“Kidding!” says Taylor. “I’m definitely mostly kidding. The only kind of bullet I have is right here.” From the bag she draws out a bottle of Bulleit Bourbon and two rocks glasses. “I figure if we’re going to handle this like a couple of men then we should really handle it like a couple of men. I figured I’d go allYellowstoneon you.” Juliana doesn’t know what it means to “go allYellowstoneon you” (this is a TV reference, but who has time for shows?), and as she’s wondering, Taylor pours a healthy amount into each glass—more hand than finger—and passes one to Juliana. Taylor’s grip is steady: no wobbles, no spills. “Drink,” she says.
“Oh, I don’t really want—”
“Drink,”says Taylor again. Juliana drinks, and as the bourbon goes down, smooth, warm, she thinks, What is happening now? What isgoingto happen? “It’s good, right?”
Juliana nods;Yes, it’s good.
“I know what you did,” says Taylor. No more preamble. She fixes Juliana with an unwavering gaze.
Like the businesswoman she is, Juliana counters. “I know whatyoudid,” she says to Taylor. “I know what you’ve been doing.”
Taylor looks at her quizzically: “I’m sorry?”
“With that guy who works for your dad—”
“Ohhhh,” says Taylor. “Oh.” She tosses her head back and laughs so long and so hard that the laugh seems to travel along the beach, bouncing here and there atop the rocks before heading out to sea.“Oh,Henry. Okay, let’s get a couple of things straight. First of all, he works for me, not my dad. Second, I’m not talking about you and David. We’ll get to that, of course, that’s part of this conversation, and it’s not like that’s some fucking secret anymore, obviously, but that’s not what I’m leading with.”
“What are you leading with?” whispers Juliana.
“I know how you got the money to start your business.”
Oh, no. Not that. Notthatnotthatnotthat. Not Serena. Not Mrs. Sanchez. NotGeorge.
Juliana drains her glass and holds it out to Taylor. “May I have another, please?”
“Of course,” says Taylor, nice as can be. Juliana has to fight the urge to rip the bottle out of her hands and dump as much as she can directly down her throat. She satisfies herself with what Taylor pours her, and she listens as Taylor begins to talk. Taylor tells Juliana about a party she and David threw not long ago. “You weren’t on the guest list. I wasn’t crazy about your manners last time you were at our house. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“One person who was there,” says Taylor, “was Shelly Salazar.”
Juliana’s stomach drops, and her hands feel like they’re going to float away from her body. Shelly, who’s been calling her Jade all summer. Shelly, who can’t hold her liquor.
“Up until this party we hadn’t talked socially that much. She’s a hoot!”
No, thinks Juliana. “She is,” she says.
“We got to talking about all sorts of things, like where we lived in our twenties, and who we might know in common. Shelly knew someone from my class at Yale. Everyone knows someone who went to Yale, you know.”
“Sure,” says Juliana. On the outside, she’s tough as nails. Inside, she’s shriveling.
“So while we were talking about college it was an easy segue to get to you. Shelly had mentioned that she was friends with your freshman-year roommate? Someone named Ann Marie?”
Juliana squeezes her eyes shut, holds her breath. When she releases the breath she says, “Mary Ann.”
“Right. Sorry. Anyway, Shelly said, ‘She wasn’t Juliana George then. She was...’” Taylor pauses. Juliana’s eyes fly open and she doesn’t meet Taylor’s gaze. Above them a lone gull squawks; the waves crash; far down the beach to the right, two figures are walking. To the left, nobody. Take me away, thinks Juliana. Take me away from here. “Juliana.” Taylor’s voice is sharp. “I feel like you’re not giving me your full attention.”
Juliana fixes her eyes back on Taylor. Taylor says, “Shelly said, ‘She wasn’t Juliana George then. She was Jade Gordon.’ I remembered that she’d called you Jade at dinner, right? But then you made it into a joke... what was that joke, Jade? Something about jewelry?”
“Stop,” says Juliana. She gets up from the rock and stands facing Taylor. “Juststop. Stop drawing it out. Just skip to the end.”
“I don’t want to skip to the end, though. It’s such a good story! These are the kinds of stories the press loves, right? I read yourForbes30 Under 30profile.Forbescouldn’t get enough of your Cinderella story. A young woman pulling herself up by her bootstraps, from what was it, Lowell?”
Cinderella married a prince and lived happily ever after; Cinderella did not start a company. “Lawrence.”
“Lawrence! Yes. A young woman from Lawrence, pulling herself up by her bootstraps, using nothing but her smarts and her ingenuity... the American Dream, alive and well, right here in front of me! Amazing, Juliana. Really impressive. From scholarship student to business owner. But there was this question of the name change, you know? I got a little curious. I put some of my people in the New York office on the research. People in New York arevery goodat research, you know.”
“I know,” says Juliana sharply. “I have people in New York too.”
