Also Known As

by Robin Benway

  “Oh, yeah, that,” Roux said, then held out her hand toward me. “Want some Brie?”

  “I’m good to go on dairy, thanks.” I looked skyward again. “Who lives up there, the Wicked Witch of the West?”

  Roux wrinkled her nose at me. “What?”

  “You know, when the house dropped from the sky, goes boom on the witch …”

  “Are you sure you’re not drunk, too? Anyway, whatever. Jesse lives there.”

  “Seriously?”

  She hiccupped a little. “Yep.”

  “Wow. Okay, then.” I straightened my fedora for the eighty-fifth time, then turned to Roux. “Are you ready?”

  “Of course not. Why do you think I got drunk?”

  I was about to respond to her when I saw a familiar figure in the bookshop on the ground floor of Jesse’s building. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” I muttered, then shoved Roux toward the front door. “Wait for me inside,” I told her. “My phone’s buzzing, I have to answer it.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll be there in a sec.”

  “When did you get so bossy?” I heard her ask just as the door closed behind her.

  I mimed taking my phone out of my pocket and answering it, but as soon as Roux was out of sight, I stormed into the bookstore and found Angelo in the rare-edition section of the store. It wasn’t hard to spot him: he was the only man in a ten-block radius wearing a three-piece suit. Everyone else must have thought he was in costume, but I knew that for Angelo, a three-piece suit was casual Friday wear.

  “Do you mind?” I asked him.

  He turned with a smile on his face and a book in his hand. “Don’t you just adore bookstores?” he asked me. “The smell of old paper and new ideas thrills me every time.”

  “That’s great. Are you spying on me?” I asked him. “Really? Have you sunk that low?”

  He was trying to hide an even bigger smile, I could tell. “How ironic that you asked me if I’m spying on you.”

  I waved to cut him off. “You know what I mean. Come on, Angelo, it’s a party, not an assassination. I can handle this.”

  “Your friend appears to be having quite a time already.” Now he wasn’t even hiding his smile.

  “Okay, yes, Roux’s three sheets to the wind, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll shove her in a coat closet if I have to. I’m sixteen, I’m going to a party, and I’m going to do my job. It happens.”

  Angelo, of course, feigned innocence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, my love. I was just perusing the first editions—have you read Agatha Christie? Oh, you must, I insist. Intrigue, our favorite thing—when you interrupted my browsing.”

  Sometimes Angelo is so calm that it sends my blood pressure through the roof.

  “Just … please stay away, okay?” I asked him. “The only people in the house are drunk teenagers and a butler named Jeeves.”

  “Really?”

  “Possibly. It’s like the kindergarten version of assignments.”

  Angelo raised a knowing eyebrow and shrugged. “Let’s come to an agreement. You go to your party, I browse at my leisure?”

  “Agreed.” I started to flounce out of the store, but turned around halfway and went back to him. “Hey. Thanks for not listening to my mom and getting me this coat.”

  He merely winked and went back to his book.

  By the time I caught up with Roux in the lobby of the building, she was more sober … and more impatient. “Sorry, parents,” I said, patting my phone in my pocket. “They get nervous.”

  “Gee, how hard your life must be.”

  Yes, Roux was definitely sobering up.

  There was a private elevator that led directly into the front lobby of the Olivers’ apartment, and when the doors opened up, I almost fell over at the view. Every wall seemed to be made of glass, showing a near 360-degree panorama of the Manhattan skyline outside, and in addition to that, there seemed to be a lot of people in the room as well. It was quite possible that every Manhattan teenager was attending the Halloween party.

  “Oh, Christ, everyone’s here,” Roux said under her breath, and I had to lean in to hear her. “Word must have gotten out,” she explained.

  I was starting to feel warm, way too warm in my turtleneck, hat, and trench coat. And that was exactly the problem: only a few people were in costume.

  Time to reassess.

  I took off the hat and immediately crushed it up in my hand, then pulled off my coat and hung it in the front closet because I planned on forgetting it later. I might need an excuse to get back into the Oliver house and coming back for my coat was plausible, and I wasn’t going to leave it crumpled up on a couch so someone could spill beer on it. Burberry plaid, hello.

  Roux gave me the eye when she saw my turtleneck and jeans. “I thought you said you weren’t wearing a catsuit,” she said.

  “It’s a turtleneck,” I told her. “Totally different animal.”

  She gave me a knowing look, but all she said was, “I wonder where Jesse is.” She seemed to be getting more tense as she led me into the kitchen, which was probably one of the largest kitchens I had ever seen. There was no food, but a ton of wine bottles and alcohol littering the marble countertops. “Seriously?” I said. “Not even carrots and dip or something?”

  “What?” Roux yelled. She had to, the music was loud and pounding. I suspected it was the kind of music that sounded better when drunk.

  “Is there food?” I yelled back.

  “Looks like a liquid diet tonight,” Roux said with an exaggerated wink, then immediately grabbed a bottle of red off the countertop and took a swig, not even waiting for a glass. The label was French and I assumed that it was as expensive as everything in the house seemed to be. “Uh, do you want a glass?” I asked her. “Maybe a Dixie cup?”

  “Nope!” she said, wiping her mouth a little. “Tastes better when it’s direct from the source!”

  We wandered out of the kitchen to come face-to-face with a huge stainless steel staircase. It spiralled upward through three more floors and just looking at it gave me vertigo. I wish I hadn’t promised not to use the elevator. Just as I was about to say something to Roux, a kid dressed as a ninja suddenly came leaping toward the stairs, and even though I couldn’t see his face, it was obvious that he was drunk.

  Sure enough, he tried to jump over the railing, but he lost his footing and sort of dangled for a second, before falling several feet to the marble floor. It was so noisy that only a few people noticed, but Roux saw and she shook her head in disgust. “Ugh,” she said as he peeled himself off the floor in a daze. “Worst. Ninja. Ever.”

  She wandered off with her wine bottle, and I really wanted to follow her just to make sure she didn’t end up crumpled in a bathtub somewhere, but I had a job to do. Roux was a big girl, she would just have to take care of herself.

  It didn’t stop me from feeling a little guilty, though, as I left her behind.

  As I wandered into the center of the house, I recognized a few faces from school, but hardly anyone even acknowledged me, which was awesome. The fewer people who remembered seeing me there, the better. Still, it was hard to move through the crowd and I found myself throwing a few inconspicuous elbows just so I could clear a path through the human sea.

  After elbowing Batman out of the way and fending off the inappropriate advances of Spider-Man (“No, I don’t want to be caught in your human web, gross”), I made it back over to the huge stainless-steel staircase and started to climb. Halfway up, I heard a crash and prayed that Roux wasn’t bleeding from an arterial wound somewhere in the foyer. What had I been thinking, making her come with me? She was a disaster, so drunk that she looked like a broken marionette. I had never had such a liability before, and I swore that as soon as this job was over, I was never going to have another friend ever ag—

  “Do you always talk to yourself?”

  Jesse was standing at the landing of the stairs, smiling down at me. “Let me guess,” he said. “Multiple
personality disorder.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your costume.”

  I knew I should have taken the elevator.

  “I’m a spy,” I told him, wondering if I could shove him down the stairs and make it look like a tragic accident. “No multiple personalities yet,” I added, and then wondered if having twelve different passports totally refuted that statement.

  “Oh, that’s riiiiiiight,” Jesse said, leaning against the silver banister. “Spy girl. I remember you. How’s it going?”

  “Just ducky,” I said. “Halloweening it up, you know.” I glanced past him and saw that the rooms upstairs were fairly calm, as compared to the near-riot of people downstairs.

  “Did you just make Halloween a verb?”

  “Poetic license,” I shot back, even though the thought of Jesse discussing verbs was enough to make me hate him a little less. “What are you supposed to be?”

  He stood back a little and showed me his tuxedo, his tumbler half-filled with ice and what looked like scotch, the toy gun tucked underneath his jacket. “I’m James Bond,” he said.

  This was all becoming a little too meta for me, but I guess Jesse took my surprise for disdain. “Sorry, that was really cheesy.” He grinned, and I was totally not admiring his smile and his nice dimples and, my God, it was really warm in this house.

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “Hey, is there a bathroom up here?”

  He pointed vaguely over his shoulder. “There’s a few up there, but they’re all taken by people making out.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me before cracking himself up. “Sorry, that was really cheesy, too. Did you just get here?”

  “Um, yeah.” My opinion of Jesse seemed to be changing every three seconds. He knows about verbs? He has a nice smile? He doesn’t take himself too seriously? Our dossiers really needed to start including this kind of information. “I came with a friend.”

  “Oh yeah? Who’s your friend?”

  “Roux?” I said it like a question on purpose, just in case Roux did something that made us all end up in court. I wasn’t going to jail for that drunk muppet, that was for sure.

  “Roux? Are you serious? She’s here?” Jesse looked down the stairs. “Holy shit, she’s brave.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s a big girl.” I climbed the stairs so that Jesse and I were both on the landing.

  “Is she drunk?”

  “I’ll give you one guess.”

  Jesse sighed a little. “I better go lock the wine cellar. Last Halloween she drank an entire bottle of ’72 Bordeaux. I thought my dad’s head was going to explode. He takes his wine seriously.”

  It sounded like Roux and Armand had something in common, but I filed the information away for safekeeping. I wasn’t above drugging someone’s glass of Pinot Noir to get access to his files.

  “Yeah, you go lock that wine thing,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “I’m gonna wait in line for the bathroom. Say hi to Q for me.”

  “Wait, so you’re not even going to tell me your name?”

  “You’re the secret agent,” I told him. “Figure it out.”

  I climbed the stairs until I couldn’t go any higher, finally reaching locked double doors. “Why, hello,” I said softly, then found the bobby pin that I had stashed in my hair for such an occasion. I straightened the pin and slid it into the lock, then wiggled it around. Usually when I pick a lock, it can cause a racket, but the music was a perfect distraction. I probably could have used dynamite to blow open the doors and no one would have noticed, that’s how loud it was.

  I felt the lock click into place a minute later and the French doors opened to reveal plush carpeting and dark wood walls. I crept in and shut the doors behind me before calling, “Hello? Is there a bathroom here?” I knew that my parents had placed Armand in Los Angeles, but there could easily be a wife or a mistress or a boyfriend or, I don’t know, Max, that crazy friendly golden retriever, lurking somewhere upstairs. I wasn’t taking any chances.

  The coast was clear, though, and I locked the doors behind me before pulling leather gloves out of my pocket and putting them on. “Game on,” I whispered, then got to work.

  The entire upstairs was a master suite, I soon realized, including a huge bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub and a skylight in the massive closet that revealed a clear, empty sky overhead. The Icelandic nights had been so light, and I still wasn’t used to New York’s darker heavens. It was nice to see the moon again.

  I could feel the party pulsing under my feet as I prowled the huge walk-in closet. I was pretty sure that the closet was the size of our temporary loft in Soho and easily twice the size of our house in Reykjavík. Surely big enough for a safe, right?

  Wrong.

  The cutout that my parents had showed me on the blueprints turned out to be nonexistent in the actual house. I started shoving clothes aside, moving shoes and feeling the walls, checking the edges of the carpet to see if it would pull up and reveal a floor safe. Nothing. My heart was starting to pound in time with the music and I wished I wasn’t wearing a turtleneck. How was I supposed to get anything done when I was being strangled by my own clothes?

  “Shit, shit, shit,” I whispered to myself as I felt the wall behind a tie rack. Jesse already knew I was at the party. What if he was wondering where I was? Time was always of the essence, but especially when people were looking for you. Especially then.

  A few minutes later, I realized that the closet was a waste of time. There was nothing in there, no safe, nothing but socks and ties and men’s shoes, all of which looked really uncomfortable. I moved back into the bedroom, looking behind artwork that was probably worth several million dollars, dropping to my knees to glance around a dresser that was too heavy to move.

  Nothing.

  Five minutes later, I left the room frustrated and empty-handed. I hate when I can’t find the damn safe. I hate it. It’s my job, the one thing I know how to do, and when it’s not there, it’s like I’m not there.

  The party was still raging, though, and it seemed to have only gotten more crowded. Roux was nowhere in sight and I only saw the top of Jesse’s curly head as it disappeared around a corner. Everyone else was a stranger, and I had a rare moment of self-pity when I thought that I should have just stayed home and read a book instead. Angelo could rappel himself into the house later.

  I was just trying to figure out which window I could open that would make it easier for Angelo when I heard the fight. I didn’t know it was a fight at the time, though. I just thought it was one girl screaming a lot. And then I heard the name “Roux” and immediately followed the noise into the library.

  The library.

  Oh my God, I’m an idiot, I thought. And apparently my parents were useless at reading blueprints. Libraries had shelves, empty books, plenty of room for hidden safes galore! I canceled my mental image of Angelo ziplining in through the window.

  The fight, however, was still going. Roux was backed against one row of books, half-ready to tip over, looking angry and sad at the same time. “You know what you did!” another girl screamed at her. I recognized her as Julia, the jilted girlfriend whose ex-boyfriend had slept with Roux.

  Hoo boy.

  “He didn’t even like you anymore!” Roux said, her words slurring together. “He liked me! He was gonna break up with you!”

  “Lying bitch!” Julia yelled back, and oh my God, I was at a high school party and there was alcohol and an actual girl fight. When did my life turn into a movie?

  Everyone watching took a collective breath when Julia busted out the word “bitch.” Apparently that’s a fighting word in Manhattan private schools. Roux’s red sequined horns were askew on top of her head, but she seemed to be breathing fire, just like a bull, just like she had said when I first met up with her that night.

  “Ask him!” Roux shouted, and pointed toward one of the dopiest-looking guys I had ever seen in my life. His eyes were red-rimmed and he had a smile that seemed to suggest he had been stoned for the past six
years. He was still wearing his school uniform, and I would bet a hundred bucks that he was one of those teenagers who went trick-or-treating as “a teenager.”

  They were fighting over this clown? Now I had seen everything.

  “Jake?” Julia said, crossing her arms and looking over at Stoner Boy. “Is it true? Who did you like better, babe?”

  Babe? They were still together? Jake cheated on Julia and she took him back? If this were a TV show, I would have been recording every single episode on my DVR. And judging from the crowd in the room, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

  (And Jake and Julia? Really? It was so matchy-matchy that I wanted to gag.)

  Jake looked like a deer that had just woken up to find a hunter’s gun pointing at him. “Uh,” he said, and Roux managed to roll her eyes a little at his denseness. But then she bit her lip and looked at Jake, and it was suddenly so obvious.

  Roux was still in love with him.

  Julia looked ready to turn Jake inside out using only her menacing stare, so he answered quickly. “You, babe.” He smiled at her. “Jules, I told you, Roux didn’t mean anything. She was a mistake. She meant nothing.”

  I looked at Roux when he said that and immediately wished I hadn’t. Roux looked like she had been slapped, her mouth twitching before it smoothed back to her normal, neutral expression. “There you go, Julia,” she said. “He’s all yours.”

  “Damn right,” Julia replied, then threw her arms around Jake’s neck as the crowd started to disperse. Roux stayed standing next to one of the bookcases, but her knuckles were white against the mahogany wood.

  “Roux,” I started to say when I was close to her.

  “What?” She sighed. “Just … what.”

  I had no idea what I was going to say, but before I could even think of something, Roux interrupted me. “He’s an asshole,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. Agreeing seemed to be easiest.

  “A really big asshole.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I hope he gets hit by a giant truck and they can’t even peel him off the street because he’s so flat.” Her words were slurring again, but I think that’s what she said.