Elizabeth's Story

by Jessica Knoll

There was a knock on my door. I put down my copy of A Million Little Pieces. I hadn't had much interest in the book when it first came out—oh, how edgy and original to regale us with your poor little rich boy drug problems. Yeah, I just heard how that sounded too. Whatever. Maybe it just hit too close to home.

But I'd had a vested interest in the memoir—excuse me, semi-fictional novel, as they've now started to market it—ever since the guy was ousted for being a dirty, lying fraud. The man duped Oprah for fuck's sake! I could learn something from him. I was about to put on the performance of a lifetime.

I opened the door, and gave Biz my usual, "Yo, girl."

"Yo," Biz said, all forlorn. She might as well have clasped her hands behind her back and traced her toe on the floor. She clearly wanted me to ask her what was wrong.

Time to play. "Is everything okay?" I asked her.

Biz sighed. "Can we just talk? For a sec? Before we go?"

"Of course." I opened the door wider and ushered her in. We were supposed to go shopping for bridesmaid shoes. Izzy's wedding was just a few months away.

Biz took a seat on on the King James' style tufted bench by the window. "Hey, Peter!" she called. Our apartment was so big that the kitchen was out of ear shot, and you had to raise your voice to be heard.

Peter was in the kitchen, eating a quick breakfast before he met his friends for their weekly basketball game. He used to play with Campbell. But, well, that was no more for obvious reasons. These days, Peter was always on the go, and I was too. I let it happen without much of a fight. I just shut him out after I couldn't get pregnant. The idea of a baby had consumed me. Now, I had something else to consume me, something I couldn't share with Peter: new revelations about my past. The sweet promise of getting my revenge. If I couldn't have a baby, and I couldn't have Campbell, at least I could have that.

"Hey, Biz," he called back.

Biz glanced at the coffee table. "I loved that book."

I followed her gaze to the cover of A Million Little Pieces. "It's amazing the bravado of some people," I said. "He really thought he was going to get away with it."

Biz narrowed her eyes at the cover. "Get away with what?"

"Biz," I said, "he fabricated practically the entire thing and tried to pass it off as his life story."

Biz was still staring at the book, her brow furrowed.

"How have you not heard about this?" I asked her. "It's all over the news. Oprah dressed him down on national TV."

Biz shrugged. "I guess I haven't really been paying attention to the news lately." She looked out the window and squinted into the sun.

"What's going on?" I prodded, both gentle and exasperated. It was the way I always addressed her when she came to me with her problems, and I had to pretend like everything was normal. Even though nothing was normal anymore. Not after I knew what she had done to me.

"I'm just having a really hard time with Izzy's wedding," Biz said. "She's just...changed. Ever since she got engaged."

I cocked my head at her, an indication for her to go on.

"Like she's on her high horse or something. Super bossy. She basically made an itemized list of everything she wanted at her shower. Down to the gift we gave her to her expectation that I be on constant standby to ensure her drink was never less than half full."

The sun suddenly shifted, blasting me full in the face. I held my hand to my forehead like a visor, but I could only make out Biz's silhouette in the glare. "This is the first I'm hearing of these demands," I said.

Biz snorted. "Well, of course it is. She's not going to go all Bridezilla on you. But she's treating me like her punching bag. Do you know I had to go to three separate stores to get everything on her list? She was emphatic about this pair of handcuffs. They had to be leopard print and furry. Not pink, not zebra print. Leopard. She must have reminded me five times."

"She specified leopard?" I asked, a little too eagerly. Have you ever read The Art of War by Sun Tzu? I recommend every girl does. A favorite strategy of mine: encourage your enemy's arrogance by feigning inferiority. It dawned on me, suddenly, that Biz might know I knew she and Izzy were involved. Why else would she attribute the handcuffs to Izzy? It was beyond me how she could possibly know that Abby had come to me and revealed the truth, but there was a chance she did. And there was also a chance that what she was doing now was trying, in her sweet clunky way, to pin it on Izzy. And I was going to roll with that, for now. Because it would just make the punishment I'd already doled out for her in my head even harsher when I finally served it up to her. Izzy would get what was coming to her too. Just sooner than Biz.

Biz nodded her head up and down really fast, like a little bobblehead doll someone had just flicked. "It was really weird, Elizabeth. And then she was laughing like a maniac when she opened our gift and saw that I'd been able to find the pair she wanted." Biz wound her finger around her ear and whistled: crazy.

I twisted my face so that it appeared as though this information had just blindsided me. In Biz's mind, she had just shared information that implicated Izzy in my abduction. I had to act as though I was devastated. "I'm sorry," I said, putting my hand over my heart. "I need to use the bathroom."

I walked, unsteadily, toward the guest bathroom. As though I was stunned, knocked right off my equilibrium. As soon as I shut the door behind me I turned the water on and leaned against the wall, drumming my fingers on my arm, irritably, wondering how long was long enough to convince Biz I was in here having some kind of come-to-Jesus moment.

"E, I have to go too so just using your bathroom!" Biz called from outside.

"Go for it," I called back, making sure my voice sounded weak and strained.

I gave it ten minutes. At some point Peter knocked on the door and said he was heading out. I waited another few minutes after that before slapping my face so that it would appear I was flushed. On our way out the door, I made sure Biz saw my hand tremble as I glanced at my watch. "Shit," I said, "we're late to meet Izzy."

"Actually," Biz said, "she called while you were in the bathroom. She can't make it. Some kind of family issue."

I paused, my hand on the elevator button. "Everything okay?"

"She said not to worry. But just go ahead and shop without her. She said she trusts our—well, your—taste."Biz rolled her eyes.

"Huh," I said, genuinely not sure what to make of that.

I acted out of sorts all afternoon, distracted and irritable. Though it wasn't all an act. There was something up with Izzy 'canceling,' only I couldn't put my finger on what it was.  "Are you okay?" Biz asked me, several times, and I would nod, half-heartedly at her.

Biz was modeling a pair of Stuart Weitzman mules for me, and the salesman was doing a super shitty job of convincing her that the Manola Blahniks looked much better on her (and for twice the price!), when Peter called me. Biz listened to us chat on the phone—he had grabbed brunch with his friends after his game—and said, after we hung up, "So Peter plays basketball at NYAC?"

"When it's cold out," I told her. "When it's nice out he plays in Central Park, so that's where he was today. NYAC reserves a court there for members."

Biz paused. "No, they don't."

I scowled at her. "Yeah, they do."

"No," Biz repeated. "They don't. Brad used to be a member there. I remember that was something they lobbied for, that NYAC was trying for, because there's always a wicked long wait to get on the court. The one near the Great Lawn? It's always like a three hour wait. Anyway, I guess they couldn't get approval from the city." She pointed her toe at me. "So what do you think? These, right?"

I glared at her toes, painted cherry red. If Biz's goal had been to plant doubt in my mind about where Peter really was this morning, she had succeeded. God damn her.

- -

Biz suggested we grab a drink after we finished shopping, but I was too eager to get home. There was something I needed to do.

I hugged Biz goodbye, resisting the urge to squeeze her until I heard a rib crack, and climbed into a cab. I was praying either Peter wasn't home yet or if he was, he wasn't in the bedroom and I could take the opportunity to do a little snooping.

I called out his name as I walked into our apartment, disappointed to hear his reply, and that it was coming from the direction of the bedroom. But I perked up when I discovered he was in the shower. And then there, on the heirloom Louis Vuitton chest at the foot of the bed, was his gym bag.

I dropped to my knees and pawed through its contents. Peter had just shut off the water when I found them. Well, I felt them first. The cold hard metal. The soft restraints. I extracted the handcuffs and held them up in front of my face, stunned. Biz had put them there. I was sure of it. Between the cuffs, Izzy 'canceling,' and Biz suggesting that Peter had lied to me about playing in Central Park today, Biz wanted to make me think that Izzy and Peter were having an affair. Or maybe the cuffs weren't a red herring. Maybe Izzy and Peter actually were bumping uglies on the side. To be honest, I didn't really care.

All I cared about now was that I was positive, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Biz knew I knew about her and Izzy's involvement. And she was trying to shift blame onto Izzy. And I had to take this into account when it came to my own plans for revenge.

A small part of me was impressed. Pleased, even. Biz had more game than I'd given her credit for. It would make taking her and Izzy down all the more gratifying. I just had to be extra careful from here on out. Because Biz could play, but there was no way she was going to win. I wouldn't have it.

- -

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