As if beginning a series of hellish aerobics, she visualized a future without her wife. Dusty Wilding would be in the news forever, on billboards and award shows, joyous and bulletproof, pictures in magazines, jumping off yachts with new loves, new lovers, new friends—time-lined and tweeted in millions of Internet pages, while she, Allegra, would be in the non-news forever, the hapless, humiliated ex, a loser thrown off a hit reality show, dredged up by the press and eternal loser links of the Web, to body-shame a depressive weight gain, or money-shame a ruinous investment, or slut-shame a calamitous post-marital hookup, or soul-shame for merely being born — chronicling DUIs, shoplifting arrests, and other rumored occasions of injury, death, and dishonor…
Her wife sent another text asking if they could just please meet. Allegra’s heart quaked and she said yes but that she was going away for the weekend, what about Monday. (She didn’t want it to be on Dusty’s terms.) She wrote back of course and Allegra said you can come to 4 seasons. Her heart clenched again; maybe she shouldn’t have even told her where she was. I keep giving my power away. Dusty texted 
and Allegra puzzled over whether the hearts were respectfully reserved, hopeful, positive — or contrived, thoughtlessly businesslike, and negative.
But she did feel a little better. Maybe she should book a rub at the spa? She grabbed her iPad instead and scrolled through the videos. She hadn’t looked at the sextape in months. They drolly referred to it as their “performance piece” and it was the only one they’d ever done. Their faces were deliberately obscured; even Dusty’s birthmark had been scrupulously shot around. Allegra watched it dispassionately, like an anthropologist puzzling over an artifact.
Her cell rang, throwing her into electrified chaos for the thousandth time that day — but instead of Dusty, it said
Jeremy
mobile
“Hey!” she said.
Nothing — nobody there.
“Hello? Hello? Jeremy?”
After some clicks, rattles, and throat-clearings, came a honking nose-blow and loud rustles.
“Hello?”
“Jesus, did you butt-call me?”
He started to moan, then wail — totally crazy-sounding.
“Jeremy, what the fuck?”
“Tristen died,” he said, in scary deadpan basso. More phlegmy, aggressive throat-clearings followed.
“What?”
“He crashed his car.”
“He died?” she said dumbly. “When?”
“Four days ago!” he blubbered. “He kind of disappeared and I was starting to worry — so I Facebooked Larissa… oh, Allegra! He crashed in his car! He crashed in the car I gave him!”
“Jeremy, I’m so sorry! Where are you?”
“Home.”
“I’m coming over.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’m coming over.”
“Okay.”
He sounded like a three-year-old.
“Do you need anything?”
Long pause.
“Oh, Leggy… he’s dead, my Tristen’s dead, he crashed in the car I gave him… the Honda! He crashed in the Honda! He loved that car, he loved that car! It’s my fault, it’s my fault, it’s my fault, he wouldn’t have even had a driver’s license if I hadn’t paid for the lessons—”
He was off to the races and wailing again, ugly and high-pitched, then wandered away from the phone. After a few minutes, she hung up.
When she got to the house, Jeremy was a resplendent mess — on the phone with this one, laughing and weeping with that, rushing around doing his tragic Blanche DuBois hostess thing then collapsing on the couch, a drunken queen in her cockeyed crown, waving a broken fan. It moved Allegra to see how much he really cared for that boy. He went on about the night he died, how only hours before, Tristen had been sobbing in his arms about his dad, and how Larissa later said their son must have had a sixth sense that something was wrong because the tantrum of tears would probably have been right around the time Derek was having trouble breathing — Derek’s girlfriend called her and Larissa was on her way there herself — how Jeremy was obviously rushing over there to help when he lost control of the car. “He was so full of love! He played it so cool and so spiky, but Leggy! He was such a love bug! And he loved me, Lego, he loved me. He really, really did, I know he did…”
With an actor’s instinct to rein in the maudlin, he abruptly stepped out of himself to ask, apropos of Allegra’s general marital meshugas, “And how are you?” She squinched a tight little smile, shorthanding, “At the Four Seasons.” When he said he still hadn’t heard from Dusty, Allegra was about to ask if he left word about what happened to Tristen but friends were arriving with flowers and plates of comfort food and Jeremy kept leaping up for hugs.
She hung a while longer then snuck up to kiss him and crept out.
On the way to the hotel she thought of phoning Larissa for a condolence-bla but decided against it. Then, with a shock, she wondered if Dusty was with Larissa this very moment, providing solace, money, palliative sexual favors, whatever… the thought sickened, her rage reigniting as she pictured the distraught stand-in cradled in her wife’s arms. Perversely, Allegra fantasized that when they finally talked, Dusty would open with the conversational gambit of “Jeremy’s loss” in order to defuse/minimize her adultery by implying that in context, their own troubles paled in comparison to such an event. At the same time, Dusty’s hands were sort of tied — she couldn’t really get into Tristen’s death without dragging in Larissa, one way or another, which she’d want to avoid, or put off, for as long as she could. So actually, she’d probably know better than to bring it up.
Though maybe not. Maybe Dusty so didn’t give a shit anymore.
When she walked into the suite, Allegra noticed an envelope propped against a vase on the living-room coffee table. Someone from the hotel must have delivered it. She recognized the Smythson stationery she bought for Dusty a few years ago in London.
A calligraphic A. was written on the front. Trembling, she pulled out the thick square note inside:
Everything is going to be OK,
Please please trust
xD
—
They found a pistol belonging to Derek in the trunk of the crumpled hybrid. (The editor used to go shooting with his geriatric director friends.) Larissa theorized their son came across the gun while at Derek’s apartment and took quiet custody, out of worry that after the diagnosis his father had become so depressed he might harm himself.
Larissa was shocked when the E.R. nurse informed that Tristen was an organ donor. It seemed so out of character and made her question everything she thought she knew about her complicated, secretive boy. Later, Jeremy shed some light. He shared the scarifying backstory of the girl who crashed her dad’s Porsche, and Tristen’s mischievous contribution to that unsavory Internet legend; and how, when he took her son to the DMV to get his license, Tristen revealed he’d signed Nikki Catsouras on the donor form.