“How much money did they give them?” Bunny takes a swig of vodka, swallowing her pill.
“Money? I dunno.”
“Well, they probably gave them money, so you’ll get in, don’t worry.”
“Oh, I’m not worried, I’m just saying I didn’t apply early.” Mackenzie takes a swig and finally swallows the pill in an attempt to defuse her defensiveness, a by-product of a specific kind of academic virus that spreads this time of year.
* * *
Bunny takes in the room and sees Lily Anderson flirting with Billy under the grand archway in the loggia just off the dance floor. Stan blows O’s of smoke in the cold air of the doorway to the garden. Bunny tucks her phone in the side of her skirt and takes another swig, feels the molly start to soften her bloodstream, tickle her nerves, loosen her motor skills, tighten her jaw. She positions herself closer to Stan, but so Billy can see her.
“Let me bum one.”
Stan hands Bunny a Capri, one of those skinny cigarettes you mostly see in Europe. “Feelin’ good, Lizbet?” he asks.
Bunny inhales, the end of her cigarette lit like a burning star. “So good.” She exhales in Billy’s direction, laser-eyes Lily Anderson’s back.
Strobe lights swirl the dance floor as everyone makes their way over. Bunny and Stan sway back and forth together, giggling, then laughing, then laughing harder before they catch Billy’s attention. Lily Anderson goes off to get more vodka, and Billy walks over, sliding his arm around Bunny’s neck, nuzzling his head into her. “Mmm… you smell good. I don’t wanna fight anymore.”
Bunny inhales the scent of his skin underneath the aftershave and cigarettes and grabs his face. “I don’t either,” she says and kisses him, and it’s slow and teasing, their lips tingling, and charged eye contact when they let go; she pushes him away from her.
“You wanna get rough?” Billy asks playfully.
“You wanna go upstairs?” Bunny asks, the molly making her fingertips tickle his forearm.
“I do,” Billy says.
“Copy. Upstairs we shall go,” Bunny says in her most playful soldier voice, “to the general’s bedroom, where it is proper.” She salutes Billy so as to mock his experience since childhood.
“Wait for me!” Stan says.
“Russia!” Bunny shouts in Stan’s direction, losing her eye contact from the alcohol and drugs. “I’m sorry, but you’re not invited to our peace corps.”
Billy laughs.
“Vhut! Aw, man.”
“Go make me a snow angel, we’ll be back,” Bunny says. Stan swirls around in his red peacoat and stumbles into the snowy garden.
* * *
Bunny and Billy shuffle into the dim master bedroom, a canopy bed fit for a king on one side of the room and double limestone fireplaces on the other, the floor covered in silk rugs and the ends of drapes. Drake’s “Started from the Bottom” thumps on the loudspeakers under their feet.
Bunny wraps herself in the red silk drapes, twirling round and round. “These feel so good,” she says, spinning as the curtain rod pulls and wiggles above her head before completely yanking the curtain off of the window. Trapped and wrapped like a mummy, Bunny waddles over to Billy as the second curtain flies through the air like a cape catching wind, and she tumbles into him and onto the floor.
Bunny rolls only partially out of her silk cocoon. “Oops!” she yells next to him, both belly-laughing together. “The general will be so mad at us.”
“So mad!” Billy says.
“Mr. Ambassador too,” Bunny says again in her soldier voice.
Billy rubs his arms across the raw silk, as if he’s making a snow angel on the floor. “You’re right, this feels so good.”
“I don’t think Mr. Creepy up there would be disappointed in me if I took off this bra, do you?” Bunny teases, looking up at the portrait of a significant hero in America’s War for Independence.
“Absolutely not, he declares a No Bra Abiding Society!” Billy looks up. “His eyes are moving, black circles spinning… whoa,” Billy says, tripping.
“Billy, why are you so afraid of the dark?” Bunny slurs, taunting him, unable to withdraw from the more sinister place inside of her, from the place that feels unseen in her quest for the truth about the Bankses’ murders.
“I’m not afraid of the dark.” Billy sits up, his gaze still on the supposed war hero above him. He takes several large swigs of vodka from a glass Voss bottle.
“Unravel me,” Bunny demands. “I’m stuck.”
Billy crawls to her and begins to pull on the silk as Bunny rolls out of it and onto the limestone finish of the fireplace, inhaling the smell of cool wood and dust.
She leans over to Billy. “Answer me, soldier! Why are you afraid of the dark!” Bunny is close to his face like a drill sergeant. She arches her back like a cat, leans down and rubs her cheek against his, rubbing them together like Silly Putty.
Spooked, Billy shoves Bunny flying back on her bum. She giggles, not taking it seriously. She stands and finds her balance; extending her arm toward the light switch next to her in the dark, she pulls on it, flickering the bedroom lights on and off as fast as possible. Billy squints.
“Do you hear that?” Bunny asks as if she hears ghosts in the walls. “It’s Audrey, it’s Audrey! She’s begging us for help! She wants to know who killed her?! Was it you?” She makes a serious detective face and looks up at the portrait of the Revolutionary War hero. “Was it you?” She looks to Billy. “Was it I?” She looks down at the floor, hand to chest dramatically, then slams into Billy, who has managed to get up, while holding on to the fireplace mantel as if it feels like velvet. “Tell me,” she says.
Billy walks toward her and grabs Bunny by her bottom with both hands, pulling her against him as hard and tight as possible. Bunny tilts her head back, her eyes rolling with it; Billy gently lifts her head back up. He stares down at her lips, still and apart, then caresses her chin. “Kiss me,” he says. Bunny does as she is told.
“Do you love me?” she slurs.
“I do,” he says.
“Grab my neck,” she says.
Billy feels rage and then sudden sadness; holding everything inside of him, his chest rising, his head spinning. He places his hand below her collarbone.
“This is so erotic,” Bunny says, feeling his hand gentle on her collarbone. She waits for him to grab her neck. Billy can’t bring himself to do it.
“I said… grab my neck.… Or are you afraid to do that too?” Bunny says, staring at him, her eyes glassy and passionate.
Billy outlines her fragile collarbone with his fingers, and Bunny’s head rolls back, a combination of laughter and then choking as Billy begins to squeeze it.
Wind throws hail across the glass windows, the sound of ice against copper drains as Billy pushes Bunny down onto the silk rug.
“You like being powerful, don’t you,” Bunny whispers. “You like where we come from, who we are, don’t you.” She exhales as Billy removes her underwear, caresses the inside of her.
“Who are we?” he whispers. “Tell me.”
“Tell me you love it.” Bunny stretches her arms into the deep red creases of the silk curtain.
“We’re lucky, Bunny,” Billy whispers, then bites and sucks on her neck.
“No we’re not.” Bunny slaps him and laughs. “Did that hurt?” Billy’s head drops then bobbles back up in a blackout. She starts unbuckling his belt.
“Don’t be such a brat, kiss me,” Billy says.
Bunny kisses Billy hard and begins to unbutton his shirt when his grandfather’s dog tags fall out, dangling across her lips. She grabs them in her hand.
Billy watches and pulls Bunny up so she’s straddling him, her skirt high above her waist; he attempts to pull off her cashmere sweater as he thrusts deeper—then his face goes white as a ghost and small chunks of vomit erupt out of his mouth like the beginning of a volcano. He goes limp.
“Billy, ew,” Bunny says.
Billy falls to the
side, his eyes rolling deep into the back of his head.
“Oh my God, Billy… Billy!” Bunny shrieks, adjusting herself so she’s not putting pressure on him. She grabs his shirt, trying to bring him back to consciousness. “What’s happening!” she screams.
Bunny, disheveled and still rolling, runs out into the corridor. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.… someone help!” The heavy beat of some Jay-Z song blasts through the gilded walls and no one can hear her screaming.
Marty runs out of a second bedroom down the hallway with his shirt unbuttoned. “What is it? What’s happening?”
“Call nine-one-one!!!” Bunny yells as she trips and falls, the carpet burning the skin off her knee.
* * *
Red flashing lights swirl atop the ambulance that waits between the wrought iron gates of the cobblestone driveway. Hail has turned into freezing rain and Billy is whisked out the front doors on a stretcher, clinging to his every breath with an oxygen mask and two paramedics taking his blood levels. Bunny runs after him, but when she hits the freezing rain, she loses him in her focus, the red lights blurring her vision, her head pounding, her mouth dry. “What’s happening?” she asks no one in particular. On the other side of the driveway, Mackenzie and Marty stand with Meredith and Phyllis, who’s doing damage control with a police officer. Marty walks over to Bunny and wraps his jacket around her wet shoulders. “Here, Bun, put this on, it’s okay, it’s gonna be okay.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The electronic sound of a camera flash awakens Mackenzie, whose limbs are intertwined with Marty’s. They’re lying naked across the green felt pool table in her basement, covered in one of Betsy’s nouveau riche blankets (unclear what it is made of).
Mackenzie lifts her head, disoriented, when she sees Haley standing at the edge of the pool table with her cell phone pointed in their direction: snap, snap, snap.
“What the fuck?” Mackenzie leans over as if she’s a hostage inside her own hangover, swats at Haley and misses.
Haley swings her body to the left with a wide smirk across her face. “Blackmail, bitch.”
Mackenzie rocks Marty’s shoulders. “Marty, get up, get up! My alarm didn’t go off!”
Marty rolls over, rubs his eyes. “Huh?”
“Get up. Hurry! You have to go or my dad will literally kill you. Get up!”
Marty sits up, blinks, then reaches for his glasses on the edge of the table. He puts them on, pushes them up his nose, and sees Haley standing at the foot of the pool table smiling at him. “Oh, shit,” he says, Haley’s presence propelling him off of the pool table and onto the floor, panicked as he reaches for his scattered clothing.
For no reason other than to punish and humiliate her sister, Haley begins to scream: “AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!” It is guttural, animalistic—she’s a budding actress!
“Haley, stop!” Mackenzie whispers, straining the muscles in her neck.
After Billy’s overdose, everyone had been sent home. But Mackenzie was still rolling. She had been staring at her mother’s collection of vintage Waterford crystal service bells in the living room, picking at her scalp, when Marty called to see if she was still awake. He’d taken an Uber to the Wallaces’ house, sneaked in through the garage door. Billy’s overdose wasn’t going to get in the way of losing his virginity to the new senator’s daughter.
As Marty runs to the basement door and out toward the tennis courts, Mackenzie hears the sound of her father running down the back staircase. She knows the sound of panicked foot-stomps. Doug appears in his boxer shorts holding a loaded nine-millimeter handgun.
Marty runs for his life across the courts, his glasses falling off his nose, shattering to pieces. Fuck it, he runs for the exit as Doug follows him waving his gun in the air like a drunken cowboy who’s escaped rehab.
“DAD, stop!!! STOP!!!” Mackenzie screams.
Marty runs down Chain Bridge Road with no shoes on and an open shirt in the freezing cold, passing old Hickory Hill, the Kennedy estate, and various groomed lawns full of government propaganda—pro-gun, anti-abortion, Blue Lives Matter!
Mackenzie runs topless across the tennis court in a pink thong screaming at the top of her lungs—a volcano of teenage love erupting from her postpubescent self: “DAD, STOP!!!”
Haley stands shaken by the escalating seriousness of the situation, eyes wide open, her iPhone dangling by her side as she watches her sister save her boyfriend’s life.
“Christ, Mackenzie, what in God’s name is going on?! Cover yourself!” Doug’s balls hang down the side of his hiked-up boxer shorts as he walks toward her, holding his gun down.
Mackenzie walks swiftly back toward the basement door. “You were going to kill my boyfriend!” She enters the game room and charges her sister: “And it’s all your fault!” She lunges for Haley’s throat. “I’m gonna fucking KILL YOU!”
Haley runs around the pool table like a puppy not wanting to go in its crate.
“She’s trying to blackmail me!” Mackenzie yells. “Give me your phone, you little bitch!” Mackenzie picks up her own phone on the edge of the table and throws it at Haley’s face. Doug stares in horror at his pre- and postpubescent daughters.
“You’re just jealous of me!” Haley screams before Mackenzie’s cell phone hits her lower lip, blood bursting down her chin.
Doug runs to Haley, pointing his finger at Mackenzie. “Go to your room before I blow a hole in this goddamn ceiling!”
“She’s trying to blackmail me! She’s trying to post a naked photo of me on Instagram!” Mackenzie cries.
“I am not!” Haley yells.
“Go to your room!” Doug storms toward Mackenzie, prepared to rip her away from the pool table by the arm.
“Fine! Not my fault if nudes of me show up on the Internet during your next campaign! FUCK YOU!” Mackenzie screams a final time at Haley, then snatches up her phone and runs up the stairs.
Doug sets his gun on the counter of the wet bar, grabs a towel from next to the pinball machine. He lifts Haley up onto the counter and dabs her lip.
“Ow, ow, ow.” She winces.
“It’s not bad, cupcake, but she got you pretty good.” Once Doug has the bleeding under control, he takes her cell phone out of her hands, “Hand them over,” he says.
“Ugh,” Haley grunts.
“You girls better get yourselves under control and not embarrass this family, stop acting so stupid,” he says. “Show them to me.”
“Dad!” Haley begs.
“My father would have taken a belt to me had he heard me speaking the way you and your sister just spoke to each other. Pull up the photos.”
Haley opens up her photo app while Doug holds the phone.
“Jesus Christ,” Doug says as he swipes through several photos of Mackenzie spooning naked with Marty, then a close-up of her face, midblink, boobs out, arms reaching for the camera, and another one of Marty midroll off the Ping-Pong table, his butt in the air, his flaccid penis dangling as he tries to pull up his pants.
“Who is this boy?” Doug asks Haley with concern in his voice.
“I don’t know. She says he’s her boyfriend.”
“Well, I’ll talk to her upstairs.” Doug performs an artificial smile as he plops Haley down off of the counter. “Hold that towel there until the bleeding has stopped, there’s Neosporin under the sink in my bathroom.”
“Where’s Mom?” Haley asks.
“She’s still sleeping.” Betsy would have tried to assert some power and control over the fight between her daughters if she hadn’t been fast asleep from the Chardonnay and Ambien, decorated with earplugs, an eye mask, and a night guard, wrapped in a heated blanket like a modern mummy.
* * *
Doug stands in front of Mackenzie’s bedroom door wearing a monogrammed navy bathrobe. He knocks. “Mackenzie, cupcake, I’m coming in.” Frightened of her womanhood, Doug wants to be sure she’s clothed.
Mackenzie is snuggled in her St. Peter’s Academy sweatshirt and leggings under he
r coral-colored covers. She wears her Apple AirPods, listening to music, and has her iPad in her lap. She refuses to look up when the door opens.
Doug sits on the edge of her bed like he’s aiming for father of the year.
“Can you take your AirPods out please?” he asks. Mackenzie rolls her eyes but does as she is asked. Then she quickly, and very carefully, slides her cell phone under her comforter and presses the Record button in her voice-notes app.
“Listen, cupcake, I saw the photos your sister took—”
Mackenzie cuts him off. “I love him,” she says in protest.
Doug nods as if to refrain from disgust and outright disapproval. “Mackenzie,” he says, trying to remain calm and not overtly racist, “you had a young man over here without mine or your mother’s permission. You acted out of faith with your religion, out of faith with what your parents think is best for you, and you disrespected our rules… right after General Montgomery’s son was sent to the hospital for a drug overdose. You understand how this looks for our family? To have some idiot running down the street this morning for every neighbor to see?”
“He’s not an idiot, he’s going to Harvard,” Mackenzie says.
“Sweetheart—” Doug scoots closer. “You had a young African American boy in our home who gave you drugs. Is that right?” he asks.
“What? What are you getting at?”
“Answer the question—yes or no.”
“NO! He did not give me drugs!”
“I’m not mad, cupcake. I’m not mad.…” Doug’s calculating brain knows getting upset will escalate the situation, which won’t help; he’s got to think strategy, psychology, the best politicians he knows are psychologically (pathologically) savvy—each trying to outdo the other, a disease that needs its host.
“I’m not mad at all, your dad had some fun as a teenager too, you know.…”
Mackenzie softens at her father’s touch, his hand moving upon her knee.
“Love… is complicated, cupcake. We know he’s not the one, right? The one you would want to introduce to Nanny and Grampy? Love doesn’t feel complicated. And… with this one… it feels complicated, Mackenzie. You wouldn’t want to put yourself in any challenging position, would you?”
The Cave Dwellers Page 18