“You hit your brother?” I said.

“Oh, I asked for an explanation first, I’m a reasonable man. And when the explanation was clearly bullshit, as I was fully expecting, I let him have it.” Trevor tapped his fist into his palm a few times, relishing the memory.

I sat up. “But that didn’t clear the air,” I said. “You told me you and your brother aren’t on speaking terms anymore.”

“He stopped speaking to me,” said Trevor. “I told him I was through with the business and he took that pretty hard. But as far as I was concerned, the air was cleared. He knows he can call me anytime and we’d have a nice chat.”

“I just popped somebody!” I argued, pointing past Kelli out the window. “Just a few hours ago, out in front of the house! I hit a fellow woman! So, yeah, I wouldn’t say I let anything stew in that case.”

Trevor began to chortle. “Oh — you two girls,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You two are just beginning to work all your shit out. You got a long ways to go yet.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I said, sitting back.

Swirling his rum around some more, Trevor then unspooled an elaborate story — a narrative tapestry he’d clearly been embroidering in his mind for weeks. It was the story of me and Jessica and our relationship to one another, about which I was sure I’d told him basically nothing. I, he explained, was intimidated by Jessica, because she was so blond and well put together. Also because she had children and a husband and I did not. It ate away at me, he said.

Jessica, for those same reasons, looked down on me. She enjoyed spending time with me, however, because everything she possessed stood out in relief against everything I did not. And that made her feel amazing about herself. She went home after spending an hour or two with me, according to Trevor, preening with self-satisfaction. “Better than a trip to the goddamn spa,” reflected Trevor.

Meanwhile, I spent time with Jessica because being in her presence reflected so well on me. I “sucked up” to her and wanted to please her, apparently, in the hopes that some of her magic and good fortune might rub off on me. It was a little embarrassing to behold, Trevor hinted, how abject I became in Jessica’s golden presence.

He was describing two natural-born hypocrites. Two people who had despised each other all along but pretended otherwise in pursuit of their own interests, their own vanities. A pair of vampires clawing away at one another, each trying to get the advantage, the better to suck the other’s blood.

Trevor took a meditative sip of his drink before glancing up at me, concerned he might’ve said too much.

“It’s understandable, though,” he said.

“What’s understandable?” I said.

“You’re still figuring out how to stand on your own two feet. Figuring out who you are. And you’re gettin there, Karie. You’re doing great. You don’t need that bitch. And you sure as hell let her know it today.”