Part 2 (1/2)

”Hey, little sis.”

”Hi, Mark.”

”You're not too old for a noogie, right? Say the magic words and I'll let you go.”

She giggled, punching him lightly in the stomach as he let go of his grip around her head and put his arm around her shoulders instead.

”Goonies say, never die!” They both loved The Goonies. Sloth was Mark's favorite character.

She felt something knotted within her simply ... relax. He had that effect on her, as he did on everyone else, too. ”You know I love you, don't you?” he said quietly into her ear, so as not to allow people walking by to witness any of their private exchange.

Her eyes welled up, but she looked away toward a nearby green locker that had the initials KG + JG scratched on it. She didn't know them. ”Yes,” she'd whispered back.

And that had been the end of that.

But now she was late for the gym. Her phone emitted a sharp bleet, as Alexis quickly downed the gla.s.s of milk like a shot. She had another app that reminded her when she was running behind for her workout. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a blur of motion as sailor boy reached out and helped himself to a slice of her banana.

Alexis sucked in air and let out a small scream.

Sailor boy's arm dropped to his side, the banana still mashed into his cheek, making him look like a chipmunk.

Billy came rus.h.i.+ng out of his bedroom. ”What is it? What's the matter?” He glanced at the clock on the stove. ”It's five-oh-four. Why aren't you at the gym?” Billy was Korean, had black spiky hair and smooth, caramel-colored skin. His eyes were large and black, framed by beautifully long lashes that were his best feature (which he'd tell everyone who would listen). He was the same height as Alexis, five-foot-two.

Two eyes peered out of the darkness from Billy's room at Alexis. She realized it was the other sailor from last night. Tom, or Tim. Or maybe it was Tony? She couldn't remember.

”Sailor boy over here thought it might be okay to take one of my banana slices,” Alexis said.

Polka-dot Boxers Sailor let out an embarra.s.sed chuckle. Alexis realized he sounded embarra.s.sed for her. The nerve.

”What's with your roommate?” he asked Billy. ”She got a stick up her a.s.s or something? I ate a slice of banana, and she screamed like I was stabbing her in the eye.”

Billy strode slowly but meaningfully over to him. He came up to the sailor's nipple.

Pause.

He reached up and slapped him across the face.

The sailor stood there, his hand on his cheek, wearing a shocked expression. Alexis heard Billy's other boy toy scurry back into the shadows, quickly slamming the door. The sound of the lock being turned echoed across the tiles in the kitchenette.

”What the f.u.c.k was that for?” Polka-dot Boxers Sailor asked.

”I'm going to explain something to you, so open up your big dumb waterlogged ears,” Billy said, hands on his narrow hips. ”Do you have any idea who you just took a slice of banana from? Whose breakfast you so cavalierly interrupted? Motherf.u.c.ker, this is Alexis Allbright. Editor in chief of Skinny Chick. Queen of Chelsea. b.i.t.c.h of all b.i.t.c.hes.”

”The blog?” the sailor asked, lifting his thick eyebrows at this news.

”The blog,” Billy replied.

”Oh, my G.o.d,” he said, putting a hand up to his reddening cheek. ”I read your blog, like, every single day. I f.u.c.king wors.h.i.+p you. I used to be a fat kid when I was younger.” He pointed to his washboard abs. ”Really.”

Alexis smiled the wafer-thin smile she reserved for people she didn't like.

”That interview you did with Anna Wintour I read like five hundred times on my laptop when we were stationed off the coast of Mexico. It got me through the lonely nights.”

”Glad I can do my part for my country,” Alexis said. She was starting to calm down.

”Now do you understand why taking her banana slice was so disrespectful?” Billy asked, his tone that of a preschool teacher speaking to a very small child. ”Girlfriend isn't going to eat anything for another five hours, as you know from her blog. And when she does eat, it will be a meal consisting of fewer calories than you have brain cells. And she has to now go work out. While the rest of the world sleeps in their lazy little beds.”

The sailor was tripping over himself to apologize. Alexis let him off the hook with a wave of her French-manicured hand. She never got anything other than a ”Frenchie,” as she called them. Her mother had always said color on fingernails looked vulgar.

”Don't worry about it, honey,” she told him. ”If you can say Skinny Chick's motto to me, all is forgiven.”

The sailor grinned. Now he was on familiar ground. ”A few calories a day keep the spandex away,” he sang.

”Good boy,” Billy said, patting him on the b.u.t.t like a dog. The sailor went skipping off to the bathroom, glowing as if he'd just met Angelina Jolie.

Suddenly a second door opened and a dark mane of hair appeared. Alexis and Billy both sucked in their breath at the same time. ”All right out 'ere?” a voice called spookily in an indeterminate accent. It seemed to warble, or echo somehow, like a ghost wailing inside a haunted house.

”Er ... everything's fine. Sorry we woke you,” Billy whispered.

Their third roommate was the only person on the entire planet who truly scared the s.h.i.+t out of both of them. Not having any friends, they'd had to rent out the third bedroom in their apartment when Alexis quit law school to start her blog. Billy was between bartending jobs at the time, and they needed the money. G.o.d knows, she'd rather take in Hannibal Lecter before going to her father for money, after he'd told her she was ”dead to me” when she dropped out.

So when Vanya answered their Craigslist ad, and had the deposit ready, they'd accepted her on the spot.

Her profession was unknown, and they'd never really gotten an actual look at her face after several years of cohabitation. Only brief flashes of light green eyes, nearly yellow like a cat's. Her hair was down to her waist and Wonder-Woman black, with a blue sheen. Her skin was a translucent white and she spent most of her days in her room (like a vampire!) playing the kind of weird music with bells sounding and cymbals pinging one heard in a spa. Billy had a theory she was a dominatrix, as she seemed to work only at night, and often wore thigh-high patent-leather boots. She'd once left a book out on the living room table, and Billy and Alexis had pounced on it. The t.i.tle? Wicca Today: 15 Curses for the Modern Witch. Billy had emitted a little scream and dropped it on the floor like a hot pan. Later, Alexis saw him carefully place it back on the table, precisely as it had been left. His hand had been shaking.

This morning was only the second or third time they'd heard her speak. Billy shrank closer to Alexis. Vanya had a mix of accents; one couldn't be sure if she was Irish, Scottish, or Transylvanian.

”Just a little disagreement,” Alexis said. ”Sorry we woke you up.”

Billy made a small choking sound. Alexis never apologized. ”Being hot and skinny means never having to say you're sorry,” she often said.

Vanya retreated back into her room (Alexis could swear she saw her feet not actually touch the floor), its walls painted such a dark purple it was cavelike, the reflection of a mirror on the ceiling casting a silver light onto the crack under her door. Only, her door didn't shut, not really. It seemed to suck closed, like a force field swirled around her s.p.a.ce and it was retreating back into itself.

Billy wiped his forehead with the gold sleeve of his Louis Vuitton pajamas. ”She scares me,” he said. Then, as he turned to Alexis, they both started giggling uncontrollably, holding their sides and then each other. Billy was the only man Alexis felt comfortable with touching her regularly. She occasionally slept with men (some married, some not) in five-star hotel rooms, but if they called her or tried to contact her afterward she always told them to lose her number.

She and Billy were so close it was as though they were married. Dating someone seriously would feel like an intrusion on their friends.h.i.+p; whoever it was would be an outsider. He wouldn't get their seven-year buildup of jokes and familiarity. They'd both dated but never seriously. Most people who found out about how close they were usually recognized their friends.h.i.+p for what it was: needy and strange. They vacationed together, applied self-tanner to each other's bodies, and even took baths in their humongous claw-foot bathtub the rich old lady who owned the apartment before them left when she died, their feet hanging over the tub's lip on either end.

Billy handled the recruitment of advertisers for Skinny Chick, serving drinks to people in the entertainment industry who wanted to promote their new movie or alb.u.m on the blog. ”I'll go and get my gay,” Alexis would say, when advertisers called wanting to speak to someone about the site. Billy worked three jobs: he helped run Skinny Chick, bartended, and worked as a fas.h.i.+on consultant for Vogue. He styled the models for photo shoots, lugging items from his own collection (he had a twenty-seven-inch waist, and sometimes the models wore his clothes unawares), or he'd borrow a credit card from Vogue and go shopping for the shoot, with specific outfits in mind. Billy was a genius when it came to dressing women, and even though freelance budgets at many magazines were dwindling, they always found the dough to hire him. Before she met Billy, Alexis dressed provocatively, wearing very short dresses and thigh-high boots. She cringed now, remembering. Her mother had never really helped steer her in any direction with fas.h.i.+on; Bunny wore tennis skirts and tops around the house, which was ironic because she hadn't picked up a racquet since she peered down the neck of a bottle of vodka years ago and never looked back up. Billy helped give Alexis a more streamlined, polished, adult look. She still was allowed the occasional short dress, but the label had to be Stella McCartney, not Bebe.

Though Alexis founded Skinny Chick, Billy came across as much more warm in business meetings and over the phone. Clients were scared of Alexis. Men and women alike. She weighed one hundred pounds soaking wet. She wore five-inch heels, everywhere she went, even to the supermarket. Her blond hair was dyed so heavily it was nearly white, and pulled into such a short bob it gave her young face a severe look. Once, when she looked into the carriage of a neighbor's new infant, the baby had instantly scrunched up its soft face and burst into tears, the mother embarra.s.sed and shus.h.i.+ng it.

But now Billy was ready to go back to sleep. Or at least to bed. ”I was having the strangest dream,” he told Alexis.

Alexis glared at him.

”I know, I know, you have to go work out,” he said, rolling his dark, beautiful eyes. ”Just listen. So I'm nestled there between my two sailors, and I'm dreaming that I go on Craigslist, because you know how I have that obsession where I look at c.r.a.p people are selling in our neighborhood?”

”Of course.”

”So I go on there, and lo and behold, there is my signed poster of Liza Minnelli from Flora the Red Menace, you know, the one I waited for three hours in January outside the auction in Midtown and caught a deadly strain of pneumonia to get?”