Should Have Known Better

“Here who is? Who are you talking to?” Sasha asked before coming into the room. “Was my door open?”

“Your friend is in here,” A. J. said, slipping out of the room as Sasha came in with a short, Asian woman following close behind her. “I’m sure I’ll see you again.” He nodded at me and signaled for Sasha to call him.

“Ohhh, I didn’t know I was having company,” Sasha said as if she wasn’t even surprised to see me.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know how she got in here,” the Asian woman said apologetically. “I locked the door but, I guess—”

“Please, Suzy, just . . . just go somewhere,” Sasha scolded her, “and figure out why you work here.”

The woman stood there confused for a second and then hustled out of the room.

Sasha slammed the door behind her.

“What?” She looked at me. “You came here to fight?”

“Fight? Why would I want to fight you? You’re my college roommate. We pledged together. You just came all the way to Augusta to visit my family. Made my children pancakes. Why would I want to fight you?” I smiled wickedly in a show of strength, but I guarantee it took everything in me not to tackle her into the back of the dressing room door. The way she moved, spoke, and even smelled just scolded me. Here I was on the edge of everything and here she was having a day at the job and looking at me like I was some spectacle. “And, oh, I almost forgot, you fucked my husband. . . . But why would I want to fight?”

Sasha walked to the closet and kicked off her shoes into the box.

“Oh, save the drama, Dawn. You know you don’t even know how to curse. Here’s your first lesson: be careful who you say did the fucking.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I didn’t make Reggie do anything he didn’t already want to do.”

“Whatever. You stop calling him that.”

“Whatever, then,” she said, stepping closer to me, almost daring me to hit her. “Look, I know you didn’t come all the way down here and sneak up to my dressing room, which I never would’ve thought you’d have the nerve to do, so go, soror, for that”—she pumped her fist in the air like a cheerleader—“but I know you didn’t do all of that to come here to tell me what I can and can’t say. And you’re also not terribly slow, so I know you’re not here hoping to pick a fight with me, so what do you want?”

“I want you to know that you’re a trifling . . . tramp. And I know exactly what you’re trying to do.”

“Oh, really, do tell.” Sasha stepped around me and went to the vanity to pretend she wasn’t really interested in what I was saying. She began wiping off her makeup as I spoke.

“All that talk about how you want a man, and how the next one you meet is going to be a father,” I said as she pulled off her earrings and aped my speaking in the mirror. “Yeah, I remember that, Sasha. And I know you couldn’t care less about Reginald. You just want a sperm donor. Someone to take pictures with. But it’s not going to work. It won’t last. He’ll figure out he’s just a pawn in your little scheme and leave you just like all of the other men—the one who slept with your neighbor, the one who slept with your assistant, the one who gave you syphilis in college.”

Sasha became visibly angered and slung her metal bracelet into the mirror making little hairline cracks spring from a pinhole break.

“Fuck you,” she said, looking like she was about to spit at my image in the mirror. “And you know what”—she turned around to me—“I did fuck Reggie—”

“I said don’t call him that,” I warned, balling my fists.

“And it was good and he’s not going anywhere, so you can pack up yourself and carry your ass back to Augusta where you belong.” She rushed and pushed me into the wall beside the closet, pinning me by holding both of my arms. “You think you can compete with me? You think he wants to be with someone who’s just a nobody? A no-fucking-body? I can make him something. I can make Reggie a real man. Not some lawn-cutting country fool.”

“I said”—I pushed back against her, slamming her into the opposite wall and pinning her arms—“don’t call him that!” I wrapped my hand around Sasha’s neck and wanted badly to squeeze, but instead I just threatened her, staring into her eyes as the seconds ticked.

The short, Asian woman came into the office with her head down, looking at a stack of papers.

I stopped and looked at her and Sasha regained control, pushing me back into the other wall.

“What is going on?” the woman said, looking up. “Security!” she yelled. “Security!”

“That’s right,” Sasha said slyly. “Call security to get this bitch out of my dressing room. I think she’s on drugs or something.”

“Ma’am, you’re lucky she didn’t press charges,” a plump black woman with childlike spiral curls in her hair and a name tag spelling “Sperry” said to me ove

r a desk in the CNN security center. She’d been typing all of my information into the computer in front of her and promised I’d never be let back into the building. “We have a strict security policy here. And we’ll prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.” She slid my driver’s license across the desk to me. “We have good people who work here. And we protect them at all costs.”

“Sasha doesn’t need any protecting. In fact, you all should probably work harder to protect the rest of us from her.”