“Another couple is joining us. We’ve got the house for the weekend; my parents are in Laguna to escape the heat. Just pack a few things, okay?” She smiled hard at Jessie and tapped at her phone, her long neon-pink nails clicking against the screen.
Trashy, Jessie thought.
Dozing beneath the lone shade tree near the apartment pool, Jessie nearly missed the call. She saw it was her dad, Jim, and swiped to answer.
“Daddy—” she started, but was cut short by her father’s angry voice. He never yelled at her, not really, but he was yelling now, all the way from the Bay Area. He was yelling about money and what in the hell, what the fuck was she up to, who were these people, and did she have any idea her account was over six thousand fucking dollars in the red?
“The red? What do you mean? I’m sorry! I didn’t know, I swear,” Jessie stammered, around and over the continued noise from her phone. He said other words: check fraud and cops and felony. It all sounded so bad, and she had no idea how to make it better. She thought about the trips to the bank, or sometimes the Circle K with its ATM machine beside the Monster energy drinks and Lotto tickets. All those slips of receipts she’d shoved in her pockets, or even thrown away without a glance.
“I’m coming,” her dad said now. “I’ll be there tonight, maybe tomorrow if I can’t get a flight. Where will I find you? I’d say this is all your mother’s fault, but you need to answer for this too, Jessica. And so does Mia.”
And Nick too, Jessie thought. She didn’t say his name, but her dad would be learning it soon enough.
The group had partied all day under the hazy white sun, diving into the turquoise pool over and over. The misters were on around the covered patio, the outdoor ceiling fans turned. Nick and Mia laughed and kissed often, their arms wrapped around each other, recounting with Leo and Cherise tales of other parties at Mia’s parents’, of post-Coachella all-nighters and trips to Havasu. Once, as Mia bent over the outdoor fridge rooting for a beer, Leo came up behind her, grabbed her thin hips, and started humping. He turned his face to the group and wagged his tongue. “Uh, uh, uh!” His eyes were hidden behind his mirrored sunglasses.
“Quit it, perv,” Mia laughed, slapping his hands away. Jessie glanced at Nick, but he only laughed along with his friends. Later, Nick approached Cherise in her lounge chair, standing with his crotch directly in front of her face. He grabbed at himself and grunted, “Got something for you, baby.” Cherise only stared up at him, one eye squinted shut against the sun, and blew out a cloud of vanilla Juul smoke. “Use it or lose it, asshole,” she chuckled.
To all of this, Jessie forced an echoing laugh and whoop, accepting every beer and joint passed her way. Otherwise, Mia and everyone else seemed to forget she was there. By midafternoon Jessie felt nauseous, rocked by long hours under the sun and atop the wide pool float. The beer and smoke had helped her nerves, though.
Earlier that morning, her hands had shaken. They shook when she googled the phrase on her phone, making sure it applied. They shook when she looked up the local sheriff department’s number, and when she called and spoke to the woman who answered, and then an officer. She kept her voice low, despite the thick plastered walls of her guest bedroom in her aunt’s home.
Her hands had shaken, saying the words statutory rape. Giving Nick’s full name, his age, and then her birth date. “I think he stole my money too,” she said before hanging up. Her mouth had been so dry. Then she called her dad, who was stuck at the San Jose airport, unable to catch a flight until the afternoon. He was calmer than the day before, but still angry. Jessie reminded him of the location of her aunt and uncle’s house; he’d visited plenty of times for family get-togethers be fore the divorce. Her dad said he’d called the sheriff’s department too, that he’d be “bringing a posse.” It all sounded so terrible. Her mouth was so very dry.
She fell asleep in a lounge chair under the patio, beneath cool droplets of the spraying misters. She woke with a start, though she hadn’t slept long. Did she hear a siren, way down the hill? Would there need to be sirens for this money crime that she barely understood? Out of habit, her mind drifted to thoughts of Nick, to their late nights on the cheap blue rug over the hard tile floor. Each time they slept together had been hurried and nearly silent, but in her daydreams, Jessie recast the encounters, making their gestures slow, lingering. Would he go to jail for what they did together? She watched Nick, out by the pool, still drinking, talking to Leo now. His eyes, his mouth, had not sought her out even once since that last night in the apartment.
She turned her gaze from him and lifted her face to the sky, darkening with clouds from the monsoons that pushed up from Mexico in late summer. Far above, a cloud shadowed the earth as it parked before the burning disc of sun. In that moment, a vision descended over Jessie’s eyes: her hot skin, the bare flesh of the party crowd and the unnamed women in her Instagram searches, the mocking eyes of Nick — all of it cloaked in the cool, velvet dark of midnight. Over the laughter and the hip-hop she could hear the wail of a blues guitar. She didn’t have to close her eyes or plug her ears to imagine it. Instead, this cool world opened wide before her and welcomed her, a moment perfect in its seamless reality.
The cloud scooted away and she squinted against the instant return of desert glare. Was she imagining again? No. Here they were, then. Across the pool, just on the other side of a low iron gate, were three men. One was her father, the other two were unfamiliar, but in uniform. They had badges and guns. Things were going to happen now, and quickly.
The music stopped, the voices grew louder and angry. Was that Mia crying? It didn’t matter. It was all over; she was going home, to her mom’s small expensive house, her dad’s modern condo, to morning fog and summer evening sweatshirts. Things would get bad for Jessie for a little while too. But she wasn’t worried: she would always have music, and the perfect darkness of late, late summer nights.
Part II
Little White Lies
VIP Check-In
by Michael Craft
Little Tuscany
The move, the new job, the fresh beginning, none of that was my idea. But for two men, together for years — hell, decades — the time had come to plot a path toward retirement. And to Dr. Anthony Gascogne, ophthalmologist, Palm Springs felt like the logical destination. To me, not so much.
That was seven years ago, when Anthony was dead set on relocating his practice from LA. Because I balked, he said I could join him in the business as his office manager and assistant. My lackluster career as an actor and model had sputtered to a standstill, so I tagged along to the desert. Soon after, when the law finally allowed, he asked me to marry him.
Then, two years ago, Anthony divorced me. And fired me. And my career path took another unexpected turn — a much darker turn.
Starting over, pushing sixty, I was broke, unemployed, and couch-surfing.
On the brighter side, I was now in Palm Springs.
Well-heeled snowbirds fled for the long summers, but for the rest of us, twelve months of sunshine provided a constant tan, inspiring me to stay fit. And while the sizable gay populace skewed toward the rickety side of Medicare, this demographic twist had its upside: in the eyes of the local gentry, I was still pretty hot (which had a little something to do with the divorce).