Look

by Zan Romanoff

  Out of habit, she checks her phone.

  Ryan sent her a link to a website. When she opens it, he has the photographs for sale. He’s calling the exhibition LOOK AT THIS. He’s selling it like he owns it. Like he owns her.

  “What?” Bea asks.

  “Well,” Lulu says. “You wanted to know what happened? This is what happened.”

  She hands her phone to Bea.

  Bea clicks through the slideshow. Rich comes out at one point, hair damp, deeply pouty, and Bea waves him away. “Girl stuff,” she says. “Urgent.”

  He goes downstairs to play video games.

  Bea hands the phone back to Lulu when she’s done.

  Lulu can’t keep herself from thumbing through the gallery some more. It’s crazy to see herself as a model, a photograph, a thing that can be bought and sold. All of the magic of The Hotel sucked up and turned into a way to manipulate her into letting her guard down for long enough that he could capture the shape of her body for himself.

  As if it even had to be that hard. Everyone knows Lulu is easy for a camera.

  Bea takes the phone from Lulu’s hands. Lulu doesn’t resist. It feels so good to let someone else take care of her.

  “I think we should talk about this,” Bea says.

  “What’s left to say?” Lulu drains the last drops from the champagne bottle. “Is there more?” She likes the fuzzy faraway soft feeling the booze is lending her. She wants more of it.

  “No,” Bea says, “and, to start with, I need to know what exactly happened here. Did Ryan not tell you he was taking the photographs? Or that he was going to sell them? Or post them online?”

  “The black-and-white ones are security footage,” Lulu says. “The pictures of us in bed? We definitely did not pose for those.”

  Bea sucks in a sharp breath.

  Lulu says, “I just. I know it doesn’t look that bad. But I didn’t know he was watching. Much less that anyone else ever would be.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Wow. Wow. Wow. That’s, like, that’s got to be illegal, right?”

  “I don’t know. Probably. Kind of. There were signs up saying there were cameras at the hotel.”

  “Still, though. You should sue him.”

  “Sue the Riggs family?” Lulu’s laugh is hollow. “Waste of time. Or money, I guess, mostly.” Her family is rich, but there’s a difference between second-generation immigrant lawyers and a hundred years of Riggs men getting away with whatever they fucking please in America. She thinks about that Supreme Court justice, the one who assaulted a girl when he was younger. No one believed the women who came forward against him. And the Riggses have way more money and history than he did.

  “It would mess with his reputation, at least,” Bea argues.

  “I can’t really think about this right now,” Lulu says. “I’m sorry, B, I just—”

  “No, no, that’s fine, I’m sorry, I’m just—I don’t know what to do about this.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “You want to make Rich give up the PlayStation so we can watch a movie or something?”

  “Yes,” Lulu says. “Please. Thank you.”

  * * *

  It doesn’t seem possible, but Lulu falls asleep midway through the Hannah Montana movie. She wakes up to Bea shaking her gently, apologetically. “Rich just left,” she says. “My parents are on their way home. They’re gonna think it’s weird if you’re passed out here instead of upstairs.”

  “Right,” Lulu says. “Of course.”

  Usually when she stays here she sleeps in Bea’s room, but tonight Bea leads her to the guest room.

  “You need anything?” Bea asks.

  “Nah,” Lulu says. “I’m fine.”

  “Okay.”

  Before she can talk herself out of it, Lulu says, “Hey.”

  Bea turns around.

  “Thanks for letting me in.”

  “Of course.”

  “I know I haven’t been an awesome friend lately.”

  Bea smiles gently. “We should probably have this conversation another time.” Which isn’t a No! You’ve been great! She doesn’t move, though. Instead, she says, “But as long as we’re talking about stuff. Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why do you keep doing it?”

  Lulu frowns. “Keep doing what?”

  “Flash,” Bea says. “After—after Sloane. Did you ever think about stopping?”

  Lulu closes her eyes and falls back on the bed.

  Of course she thought about it. She wanted to do it. But she knew that if she did, she would be admitting something: that she’d screwed up; that everything had changed; that she wasn’t who she’d said she was. Or who she wanted to be.

  So she didn’t.

  “I’m not blaming you for what happened tonight,” Bea adds hastily. “I’ve just been wondering.”

  “Well, I will now,” Lulu says to the ceiling.

  “I’m sorry,” Bea says.

  “Don’t be.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do!” Bea seems almost startled by the force of her own outburst.

  Lulu has to laugh. “Okay,” she says. “Be sorry. It’s fine with me.” She kicks her shoes onto the floor, and they land with a satisfying thump. “Why are you asking?”

  “Um. In terms of you maybe not being the best friend in the last few months. I guess it felt sometimes like you didn’t want to talk to me about anything, but you were still always, like, performing. For this audience.”

  “I had a beautiful life,” Lulu says. “Wasn’t that what I was supposed to do with it? Make sure everyone knew just how beautiful it was?”

  “Even when it was kind of fucked up?”

  “Especially when it was fucked up.”

  Bea nods, and sighs. She says, “If you’d called and asked if you could come over, I don’t know if I would have said yes.”

  “That’s why I didn’t call. I knew I shouldn’t. But I also didn’t want to go anywhere else.”

  “Well,” Bea says, “for the record, I think I’m glad you did.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  IN THE MORNING, Cass has sent Lulu a text. Can we talk?

  Sure, Lulu says. Should I come there?

  Let’s meet in the middle.

  They pick a diner in the Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax, which is nearly empty at hangover o’clock on the first day of the year. It’s been a long time since Lulu ate anywhere like this: a place that wasn’t trying to be cute, or stylish—that just, like, was. They don’t list a provenance for the coffee on the menu, or explain to her how it’s been brewed. She sits in a booth drinking a cup, black, and worrying.

  Lulu expects Cass to show up looking wrecked, but when she arrives she’s just subdued. She doesn’t look broken, but she doesn’t look entirely like herself either. It takes Lulu a minute to work out why: She isn’t wearing mascara. Her eyelashes are pale ginger, faint and delicate against the cream of her skin.

  Lulu was ready to comfort Cass while she cried. She has no idea what to do with the stoic, steely-eyed Cass who’s sitting across from her.

  Cass breaks the silence. She says, “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Lulu repeats.

  The waitress tailed her in, so she takes Cass’s coffee order and they’re spared the pressure of making conversation for a minute more.

  Then she bustles away, and it’s just the two of them.

  “I—” Lulu says, but she can’t get the rest of the sentence out of her throat.

  Cass asks, “So where did you go last night?”

  “To Bea’s.”

  “Oh.”

  Talking to Cass has always been almost too easy. Now Lulu feels like she’s sitting with a stranger. “How did you�
�� Did you end up staying long? At the party?” she asks.

  “No, Lulu.”

  “Did I miss something?” Lulu asks. “Something else?”

  “No, Lulu.”

  “Okay.” Lulu wishes she had done something right—with Bea, with Cass—so that people wouldn’t keep being so mad at her, but it’s too late for that now. “I’m sorry I left without you. I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking at all. I just had to leave. I felt like I was gonna die if I didn’t.”

  Cass’s coffee arrives. She takes a long swallow and looks out the window. She doesn’t say anything. Then, after a while, conversationally: “He broke my heart, Lulu.”

  “He what?”

  “My heart, Lulu. He broke it.”

  “I thought you guys weren’t—”

  “He was my best friend. For a while—before you—he was one of my only friends. I trusted him, and I loved him, and he got pissed that I wasn’t paying attention to him and he betrayed me. He took something that he knew was important to me and made sure everyone could see it. He exposed me, even though he knew it was the last thing I’d be able to stand. He broke my heart last night, Lulu.” Cass can’t keep the emotion out of her voice anymore. “And you just left. You went to hang out with Bea. You didn’t text. You didn’t call. You didn’t ask if I was okay—”

  “I know.” There’s nothing Lulu can do to change it. “I know,” she says again. “I couldn’t bear to look at you, Cass. It felt like it was going to make it too real. It was selfish. That’s the truth about me: I’m a very selfish person.”

  “Don’t ask me to feel sorry for you.”

  “I’m not,” Lulu snarls. God, she’s angry. All of the rage she’s been suppressing comes roaring to life, and before she knows it she’s saying, “He did this to me too, you know.”

  “Not like he did it to me.”

  “Oh, because of your special friendship?” Lulu couldn’t let herself be angry with Ryan, not the way she wanted to be. She couldn’t let herself scream or curse, get ugly and wild. But there’s nothing and no one stopping her from dumping the fury that’s been simmering in her blood—at Ryan, but also at her stupid, stupid self—onto Cass.

  “Or,” Lulu continues. “Do you mean, because I’ve already exposed myself on the internet? That it just shouldn’t bother me as much? I was always going to be damaged goods, I guess.”

  “That’s not what I said. That’s not even remotely what I said.”

  “What are you saying, then?”

  “I’m saying that I get the sense you disappeared on Bea when you met me, but when I stopped being easy, you went back to Bea. I’m saying that I thought there was one person I could completely, totally trust, and he fucked me over, and I’m scared. I’m scared of him, and I’m scared of you too. I’m scared that I’m gonna keep falling for you, and you’re gonna abandon me when I stop being convenient.”

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  “Exactly. You don’t do things. You let things happen to you. You waited for that Flash to break you and Owen up; you were never gonna tell me you were into girls, were you, until Kiley forced the issue—”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah, and who texted first?”

  Lulu puts her head on the table. Its surface is hard and cold. She likes that. She likes that it’s exactly and only what it is.

  “Okay,” Lulu says. “I already told you: I’m bad. I’m the worst one. What do you want from me, Cass?”

  Cass doesn’t say anything for a while. She drinks her coffee. Lulu thinks this is the longest she’s sat with someone in—she can’t remember how long, where neither of them is saying anything, or looking at her phone.

  “I read the book you got me,” Cass says, finally. “For Christmas. Have you read it?”

  “No,” Lulu says, and thinks, Another strike against me.

  “It’s beautiful,” Cass says. “But mostly it got me thinking. Do you know how many adaptations of the Bluebeard story there are?”

  “No.” And another.

  “A lot. There are . . . a lot. Just like, all of these retellings of this story about a man who compulsively kills women. Who murders them. That’s what we watch for fun. That’s the story we’ve been telling each other as entertainment for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

  “She gets away in the end,” Lulu says. “Slays the monster. Lives happily ever after in the castle.”

  “First, though, she has to escape.”

  “I don’t know what you want from me, Cass.”

  “I don’t want anything,” Cass says. “From anyone. Or I just—god. I just want it to stop.”

  She puts a ten down on the table and leaves.

  * * *

  Back in her car, Lulu does what she always does when she feels like she’s dissolving. She flips the camera in her phone on and takes a selfie. It looks like all her other selfies: She knows exactly how to angle her chin to catch light on her cheekbones, to make her mouth look full and her eyes look wide. Usually it helps make her feel solid again: taking a photo, and posting it, and knowing exactly how everyone else is seeing her. Being able to look at herself the way everyone else in the world does.

  But today the image on the screen doesn’t make her feel any better. Lulu recognizes the girl in the picture, but not the one sliced into pieces by the rear- and side-view mirrors, reflecting off the windshield’s glass. She doesn’t understand what she’s feeling, sitting here, coming and coming apart. The girl in the pictures has nothing to do with her today. She’s untouchable, and Lulu—everyone’s had their hands all over Lulu, haven’t they.

  Lulu puts the car in gear and starts driving.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  THE HOTEL BEARS all the signs of a long, late party. The catering company took the glassware and the linens, but the lobby is still forested with bare tables, and the walls are lined with empty bottles and abandoned jackets and wraps. The front steps are covered in cigarette butts.

  The lobby door is open and even though it’s sunny outside, inside it’s all blue chill. After Lulu left, someone plugged in a projector down here, and the images from upstairs blinked onto one of the lobby’s bare walls while guests danced. Lulu watched Flashes of it this morning. Thanks for nothing, #TheFutureIsRigged.

  Ryan is exactly where he was the first time Lulu showed up here: in room Four. This time, though, he’s in bed, asleep. He doesn’t stir when Lulu opens the door. She stands there, looking at him.

  He’s sweet in his sleep just like everyone is, slack and young looking, pale and vulnerable. The thought comes to Lulu: I could do anything I want to you. Anything at all. Is that what he felt every time he saw her and Cass wander away from him, thinking they were alone, and knowing better? This surge of sick, seductive power?

  She kicks his bed to wake him up.

  Ryan spasms, startled, but he recovers quickly. He’s shirtless, passed out in last night’s jeans. As soon as he’s fully conscious he looks dangerous again, rich and handsome, rumpled but unfazed. “Shapiro,” he says. “What’s up.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know, Ryan. What is up?”

  Lulu’s mind is spinning. What does Ryan value? What does Ryan need? She has no answers for these questions. God, what an idiot she’s been. She showed him exactly where she was vulnerable—with Owen, with Cass—and all he ever showed her was this place where she could act out her fantasies, and let him watch them unfold. She can’t believe that she let herself forget, even for a second, that she was playing a game.

  The only thing she can cling to is: Lulu Shapiro is very, very good at this particular game.

  “You’re pissed,” he says.

  That’s not too much to give away. “Of course I am.”

  “I’m sorry it was such a big surprise,” Ryan says. “I wanted to show you two the pictures first. I really think the
y’re great. But I also didn’t want to risk you trying to stop me.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better? At all?”

  “I do have a conscience,” Ryan says. He grins at her, infuriatingly pleased with himself. “I listen to it. I just try not to let it affect my behavior, or my work. The images are beautiful, right?”

  “Self-indulgent. Just pretty girls being pretty girls. I thought you were better than that.”

  “Pretty girls are enticing, though,” Ryan says. “If there’s one thing I learned from Roman, it’s the kind of business you can build if you make pretty girls your first customers. And really, I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to photograph someone with such a big reputation.”

  He thinks he’s already thought of everything. Lulu wants to see if she can rattle him. “Aren’t you worried that I’ll sue?”

  “Not really,” Ryan says. “Sure, you didn’t sign anything, but there were signs up about the cameras. I told you they were there. I took pictures of you guys all the time, and I always asked, so you knew that was happening. And I’m only eighteen. How could I have known that I needed anything other than verbal consent?”

  “This is how your dad raised you, huh. He must be proud.”

  “You know what,” Ryan says. “He is.”

  “That’s because he doesn’t know how pathetic you are. Building a whole hotel to keep a girl interested in you. And she wasn’t, Ryan. She wasn’t ever going to be, so you decorated it with stolen photos and called it art. This is all self-indulgent bullshit and you know it. That doesn’t surprise me—you’ve been a self-indulgent bullshit artist since I met you—but even I can’t believe you’d do that to Cass.”

  “I didn’t do half of what I could have,” he spits back. Finally, finally, she’s got Ryan unguarded, Ryan too furious to hold back. This is who he really is—a wounded animal, and once Lulu would have felt bad, seeing him hurt. Now all she sees is how intent he is on hurting her, and everyone else who gets too close. “You want to see what I could have done to you and Cass?”