A Field Guide to Deception by Jill Malone

“So far I’m not one of your fuck-and-run girls.”
    â€œAnd that gets her what exactly?”
    â€œMaybe I’m the field guide.”
    â€œThe field guide to what?”
    â€œYou, Liv.” At that moment Claire envisioned herself writing it—the field guide to a girl: You’re studying the girl as though she were a
butterfly. Sketching the musculature and wingspan, charting the range and season as though you’d discovered a new species.
    Could you hunt them like mushrooms? Is that what Liv did, hunt girls? Claire wound down Government Way; the pines sunburned, cheat grass tall as Simon, and billowing.
    You observe unobtrusively. And the more you watch, the more apparent the patterns become: the proclivity for a certain flower, the skills employed to evade predators, mating. In fact, you want to believe that the throbbing flicker of this creature in-between your thumb and forefinger is your discovery, previously unknown, and unknowable.
    In the passenger’s seat, foot propped on the dash, an unlit cigarette in her fingers, Liv was mid-sentence. You want to believe yourself scientific, a researcher. What, after all, is your objective, but the furtherance of knowledge? They drove along the cusp of the city.
    â€œWhat,” Claire said softly to the steering wheel, “is your objective?”

    â€œYou know, I’m really OK staying in the car,” Liv said as they parked in front of Bailey’s house.
    Some chick named Marjorie opened the door. “Hi, I’m Marjorie. Come in. There’s been an incident with one of the pies. We only know it involved a paper bag and a fire. But that’s all we know. I’m Marjorie. You guys are twins, right? I used to have twin neighbors when I lived in the Valley. They were not identical, though. They didn’t even look like twins, really. It was disappointing like that. Which one are you?”
    â€œI’m Claire.”
    â€œOh happy party, Claire! Bailey’s so excited. She said you’re a really important artist and you had to be celebrated. So yay, you! Have I seen your art? Are you at like a gallery or something?”
    â€œSort of,” Claire said, and gripped Liv’s arm.
    â€œCool. So which of you guys is older?”
    â€œShe is,” Liv said, smiling her brightest smile. “We have to go see Bailey. Excuse us.” And she propelled Claire through the entryway and into the living room. There were eight trays of appetizers on the
coffee table and three people sitting on the same side of the sofa, concentrating on their napkins.
    â€œHi,” Liv said and kept propelling.
    Bailey wore an apron around her vintage red dress. She’d worn stockings and red glimmer shoes and had pitched her blond hair atop her head like a diner waitress. At the kitchen doorway, Liv smelled cinnamon and yeast, and remembered riding bikes through her grandparents’ neighborhood on a rainy afternoon, and a treat of fresh baked bread with apple butter. On the counter, a platter piled with ears of corn, grilled and still in husks, brought back her first ride in the back of a wagon. The aroma of hazelnut chocolate from a cooling torte, gave her a scene with her first girlfriend on a cross-country skiing adventure.
    â€œThis smells like my childhood,” she said now.
    â€œGood, you’re here. Liv, I need you to open the wine. Those bottles on the counter. Claire, relax, enjoy; go have a seat and eat something. I think the crab cakes are pretty good. And the stuffed cabbage rolls are maybe the best I’ve made ever.” Claire withdrew as though she’d been sent away from the campfire. Bailey went on, oblivious, “Liv, have I ruined my oven? Look at this fucking mess.” She opened the oven to reveal ashes, the drenched remains of a pie and a charred paper bag.
    â€œWhat happened?” Liv asked.
    â€œPaul threw a glass of water on it.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause