Page 31 of High Season

TWENTY-ONE

ONE WEEK BEFORE THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

One week before her mother’s birthday party, Tamara Drayton borrows Harrison’s car and drives down the coast to Montpellier.

Most of Tamara’s life has operated on this kind of bargaining.

Having a mother like Evelyn Drayton taught her, from a very young age, that secrets were a currency, and that collecting them conferred a very specific kind of power.

If you accessed them at the right time, they could be used to get exactly what you wanted.

It was how she knew about her stepfather’s affairs, and her mother’s insecurities.

It was how she knew that her dad was not, as he claimed, “Italian sober” (fine wines only), but had three separate cocaine dealers in Montpellier, Naples, and London.

It was how she knew that Blake was sleeping with Hannah Bailey, even though he had told her that he wasn’t—a lie that shook Tamara, who had once believed that her brother would always tell her the truth.

But mostly, Tamara knows the power of secrets because she knows what it is like to have one.

The roof is down on Harrison’s car, and as Tamara drives she is buffeted by the summer air.

The afternoon is sloping toward evening, slippery with heat.

She lights a cigarette, one hand on the steering wheel, thinking that the smoke will ward off the flies and mosquitoes that swarm at this time of day.

She drives toward the city as if she is driving away from her life.

She drives as if there is nothing in the world that can stop her.

When she was very young, Tamara’s nanny told her that she was the bad twin.

The nanny, who lasted just six months, had walked into the nursery just as Tamara was scrawling an enormous T on the wall in bright blue crayon while Blake sat quietly, finishing his apple slices and peanut butter.

The nanny had not stuck, but her words did. The bad twin .

As she had gotten older, Tamara became fascinated by the idea. She read about changelings and doubles. Germanic folklore and Norse mythology. The idea of twin malevolent entities.

She is thinking about this as she steps into a bar on the wrong side of the city, the kind of place where it’s always dark, even in daytime.

Thick drapes and carpeted stairs, a room with plenty of corners and places to hide.

Tamara briefly considers whether the car will be safe on the graffiti-lined street outside, and then decides that she doesn’t care much if it is or not.

That, perhaps, Harrison will think twice before his next afternoon rendezvous if his Corvette comes back with a window or two smashed in.

Bad twin.

These are the spiteful, vengeful things that cross her mind. Enough badness for two people.

She orders shots. Two of them. She drinks them straight down, chases them with a beer. A man on a barstool close to her wolf-whistles between yellowing front teeth.

“You can really put them away, can’t you, sweetheart?”

Tamara sticks two fingers up at him.

Bad twin.

Later, she finds herself sitting with a man who tells her that he was recently dumped by the love of his life. He buys them more shots. Tells her, tearily, about how he thinks that he’ll never meet anyone like her again.

“At least you’re not me,” Tamara says. She’s slurring. She can hear the slant of her words, the way they run into each other. “At least you’re not in love with someone who you can never, ever tell.”

“Ah, you’re young,” the man says. “You’ll get over it.”

He knocks back another shot. Tamara hasn’t been counting how many they’ve done, but something in the churn of her stomach tells her that it’s too many.

“Anyway,” he says. “Why can’t you tell them?”

She takes another shot anyway. It burns all the way to her stomach.

Bad twin .

“Because,” she says. “There’s something wrong with me.”

The man tilts his head to one side, focused now.

Tamara leans in closer.

“Can you keep a secret?”