Imani hadn’t given her such solutions. Instead, she’d silently waited for Jay to de-latch and then passed over her contented, sleepy six-month-old. “You have so much to give,” she’d said. “You’ll find new ways. I believe in you.”

Melissa was surprised to find the memory brought fresh tears. She’d cried so much, off and on, that she’d believed all her emotion spent. But the wetness on her face was real, as was the melancholy that came with it.

Hollywood liked to show how fraught friendships between women could be. It dwelled on the competition, the sexual jealousy. It depicted female companionship as existing to attract male attention or being in a state of uneasy truce brought about by solid male relationships.

But Tinseltown was wrong. Women were designed to bond with one another, to build one another up so that they could all share in collective power. Imani had known that. Her friend had never acted intimidated by her fame or tried to one-up her by bragging at times when Melissa had been feeling low. Imani had been a listening ear and a sounding board, and all she’d asked in return was the same respect, secrecy, and attempt at wise counsel.

Her friendship had been real and deep, Melissa told herself. Imani loved her. Surely, she wouldn’t simply let her disappear.

CHAPTER TWENTY

OKSANA

Oksana marched through the massive gray skyscraper’s revolving doors into the frigid air. She leaned against a limestone pillar, pulled a cigarette from the pack in her right coat pocket, and lit up beneath the giant news ticker affixed to the building’s facade. The spot was shielded from the wind and as good a place as any to figure out her next move.

Fascists, the lot of them! The editors had refused to buy the photos. Worse, the blond, bifocaled brat behind the counter—the same woman who had eagerly written a check for Melissa’s skin care regimen—had the audacity to suggest that her taking the pictures warranted calling the cops.

American laws were so hypocritical, Oksana fumed. The country couldn’t care less about privacy when it concerned the living. It let companies tailor advertisements based on personal emails and permitted devices that listened in and recorded people without their consent. People could walk around videotaping an entire street via internet-connected glasses, for God’s sake. But try to sell a picture of a dead body—show a person who couldn’t possibly care anymore what anyone thought of them—and that was a violation. That was the sacrilege!

Fortunately, Oksana knew that America’s true religion was capitalism. Its golden rule was that demand must be supplied. Give the people what they want, with legal caveats indemnifying the deliverer, of course.