Some Girls_ My Life In A Harem Part 4

We ate at a big, round marble table in the dining room downstairs. Serena wore a robe and had her hair already in curlers, her face dewy with moisturizer. Half ready and dressed in possibility, she looked beautiful. I still wore my travel clothes and felt covered with a film that I couldn't rinse from my face or my eyes.

The maids brought us a feast in large aluminum tins. It was twenty times the food we could possibly have eaten. There were delicious, oil-soaked Thai noodles and spicy chicken dishes and fruits and salads and a whole tray of tarts and pastries. The fruit tray smelled like filthy feet. Ari explained to me that the perpetrator was a fruit called durian. She began to fill us in on the protocol. We ordered our food for the next day the night before. Anything we desired would magically materialize and when we were done would just as quickly be taken away.

"Except papaya. You'll never see papaya here. Robin hates it," said Serena, sc.r.a.ping the sauce off a piece of chicken with a spoon.

"Who's Robin?"

Ari explained that with the exception of the devoutly religious Mohammed, each of the royal brothers-the Sultan, Prince Sufri, and Prince Jefri-had informal Western nicknames that we were to use at all times. We were to call Prince Jefri Robin. It sounded pretty, Sherwood Forest-y, almost feminine: Good Sir Robin. And I, his Maid Marian. I was such a dork.

"I called him Jefri once to tease him," added Serena.

"Don't try it," said Ari.

Day tumbled into night tumbled into party time. I could barely change my shoes fast enough to keep up. When we dressed for the party, I chose my best suit because it was s.e.xy and was actually the most expensive item of clothing I owned. I hoped it might inspire some confidence.

Destiny, Serena, and I waited for Ari in the foyer. As I grew accustomed to it, the house was looking less like a palace and more like a banquet hall. I pictured a gaggle of bridesmaids posed on the staircase. But it was just the three of us, facing each other awkwardly, tallying up each other's flaws and a.s.sets as we waited for Ari's entrance. I figured that over Destiny and her acrylic claws, I had looks but not wildness. Over Serena and her china-doll eyes, I had smarts but not looks.

Serena leaned against a column opposite me. She was the blonde and I was the brunette. In the world of musical theater, she would be the soprano and I the alto. I was the one with the big a.s.s who played her lines for laughs. Serena was the slender-waisted ingenue who got the guy in the end. I was Rizzo and she was Sandy. I was Ado Annie and she was what's-her-name in the surrey. We faced off until, with a subtle s.h.i.+ft in posture, she dismissed me as not much of a threat. One thing Sandy always forgets is that Rizzo has the best song in the show.

The palace was too far to walk, so we drove the golf carts that were parked in our carport. Ari drove with Destiny and I hopped on with Serena, who silently steered through the winding, lit pathways, past the pools and tennis courts and palm trees. The air was humid and thick with the fragrance of tropical flowers. Not an hour out of the shower, I already felt sticky. My head raced with plans. I would make the best of my time here. I would improve my tennis game. I would get a tan. I would lose weight. And maybe I would even make a prince fall in love with me and my whole life would change in dazzling and unexpected ways. I longed for a magic pill to soothe the restlessness that p.r.i.c.kled constantly under my skin. I'm not sure what made me think I'd find it in Brunei, but I wouldn't be the first person who hoped to step off a plane on the other side of the world and discover their true self standing there waiting for them.

Up close the palace reminded me of a picture I had seen once of Hearst Castle, on the California Coast. There were gold domes, columns, and twin marble staircases that curved like ribbons up to the main entrance.

"We normally go in the side because it's less of a hike, but I want you guys to see the entrance hall," said Ari. "I think you'll like it."

We were breathing hard when we reached the top of the stairs. We entered a cavernous cathedral of a room with a fountain at the center. I felt like I had walked onto the set of some 1930s MGM movie version of Salome. Salome. Surely a flock of harem-pants-clad showgirls was about to descend the stairs and launch into a Busby Berkeley dance number. Surely a flock of harem-pants-clad showgirls was about to descend the stairs and launch into a Busby Berkeley dance number.

"It's all real," said Serena.

"Real what?"

"Like, the gold in the carpet is real gold. That ruby is a real ruby," she said, pointing at a ceramic tiger that stood near the fountain. The tiger held in its mouth a round, red stone the size of a tennis ball.

I spotted what looked like a Pica.s.so directly across from the front door-also real, I a.s.sumed. We followed Ari around a corner and there, where a hallway bisected the main foyer, a Degas ballerina sculpture stood on a pedestal, a little girl cast in bronze. She clasped her arms behind her back and pushed her chest out defiantly, her foot thrust in front of her in third position. It looked exactly like the one that I had loved visiting as a child, when my father would take me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on special Sundays to wander the wondrous galleries and then stuff ourselves with hot dogs on the steps. Each visit we chose a different gallery. We sat on a bench in front of a giant Jackson Pollock and looked for charging bulls and blooming irises and skywriters hiding in the paint splatter. We crossed our eyes and tried to rea.s.semble the figures cut to pieces by Pica.s.so. We stood washed in light next to the enormous wall of windows that faces the Temple of Dendur and told stories of time travel. But at the end of the day we always visited my Degas ballerinas, numinous and frozen in time, pinned like b.u.t.terflies to the wall.

When she caught me staring at the sculpture, Ari told me that Robin was an avid art collector. He had countless walls to decorate. Robin owned other palaces where he lived, still others where his three wives lived, whole office buildings where he conducted business, and hotels and estates in Singapore, London, and Los Angeles. But Ari informed me that some of his favorite art was right here. We were standing in the palace where he unwound every night, his sunny pleasure dome.

"Come on," she said, with a hint of trepidation. "Let's go in."

We were so close I could have walked up and touched the Degas. In fact, I felt an overwhelming compulsion to do just that. I made a note to try to sneak back and do it sometime later. Like people touch the feet of Jesus on the Pieta and hope for a blessing, I would touch the feet of the dancer and hope for grace.

chapter 9.

We entered a downstairs room, where beautiful women lounged on every inch of the upholstery. Scattered around the party were little seating areas where low chairs and couches surrounded gla.s.s-topped coffee tables with bases in the shape of silver and gold tigers. A tableau of Asian girls decorated each area, themselves looking like tigers draped over the rocks in their cage at the zoo. s.h.i.+ny hair hung down their backs and they leaned shoulder-to-shoulder, as if propping each other up. They were set against a backdrop of deep blue upholstery, jade green drapes, a dark wood bar, and creamy carpets.

The women were of different nationalities: Thai, Filipino, Indonesian, Malaysian-maybe forty of them in all. At the far end of the room was a dance floor with a mirrored dis...o...b..ll throwing lazy coins of light across the scene. Every gaze fixed on us when we walked into the room, except for those of a girl who, eyes closed, was lost in a moment of karaoke abandon. Behind her, a large screen played a video of a man and woman riding a carousel, with cryptic foreign words appearing along the bottom in yellow print.

A dowdy white woman with a wide forehead and wire gla.s.ses saw Ari and crossed from where she stood at the bar to meet us at the doorway. This was Madge, the Brunei equivalent of Julie, the cruise director from The Love Boat The Love Boat. Madge was a British woman who ran the parties, managed the affairs of the household, and made sure that Prince Jefri was happy at all times and that everything was going according to plan. She wore a cell phone, still an exotic sight at that time, clipped to one side of her belt, and a walkie-talkie clipped to the other.

Ari and Madge greeted each other with a warm hug and exchanged a few loaded pleasantries before Madge showed us to our little domain. We occupied the seats of honor, squarely in front of the door. Destiny and I followed the cues of Ari and Serena as we sank into the deep cus.h.i.+ons of the chairs and ordered gla.s.ses of champagne from one of the army of servants who were standing by to take our order. Alcohol was illegal in public in Brunei, but it flowed at the Prince's parties. I sipped self-consciously. I could feel that the conversation in the room was all about us. The other women stared and murmured, their foreign words floating around and mixing with the cheesy synth sounds of Asian pop karaoke music.

Ari and Madge caught up about London and a bunch of people whose names I didn't know yet. Then Madge got a call and answered it out in the hall, while Ari took the opportunity to school us about the men we were about to meet, the royals and cabinet ministers and air-force generals and international financiers.

"The men with the Prince are his closest friends. Don't talk to them unless they talk to you. Don't show anyone the soles of your shoes; it's considered really rude in Muslim countries."

While being instructed on the best way to angle my feet in order to be respectful of Muslim customs, I thought with wry amus.e.m.e.nt of what Rabbi Kaplan would say if he could see me. Stodgy Rabbi Kaplan, the thin-lipped tortoise who had stood by my side while I confidently chanted my clear haftorah. I was that rarest and least cool of things-the girl who took her Bat Mitzvah seriously, the promising student of Hebrew.

It had been only five years earlier. I was a late bloomer and didn't even have to wear a bra under my dress. I could still remember the heft of the silver pointer we used to keep our place when reading from the Torah scroll, a treasure hand-lettered on parchment. The goat-skin parchment looked both powdery and oily, like the thinnest pie dough rolled out on the counter. When I stood on the bimah, the scroll seemed to glow in the light from the tall stained-gla.s.s window behind me. I wanted to smell the paper, to see if it smelled like an animal or like cooking oil or like silver or like the truth. For some reason, I thought it probably smelled like autumn, like damp leaves on the ground. But I couldn't say for sure because I was too self-conscious to lean my head down and sniff the Torah in front of the rabbi.

I believed that G.o.d was in that scroll somehow, in the gaps between the words. G.o.d lived in the negative s.p.a.ce, in the hushed, vaulted hallways of the temple, between my roof and the clouds, between the branches of the trees. I had no question that G.o.d existed, because I felt him. G.o.d was a palpable presence, a warmth behind me. I talked to G.o.d all the time, except when I lay terrified in my bed at night. Because as certain as I was of G.o.d the rest of the time, I was equally sure G.o.d wasn't around then. When faced with my nightmares, I had to think quickly and start negotiating with the monsters instead. But those kind of negotiations-deals struck, promises made-dissolve with the sunrise.

I was twelve, not thirteen, when I was Bat Mitzvahed. The younger age is permitted for girls, particularly those who have their birthday over the summer and want to have their reception during the school year, when everyone is still around. In our town at the time, the popular thing was to have a theme party following your Bar or Bat Mitzvah ceremony-the more outrageous, the better. To celebrate this sacred coming-of-age ritual, this symbolic threshold crossing, cla.s.smates of mine had mini-carnivals, costume discos, and black-tie b.a.l.l.s. One of the town's real estate magnates rented out Giants Stadium for his son's reception, which was attended by actual members of the Giants as well as Giants cheerleaders in uniform. We ate kosher hot dogs in the stadium restaurant while a marching band spelled out GREG, the name of the kid being Bar Mitzvahed, on the field.

The theme of my party was Broadway shows. Each table was crowned by a festive foam-and-fabric center-piece representing a different show. My table was A Chorus Line A Chorus Line. In the foyer of the catering hall was a picture station, where you could get your photo printed on your very own Playbill. To be accurate, it was called a Jill's Bill-very collectible now, I hear. A guy named RJ stood near the entrance of the catering hall eating fire and juggling. He had been in the original Broadway cast of Barnum Barnum , which, at the time, I thought was the coolest thing ever. I might have recognized the ominous portent if I had thought for a minute that performing at suburban Bat Mitzvahs probably didn't rank highly on RJ's list of dreams for himself. , which, at the time, I thought was the coolest thing ever. I might have recognized the ominous portent if I had thought for a minute that performing at suburban Bat Mitzvahs probably didn't rank highly on RJ's list of dreams for himself.

My mother worked so hard to make my Bat Mitzvah all I could possibly have wanted, from my dress with matching purse and shoes (designed by me and featuring lots of fabric roses and pink Swarovski crystals) to the flowers, the balloon arch, the ice-cream-sundae buffet, and the fire-eating circus performer. But with my final bite of cake, I seemed also to swallow a worm of doubt that would make a home in my belly and grow in the coming months. If G.o.d had, in fact, scooped me up in his arms and carried me over the threshold that marked the entrance to womanhood, was this a disappointing room to find on the other side? A room filled with a bunch of spoiled preteens, most of whom weren't even my friends, wearing foam lobsters on their heads and dancing spastically to the B-52s?

Soon after, I began to question the wisdom of G.o.d altogether. It wasn't the Giants cheerleaders or the foam lobsters. It wasn't even the Holocaust or the famine in Africa that broke up G.o.d and me. It may have had something to do with the archery counselor I met that summer at sleepaway camp and fell in love with, the counselor who agreed with G.o.d about the Bat Mitzvah concept: He thought twelve-year-old girls were all grown up. It may have been the fact that when our little romance was exposed and we were dragged into a room to stand before the camp director and every other counselor in the camp, with my parents on the other end of the phone line, no one stepped forward to defend me. Not my father, not anyone.

Before that experience, I had often felt the kind of alone that comes from the suspicion that you are not only genetically different from those around you, but different in your very soul. I was a princess from another kingdom, abandoned on a doorstep by a mother who couldn't care for me because she'd been trans.m.u.ted into a swan by the spell of an evil sorcerer. But after Nathan got fired, I was a different kind of alone. I was alone and ashamed of myself. It wasn't the fault of a sorcerer that I'd wound up unlovable, by my parents or G.o.d or anyone-anyone but a guy nine years my senior. It was no one's fault but mine.

It wasn't an exact cause and effect that led me to stop believing in G.o.d; more like an acc.u.mulation of evidence. First I stopped talking to G.o.d, then I kind of just forgot about him. Then I got to high school and discovered that a lot of people agreed with me about this no-G.o.d thing. I was so relieved.

So there I was in Brunei, not believing in the Jewish G.o.d, believing instead in the pernicious influence of all organized religion, and yet suddenly feeling very Jewish indeed.

"Don't have your head higher than Robin's. If you have to cross in front of him while he's sitting, bow," continued Ari.

"Bow like how?"

"You'll see."

I had a deja vu from The King and I The King and I.

When I sit, you sit. When I kneel, you kneel. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

"And watch what you say. When you think they can't hear you, they can. When you think they can't see you, they can."

What she meant was that there was surveillance everywhere in Brunei, even in the bathrooms; hence all the mirrors. It was a constant source of speculation and paranoia among the girls. Not exactly The King and I The King and I after all. after all.

A bored-looking Filipino woman stood up from a couch across the room and crossed toward us, stopping to exchange a few words here and there with a handful of the women flanking her path. She seemed to be the only woman in the room who breached the invisible barricades that separated one seating area of girls from another. She was a bit older than the average age in the room and appeared almost matronly in a black, high-necked dress and diamond drop earrings. She introduced herself to us with a vague British accent.

"I'm Fiona. Welcome to Brunei."

Serena rose and kissed her on both cheeks. They looked thrilled to see each other, greeting each other like old sorority sisters and catching each other up on the latest gossip.

After Fiona left, Serena said, "I see she still hasn't shaved her mustache."

Fiona was Serena's archenemy and soon to be my closest ally.

Within half an hour I regretted my outfit choice. I had worn my little black suit and I felt stiff compared with Serena in her flirty, swingy dress and her Grace Kelly French twist. I s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably and braced my thigh muscles so that I wouldn't start to slide off the slippery upholstery.

Abruptly, the karaoke music stopped and the lights dimmed as the DJ changed hats and arranged himself in front of a keyboard. The languid couch decorations turned from slouching question marks into exclamation points. They prettily crossed their legs as a woman took her place beside the keyboard player. She began to sing Lisa Stansfield's "All Around the World."

I felt him coming before he entered the room. Prince Jefri walked in that night wearing shorts and a s.h.i.+ny Sergio Tacchini sweat jacket. He carried a squash racket, as if he'd just walked off the court. When he appeared, all the girls lit up with purpose. The pictures hadn't lied. In person he was handsome, in spite of his outdated, feathered p.o.r.no hair and thin mustache. A wave of charisma swept the room in front of him. You could almost see it, like heat radiating off asphalt on a summer day. Behind him walked ten or so identically attired men. The whole entourage stopped when he paused to take a quick glance around.

His eyes rested on us, specifically on Serena. He made an expression of phony surprise and then strolled over to give both Serena and Ari a brief kiss on the cheek. Up close, the Prince appeared tightly wound, toned muscles curving around the bone, taut skin holding it all together. He smelled like too much expensive cologne. He half-sat on the arm of Ari's chair. What was it about Ari that seemed so out of place? Plain Plain wasn't quite the word to describe her. She was like a real strawberry in a roomful of strawberry Pop-Tarts. wasn't quite the word to describe her. She was like a real strawberry in a roomful of strawberry Pop-Tarts.

When Ari introduced us to Robin he welcomed us with a practiced smile, then ignored us and turned to Serena. She became a study in coy gestures and s.e.xy glances-chin down, eyes turned up toward him, little giggles and tosses of the head, slight rearranging of the skirt, delicate hand signals. I was cooked. I was many things, but, alas, never delicate.

As they talked, the Prince watched Serena with what seemed like fascination until something across the room caught his eye. I watched his gaze s.h.i.+ft as his attention wavered. In that flicker of disinterest, I saw my window open. He nodded a few more times and gave her leg a familial pat before walking away.

After the Prince moved on to the next table, Eddie, the Prince's sycophantic right-hand man, seemed to tele-port into the seat next to me. Eddie was sneaky like that; you never saw him coming. He was too accommodating for comfort, inquiring after our needs with bulging eyes that looked like they might pop right out of his head and land on Destiny's b.o.o.b-shelf. Were we meant to "entertain" the Prince's friends? Was that the meaning of "entertainers"? I'm not sure why this was such a disappointment. I certainly wasn't this discerning when it came to Crown Club clients. Were they clean? Did they have money? Were they relatively sane or at least not homicidal? These were the criteria. But somewhere along the journey, in my mind I had become mistress to a prince.

But Eddie left pretty quickly. Two more men, named Dan and Winston, came over and said h.e.l.lo. They appeared to be friendly with Serena and Ari and they didn't give me the creeps like Eddie did but they, too, soon moved on.

There were three talented singers who changed off every few songs and sang a schlocky medley of Malay and American pop songs. The American songs were the kind played in grocery stores, the kind that can make you cry if you happen to be shopping for Cap'n Crunch and tampons at two a.m. on a lonely night.

By the end of the night I had to pinch the sides of my thighs to force my eyelids to stay open. I felt like I was in a math cla.s.s in an overheated schoolroom, snapping a rubber band on my wrist so I wouldn't fall asleep. The Prince ended up seated in a chair by the wall next to Fiona. On the other side of him was an empty chair, and though plenty of people stooped to talk to him, no one sat down in it. The rest of the men socialized and drank with the Asian girls. A few of the men laid their arm across a girl's shoulder or held her hand. Other than the short visits at the beginning of the party, everyone ignored us. I wondered if I was supposed to be doing something more than sitting in a chair drinking champagne, but I was too tired to ask.

At some outrageously late hour, the lights dimmed even more and a dance hit from about two years before blasted from the speakers. The dance floor filled with girls immediately, while the men sat and watched. I had grown stiff with sitting and I felt like a barnacle on the chair, so when Destiny took my hand and led me to the dance floor, I didn't protest.

The only route to the dance floor was a narrow path that crossed right in front of the Prince's chair. All night I'd watched the bows of the women who pa.s.sed in front of him. This was my chance to practice. I emulated the others, walking with a little shuffle and bending at the waist, with my head bowed. It made me want to giggle. I almost expected him to break out with a Yul Brynner- esque "'Tis a puzzlement!" Instead, he ignored us. But I felt his gaze hot on me as I pa.s.sed him, and I flushed. Was it the act of bowing itself that had made me suddenly shy?

Destiny kept her back defiantly straight and yanked me along.

"I'm a f.u.c.king American," she said when we were out of Robin's earshot. "Sorry, I don't bow."

When we hit the dance floor Destiny went nuts, which delighted the dancing girls and watching men alike. Across the sea of women, I could see through to where the Prince was watching, his head inclined toward Fiona as she whispered in his ear. All the eyes in the room were on Destiny except for Robin's. Robin was decidedly looking at me. I got the electrical surge that comes from being noticed, from being watched, the kind that makes your bulb glow a little brighter. The truly beautiful people of the world must live their lives buzzing with it. I looked away, but my feet were surer on the floor, my hips synced perfectly with the ba.s.s line.

After an hour of the disco, Robin stood. All the men preternaturally sensed this and darted up a millisecond later. He shook hands with a couple of them as he left the room with Eddie in tow. As soon as he was up the stairs and out of sight, the music shut off and the lights came up. All the party guests gathered in a group near the door, where Madge stood facing them, her hand on her walkie as if she was a gunslinger and it was her revolver. A few minutes later, a crackling, unintelligible voice came from her hip and she pulled the walkie off her belt and thanked whomever it was before standing aside. Everyone walked out looking tired. Even the men were like strippers matter-of-factly cas.h.i.+ng out for the night, different people entirely than they had been a half hour before.

"What were we waiting for?" I asked Ari as we headed toward the golf carts.

"We wait until he's left the building, in case he changes his mind and wants to come back."

He never once came back. He just liked to know the party was always waiting.

chapter 10.

The Prince was charming, dynamic, enigmatic, a polo player, a playboy, the minister of finance. The Prince was totally ignoring me. By the end of the first week, I was still on the fringes of the Brunei party microcosm. Serena was part of the inner circle in a way I didn't completely understand. Destiny was in a different tribe altogether and didn't give a s.h.i.+t. Ari was like one of those really great retail bosses who are fun and chummy, but are still management through and through and don't give any of the boss's secrets away.

I was nearly halfway through my time there and, contrary to my big plans, I hadn't gotten much of a tan, hadn't picked up a racket, hadn't fallen in love with a prince, and hadn't lost a pound. Time in Brunei was slippery. As soon as you tried to get a foothold in a day it was already gone. Some days I read for hours. When I did my nails, I felt a huge sense of accomplishment. The boxed set of French-language tapes I had brought along sat unopened on the shelf. Ari had helped me put a call through to my parents late one night so I could check on my father's health, which was steadily improving, though not so much that it didn't warrant a heavy dose of guilt. My father sounded like himself again, but slightly deflated. My mother's voice was worn. I kept it short, saying that I was needed on the set. You know-the set of the movie I was shooting in Singapore.

On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sat.u.r.days, the party lasted until four-thirty a.m. On the rest of the days it ended at three-thirty. We didn't get to bed until at least five in the morning, and the blackout drapes made it easy to sleep until one or two. Bleary, hungover, starving, we'd stumble to the kitchen in our robes, wolf down the lunch that was waiting for us in big tins lined up along the counters, then flop down in front of a laser disc in the upstairs den. Sometimes we'd go to the gym on the property or hang out by the pool to catch the last of the late-afternoon sun. Then we'd eat dinner and it would be time to get ready for the party again.

I was disappointed in Brunei and in myself. I hadn't made any kind of a splash at the party and the nights were melting away in a haze of small talk and champagne. The only good thing about my long nights of being pa.s.sed over is that they gave me an opportunity to observe the subtle machinations that drove the social interactions around me. The parties were a petri dish, ideal conditions to breed fierce intimacies and fiercer resentments.

I had figured out that the tables were arranged by country: Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia. There was a hierarchy of importance. I couldn't figure out the order exactly, but I knew the Filipino girls were on top and the Thai girls were on the bottom. The Filipino girls got their status from Fiona, who was the Prince's favorite girlfriend and the only one who sat next to him. Other girls in the room also counted themselves in the Prince's or one of his cronies' favor, and their rankings s.h.i.+fted from time to time, causing enmities and alliances to spring up within the various camps.

For instance, Winston had once had a girlfriend in the Indonesian camp, but he had given her the shaft in favor of a girl named Tootie, who made her home in what I called Little Thailand. So now the Thai girls and the Indonesian girls were practically in a gang war, which, of course, looked like nothing from the outside. Girls at war opt for a quieter cruelty than fistfights and drive-by shootings. Girls circ.u.mvent the corporeal and go straight for each other's souls. The bleeding is harder to stanch.

I knew, for instance, that the Thai girls enlisted the Thai servants to doctor the Indonesian girls' drinks. Some nights the drinks were too strong, some nights too weak. They did it to mess with their minds, so the Indonesian girls would get too drunk and make fools of themselves, so they wouldn't get drunk enough and would be too sharp, too present. This might s.h.i.+ft in a period of a few days and some necessary alliance would make them all best friends again.

I got my insider information from a beautiful Thai girl named Yoya, with whom I had struck up a friends.h.i.+p. She fell somewhere on the Prince's list of favorites, though not even she was exactly sure where. Yoya was a curvy confection, with sparkling eyes, a chubby baby face, and a braid as thick as a horsetail that brushed her a.s.s. She was bright and irreverent and eager to use her few words of English. I needed a break from the American girls, who had begun to bore me to the point of homicidal thoughts. Before the men showed up, when Serena had me yawning into my espresso with her improbable, name-droppy tales of Hollywood parties ("So this one time I was at a Halloween party and this guy was there in you know, whaddaya call it . . . in blackface, and he was trying to flirt with me all night long and I was like I recognize that voice I know I recognize that voice and guess who it was? No seriously try to guess. Okay it was Jack Nicholson. So I wasn't really into him or anything but I gave him my number and he would call once in a while and be like, 'Hi baby it's your daddy calling . . .'"), I would drift over to Little Thailand. Yoya's best friend, Lili, would hop on someone's lap in order to make a spot on the couch. They huddled up and pieced bizarre stories together for me. Yoya always referred to herself in the third person.

"Yesterday Yoya going to gym in the naked."

"Yes. Yes," agreed the other girls, leaning in and nodding.

"You went to work out naked? Ew. Why?"

"Someone watch somewhere," she whispered, looking around for dramatic effect. "Robin watch somewhere."

I was sure they were pulling my leg.