My Friend Anna

by Rachel DeLoache Williams

“What’s going on?” I asked her. “Were you able to sort things out?” She made a lazy gesture toward her phone. “I left messages,” she said. “They should be calling me back.” “How long will that take?” “I don’t know—I’ve been promised to have this resolved already.”

I was overcome with reverence for the mystery and splendor of the villa, but something about Anna’s presence made me suppress the impulse to lean into my interest too profoundly. Letting her see that I cared too much about anything made me feel vulnerable. I moved through the villa taking notes with my eyes, as though I was scouting a location that I might come back to later in life, someday when I could appreciate it properly, on my own time and with different company.

We finished in a sunny blue drawing room, taking a moment to admire a square table with a chessboard set into its center. Anna was especially interested in chess. She once told me that her younger brother played at a competitive level, in tournaments and such. Talk of her brother seemed to reveal a soft spot in Anna, an access point to something warmer, more human, a familial affection to which I could relate. As a result, anytime I was with her and saw anything relating to chess, I went out of my way to point it out. She seemed as taken with the game as her brother must have been.

My siblings and I were taught the importance of good manners from an early age—that they were an essential way of demonstrating consideration and respect for others. It didn’t matter if it was a relative or the lady making milkshakes at Long’s Drug Store: through politeness we acknowledged another person’s dignity.

“Raise your hand if you’re a virgin,” said the educator in one of the classes I attended. She came from an outside Christian-based organization and was brought in by the school to teach this portion of the health curriculum. “Okay, now raise your hand if you’re a second-time virgin.” This meant that you had already lost your virginity, but having seen the error of your ways, you had repented and declared your virginity anew, presumably until marriage. We looked around and shifted uncomfortably in our seats. Some girls exchanged knowing glances. Others raised their eyebrows and sat up straighter in their chairs, perhaps thinking good posture was evidence of purity.

On occasion, I’d do an experiment to entertain myself. I’d speak to strangers with an exaggerated Southern drawl and gauge their reactions. When I used a slower cadence, people would hang on my every word. Jokes were funnier. Stories were sharper. The only trouble was the inevitable disappointment—or, worse, disinterest—when I returned to my usual way of speaking. I suppose, to varying degrees, we all try on different identities in college, on the path to finding our own.

There was a strange period of time where mysterious spider bites appeared on my arms and upper legs, one at a time. Red circles started as sore spots and grew into swollen mounds. I went to walk-in clinics, took courses of antibiotics, and cleaned my bedding, my clothing, and the room, but to no avail. I lasted a full year with the spider bites before cracking, and decided at long last that I needed a fresh start.

She was endearingly kooky, not polished or prim. Her hair was wispy, her face was naked, and she was constantly fidgeting with her hands. She was a zillion miles away from the cotillion-trained debutantes I’d known in my youth, and I liked her more because of it.

Hunter became more talkative as the evening went on. Once he’d warmed to me, I found him interesting and eloquent. He seemed to know at least a little about a lot.

By the time fall began, my schedule had calmed down, but Anna was already gone. She had been in New York on an ESTA visa, she said, which lasted only three months at a time. When it lapsed, she went back to Cologne, Germany, where, she explained, she was from.

was surprised and disappointed, but I made an effort to justify Anna’s boredom, dismissing her blasé attitude as a symptom of her youth and privilege. After all, in some crowds one must appear bored to be “cool,” and enthusiasm is often the mark of a rube.

“Well, what about siblings?” I asked, hoping for something more cheerful. She said that her brother was twelve years younger, so, in essence, she was raised as an only child. Her mother had been careful to keep them totally separate, she explained, to prevent Anna from becoming inconvenienced or jealous. Anna said this as though it was normal, as if her mom had done a particularly good job of governing sibling relations, and perhaps she had. Maybe Anna’s temperament didn’t mix well with others. However, it gave me the sense that Anna was troubled. She reminded me of a girl I’d known in elementary school. We’ll call her “Sarah Jean.”

When she was younger she had cared so much about getting new things and keeping them obsessively organized, but at some point she’d made a decision. Why should possessions control her? “None of it matters anyway,” she had realized. “Things, like money, could all be lost in an instant.” I was glad to hear Anna say this. It made me think that she wasn’t precious about the trappings of her wealth. “You can’t take it with you,” I said in agreement.

Anna was frequently giving me an education in popular culture references. At this meal, for instance, she was surprised to learn that I knew nothing about Danielle Bregoli, a young teenager who’d recently become famous for coining the phrase “Cash me outside, how ’bout dat” on an episode of Dr. Phil. Anna played me the segment, entitled “I Want to Give Up My Car-Stealing, Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-Year-Old Daughter Who Tried to Frame Me for a Crime.” While we waited for our food, she showed me the YouTube clip, in which Bregoli, a baby-faced teenager with flat-ironed hair and huge hoop earrings, described her bad behavior without an ounce of remorse. When she noticed members of the talk show audience laughing at her, Bregoli smugly called them “hoes” and dared them to catch her outside. When Dr. Phil asked what she meant by that, Bregoli’s mother chimed in to clarify: it “means she’ll go outside and do what she has to do.” I guess Bregoli’s bravado, and her self-proclaimed “street” talk, made the scene funny. I watched as Anna laughed.

I was skeptical but intrigued and egged her on by asking questions. Anna couldn’t have cared less. Next, Becca lifted a little cord from the bowl and told us how it could be used to play music. Anna listened to this part.

If someone had entered the room at that moment, they’d have seen two red-faced girls in white towels sweating profusely with their hair in topknots, taking sips of wine between giggles as they listened to music inside of a light box that changed color every few minutes. It sounds like a lot, I know, but it really was a blast.

She also loved to refer to people and things as “fake news.” It might happen like this: “Anna, no—it’s so late! I need to go home.” “No, no, come back!” Anna called to the waiter, laughing. “Two more glasses, don’t listen to Rachel—she’s fake news!”

Here was this girl operating in extremes, party nights and power lunches, making bold proclamations and grand gestures.

When the dates were finally set, Neff tweeted, I’m going to Morocco in a few weeks to direct a film. Two years ago I was a manager at Starbucks. You can’t tell me God isn’t real.

mean i like her in real life. She seems like she works hard. [But] this psychotic desire to show off is such a turn off for me.

The line was so long that we stood for a moment looking for its end. That’s when Anna did something peculiar. She walked ahead, disassociating from our group as though she had arrived in Morocco alone. She moved briskly to the front of the line, and then she slipped right through, leaving the rest of us behind.

A funny thing happened during our meal. One cat at first, and then another, appeared on the restaurant’s terrace and moseyed over to our table. Marrakech is filled with feral cats, so their presence wasn’t a mystery. But both of them came right up to me—only me—and stared until I gave them some food (which of course I did because I couldn’t help myself ). Cats would single me out for the rest of the week, wherever we went. It became a running joke that I was their master. So maybe that was my role: pleaser of people and of stray cats.

We tussled. She was laughing; I was not. I can still picture the look on her face when she realized that I was stronger than she was. I broke free from her grasp, rolled away, and kept running.

I couldn’t hear their conversation, but Jesse later told me that someone had been fired because of the trouble with our villa’s payment.

At this point I thought that Anna would pay the hotel bill when she checked out—and, worst-case scenario, if the charge on my personal card were to stay there (without a credit for the same amount, as the hotel promised), Anna would repay me the following week when she wired reimbursement for the flights and expenses from outside the hotel. This was not an arrangement I had agreed to in advance, but considering the way things had played out, it felt as though I had no choice but to go along with it. Sure, I was annoyed by Anna’s cavalier disregard for logistics, but this is just how she was. How she had always been. A rich girl disconnected from the mundane stressors of monthly billing cycles; who’d gone on an expensive vacation and not told her parents; who’d blown through her allowance and been forced to stall for time; who’d backed herself into a corner but could easily sort things out. And I trusted that she would. I believed in her.

Anna texted that afternoon, but only to complain again about Neff. Neff had bragged on Twitter about having heard Tha Carter V—an unreleased Lil Wayne album that had come into the hands of Martin Shkreli, who shared some of the tracks with Anna, who in turn played them for Neff. Anna

She was our generous host, after all. But letting Jesse get in a car for a four-hour drive and stranding him at the airport without a flight or a plan was something different. I started to see Anna’s behavior as negligent, and it worried me.

When this was finally over, I would want space. Perhaps Anna and I could resume a more casual friendship after a time.

Anna: K me too im running out of contact lenses after next week so gotta return to ny. Did she want me to pick them up for her? I offered.

Kacy: Did Anna wire u the money yet? Me: No not yet. Kacy: She wants me to buy her a ticket back in business class for $2500! Have you spoken to her yet? This is madness! Me: I texted to be sure she was ok. Kacy: AND? Me: She’s embarrassed about not paying me yet so wouldn’t ask me for help right now (bc I literally can’t pay). Me: I do think she’ll pay you back. Me: Did you suggest she ask her parents? Me: I don’t know what to say. Me: I hope this is a wake up call for her. Kacy bought the ticket, and Anna arrived to New York the following afternoon. Barely through customs and bound for the Beekman, she texted me: If you feel like stopping by after work for a bite you’re welcome.

We watched as a banker carefully entered the reference number, but it wasn’t in a format the system recognized.

Me: it feels like there is a problem. something is holding this up—obviously everything is not ok. A wire does not take weeks. A wire does not take days even. I feel like you’re not being straight with me and I can’t afford to keep chasing you like this.

“Nothing this girl says is true!” he replied. That possibility concerned me, of course. But what else could I do?

My dad was running for Congress as a Democrat in a district that had been Republican since 1855, before the Civil War.

Yep. She’s very good at stalling. Masterfully manipulative. Masterfully!!!! Kacy replied. That’s why I was thinking . . . con artist? I sighed. Yeah . . . I don’t know. The fact that she’s back in NYC and still in our lives without having disappeared. I don’t think it’s that simple.

“You can just sleep in the bed.” I let her borrow some pajamas—black cotton pants and a T-shirt. We went to sleep without any conversation, each hugging an edge of my full-size bed, with our backs to each other.

It was July 17 when I finally telephoned a lawyer, almost two months to the day after I’d left Morocco.

The lawyer returned my call while I was at my desk in the office. As succinctly as possible, I explained my situation. Before I could even finish, he cut in, “Did you learn your lesson?” “Excuse me?” I asked. “Do you want to pay for my son’s medical school, too?” What a jerk—could he not pause for three seconds to imagine how completely broken and lost I felt?

Me: Please anna, tell me what is going on. Me: Do you have money in a checking account? Or is it just a trust and you don’t have access to the amount you need? Anna: Yes. Me: Yes to what? There was no response.

Next, she had called me from a strange number—her lawyer’s office, she said. After she hung up, I looked at my call history and googled the phone number: Varghese & Associates, a law firm focusing exclusively on criminal defense. Red fucking flag.

By then, only the lieutenant was left. His nods were sympathetic, if a bit dismissive. At last, he spoke. “I’m sorry this happened to you,” he offered, “but since it happened in Morocco, there’s nothing we can do.”

“With your face,” he said, “you could start a GoFundMe page to get your money back.” That was not the advice I had been looking for.

On Baxter Street, in a row of storefronts offering bail bonds, the Whiskey Tavern looked welcoming. Inside, I sat in a tall chair at the bar, next to a cop and a large man in a suit. “What can I get ya?” the bartender asked. I ordered an iced tea, chicken fingers, and tater tots. “What brings ya to the neighborhood?” he inquired, returning with my drink.

“Your story is a never-ending fucking story,” Beth answered. I knew she was right.

“Did you ever consider a career as an investigator?” one of the ADAs asked me. As it happened, why yes, I had. As a third-grader in Knoxville, Tennessee (looking up to my grandfather, who’d been an assistant director in the FBI), becoming an agent had been my earnest when-I-grow-up plan. This was not how I had imagined it, but my time had come and I would rise to the occasion.

I spent the first weekend in August at Kathryn’s house, in Bridgehampton, and that’s when I began to write everything down.

Work was a good distraction—I had my day job to maintain. That following Monday, I was in the Vanity Fair office, as usual. I was busy organizing a small photo shoot of Jeff Goldblum, finding someone to photograph the desk of Cecile Richards for a front-of-book page, and finalizing a menu for the photo department’s annual “Summer Fling,” an upcoming dinner at Cecconi’s in Brooklyn.

drain you, read the caption of her Instagram post on August 10, an underwater picture of a woman. You couldn’t see Anna’s face, but in a black dress with her legs bent, it was definitely her. Although she hadn’t geotagged the location, I remembered the scene from Marrakech. It was an image Jesse had taken in our private pool at La Mamounia. Was Anna’s caption directed at me? I took a screenshot of the post and shared it with the DA’s office, if only to give them an indicator of Anna’s insensitivity.

scrolled all the way back to his earliest posts. This time it wasn’t a chessboard that caught my eye (although there were a few of those). It was René Magritte’s Le modèle rouge—posted on March 21, 2011, without any caption—a Surrealist painting of hollowed out feet-shoes, complete with ten toes and untied laces, like boots made of flesh. It was a fitting reflection of how I’d come to see Anna. Her human form was just a vessel: sealed in its confines, her Machiavellian life force wore its skin like a costume.

On the following Sunday, August 20, I drove a rental car with Grandma Marilyn and Noah to my aunt and uncle’s house in Cape Cod for a brief vacation.