The Party Upstairs

by Lee Conell

  “Or it might be a wrong number.”

  The light kept blinking. She stepped forward and she pressed play.

  The message was from Frank at Sycamore Management. Frank was half screaming into the phone. He had, yes, received a call from Kenneth, who was on vacation but who had talked to Caroline, and Kenneth was outraged, so outraged that he’d contacted Sycamore right away. Kenneth had said something about Martin threatening Caroline with a rock, throwing the rock at her, and did Martin actually want charges to be pressed, could Martin call Frank back immediately, did Martin know what all this meant?

  The blinking light earlier had seemed almost like a sound, a pulse designed to keep time to their day, but now there was just an unmoving red light, no new messages, no blinking.

  “But she said—” Ruby bit her lip.

  “Don’t worry.”

  “She told on you, and she said she wouldn’t.”

  “She didn’t tell on me. I’m not a kid, Ruby. She just told her father what she experienced. Which she should have done.”

  “The cunt.”

  “Shh. Don’t use that language.”

  “It’s better if I call her a trustfundian fucktard?”

  “Yes,” Martin said. “It’s better. Calm down.” His eyes moved to the cockroach on the wall. “It’s fine, it’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine.”

  Adjacent to his meditation bench lay what looked like a conductor’s baton. He picked it up.

  “What’s that?” Ruby asked.

  “This is a striker,” he said. “For a singing bowl.”

  “A singing bowl?”

  “I stole it,” he said. “But by accident.” Then he stood up very fast and raised the baton-like object and slammed it against the cockroach on the wall. The cockroach fell. Her father took the striker and walked to the kitchen. She heard the trash can opening, shutting. He came back to the living room empty-handed and sat down, not on the meditation bench, but on the couch.

  “Oh,” Ruby said. “Oh, Dad.”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Honest.”

  Caroline had hurt her father. She felt so strange. If stealing from Andy had excavated a space in her brain, now that space seemed to be widening. Her very bones would go hollow, birdlike. She needed to act before she felt so weightless. Next to the answering machine was the toolbox. She opened it.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m going to talk to Caroline.”

  She took out the two pieces of turquoise cloth. The shoe covers. She pulled them over 2D’s sparkly shoes. She wanted to make Caroline think about Ruby’s father. To bring that sign of respect upstairs, so that Caroline had to recognize all the ways she’d disrespected Ruby and Ruby’s family. These shoe covers were her final disguise. At least for today.

  “Ruby,” her father said. “Stop. It’s okay.”

  She turned away. She began to walk out of the apartment. The covers over her shoes made a sound like shush shush shush. She felt very focused. She felt very, very in the moment, like her every stride forward was a meditation. Her father followed her out the door. “Ruby,” he said, “stay here. I’m your father. I’m telling you to stay here.”

  She jabbed her index finger against the call button. Her father was too old to chase after her, too old to tell her what to do. When the elevator doors opened on the basement, she stepped on and he did not follow. He said, “Ruby, just relax. Stay here.” And he said some more words she didn’t hear, because the doors closed and she was ascending.

  * * *

  —

  Another game she’d played with Caroline as a child: In the moment before the elevator began to go down, they’d jump up. The elevator would sink just as they would rise and they would drop farther down than they had ascended. Every time. It was thrilling, like pulling one over on gravity. The elevator-jumping game was one of the few games Ruby was better at than Caroline. Ruby always dropped farther than Caroline because she was more skilled at recognizing the moment before the elevator descended, the perfect moment to jump. The trick was in the timing.

  * * *

  —

  The penthouse had not been locked. The elevator doors opened onto the party, or at least onto what remained of it. There were wineglasses out, plates of different gunked-together cheeses, but no people. The party had not been so exciting, then, or perhaps there was a better one elsewhere. So the guests were all gone. But was Caroline gone, too? She must still be here, or she wouldn’t have left the place unlocked. Ruby should call out. Hello, O Caroline, I am here to confront you. I am here to challenge you to a duel. I am here, I am here.

  But she said nothing. Instead she took a few steps forward. The shoe covers made their shush sound. A cold breeze hit her. The terrace door had been left partway open. Someone was out there.

  She stepped onto the terrace. Nobody in sight, but Caroline’s keening laughter was being carried on the wind. Caroline was somewhere on the roof.

  Again, Ruby hopped over the railing. She walked along the edge of the building, trying not to splash her feet in puddles, toeing aside stray cables, beer bottles.

  Then she saw them. Andy and Caroline standing in the same spot where, hours before, Ruby had stolen Andy’s wallet. And next to Caroline: Lily’s cousin.

  Lily’s cousin, off the intercom screen, live and in color, in three dimensions, in a puffy pink coat, on the roof near the penthouse, chewing on cheese, while Andy adjusted a tripod.

  They hadn’t noticed Ruby yet. She could hardly breathe. She stepped back into the shadow of the water tower. Caroline hovered at Andy’s shoulder, muttered something to him. Andy crouched down, his face covered by the camera. They were, Ruby realized, collaborating.

  Now Andy seemed to be taking the woman’s photo. He said, “No, no, it’s better . . . Better you don’t look away. Look right at the camera. Okay? Like, look hard. Glare! Okay. And at the very last minute, let your eyes just sort of soften. No, no, not so soft that they close. Just imagine you’re looking thousands of miles into the distance—”

  “Let her do what she wants,” Caroline said. Caroline had not worn a dress for her party. She had instead changed into an oversize sweater and a long spandex skirt with a plaid print. She looked frumpier. She looked like how Ruby must have looked in her interview outfit, except Caroline was wearing this outfit because she had a choice. She was demonstrating to the world all the ways she was empowered in her rejection of the feminine norm. Or something. Abruptly, Ruby felt the ridiculousness of the dress she had taken from 2D, its silken swaths calling attention to their own excess, the beadwork on the illusion neckline, the pleats on the skirt making her look like some giant blue, dimpled Smurf, smiling stupidly out at the world. Why had she ever put on 2D’s dress? Here she was playing at being Caroline (and getting it all wrong) while Caroline was playing at being Ruby. Truly? Could the exchange be so simple?

  “Keep going with your story, Evie.” Caroline held up a small recording device. “You were talking about what it was like, stepping into 5A.”

  “It was dusty,” the woman said. “Really dusty.”

  Her eyes, her mouth, her forehead’s blocky frankness—all of that was so familiar. The resemblance to Lily had come through on the video screen on the intercom this morning, but now, here, it was like part of Lily had risen up again to greet Ruby.

  Caroline held her recorder a little closer to the woman’s face. “That must have been very hard, to walk in and see just dust. Do you have a lot of nice memories of your cousin?”

  The clicking of Andy’s camera. A weight on Ruby’s chest.

  “Nice memories?” said the woman. “Oh, she was fine. A nice full fridge. Sometimes she could be a real riot. But sometimes a little bit exhausting to talk to. Always blaming my problems on systems. When sometimes people are just shitheads, you know?” At this, Caroline laughed
a little, and the woman said, “It’s no damn joke, little girl. Lily thought she knew more about my problems than I did. But then she said to me one day, she said they’re eyeing my apartment, they’re waiting for my death, and she said . . .” The woman pulled proudly on the sleeves of her puffy coat. “She said if I was ever in a bad way, I should come and move in, and since I was technically family, she could get me on the lease. If things with Hal got bad again, she said . . .” Now the woman’s eyes rolled upward to the sky. “She said it would kill them if I wound up on the lease and that would be funny, the way it would kill them. So I came. But I didn’t come soon enough. It’s not so funny now. She’s the one killed.”

  “She wasn’t killed,” Caroline said. “She died of natural causes.”

  “Same difference for someone like Lily,” the woman said. For a second she covered her face with her hands, forming a kind of carapace with her thick-nailed fingers.

  “I’m so sorry, Evie,” Caroline said. “That all sounds really hard.”

  “Thank god you found me this morning. Thank god you let me stay with you.” She turned to Andy, releasing her face from her finger cage. “This one”—and the woman pointed at Caroline—“this one is a real true angel. Letting me stay here in this mansion all day.”

  All day. Ruby understood it now. She had been here all day. In the penthouse, inside one of the empty rooms. Caroline must have gone to 5A right after Ruby had admitted to letting Lily’s cousin into the building. Before Ruby had gone to check 5A herself, Caroline had found the woman in the remains of the apartment, taken her upstairs, and kept her there until Andy had come over to take her picture against the city skyline at night. When Ruby’s father was in the penthouse, fixing the door, the woman was hidden. During the party, she had been secreted away in Caroline’s room with Caroline keeping her company. A kind of hide-and-seek.

  Caroline must have been worried Ruby would have told her father. Or maybe she did not want to share the mantle of “real true angel” with Ruby. The woman had become Caroline’s project. Caroline’s doll.

  She wanted to run at Caroline now, to push her over the wall, just as she’d wanted to do with Andy before taking his wallet. The wall was low enough here. A quick hard push. But no, that was the move of a villain. Or at least the move of a deranged psycho Dickensian urchin with a vendetta. Which was who she would be in Andy’s stories to Caroline, probably. But she was not inside Andy’s stories. Thank god. Instead, she was inside her own life, inside whatever story made the most sense to her. A secret princess. A secret heroine. A secret real true angel. Now was the time for her to reveal her truest self.

  “I was the one who let you in,” Ruby said. She stepped forward and Caroline’s shoulders jumped and Andy’s shoulders tightened and the woman cocked her head and, down below, a car horn screamed. In the silence that followed, Ruby stood up straighter. “Yes,” she went on. “I’m the reason you’re here, right now, on the roof outside this penthouse apartment.”

  The woman, wearing Lily’s squint, looked back at Ruby. Caroline squealed. She ran to Ruby, hugged her close. “Oh my god!” she said. “See, Andy, I told you. I told him, Ruby, that you were just kidding.”

  “Kidding?”

  “Joking. I told him you would be back here to say so.”

  “To say . . . ?”

  “That you were joking,” Andy said. He had put his face close to his camera, the lens pointed at the intruder. “But you weren’t joking when you stole from me, Ruby. I know that. Caroline just sees the best in people. It’s cute. But it’s delusional.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Caroline said, beaming.

  “Who is that one?” asked the woman.

  “Nobody,” Andy said. “No, don’t do that with your face, please.”

  Caroline clung to Ruby’s arm, her chin tilted so she could look Ruby in the eye. That little ruffle of skin, where the potentially cancerous beauty mark had been removed, seemed to smile up at Ruby. “Listen, babe, Andy told me this story, this crazy story, and I said it was a joke. Or, like, a kind of you-version of performance art. Right?” Then Caroline looked down. “What’s on your feet?”

  “Shoe covers,” Ruby said.

  “Shoe covers?”

  “Like my dad wears. When he visits an apartment. It’s a symbol.” She turned to Lily’s cousin again and spoke up. “I was the one who let you in.”

  “Ruby,” Caroline said, “you are here to return Andy’s money, right?”

  “Look at me, please,” Andy said to Lily’s cousin. “Right here. Not at the new person. Good.” He paused. “She’s not here to return anything, Caroline.”

  “Ruby.” Caroline’s breath had the new-upholstery smell of too many drinks. “Kiddo, kiddo, kiddo. Explain to me. What is going on?”

  “You told about my dad,” Ruby said.

  “Well, my dad called and I just mentioned it. I’d had a shot or two of tequila before the party . . . I didn’t exactly mean to tell my dad. But it came up, and it kind of slipped out.”

  The stone caught in Ruby’s throat. If she pushed Caroline off this building and onto the roof next door, it would have to be quick. But no, what she needed to do was use her words. She tried again to gather up the nobility of the secret princess heroine angel star. She said, “I’m really angry at you, Caroline.”

  Caroline tilted her head. “Do you know, I don’t think you’re actually angry, Ruby, not really. I don’t think you’ve actually been truly angry at me once today. You’ve just been playing pretend. I think you’re angry at yourself. And embarrassed.”

  The stone inside her throat was sweating somehow. Her whole face was hot.

  “Rube. Look, your dad won’t be in any real trouble. He’s been working here so long. I know things have been weird today. But see what we’re doing?” Caroline moved her arms in a Vanna White sweep toward Lily’s cousin, like she was a costly vowel newly revealed. “I found the woman you mentioned! Her name is Evie. We’re going to make her image iconic and we’re going to tell her story. Andy has this concept where she’s standing against the skyline at night, like she herself is one of the buildings! Can you see it? It’ll be gorgeous. Andy is going to do a whole series of photographs on her, and we’ll get her truth out there and we’re going to find her a forever home.” The wind rose, cool and steady. “It’s poignant, Ruby, it’s this really exquisite thing that you’ve been a part of today, by buzzing this woman in, don’t you see that? Don’t you see what you’ve helped us create? You’re like . . . the precipitating force.” Caroline was drunk, she was excited, she was thrilled, she was buzzing with her own goodness. She had not thought about what she had done, what she might do, in reporting to Kenneth on Ruby’s father. She reached forward and hugged Ruby so hard that they swayed back and forth together. Caroline said, “It’s fine. Do you know? It’s all going to be fine. Do you know that?”

  Do you know, do you know.

  “You weren’t at your party,” Ruby managed at last. “At your own party. I didn’t see you.”

  “I came out a few times and said hi. But mostly I was with Evie.” Caroline smiled at the woman. “Getting her psychologically ready for talking to Andy.”

  “We got psychologically ready by drinking tequila!” sang Evie, and Andy said, “Okay, good, keep your face like that for a second, happy but not, like, too happy.”

  “We drank lots of tequila,” said Evie, “so I’d be honest and go viral.”

  Andy said something about the shots being very powerful, that there was a kind of cross formed between the horizontal skyline and the intense verticality of Evie’s stance, and if she actually could slouch just a bit more, right, so the cross shape and the Christlike echoes were implied but not overly obvious, yes, like that—it would be an important statement, going alongside her story, and the loss of her affordable apartment, the specter of Hal’s anger, right, and domestic violence, wasn’t Hal the bo
yfriend’s name, plus the death of her sister—

  “Cousin,” said Evie.

  But Andy’s eyes were now trained on Ruby. “Caroline,” he said, “why don’t you get in some of these photographs.”

  “Me?” Caroline’s mouth fluttered open.

  “You should be in some shots with Evie, right?” Andy said. “You took her in, you kept her safe all day, you’re part of her story now.”

  At Andy’s words, Caroline blushed a little, said she didn’t want to intrude, but Evie clapped her hands and said, “Come on, you cutie, come right in here, let’s take some pictures together. A very kind individual, this lady,” Evie said, and now, oh, oh, that tone. The playful slinking quality in the voice. She sounded so much like Lily, but a Lily who was declaring approval for Caroline, at last, while Ruby went unmentioned.

  Caroline pushed back the wisps of her hair, tucking them behind her ears. “How do I look, Andy? Is this right? Am I supposed to smile?”

  He picked up the camera and got closer to their faces. “Just in your eyes a little. Keep your mouth stern but smile inside.”

  Sweat seeped into the silk of 2D’s dress despite the chill; Ruby’s mouth felt stoppered by some inner humidity, as if her body’s ecosystem was shifting into a rain forest. Caroline gawked at the camera like a lost baby deer, a fragile cervine creature in an oversize sweater. Next to her, the intruder. Evie. Caroline had known her name first. What was Ruby’s own to know first, to name? It was not fair. Do you know, Caroline had said. Do you know, I don’t think you’re actually angry. The way Caroline had tried to un-truth Ruby’s rage, to steal that rage away, the way even now she pretended she knew what Ruby was thinking. Caroline had found the woman in Lily’s old apartment. She had walked through the demolition debris and seen the woman there, kneeling, maybe, in the dust that had been Lily’s walls. She had found her before the workers arrived and asked the intruder her name and offered help so easily because help was always hers to give, and then she had talked to her father and told him about Ruby’s father, told him maybe that he seemed unstable, erratic, unfit.