Girl Dinner, page 28
It did sound like something Fawn would say. Was that power?
Or was it just nihilism?
“Am I the one being eaten in this scenario?” demanded Nina, suddenly frustrated beyond belief.
Tessa’s laugh was listless and dry. “Do you even want to be president?”
“Of course not.” That much was obvious and accessible. “But I don’t know, wasn’t there more we should have done? Shouldn’t we have defended her, or—?”
“Look, I meant what I said. Fawn loves you.” Tessa rubbed her temple, looking tired. “And because she loves you, you being Slate’s choice will spare her in a way Dalil wouldn’t. This way, she stands a chance to walk away unscathed.”
Unscathed. Well, fair enough. Fawn was never scathed, which was half the reason Nina couldn’t envision anyone else in her place. Fawn said things like “you either eat or you’re eaten” specifically because she was cool, so cool in the face of scarcity, so cool she always knew how to walk away with grace. Which Nina didn’t understand, because Nina wasn’t cool! Nina had never been cool because Nina was too fucking hungry—she wanted things too powerfully, too close to the surface.
She felt, then, the presence of two options: get over it, dummy! That was an easy one. Sometimes the person you were secretly fooling around with didn’t get to be Lady Superior anymore and that wasn’t a tragedy. It was just one person’s bad day.
But then there was another, nearer option—the one always chanting FAWN FAWN FAWN at all hours of the night and day—which was, obviously, to go insane.
“Tessa,” said Nina, “sincerely, no fucking joke, this is bullshit. I’m not even talking about one sorority election here. Or one dinner.” What was she talking about? Everything seemed to blur, and everything hurt. “I just mean … Come on. ‘Eat or be eaten’—is that really the world? Because you can’t tell me what power is or what feminism isn’t and still try to convince me that everything’s just a zero-sum game.” There! Abruptly, departing wildly from the matter of Fawn’s displacement, Nina could finally diagnose it—the visceral problem her body seemed to have with The Country Wife. As if, with enough distance from the point, her internal organs could finally become the oracle making sense of the unknown.
It wasn’t The Country Wife’s mere existence or her popularity or even her embrace of the bizarre, pseudo-religious practice of traditional feminine roles that relied on the hegemony of white men. It was the fact that there was no objective measure of a woman, no simple framework by which to exist, and the only real danger was in the pretense that there was.
It was the performance again, Nina realized. The performance of respectability! The performance of womanhood! The fucking oxymoron that was the performance of an election designed to stab one woman gently in the back!
“I promise you, this is not about feminism,” Tessa sighed, just as Nina felt a rush of adrenaline, another shock to the framework of what she could or couldn’t accept. “I mean seriously, Nina, you think I don’t know the world’s fucked up? The only thing I’m ‘Black enough’ for is racism and I still wouldn’t be here if I were about fifteen percent less hot. So honestly, this shit is just…” She waved a hand, and Nina thought again, helplessly, about what power wasn’t. “It’s politics. Okay? Someone loses. Someone wins. Believe it or not, this is the softest landing. I truly think this is the kindest thing I could have done.”
“But it can’t just be that, though!” Nina felt hysterical. “Like, if there are no other options, if there’s no good or right choice—if everything is some stupid game we can never actually win—then what the fuck are we even doing here, you know?” Nina pleaded with Tessa, and then stopped. “What the fuck are we even doing here?” she registered aloud.
As if in answer, several things occurred to Nina at once. One, that she would have to tell Fawn about becoming part of a hostile takeover despite never answering the question as to whether or not she’d accept. Two, who the fuck was she going to bring to dinner. Three, this was what everything ultimately was, wasn’t it? Just filthy compromise and little treats.
“What is any of it for?” asked Nina desperately, to which Tessa gave a dry laugh.
“No idea,” she said, and then, “The economy?”
“What about me, though?” Nina demanded. “Can’t I be, I don’t know, different? Can’t I just say no?”
“To what?” asked Tessa skeptically. “Slate? You could, but why? Fawn would rather have you than any of the alternatives, believe me.”
“But what about devotion to the sisterhood?” Nina asked, or maybe begged. The hunt, her precious hunt. That sacred, innermost desire to devour, born from the innocence of girlhood, stoked by a lifetime’s hunger to the point of righteous flame. Was it not holy after all? “What about the high ideals of friendship?” What about the power I was promised? What about The House’s salvation that was supposed to be my grace?
“Oh god. Nina.” Tessa cupped one of Nina’s cheeks in her hand. “The dumbest part is that you’d make the perfect president. Alex would love you. The whole goddamn House would be better off.”
“But why?” Nina’s eyes had filled with tears.
“Because you still believe in it,” Tessa said, and her voice was gentle, and her touch was kind. “Even though it lied to your fucking face.”
35
“Where’s your husband?” asked Sloane, stepping foot once more into The Country Wife’s farmhouse. There was fresh paint on the walls, a new wall of built-in bookcases that had been decorated—that was the only word for it, more so than shelved or stocked—with an ombre pastel palette of coordinated spines.
“Oh, locked in the basement,” said Caroline. “I mainly just go down there for sex or when I need the Wi-Fi unplugged and plugged in again.”
“Oh,” said Sloane faintly, and Caroline fixed her with a look of supreme condescension.
“I’m joking,” said Caroline. “He’s out to dinner with a client.”
“What does he do?” Sloane wandered the living room, looking at the books. The titles were all familiar. She recognized some book club bestsellers, some mainstream nonfiction, a few sci-fi classics that Sloane remembered reading in school. She had the sense that despite the curated arrangement, Caroline had actually read them all.
“Internal audits,” said Caroline. “It’s dull as shit. He’s funny, though.” The last bit was faint, pulled from her like teeth, despite being unsolicited.
“You actually like your husband?” Sloane turned to look at Caroline as she asked, amused.
“I’m not just using him, if that’s what you’re implying.” For the first time, Caroline seemed a little bit guarded, as if Sloane had uncovered something horrific or maybe even repulsive—more repulsive than being fed human heart. “He’s got a great cock and he’s nice to animals. All in all, I’ve got no complaints.”
Sloane turned back to the books. “Is it really that shameful for you to admit you’re in love with the man you married?”
With a jolt, she ran a finger down the spine of her first book. The name Sloane Hartley gleamed in tiny, unimportant letters.
“I don’t find it shameful. I just don’t expect it to last.” Caroline gave a disaffected shrug.
“You know, I remember thinking that marriage was kind of scary at first,” Sloane mused aloud. “It changes shape, and that can be alarming.”
“Are you honestly trying to give me advice?” Caroline barked a laugh. “Your husband is cheating on you.”
Sloane froze, her hand still curled in the air from where she’d been fondly stroking the ghost of herself, the spine of her work. Then she turned sharply. “How do you know that?”
“By looking at you.” Caroline’s aggressive, predatorial smirk was back. “You don’t like your husband anymore. But for some reason, you’re trying to teach me something. Why, because you’re older? So you’re supposed to know something I don’t?”
Sloane shook her head. “I couldn’t get comfortable at first,” she said, unsure why she was disclosing any of this. Only that she felt too tired to play games. “For a long time, I didn’t really believe he was going to love me forever. For years I was as happy as I could be while still half expecting him to leave.” She stopped. “I think it’s why I took things on that … I don’t know. It seemed like maybe he’d love me more, I guess, if I just became everything he needed. If I took better care of him than me. I think that’s what backfired on me in the end. I taught him exactly how to neglect me.”
“Oh my god,” said Caroline, wrinkling her nose. “Stop. This isn’t even sad. It’s just gross.”
“I came here because I wanted to ask you about the ritual,” Sloane said, rolling her eyes internally at this literal child, who would either learn one day to be grateful for what she had for the time that she had it or she would simply eat her husband, and either way it made no real difference to Sloane. “How does it work?”
“Like any form of hunting,” said Caroline, her eyes big and deep when they looked at Sloane. Sloane was beginning to understand this was Caroline’s face of interest, and the one she made when she was waiting for a reaction. “You don’t want gunpowder residue in the meat. You don’t want something that’s been dead for a long time. You want the slaughter to be efficient and humane. We usually stun them first, then slit the throat. Oh, and a restraint system is critical. Don’t want to waste the blood, that’s valuable. Don’t want to bruise the carcass either, that’s bad for the meat.”
“When you say ‘we,’” Sloane began, and Caroline shrugged.
“I told you, I learned all this from Alex,” she said. “She’s the one who came up with the ritual.”
As if by magic, there was a knock at the farmhouse’s front door.
“Did you call her here tonight?” asked Sloane with a sigh.
“Yep,” said Caroline, waltzing leisurely to the front door. “Like I’d speak to you without my lawyer present,” she muttered, followed by an eye roll that Sloane already knew Isla would give her millions of one day.
Caroline opened the door, and Alex stepped inside the farmhouse with a tired expression on her face. “You’re driving back this time,” she said to Sloane without preamble, and to Caroline, she said, “What’s for dinner?”
“Coq au vin,” said Caroline.
Alex nodded approvingly. “A classic.”
“Is it actually coq au vin?” asked Sloane.
“Dude, if you can’t tell the difference between chicken stew and dismembered human, that’s on you,” said Caroline.
Alex sat down beside Sloane at the kitchen island. Caroline moved blithely around the kitchen, gathering iridescent wineglasses. There was a new lightness to her performance, like someone gladly showing off.
“This is beautiful glassware,” murmured Alex.
“Thanks, I’ll send you the link,” said Caroline, pouring a bottle of glittery, sanguine Zinfandel first into Alex’s glass, and then Sloane’s.
Alex raised her glass to her lips, draining it. Then she turned to look at Sloane.
“I heard about your husband,” she said.
“Mm,” said Sloane, taking an extravagant pull from her own glass. It would be a long drive, but she suspected it would be a long meal, too. “It’s just a sabbatical. To work on his book.”
“That’s good—that means they have no proof.” Alex nodded approvingly, just as she had to the menu. “Unsubstantiated rumors.”
“Yeah. It’s great.” Sloane took another drink. “I’m the wife of the man with unsubstantiated rumors and there’s a house full of young women in my care.”
“Could always serve him as a nice roast,” said Caroline cheerily. “I’ve got a great rub for that.”
“I don’t think Dr. Hartley wants to talk about our little proclivities, Caro,” murmured Alex.
“Actually, I was just asking Caroline about the ritual.” Sloane turned to face Alex. “I want to know something. And honestly, I’d love to hear your answer.”
Alex shrugged. “Hit me.”
“Are you happy?” asked Sloane. “Like, does it work?”
“What, the ritual?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you mean me specifically, or…?”
“I mean all of you. The House,” said Sloane. “Are you actually different from me? I guess I’m including you in that,” she acknowledged to Caroline, who winked at her over her glass. “I want to know if it’s real. Or if it’s just another fucking VidStar trend.”
Caroline refilled Alex’s glass, and Alex swirled it contemplatively, twice, before looking back up at Sloane.
“Like I said, no member of The House has died of any illness since the ritual began,” she said. “Nobody has ever gotten Botox or any other reconstructive surgery, either. Nobody wears glasses or has carpal tunnel and the pregnancies were all safely delivered and nausea-free. We all have the careers we wanted—including Caroline,” said Alex with a toast in her direction, “who, as you know, is a serial killer with 4.5 million followers.”
“My dream ever since I was a little girl,” Caroline contributed wistfully.
“So then it works,” said Sloane, breathing out. “It actually works.”
Alex pinched the bridge of her nose as if to contemplate something, or to still her swimming thoughts. Her eyes darted to Sloane’s, a look of concern passing over them. “Is this for your book? Because I think even the social sciences require a longer period of experimentation. Of course nobody has died of any illness; the oldest members who’ve completed the ritual are in their mid-thirties. I’d hardly call it conclusive.”
“You do it anyway, though, right? You believe in it?”
Alex’s knee jiggled apprehensively. Again she seemed to look warily at Sloane, as if she saw something on Sloane’s face that worried her. “Wherever you’re going with this, Sloane—”
“I have a daughter,” said Sloane. “Someday she’s going to be a woman.”
Alex grimaced. “I know.”
“I can’t give her this world, you know?” Sloane felt like she was pleading, and maybe she was. Neither Alex nor Caroline seemed able to look at her. “The world where you fall in love but then he fucks teenagers. The world where the dean cuts your hours because he doesn’t understand VidStar and then you die just to get out of your debts.”
“World’s fucked, Sloane,” Alex confirmed with a shrug. “It’s why I tell The Girls they have to go far, as far as possible. It’s not about girlbossing or whatever the shit Fawn Carter thinks I’m trying to enforce. It’s about being in the room where the decisions are made. It’s about doing whatever it takes to break down that door and let others follow.”
“You have so much time,” Sloane said wistfully, looking at Caroline. “So much time.”
Caroline’s brow furrowed, her eyes darting to Alex with something that looked to be a wordless cry for help. Sloane understood, then, that Caroline was just a tiny little baby. Just a sweet little girl who happened to be clinically deranged. Why, then, was she looking at Sloane like she was the crazy one? “You shouldn’t eat everyone you kill,” Sloane said to her, gently. “You’ll get some incurable brain disease.”
“I don’t,” said Caroline, looking at Alex again. “I already know about kuru. And I don’t eat human brains, I’m not a fucking zombie—”
“Calm down,” Alex said to Caroline, her gaze flicking worriedly to Sloane’s again. “Sloane’s just a little upset.”
“I’m not upset,” said Sloane, laughing a little into her wine. Again, she felt Alex and Caroline exchange glances in her periphery, as if there was something inherently threatening about a woman who managed—despite great personal crisis!!!!!!!—to stay rational and calm. “I’m curious. I find I have a deep, intellectual curiosity about this. I want to know how it works, why it works, and how long it takes to start working.”
“Scientific method,” remarked Alex dully, with a slight frown.
“Exactly—I’m doing my research,” said Sloane. “I don’t doubt that whoever Caroline hunts deserves his comeuppance. Right? I’m not saying we shouldn’t become violent. Ultimately all movements for liberation do.” She was talking a little fast, she realized. A sweat had broken out on her brow, perhaps from all the gesticulating.
“Sloane,” said Alex.
“Dude,” whispered Caroline loudly to Alex. “Is she, like, okay?”
“Just get the stew, Caro—”
“The thing is.” Sloane felt something inside her chest catch fire. “They’re bad apples. Right? They spoil the bunch.” Yes, she was definitely talking too fast.
“Are you talking about cops?” asked Caroline, who turned to Alex. “Is her husband a cop?”
“No, he’s a professor. Sloane,” said Alex, using the voice she used to placate toddlers. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tease you. Yes, the ritual works, but you shouldn’t use it on anyone you’re close to.”
“Because of cops,” said Caroline.
“Yes, Caroline, thank you—”
“What you need is therapy,” Caroline interjected again.
“No, I’m fine. I’m seriously fine.” Sloane laughed and laughed. Like: AHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! “You can both stop looking at me like that, okay? I’m just trying to understand the benefits here, you know? Like, how magical is it? Is it actually magical, or just medicinal? Have you actually cured anyone of something, or is it more preventative? Just from your observation, obviously—I mean, look at the followers thing,” she said to Caroline, who’d been trying to surreptitiously remove Sloane’s knife. “Put that back, I’m fine. Is the followers thing because you’re hot and crazy and have decent video editing skills or is it because you eat human hearts? Like, can you actually separate correlation from causation? Methodically speaking, is that something you can do? I just have to know,” she said, and laughed again, though it sounded wrong. “Speaking as a sociologist, I have to know.”
She could feel that she’d begun to rant a bit. Alex pushed a bowl of stew toward her and Sloane leaned forward with relief, using the serving spoon to take a bite. The broth was rich, laden with umami from the mushrooms. “Is there miso in here?”
