The Last Guest

by Tess Little

  “Richard was sitting on the couch next to the aquarium,” I said. “Beside him on the couch was Charlie and then, next to him, Miguel. Miguel was definitely asleep by that point. As was Jerry—he was on the other couch. I was sitting on the floor, near Richard. Around the corner of the table.”

  (The floor chilled my cheek.)

  The female cop drew a crude square on the back of a piece of typed paper. Then two crosses. Pointed with her pen.

  “Like this? Mr. Bryant here, you there?”

  I nodded.

  “Then Jerry was on the corner of the other couch, nearest to me,” I continued. “And Sabine and Kei were beside each other, next to him. I think Kei was still awake, but she was just smoking; I don’t think she was involved…”

  “In the consumption of heroin?” clarified the male officer.

  “No, exactly—she was just smoking cigarettes. And Sabine was lying with her head in Kei’s lap.”

  “Thomas Coates?” he asked.

  “He was sitting on the floor. Opposite side of the table from me.”

  “And Mr. Carlisle?”

  I shut my eyes again. “Honey was on the floor, at Charlie’s feet.”

  “Was he awake?”

  “I don’t think so, no,” I said. “I remember seeing him passed out toward the end of the night. I think he slept through the whole thing.”

  “Due to alcohol consumption?” asked the male officer, cocking his head to the side. “Or drugs?”

  “Just alcohol, I think.”

  “And he had fallen unconscious before you all went to sleep?”

  “Apart from Jerry and Miguel, yes. Like I said, they fell asleep quite early.”

  “Ms. Bryant Bell,” the female cop said, “do you believe Mr. Carlisle may have woken up later on in the night?”

  I thought for a few seconds. There he was: I could picture him lying facedown. His arms were cocked at strange angles.

  “No, I don’t think so. I remember Honey on the floor, and…the position of his body…I don’t think it was just sleeping. I’m sure he had passed out. I’m certain.”

  The officers looked at each other.

  “And you are absolutely certain, Ms. Bryant Bell,” pressed the female cop, “that there were no other guests that night besides the eight present when police arrived at the scene? Nobody that visited the party after the caterers had left, nobody that was present when Mr. Bryant began to—”

  “Nobody else came. Only us.”

  And an octopus.

  “Not even a deliveryman, driver, cleaner?”

  “Not after the staff left. It was only us nine.”

  And Persephone.

  The male cop suppressed a cough.

  His colleague went on: “So you were around the table, and you had been consuming a quantity of alcohol, and then what happened? Describe it in your own words.”

  I tried to summon the sequence of events, but only blurred impressions arose.

  (A rustle; a smack. The floor chilled my cheek.)

  “Ms. Bryant Bell?”

  “Beyond that point,” I said slowly, “I’m not sure there is much I can recall. I was on the floor, and then…Then it was morning, and we were all waking up.”

  “So you were asleep when Mr. Bryant actually took the heroin?” asked the man.

  “Or shortly after.”

  “Convenient,” muttered the woman. “You all seem to have been asleep by then.”

  * * *

  —

  “Was it Mark or Luisa heading the production team?” asked Kei, sitting on the couch with Charlie. “For One Hundred Years?”

  “Mark,” said Richard.

  “But I thought Luisa was pregnant with Daisy when we were shooting. Like, I remember her in that big blue coat on set?”

  “No, no, no,” Richard replied. “That wasn’t One Hundred Years. Because, remember, Mark hated the narration and we scrapped it at the last minute. No, you’re getting confused with The Shewings because of the period detail. But Mark was definitely on One Hundred.” He turned back to Miguel. “What were you saying?”

  “That toast,” he answered. “The one you gave earlier. Really reminded me of something from—”

  “Shakespeare?” said Richard. “It’s King John.”

  “No, it reminded me of something from my childhood. And it just hit me now, it’s this hymn we used to sing: All glory, laud, and honor to thee, redeemer king.” He recited the words without melody or rhythm, but I recognized it well. “To whom the something, something…”

  “Lips of children,” I said. “Made sweet hosannas ring.”

  His face lit up. “You know it! Yeah, that’s the one.” He clinked his glass against mine. “Nice. So you’re Catholic?”

  “Elspeth is a godless heathen,” said Richard.

  “I’m not religious,” I told Miguel, ignoring my ex-husband’s comment. “But when I was a kid, my mother occasionally took me to Mass. I remember that hymn—it was my favorite.”

  “Mine too,” said Miguel. “Regal, right?”

  “Alas,” said Richard, “Ellie ran away from home as a teenager.”

  Miguel seemed baffled by this remark.

  “He thinks he’s being funny,” I said, and took a sip of my drink. It had been disappearing faster than planned and was now mostly ice. “But he’s right, I haven’t been to church since I left home.”

  Miguel struggled to respond. “I’m sorry to—”

  “Since you fled,” Richard talked over him, “to a city of angels.”

  “Hell on earth,” I retorted. My words felt slippery with the bourbon.

  And then, politely, to Miguel: “But no, in answer to your question, I don’t think I would describe myself as Catholic. Anyway, I’m sure you’re bored by my childhood. Tell me about your latest—”

  “It’s my birthday, we’ll discuss what I want to discuss, Ellie,” Richard snapped. Then smooth, charming: “Miguel, my ex-wife is such a fascinating psychological study. You see, Elspeth was a troubled child, like me. We never liked our parents, so we both escaped from our prisons—and there we came across each other, two orphans on the run….”

  “Mate.” Tommo had wandered over to our group. “I’ve met your parents many times. If I recall correctly, they remain rosy-cheeked, if estranged.”

  “Abandoned, then.”

  “And didn’t you two meet after you moved to L.A.? That must have been nearly a decade after school.”

  “It was,” I said. “When Richard graduated high school, I was only a kid. I was eighteen when I first met him.”

  “Irrelevant nitpicking.” Richard scowled at his friend.

  “But if we’re talking about our childhoods,” Tommo said with a smirk, “I have tales about this one….” He nudged Miguel. “Now, has Dicky ever told you how sumptuous he looks in floor-length gowns?”

  I moved to the liquor cabinet. Poured myself a bourbon so I could leave the conversation without drawing attention.

  “I swear, he made the most irresistible Desdemona in our lower-boy play,” Tommo was saying. “Curves in all the right—”

  “Actually, Tommo, buddy,” said Miguel, “as much as I want to hear that story—and I do, I do—I need a moment to talk alone with Rich here. Do you mind?”

  “To what do I owe this honor?” I heard Richard reply.

  “Not here,” said Miguel. “Outside.”

  * * *

  —

  I was looking for my car keys when she confronted me.

  “Was it the house?” she called.

  I looked up: It was the small woman I had bumped into when entering the station. She was climbing from a parked car, like she’d been watching for me all afternoon.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The house,”
she said. “Is that what you wanted? The money wasn’t enough?”

  I found the keys, but she was blocking my path, moving closer, arms folded. She had a round, open face, nipped to a little nose in the middle. I was certain now that she was a complete stranger—I would have recognized a face like that.

  And so I tried to keep my voice gentle; she had obviously mistaken me for someone else and was possibly a victim, or a criminal.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I smiled as kindly as I could. “I’m sorry, I need to get to my—”

  “Your divorce money,” she said. Her nostrils flared. “Didn’t get enough in the divorce and—what?—the child-support payments have stopped so you needed some other way to keep yourself in”—she looked me up and down with a sneer—“Chanel sunglasses and highlights?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

  “Elspeth,” she spat. “I know exactly who you are. I recognize your face. You know he kept all your photographs on the wall after you left?”

  I gripped my car keys, held my purse close, but spoke calmly as I asked, “And who are you?”

  The woman ignored my question. Took another step closer.

  “What kind of woman,” she said, jabbing a finger, “doesn’t stay by her husband’s side when he’s going through hell? What kind of woman steals a baby from its father? What kind of woman bleeds a man dry, takes everything he worked for?” She struggled to contain her voice. It trembled as she went on: “I always wondered what kind of woman could do that, and now I know. Now I see.”

  I tried to push past. She stepped in front of me again.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “Excuse me, I need to—”

  “Oh, I know you, Elspeth. I know you.” She nodded violently with each syllable. “I picked up the pieces. I looked after the man you left behind. I know everything about you, and I know what you’ve done.”

  “I haven’t done anything, I’m sorry. You’re confused.”

  “So it’s a coincidence, then?” She mirrored my movements as I tried to walk around her. “You come back to L.A. and the next day Richard…” Her face crinkled as she said his name. “Richard is…”

  A black sedan was pulling into a space across the lot.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated, “you’re clearly upset, but you’re confused and—”

  “I’m not confused!” she shouted through her tears. “I’m not upset. I’m—”

  A man got out of the sedan and walked toward us.

  “You ladies okay here?” he said.

  “Fine, thank you,” I told him, and took my chance to push past the woman.

  As I unlocked the car door with shaking hands, she called after me, “They’ll find out. They will. I know you, Elspeth Bryant.”

  I slammed the door behind me, muffled her venom.

  The solitude, the physicality, was true relief—I took a long route back to Lillie’s to try to compose myself, looping around Griffith Park and then meandering through the hills. I got snarled up a couple of times and lost myself more than once, but it felt good to run my hands over the wheel, to be in control.

  I adjusted the mirror to check my lipstick while stopped at some lights. The billboard to the left was advertising sunglasses similar to the ones I was wearing. The frames were a bluish-gray, crisscross stripes embedded; I liked the way you could see the layering of these marks, caught in the resin, as you held them up against a light. They’d made me feel calm when I bought them—you could lose yourself in that texture.

  As I looked at my reflection in the mirror now, they didn’t have the same effect. All I could see were the large logos on either side of the frame, which the woman must have caught and added to my sentence.

  The house, is that what you wanted? The money wasn’t enough?

  The smell of garlic butter hit me as I walked through Lillie’s door.

  “What’s that?” I called from the hallway, slipping off my shoes. “Smells delicious.”

  “Pasta. Tagliatelle.” She was sautéing large slices of mushroom. “In a sage butter sauce.”

  “Where did you get the ingredients?”

  “I went out. You were right,” she said. “It was good to leave the house. I don’t know why I was so paranoid. I just put on a hat, and obviously no one recognized me.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders and gave her a sideways hug. “As long as you felt comfortable.”

  Lillie said, “It was weird. You know, seeing, like, the moms with their babies, stocking up on, I don’t know, diapers and cereal. It felt—I’d kind of forgotten. How everything else would continue.”

  As she cooked, Lillie talked me through each step. While the pasta was bubbling, she ladled its starchy water into the frying pan, turning the butter almost to a cream. Then she took the tagliatelle from the pot before it was fully cooked and finished it in the sauce, stirring rapidly.

  “You never cooked like this at home,” I said.

  We sat at the table, grated the Parmesan straight onto the plates. The curls were so fine, they writhed as they melted.

  “Because we always had takeout; I never needed to learn.”

  “Have you had lessons since you moved?”

  “More like how-to videos online,” she said.

  That was when I saw her real smile for the first time in a week and a half—for the first time since Richard’s death. It was a weary smile, but a smile nonetheless. My heart ached with hope.

  And then I realized: It truly was just me and Lillie now.

  Throughout Lillie’s childhood, I’d had to relinquish the reins for her biannual visits to Richard. It was only for a few weeks at the most, and I loathed her father, but perhaps I could acknowledge, in some deep and painful part of my heart, that Lillie deserved a relationship with him. They adored each other. And I could only imagine what Richard would have done if I’d cut off their contact entirely. Sue for full custody; reopen old wounds. Who would Lillie have sided with in such a battle? I could not bear the thought.

  It wasn’t an easy arrangement to accept. Every time she left, it felt like I was making that heart-wrenching choice all over again. I would hand over my little girl to the airline personnel, with her red backpack and buckle shoes.

  I’d keep the wobble from my voice when she finally called, having reached the other end. She was always bursting with happiness, tales of everything Richard had bought her, everything they would do. Already restless to hang up on me, to carry on with their exciting games. I had to keep telling myself that love is endless. It wasn’t that, for every ounce she gave her father, one would be taken from me.

  It was difficult to believe this when she moved to L.A. to work on Dominus, when it became clear she would stay for good.

  I twisted the pasta ribbons around my fork. Would my existence in New York feel different when I finally returned? Would I sense Richard’s absence, when he had been missing from my life for so long? I wondered whether I would ever grieve for him—whether I could.

  We ate our food in silence for a while, then she asked, “How was everything with the police?”

  “It was okay,” I said. “Long, exhausting. They just want the facts. When I arrived at the party, who I talked to, things like that. I’ve got another session tomorrow.”

  Then I added, “There was one strange thing, actually. This woman, when I came out of the station. She— Can you remember, did your father have a relationship with a woman after he and I…?”

  “No.” Lillie was horrified. “I don’t know who you—no.”

  “I must have been mistaken.” I was about to drop the subject, but the woman’s accusations were still with me. “It was this small lady. Dark hair, tied back from her face. And it was…She was really small but had this round—”

&nb
sp; “Sounds like Yola.”

  “Yola?” I felt I’d heard the name before.

  “Dad’s housekeeper,” explained Lillie. “She looks like that. Small? Like, really friendly? That’s Yola. Why? Where did you say you met her?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I stacked our plates, stood up to put them in the dishwasher.

  “No, it does,” she said. “Why did you think that Dad—”

  “I was just confused,” I said. But Lillie didn’t look as though she would let the subject slide. I sat back down and explained: “She…she was very upset, and she shouted at— I think that she thinks I did something.”

  Lillie raised her eyebrows.

  “To your father,” I said, “which is absurd because—I mean…”

  Lillie took the plates to the sink and started scrubbing them by hand.

  After she’d rinsed and stacked them, she turned back to me. Said quietly, “Well, that doesn’t really sound like Yola. I don’t think she’d accuse you of something like that. Maybe it wasn’t her. Or maybe you misunderstood.”

  “I don’t think I did. She told me she’d looked after your father, after the divorce, so I assumed they’d been in a relationship. But if she was his housekeeper, that makes sense.”

  “Yola wouldn’t say something like that. She’s lovely. She used to look after me when I visited Dad, and we would always—”

  “Like I said, she was upset and confused. It doesn’t matter. And the accusation itself is absurd.”

  “Is it?”

  We looked at each other, from either side of the kitchen table.

  “I can’t see Yola saying something like that,” Lillie said. “But, I mean, would it be absurd? If people did think that? The police are questioning you.”

  I took a few seconds to respond. “Yes, they are—to find out about the others, to ask me about that night.”

  Lillie didn’t move.

  “Yes, it’s absurd,” I repeated, louder.

  She picked up our glasses and took them to the sink. Before she turned on the tap, she said, “Just be careful, okay? It wouldn’t hurt to be careful. Think about what other people could be thinking.”