I nod. “When I’m drunk enough.”
“I play the piano. I can play anything. Like, anything. Come on.”
My body tingles from the hash as he pulls me to my feet and across the sunken living room to the grand piano. I’m on a yacht in the Mediterranean and life is good. Tonight has finally felt like a vacation. I curl my toes in the plush carpet as Michael lifts the shiny black top of the piano and takes a seat on the bench. “A grand on a boat,” he says, playing arpeggios. “What a terrible extravagance. So much damage from the salt air, you have to pitch them overboard every couple of years.”
“Is that true?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Makes for a good story, though, doesn’t it? You know this one?”
He starts into “Fly Me to the Moon.” I spin, my arms outstretched like wings. “A few steps higher.”
He scales up, and I start in, singing as much of the song as I know, which is more than I realized.
“Bellissimo!” He claps. “What do you like to sing? Throw it at me.”
“ ‘God Bless the Child’?”
He throws his head back in laughter as he plays the opening notes. “What are you trying to say?”
I join him, and before long Marlena wanders in with the Italian couple who were seated across from her. She lights up to see us playing. “I knew I gave you piano lessons for a reason. You have?” She raises two fingers to her mouth in the international mime for joint.
He extracts the spliff from his pocket with one hand, the other never leaving the keys, and the Italian man lights it for Marlena. Michael and I are warmed up now—flying, in perfect sync. He seamlessly flows into “Summer Nights,” and I squeal with delight. We camp it up as Sandy and Danny as the other dinner guests begin to file in.
Wendy dances coquettishly with Leo while Brittani and Amythest become our backup dancers. The Italian couple joins Leo and Wendy, and the others drape themselves across the furniture or lounge on pillows on the floor, incapable of supporting themselves after the generosity of our hosts. John and the goons are missing, but I notice Summer on the couch with Claire, her platinum hair looking yellow in the lamplight, the rocks in her ears and the big stupid not-a-diamond on her finger glittering as she mechanically nods her head to the music. She has a lipstick stain on her perfect white teeth, and there’s something sour about her smile.
The crew brings in tiramisu that looks divine, but I’m having too much fun singing to take a break to eat. Brittani dances like a bull in a china shop, while Amythest gyrates in the light, clearly not wearing any undergarments beneath her dress. The thin pale-blue fabric pulls in such a way that it looks like it wants to slip right off her—which I don’t think anyone would mind, except Summer, of course, who stares daggers at her.
We’re doing “The Girl from Ipanema” when I notice that John has returned. He’s leaning in the doorway, watching Amythest with X-ray vision. After a moment, Summer spies him. She swallows and readjusts herself on the couch, breathing shallowly, then looks back at John, trying unsuccessfully to get his attention. At the same moment, Amythest notices John watching her and gives him a wink.
Summer rises from her seat and starts for John, but Bernard taps him on the shoulder and he disappears into the hallway, leaving Summer unmoored in the middle of the room. I grab her hand and make an effort to dance with her, but she jerks it away and gives me the evil eye before stalking out onto the back deck, Rhonda scuttling after her.
After the next song, I hand the mic to one of Marlena’s Italian friends and wander into the hall in search of a bathroom. The closest bathroom is occupied, so I wind up the thick-carpeted wide spiral stairs looking for another one. Funny, now that I’m not dancing, I can feel the boat rocking. Or is that me? I grip the railing as I go around, still managing to step on the hem of my dress and nearly bust my ass. I sit down right in the middle of the staircase and try to focus on the large abstract painting staring at me from the wall, but the colors all want to blend together. I feel my phone buzz in my clutch and extract it, noticing I’m connected to Wi-Fi. I guess not all rich people are crazy paranoid. I scroll through my email, the messages swimming before me.
Sis,
Beautiful day here too! Though nothing like floating around on the Mediterranean, I’m sure. I’m great, everything awesome. Sorry you’re having such a rough time out there. At least the food is good. Have you tried any sea urchin? I hear it’s delicious. I hope you don’t get voted off the island LOL. Keep me posted. Thinking of you. Xoxo
I immediately reply:
Heeeeeey sis whats up we’re on ths crazy boat and I just smoked a spliff so excuse my typos hahahhahaaa. Spent the morning puking z cuz my dramamine disappeared nad Summer gaveme something she said was but wasn’t. Aaaaand found out from vinny tht my emails are def being read on the boat so I wont be emailing from there anymore. So aslo u’ll never guess who I ranin to at lunch?? Dylan. Yep. was there with grannie who ai didn’t meet tho but was talking to john when I saw him. He told me to clall him lol. think I should??
Haven’t triee any sea urchin yet
I think threre r some rough seas ahead.
Rough seas I tell u. STORMW!!1!
Oh and Amythest! Is fucking JOhn!! HA!
I press send without rereading it and totter to my feet. Sheesh. I’m kinda wasted, it turns out. Good thing you don’t have to wear shoes on boats because heels would not be my friend right now. Okay. Where was I going? I have to pee. Upstairs. I was going upstairs to pee.
At the top of the stairs, I pause to pull myself together and scan for the bathroom. The place is deserted, but I hear men’s voices coming from behind a partially closed door. I know I’m drunk and probably not very quiet, but it’s too good an opportunity to snoop to turn down. I linger in the shadows as one of the voices rises above the others. The accent is British; it must be Charles.
“ . . . is not a matter of the return, which I’m sure you are right about. It’s the principle. You couldn’t get this past your own board last time we spoke.”
“There’s no problem with the board,” John says flatly.
Charles standing up to John: this I have to hear. Out of sight between the office and the bathroom, I brace myself against the wall, listening. This should be good. . . .
Charles says something unintelligible, to which another voice replies something also unintelligible.
I strain to hear Charles sigh before returning, in a somber voice, “You may have the ability to circumvent the laws, as you did on our last venture, but that doesn’t mean you should. We have a responsibility to set a precedent, to safeguard the communities and land for future generations, not to pillage and destroy, take advantage of every business opportunity that arises.”
I inch closer to the door.
“I should think,” John warns, “after your part in our last venture, you would want to remain in the family.”
“I was nothing but a financier. I had no knowledge you were using substandard materials until the accident,” Charles spits.
“And you didn’t report it, even then,” John returns.
“Are you threatening me?” Charles asks.
“I’m sure you understand what damage—” John is interrupted by laughter ringing up the stairwell as guests climb the stairs, and the door immediately shuts. I quickly step into the bathroom and close the door behind me, too loudly. Shit. But I don’t think anyone heard. They were all in that office.
Michael was right about his father. At least someone in this gilded world has a moral compass. I bet John got Charles tangled up in that shopping center collapse the guys were talking about at lunch the other day. John is a bad man. A really, really bad man. But then, I knew that.
I pee for about six years, then splash water on my face in a vain attempt to sober up, and retouch my makeup. By the time I return from the bathroom, Bernard and Vinny are herding our blue-dressed harem back to the tender, where John and Summer are already waiting.
We’re a hot mess. Amythest’s d
ress is ripped. Brittani’s mascara is running. Even Claire nearly tumbles into the ocean as she’s handed down into the tender. But Wendy is the standout, her lipstick smeared and her chin chafed, her eyes a haze of longing for Leo as she wishes him goodbye.
Summer sits in the back of the tender next to John, her eyes fixed on the sea as we push away, but the rest of us are jovial. Brittani starts a reprise of “Summer Nights,” and everyone joins in until John has Vinny silence us.
The twinkling lights of the boat recede on the horizon and the music grows ever farther away, until all that’s left is the throbbing of the tender motor and the slap of the waves as we skate over the water.
(seven months ago)
Los Angeles
It was sometime after we ate the mushrooms that I noticed the hole in the sky. A distinct black pinhole in the powder blue, like someone pricked it. How had I never seen it before? Maybe it was only a satellite. Or maybe it was the drugs. Was it moving? Watching us? I tried to sit up, but couldn’t coordinate the muscles required to do so. “There’s a hole,” I said, but it just sounded like galumph, galumph, like everything else.
Galumph, galumph, galumph, galumph. Why did everything sound the same? Maybe the sound of the universe wasn’t Om, but galumph.
I could feel the top of Hunter’s head touching mine, like we were conjoined twins who shared a brain. I endeavored to send him a message. “Galumph, galumph,” he said.
We both collapsed in giggles. When our laughter subsided, the sky had darkened, and the palm trees were lit from below by the streetlights.
“It looks like a movie set,” I said, glad my words were coming out like words.
“We’re the stars of the movie,” he agreed.
A scuffling drew our attention to the hatch that led down to my apartment, and a blond head emerged. Summer climbed out onto the roof, no easy feat while wearing her private-jet stewardess outfit—a tight, collared navy-blue dress with the gold logo of the company she worked for pinned above her heart, a silk Burberry scarf around her neck. “What are you guys doing up here?” she asked.
“Shroomies.” Hunter waved the bag of iridescent fungi in her direction. “Want some?”
“No thanks.”
She turned to go back inside, but I noticed that she was holding a bottle of water, and I desperately needed a sip. “Wait,” I called, pointing urgently at her water. “I need a sip.”
She traversed the distance and handed me the bottle. I stared at it, unsure what to do with it. She sighed and opened the top for me. “Do you need me to pour it down your throat, too?”
I grabbed the bottle and guzzled it until Hunter snatched it from me and finished it off. “I thought you weren’t coming back until tomorrow,” I managed, proud of my ability to string together a coherent sentence.
“Trip got shortened.” She sat in one of the folding chairs Hunter had dragged up, kicked off her shoes, and began massaging her feet. “But I got a job offer from the client.”
“Good!” I said. I was finding it incredibly difficult to focus on what she was saying, but I knew I should be pleased. I searched for the next logical question. “Who?”
“His name is John Lyons, and he owns this huge company that invests in everything from real estate to movies. He sold his jet and has been waiting for his new one to be finished, which is why he was flying with JetSafe. But he wants me to come on this trip with him to Japan, Singapore, and Bali, and then we’ll figure out the contract if it’s a fit.”
I wondered if this meant that she would finally move off my couch, or rather, out of my bed, but was unable to formulate the question in any intelligible way, so simply nodded and smiled in what I hoped was a supportive manner.
“The Benjamins!” Hunter exclaimed. Summer looked at him like he’d lost his damn mind. “The Benjamins?” He carefully changed his inflection, turning the statement to a question, and I understood he clearly wanted to know how much the job paid, but she wasn’t getting it.
“How much does it pay?” I interpreted.
She shrugged. “We haven’t worked out the details, but his assistant told me that he pays really well, and he’d give me a signing bonus after our first trip.”
I could feel her sobriety rubbing off on me, erasing the effects of the shrooms. A little annoying considering how difficult it had been to obtain them. Perhaps I could just take a break, flip to the serious channel, and match Summer’s vibration to converse with her. Surely it would take only five minutes of intense concentration before she’d go back downstairs and I could return to the movie Hunter and I were starring in, which was obviously a stoner comedy with no role for Serious Summer.
Focus. “Did you see Eric while you were in New York?” I asked like a totally sober adult.
Though she’d never admit it, I knew Eric had broken her heart when he moved to New York a few weeks ago, effectively ending whatever was left of their relationship. She’d quickly rebounded with an Italian clothing designer, but that had also fizzled quickly, leaving her truly single for the first time in years. Eric’s departure, combined with the horrible thing that happened with Three, had changed her. Sharpened her somehow.
She nodded. “He wants me to move there and live with him, of course, but it’s not happening.”
I could see the lie hanging in the air between us like a black cloud, so thick I could almost reach out and touch it. Why did she feel the need to lie to me? It was so stupid. Then, of course, she wasn’t aware I could see her lie; also, she knew nothing of my afternoon with Eric or our budding friendship. His fault, not mine. I never planned to talk to him again after our kiss, but it wasn’t like I was gonna unfollow him on social. What was the harm? His accounts were mostly art stuff, and he had thousands of followers, so it was easy to lurk without engaging. I noticed he started following me back after that day in his loft. Likes here and there followed—totally public, nothing illicit, and anyway, Summer wasn’t on social media. Then he started direct messaging me, and it would have been rude not to reply, right? I may be many things, but rude is not one of them. And it was mainly just about stupid stuff like a movie he saw or a book I read or a meme that reminded one of us of the other. It was foolish, I knew. Extremely foolish. Sure, we were “just friends,” but if Summer ever found out, she’d straight-up kill me. She’d said it herself. The thought brought me crashing back down to the roof, where Summer was now lying to Hunter.
“His lifestyle isn’t really what I see for myself long-term,” she was saying.
“He’s broke,” Hunter recalled. “I remember. I think we had this conversation last time I was in town.”
“He’s not, though,” I objected. “His . . . ” I was about to say something about his loft being gorgeous, but mercifully stopped myself in time, finishing, “ . . . art sells for a lot.”
“It’s like he wants to be broke, though,” Summer insisted. “It’s so weird. You know he has a stake in his family’s company he won’t even acknowledge?”
“A steak?” I asked.
“I love steak,” Hunter said.
We snickered, and she ignored us. “A board seat, tons of stock, his name on trusts, buildings . . . and he wears T-shirts with holes in them and gives all his money to his skeezy Burning Man friends. He’s got some Turkish hacktivist staying with him right now.”
Travis. And he was Syrian. So she did see Eric after all, and he didn’t mention it to me. The snake of disappointment uncoiled inside me. No. This snake wasn’t disappointment; it was jealousy—and that pang I felt was its fangs, sunk into my heart. Oh dear. If Summer didn’t go downstairs soon, this trip was going to take a dark turn.
“Did he tell you all this?” Hunter asked.
“God no,” she said. “He won’t talk about it, won’t so much as mention his family’s name, and the Internet gives me nothing but puff pieces on his art and pictures of models hanging all over him. I found mail on his desk months ago, asking for his signature to increase shares in a holding company, a trust
deed to a building in Manhattan with his name on it—all just buried under sketches and junk mail. I asked him about it, and he lost it. He has such a big chip on his shoulder, it’s ridiculous.”
“I’m sure he has his reasons,” I said, thinking of what he’d told me about his father that afternoon in his loft.
“Yeah.” Summer scoffed. “Anyway, Hunter, I heard your song at a party this weekend. People were really loving it.”
Hunter and I went to give each other a high five and totally missed, then crumpled into a heap of giggles. With a sigh, Summer got up to leave. “Wait!” I called out. “I need you to order pizza from my phone. We can’t see the buttons.”
She held her hand out, and I gave her my phone.
“The code is, uh . . . It’s—”
“I know your code,” Summer said as she typed it into the phone. “It’s the same for everything.”
Two weeks later, I pulled into the driveway of my fourplex to find a white Mercedes with dealer tags in my parking spot. It was past midnight, and I was worn out from a fourteen-hour day being chased barefoot through a scalding parking lot on an ultra-low-budget movie that paid pennies. But the money from the commercial I’d had running over the holidays was drying up, leaving me desperate for acting work so that I wouldn’t have to go back to slinging drinks. I was already seriously doubting my life choices; the Mercedes was the last straw.
Street parking in my neighborhood was a nightmare, so I drove in circles for a full twenty minutes, cursing the asshole driver of the Mercedes, before I finally found a spot. It was only when I got out of the car that I saw the sign that read NO PARKING SATURDAY 8A.M. TO 10A.M. Street cleaning on a Saturday? Seriously? It was all I could do not to scream.
I pushed open the front door to find all the lights on and Summer’s suitcase open in the middle of the living room. So I guessed she’d made it home from her big trip to Asia. “Summer?” I called out.
No answer. I opened the bedroom door to find her sprawled across my bed, snoring. I shoved her over and crawled into bed. I clearly needed to talk to her again about finding her own apartment.
The Lion's Den: The 'impossible to put down' must-read gripping thriller of 2020 Page 20