Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

Around midnight, my phone buzzed. From Jamie: Where are you?

I had forgotten to tell him that I wasn’t coming into work that day, but he could put two and two together. I explained the impromptu road trip, Stella’s need to get away from it all. Back in the city by Sunday, I think, I texted.

There was comfort in knowing that, soon, this weekend would only be a strange memory. Sunday morning, we’d be in the car driving south. Monday morning, we’d be back in the office. It ran through my head as I splashed water on my face, rummaged through the linen closet for a towel, pulled back the covers on the guest bed: I had a life to return to. I would be done with this, soon enough.

My phone wasn’t there when I reached for it. Darkness, disorientation, strange sounds from downstairs. I had no idea how long I’d been asleep.

This time, the door to the master bedroom stood wide-open, the lamps inside blazing. “Stella?” I said tentatively, peering in. The bedroom was empty, and a mess. The contents of her bag were splayed across the floor, there was a stain of red wine on the carpet near the bed, and several cigarettes were stubbed out on the windowsill.

The closet door was open, and it caught my eye. Inside the closet was a safe, and the safe was open, too. I took a step closer. The safe looked empty. I was curious what had been inside, although I wasn’t about to crouch down and start examining it. What if she came in, and caught me snooping? When Stella was in a mood like this, anything could set her off.

But when I turned around, the answer was on the nightstand. Right next to the wineglass Stella had knocked over. A compact, metallic shape that clarified into a gun.

My heart thudded. Why did she need a gun?

Loud music was thumping through the ceiling. Downstairs, it smelled like cigarettes. I found Stella in the kitchen, perched on a stool at the counter. There was a bottle of vodka in front of her, an empty glass ringed with lipstick, a square of rolling paper that she was fashioning into a joint. She was wearing a silk bathrobe—shell pink with a pale lace trim, the knot lazily tied, the curve of her breast visible beneath the loose fabric. Jamie had bought it for her birthday just a few months ago. He’d asked for my help in picking it out.

“There you are,” she said, raising her voice over the music. The deep bass caused the ceiling to vibrate. “I was wondering when you’d finally join us.”

She stared skeptically at the faded pajama pants and oversize T-shirt I slept in. I crossed my arms over the lumpy, braless softness of my chest. “Us?” I said.

“You’re very popular.” She gestured with her cigarette to the counter: my phone. I must have left it on the couch. “Jamie hasn’t responded to any of my texts. But maybe he doesn’t need to talk to me. He has you. You can just tell him everything I’m doing.”

“He only wanted to know why I wasn’t at work.”

“Well, why don’t you call him?” she said. “Right now. Call him and explain.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“I knew you’d say that,” she said. “You always have an excuse, don’t you?”

When I stepped forward, Stella snatched my phone away. “Not so fast,” she said. Then she laughed. “You do realize you’re a guest in this house, Violet,” she said. “You have to do what I ask. It’s only the polite thing.”

“Give it back.”

“What else is in here, hmmm?” Stella said. “Your texts with Jamie. Your e-mails. Everything you’ve been saying behind my back.”

“You’re being paranoid,” I said. A picture of Willow flashed through my mind, in her little house outside Panama City. The clean living room, the business classes, the gun she slept with. I felt a smoldering curl of anger. There were people who actually needed protection. People who actually feared for their safety. To Stella, this was all just a game.

“Why are you here?” she said. “Really, Violet, why?”

“Because you asked me to come with you,” I said. “Seriously. Give it back.”

“Did I?” She tilted her head. “I don’t remember asking you to come. But there you were, with your sad little duffel bag. You just can’t let it go, can you?”

“I’ll leave if you want me to leave.”

“Ugh,” she said. “See, this is your problem. You’re no fun. You give up so quickly.”

“Jesus, Stella, what’s fun about this?”

She looked momentarily confused. She was actually surprised that I wasn’t going along with her routine, despite how twisted it had become. In the time she took to gather herself, the phone in her hand buzzed. My phone. A smile spread across her face. “Well, well, another text from Jamie. Ahem,” she said. Then, in a simpering voice: “Let me know how you’re holding up.”

“So I guess he’s awake,” Stella said. “Should I call him, Violet? Should we just—”

I lunged for the phone. I managed to grab Stella’s wrist but she twisted it away and sprang up from the stool, which tipped over and hit the tiled floor with a loud smack. She ran through the door and into the cold night air. “What are you doing?” I shouted, but she was already halfway down the sloping lawn. The frozen grass was cold and rough against my bare feet as I ran after her. At the bottom of the hill, she reared her arm back and threw the phone as far as she could.

The night was dark. Cloud cover, no moonlight. I couldn’t see where it had landed.

“You want it so bad?” She spun around. “Go find it.”

“You’re horrible,” I said, as she walked past me, back to the house.

“Fuck you,” she shouted over her shoulder. “Do something by yourself, for once.”

In the summer, there were buses in town that ran south to Portland and Boston, but service ended after Labor Day. There was a local taxi service, but when I called that Saturday morning, their phone just rang and rang. Without a car, you were virtually trapped.

And the next morning, when I woke up, the driveway was empty. Stella’s pattern was to run away after a fight, lick her wounds and disappear for a while. Hours, or days, depending on how much she wanted to punish the person who had mistreated her. She wasn’t answering her phone, but she surely wasn’t gone for good. Her clothing was scattered across the bed, her shoes across the floor. The nightstand still held her Cartier watch, and the gun.

Over the years we had argued and bickered and squabbled, but never had we spoken so plainly. Never had we been willing to look directly at the problem, and call it what it was. Despite her paranoia, despite being stuck in this house, I felt strangely relieved. The friendship was ending. Even if Stella’s star continued rising at KCN, that was fine. I could endure envy. It was the in-between that drove me crazy: pretending to love her, pretending to be happy for her, when the whole thing was a slow torture.

As the shadows grew long and the sun sank toward the horizon, there was the crunch of tires over gravel and the slam of a car door. When Stella came into the house, she looked strung out. She’d slept even less than me that weekend. In the kitchen, she pulled a bottle of wine from the wine rack, and twisted the corkscrew into the neck. The cork emerged with a soft pop. She took two glasses from the cabinet, and held one toward me.

“Aren’t you going to drink with me?” she said.

“I’m not really in the mood.”

“Come on.” Her tone was one part teasing, two parts pleading. “Be a friend.”

A few minutes later, when she had emptied and refilled her glass for the first time, I said, “Do you want to talk about what happened last night?”

“Not really,” she said. She pointed at my glass. “You need to catch up.”