TV, cartoons, all that.”