“You think we shouldn’t film with the darling one,” Lauren deduces with a snort. “That’ll go over well.”
“I just think we do our own thing and we let her do hers,” I say, trying to keep it light. This isn’t a blood pact. We don’t need to draw knives and weapons. The most effective way to destroy someone on the show is to disengage, to deprive her of the drama, of the meaningful connections, of the great and powerful storyline. In our world, your sharpest weapon is a polite smile.
I can tell Lauren is still not sold.
I’m contemplative for a moment. “I’ve debated whether or not to tell you this,” I say, and I have. I was hoping my case was solid without this.
Lauren says, at two martinis and two glasses of wine volume, “Just fucking tell me.”
I avoid her eyes. I am sure she will be able to tell I am lying if I don’t. “That thing in Page Six? The one about the—”
“I know which one you’re referring to,” Lauren says, and I look up to see that she’s reddened. There have been several items in the Post about Lauren’s drinking, but only one that cost her so much.
“Brett called that in,” I practically whisper.
Lauren blinks, stunned.
“I only found out after the reunion,” I rush to say. “I didn’t know what to do. Brett and I were still friends and I felt a sense of loyalty—”
Lauren holds up her hand. “Why are you telling me this now?”
I check in with Jen. Are we that obvious? “This affects your business, Laur. This affects your money.”
“Why are you telling me this now?” Lauren repeats, her voice softer this time.
Jen and I check in with each other across the table, telepathically negotiating who should be the one to answer her. Jen didn’t think it was necessary to tell Lauren that Brett was the one who sent the editors the video of a drunken Lauren fellating a baguette at Balthazar. I know Brett has a line into the editor of Page Six and I know I didn’t do it, and Jen and Lauren are in lockstep. Who else could it have been? Lauren had been next to hysterical at the reunion, demanding to know who shared the video that resulted in a lifetime ban from her favorite brunch place and her father bringing in a seasoned CEO, effectively rendering Lauren’s role at the company impotent.
Jen thinks telling Lauren not to film with Brett is enough to get Lauren not to film with Brett. She brought Lauren into the group and that buys unconditional servitude. But Lauren likes Brett, even though she is not supposed to, and I can’t pretend that I don’t understand. For a time, I didn’t just like Brett, I loved her.
I decide to be the one to say it.
“What if you didn’t drink this season?” I suggest to Lauren. “Make your sobriety a storyline. I think Jen and I, we could really support that. In a way Brett would never.” This is me, sweetening the pot for Lauren, because I need her to commit to the mutiny. I need Brett gone. We all do.
“Rehab my image,” Lauren says, her tone petulant.
“That’s right!” I say, brightly, as though I am a game show host and she is a player who has guessed the answer to a deciding trivia question correctly.
Lauren folds her arms across her chest, huffily. “Our viewers are so proletarian. This is how people drink in New York. It’s normal. I’m normal.” Her eyes flit to my unfinished glass of Barolo. She wouldn’t dare say it—You’re the one who’s not normal. At this age, in this world, she’s not just deflecting. The fact that I drink in thimble portions makes her far more average than me.
Lauren sighs, fluffing her hair at the roots in a way she thinks gives her Brigitte Bardot volume when really, it just makes her look like she rubbed a balloon against her head. “Fine. I’ll say I’m not drinking. Say it. I’m still going to, though.”
“We figured.” Jen shrugs.
“Fuck you, Greenberg,” Lauren says with a smile. She raises her glass, seeming to come around more positively to the idea. “To not drinking this season.”
I raise my own, laughing at the intended irony of the toast, relieved that everyone is so wholeheartedly on board. “To not drinking this season.”
What kind of narcissist signs up for a reality show? is a question lobbed at me on Twitter often. There are not enough characters to capture the magic of Jesse Barnes when she turns it on. And she did turn it on for me in the beginning. Dinners at Le Bernardin where she quoted from my novels. A twenty-five-thousand-dollar donation made in my name to my favorite charity that provides writing mentorship to underprivileged girls. SNL after-parties, box seats at the Yankees game for Vince, front-row tickets to a Madonna concert, and backstage passes where I got to meet Madonna. And all the while, Jesse was in my ear, promising me this was not my mother’s reality TV show. This was a show about women getting along, about women supporting one another, about women succeeding, about women who didn’t need men. I was absolutely fooled.
Jesse might have meant some of it. I think she believed, on some level, that she would be at the forefront of a new kind of reality TV, living as we were in a time of performed girl power. Beyoncé had recently dropped a golden microphone on stage at the VMAs, backlit by the word Feminist. It was no longer mainstream suicide to care about the equality of the sexes. And then season one aired and the ratings were so dismal that they briefly canceled us.
Season two felt different from the start. We got a new showrunner, Lisa, who found Machiavellian ways to pit us against one another. We fought. We aligned. We were a massive hit. There have been many times I have wanted to walk away, but I didn’t, and not because I am a narcissist.
It is because Diggers don’t survive the push off the couch. Jesse sees to it. The invitations to events that claim to support women stop coming, A-listers you were paired with on Jesse’s aftershow stop following you on Twitter, your businesses shutter, and the only magazine that wants to put you on the cover is The Learning Annex. It’s happening to Hayley right now. I made the mistake of texting to ask if I would see her at Jesse’s annual Halloween party, the one everyone who is anyone attends, and instead of saying yes, she hit me with a series of excuses so fraught my ulcers oozed. I’m having a problem receiving messages lately. Mercury is in retrograde. At least my assistant tells me so. I haven’t actually checked my email myself in a while. It’s probably in my inbox. Where is it just in case? When? Want to grab a drink together before? Ugh, I was nauseous for her. I knew that feeling. It’s like heartbreak, but not, the way cramps hurt differently than a stomach bug, though the pain is similarly located. There is no word for it, but there should be. It is the sting, it is the sickness—because it is also contagious—of your fellow woman turning on you.
I know my storyline must come to an end at some point, that I cannot reserve a prime spot on the reunion couch forever. But I will not—I cannot—allow a parasite like Brett Courtney to edge me out.
CHAPTER 3
* * *
Brett
My father thinks it’s a phase. My lesbianism.