Betty knew she had a daughter. All Sybil talked about was her kids. Betty could already tell you more about them than she could her own siblings as of late. Betty had four of them. Three brothers. A sister. She’d ghosted them all but Levi when she left Georgia, and now she and Levi swapped an email every few months, a phone call even less so, mostly for emergencies or when Betty really missed him so palpably that she had to hear his voice to ground herself. Betty knew that Sybil had twins, that this was the first time they’d been away from each other, choosing different colleges. She wanted to dislike Sybil. The upper-middle-class highlighted blonde, Pilates-toned, Range Rover–driving woman was so not her type. But Sybil had a warm heart and also, Betty thought, a stone-cold disposition when she needed to. Which maybe meant the two of them weren’t all that different.
Tonight, Betty decided to be agreeable. She thought it might be useful to stay with Zeke, and certainly, it would be more peaceful than her current arrangement. Also, importantly, he seemed harmless, the exact right level of clueless about the world around him and narcissistic about his own needs that it took to be successful in his sport.
“Sure, Zeke, thank you for the offer,” Betty said. “I guess, well, sure, I’d love to move in with you. On a trial basis.”
“Of course,” Zeke said. “No pressure. I have another surgery coming up next month, so it would be nice to have someone around.”
He struck Betty as someone who, surprisingly, did not have many friends. If he did, he wouldn’t be here in this shitty diner with strangers he had met online. Something they had in common.
“I can help!” Sybil offered. “Betty, you’re young, you should be out exploring the city. Meeting young men. Or women. My Eloise likes both, which I totally support, by the way. But you should be out having fun! Doing what young people do.”
Betty didn’t reply because she wasn’t interested in sharing anything personal, so Sybil clapped her hands together. “I feel like this is the thing, the thing that we all need. We need each other to help solve each other’s problems.”
“Who said I have problems?” Julian asked.
“Well, you don’t sleep, my man,” Zeke said. “So there’s gotta be something.”
Julian emitted a cough at that exact moment that sounded like a train engine. When he caught his breath, he said: “Sorry, I do feel like my body is falling apart from not sleeping.”
“Ditto,” Zeke said.
“Tritto,” Sybil said, then her cheeks flushed and she added, “Sorry, Eloise says that sometimes…it sounded cuter in my brain.”
“It’s the perfect amount of cute,” Zeke said, and Julian raised an eyebrow toward Betty, like they shared a secret. Betty kind of liked that too. She was used to secrets, but only her own, and it was a balm, a relief, to be in on someone else’s.
“Maybe this was preordained.” Sybil’s cheeks were bright pink now, like she was really amping up to something big. “What are the odds that the three of us met on an internet forum—”
“That sounds like the start of a horror movie,” Betty said.
“Or porn,” Zeke replied, then his eyes went wide like he’dforgotten that they didn’t actually know one another all that well. Betty watched his face blanch and marveled that someone so famous, with so much clout and power, could still be a bit of an idiot. Didn’t he have a filter? Betty’s filter was so rigid that she never said anything without thinking three beats down the line. This is why she was still on her feet. She thought about Levi again. Wondered if he were still on his feet. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d connected. Where had he been last? Seattle. Maybe he was still in Seattle.
“Sorry,” Zeke said, mostly for Sybil’s benefit, Betty thought. “I’m still on pain meds. They make me loopy. That was a joke…about the porn.” His eyelid spasmed like it, too, was crying out in apology.
Zeke turned to Betty as if he still had to plead his case. “I swear, I’m a feminist. I’m best friends with my sister.”
Betty didn’t care about his politics. She honestly was just thinking about living in an apartment the size of the White House.
“I would never,everput you in a position where you were uncomfortable,” he continued, rambling now. “It would just be nice to have the company. And if it helps you out, um, financially, then I’d feel less selfish in offering.”
“So we agree!” Sybil said, tapping her palms on the table, like that was that. “We will lean on each other until our problems are solved.”
“I’m in,” Zeke said.
Julian wheezed again, which the table took as a concurrence.
Later, Betty realized that she had never really agreed to anything. So as far as she was concerned, if she ever needed to break the terms of the deal, she could, no questions asked. She’dlearned that from her father too. Her terms, her choices, her freedom. No matter what the others thought she agreed to, she well understood that she would abide only by her rules, by what served her needs, by what kept her safe. After that, it was every man for himself.
9
Night Four
Sybil
October 26th
Sybil and Markhad a pied-à-terre on the Upper East Side that Mark used when the hours got away from him at the hospital or when he was on call but needed a nice mattress to sleep on for a short stint. She’d texted Mark that she’d be using it tonight—they mostly communicated via text these days, other than when he called her for advice with a case—but he’d never responded.
The first thing she noticed once she turned the key to the apartment was the silence. Mark wasn’t there. A relief. She hadn’t actually seen him in several days. With her nocturnal schedule and his few hours at home before returning to the hospital, she’d managed to dodge him. Or he her. At this stage in their marriage, it was equal-opportunity avoidance. She wondered if this could go on interminably: being married without actually having a partner. It wasn’t so bad, really. It wasn’t so good either. But there were worse things, she knew. Her best friend, Natalie, the casting director, had left her ex-husband half a decade ago when it turned out he had gambled away herchildren’s college funds and most of their savings too. That was a worse thing.
