Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

“Oh,” Ginny said. She fiddled with it. “It’s a medical bracelet. I have a heart condition. A form of arrhythmia.”

“Is it serious?” Stella said, her eyes wide with fake concern.

“If I keep an eye on my diet, I’m fine,” Ginny said. “You’re sweet to ask, my dear.”

“Violet?” Anne said. “Could you please bring out another bottle of wine?”

It was so easy for them: even though it was Louisa’s night off, they didn’t need to adjust any of their usual routines. The dinner was perfect—the white linen tablecloth, hurricane lamps flickering in the breeze, dahlias from the garden, the food exactly right—but beneath it persisted a sour taste. This had been a mistake. I should have stood up for myself, should have asked for help. Where was my backbone? I was letting them walk all over me.

“Oh, my favorite,” Ginny said, when I brought out the pie. “Is this from the bakery?”

“Violet made it,” Anne said.

“You did?” Ginny said, looking at me with new attention. “It’s delicious.”

“Thank you,” I said, refilling my wineglass with a generous pour.

“My sister and I would pick blueberries all through our summers up here. We’d eat them until we were sick,” Ginny said, wistfully. “That feels like a long time ago.”

“Remind me, was your sister older or younger?” Stella said.

“Younger, by a few years.”

Stella smiled. “I always wanted a sister.”

“We were close, growing up, but I suppose we drifted as we got older.” Ginny twisted the stem of her wineglass between her thumb and index finger. “We only lived twenty blocks apart in the city, but I rarely saw her.”

“You said she used to work as a model?”

“Quite a successful one.” Ginny smiled. “She was a muse to a whole contingent of designers. She saw something in their clothes that even the designers hadn’t seen.”

“Why did she stop?” Stella asked.

“You know, I never had the chance to ask her.”

Stella paused, then said quietly, “How did it happen?”

“A few weeks went by,” Ginny said. “Two, maybe three. She wouldn’t answer her phone. I started to worry. The doorman finally let me in to her apartment. It was very peaceful, in a way. It was winter. She turned the radiators off and opened the windows. The apartment was cold. There was no smell. The pills were on the nightstand. The strangest thing was, she looked so alive. So pretty. She looked like she was sleeping.”

The candlelight caught in Ginny’s brimming eyes. From the distance came the roaring ocean. From closer, the sound of crickets in the garden. When Ginny spoke again, her voice was quiet. “I don’t tell many people about my sister.” She smoothed the napkin in her lap. “A lot of people don’t even know that I had a sister. But it’s nice to say these things out loud.”

Stella put her hand on Ginny’s. “It’s clear that she meant a lot to you.”

Ginny smiled softly. After several long moments of silence, she sighed and said, “I think you have a knack for this, my dear.”

“What do you mean?” Stella said.

“You’re very good at getting people to open up to you, aren’t you?”

My stomach lurched. Stella shrugged, but there was the slightest curl to her lip. Her supplicant curiosity, her personal questions, it had all been part of her plan. I knew exactly how charming and convincing Stella Bradley could be. And she knew it, too. How could I have been so stupid not to see this coming?

“If you can get me to talk about the dreadful situation with my sister,” Ginny said. “Well. I’m not exactly an easy nut to crack. And I think your talents might be going to waste at KCN.”

“Oh, but Ginny, I love my job,” Stella said, her tone sickeningly sweet.

“You’ll love it more when you’re in a position that suits your talents. I’ll make a few calls next week. I don’t see why we should be squandering this”—Ginny gestured at Stella—“when we could have you in front of a camera.”

STELLA BEGAN AS a general assignment reporter for KCN, working the 5 a.m. shift four days a week and a shift on Sundays. It was the gruntiest of grunt work: getting man-on-the-street interviews, banking live feed that would go unused, enduring ridicule every time she flubbed a line or threw it back to the wrong person.

But glamour is relative. Stella was now Talent, capital T. She had an office, a small one, but it had a door and a window. She hired an agent to negotiate her contract. She used the Talent Only entrance at the side of the building. She spent a fortune upgrading her wardrobe, and several hours a day in hair and makeup. She hired a vocal coach; she wore whitening strips on her teeth every night. And none of this was silly or vain, because it was now her job to look good. Because if viewers liked watching her deliver the news, it meant they would keep the channel tuned to KCN, which meant we could charge steeper rates for advertising, which meant the rest of us could receive our salaries and health insurance and afford to buy groceries.

For someone in Stella’s position, cable news had a benefit: twenty-four hours of airtime to fill meant plenty of opportunities to get hits. A reporter could rise through the ranks on cable far more quickly than at a network. Stella’s big moment came in November, just a few months into her new role. A gas main exploded in Hell’s Kitchen and a fire tore through nearby apartment buildings. Stella was the first reporter on the scene. KCN had it up at least five minutes before anyone else. She held her stick mic, looked confidently into the camera, and delivered flawless live shots every thirty minutes for the next twelve hours straight.

“Who is that?” Rebecca said, looking at the wall-mounted screen in the newsroom. Night had fallen, and Stella was delivering yet another live shot in front of the smoldering buildings. The chyron blared BREAKING: TWO DEAD, SIX MISSING. “Is she new?”

“She used to be an assistant here,” I said. At least Rebecca didn’t remember who Stella was.

“You sure she didn’t come straight from the Mattel factory? She looks even younger than you, Violet.” Rebecca crossed her arms and watched in silence as Stella read the latest statement from the NYPD. “She’s not bad, actually.”

“Who is?” Eliza said, as she walked past. Then she followed Rebecca’s gaze to the screen. “Oh,” she said. “Give credit to Jamie on that one. That’s his new girlfriend.”

They had started dating right around Labor Day, and told me soon after. The careful choreography annoyed me even more than the news itself: their gentle voices, their glances back and forth, loaded with meaning. Is she okay? You go first—no, you go first. But be careful. They acted like I was so fragile I might shatter.

“We don’t want this to be weird,” Stella said, brow knitted in sympathy.

“Why would it be weird?” I shot back.

“It won’t affect our friendship,” Jamie said. “Or our working together.”

Stella took his hand, nodded earnestly. She often absorbed the mannerisms of the men she dated. For the moment, at least, Jamie was turning her into a heart-on-her-sleeve idealist. “You know how important you are to us.”

Us. They wrapped that word around themselves like a cozy blanket. Jamie began spending the night at our apartment. Once a week, then twice, then almost every night. One morning I ran into him in the kitchen, where he was clad in boxers and a T-shirt. Instead of sitting with me, he smiled sheepishly and carried two mugs of coffee back to Stella’s bedroom.

After he closed the door, I could hear them laughing. It was painful, how vividly I could imagine the rest of it. The mugs of coffee set aside, the minty toothbrushed kiss—Stella standing on her tiptoes to press her lips to his—then the kiss turning into more, the T-shirt and boxers easily shed. Stella had told me several times how good Jamie was in bed. How attentive, how generous, how unlike the men she’d been with before.