I Have Some Questions for You

As Bodie remembers Thalia and Robbie’s relationship and Robbie’s reputation as a heartbreaker, she finds out that her estranged husband Jerome has been accused of sexual misconduct via a tweet posted by Jasmine Wilde, a younger artist he claims to have dated 15 years earlier. In a piece that she frequently performs, Wilde sits on a park bench and tells anyone who happens to sit next to her about Jerome’s alleged predatory behavior. While Jerome claims they dated consensually, Bodie confesses to herself that she has doubts, and, over the year, has begun to look at her husband differently. This incident conceptually links Jerome’s situation to Omar’s, and Bodie acknowledges that her memory has shifted, causing her to put distance between Jerome and herself.

Walking to a coffee shop near campus, Bodie has coffee and tries to watch the video link of Wilde’s performance, which Jerome has sent her. The internet connection is weak, and the video plays with some trouble, freezing right as Wilde asks the man sitting beside her on a park bench whether he remembers “what it is to be twenty-one” (126). As the video freezes, Bodie works on her podcast episode about Rita Hayworth, recalling that the negligee Hayworth wore for her Life pinup was auctioned.