Someone, a mime, maybe the tall one, kissed her, and she kissed them back.
Her heart sped up, and up, and up, and the mime carried her to the side of the room, where they made out in a long-empty plastic cubicle. She felt breasts that weren’t her own under her palms, which made her laugh, until the mime pushed up against her, so she stopped laughing, the whole thing a mess of damp skin and pulsing lights and speakers so loud that she felt the bass in her bones.
“Cat!” she heard Bess screaming from somewhere far away. “Your tits are out!”
“Great! Let’s be free,” Cat cried out.
“Pull up your dress!”
Cat looked up and saw a phone pointed at her. Dammit. She peeled the mime off her body and hoiked her dress up as far as it would go. The mime smiled happily and danced back into the crowd.
“I want to be in bed,” Bess yelled over the music. “Can we go?”
Cat stood up and immediately swayed sharply to the right. Bess caught her. “I’m taking that as a yes,” she said, dragging Cat out of the building and wedging her into another waiting Mercedes.
Inside the car, Cat looked disoriented. “I think something was in my drink,” she mumbled. “I should not be this fucked up.”
“You whiffed some Molly, Cat, that’ll do it,” Bess insisted.
“Oh…whoops. But not that much,” Cat said as she slumped into the seat.
When they pulled up to the hotel, two photographers waited outside. Inside the privacy of the car’s blackout windows, Bess slapped Cat hard across the face. “Wake up!” she snapped. “Walk straight back to the little gold elevator. You can do it.”
Cat nodded. She managed to walk through the lobby without falling, but her dress was covered in the mime’s handprints and her face was smeared with lipstick, so the men took her photo with obvious delight. When they got up to the Eurydice Suite, Bess dragged Cat into the bathroom and dumped her onto the floor of the shower, turning on the water and forcing Cat to wash off the paint with the hotel’s bodywash before drawing a bath for herself and doing the same. But the water didn’t make Cat feel better—only worse. She felt something rise up in her throat and vomited for the second time that night, onto the shower’s tiled marble floor.
“Cat! Are you okay?” Bess shouted from the bathtub across the room.
Cat raised herself up and pushed the vomit toward the drain with her fingers.
“I’ll be fine,” she insisted. “I feel much better now.” Cat stood up, rinsed herself clean, and grabbed a towel. It was warm and fluffy and soft.
“I have the worst headache of my entire life,” Bess complained as she climbed out of the tub. Cat nodded in agreement, her skull crackling with pain, like she’d been hit with a hammer. Yet, somehow, both women managed to stumble onto their silk beds, piled high with duvets and heavy goose-down pillows.
“Night, Cat,” Bess called out, half under her sheets.
“Night, Bess,” Cat called back.
When they fell asleep, it was straight into a black hole.
Chapter Nineteen
Molly Beale stood over Cat’s bed, panicking.
Cat was facedown in a pile of pillows, a towel wrapped haphazardly around her naked body. Bess was passed out cold in her own room. Their two beautiful suede dresses (on loan to RAGE from the designers) were soaking wet, covered in paint, and discarded on the bathroom floor, completely ruined. Molly tried shaking Cat. Nothing.
She grabbed a remote and hit Play. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s “Hoedown” blasted as loudly as the suite’s speaker system would allow.
Bess bolted out of bed first. “Oh my god, oh my god, make it stop,” she screamed, until she saw Molly, at which point she laughed weakly and grabbed a sheet. But Cat still wouldn’t budge. Molly turned the music off. She dug in her handbag for a compact and held it under Cat’s nose; it fogged up, but barely.
“Something’s wrong with Cat,” she said to Bess, her voice shaking with fear. “She won’t wake up.”
“Oh my god,” Bess said, running toward her friend’s apparently lifeless body. Molly raised her hand to slap Cat and her palm connected, hard, but Cat still didn’t stir; the only change was a faint red mark on her cheek. Bess ran to the bathroom and filled a tumbler with cold water, dumping it on Cat’s head. Still: nothing.
“Call an ambulance,” she told Molly, still shaking Cat. “Call one right now.”
As Molly picked up the phone, Cat finally rolled over and pulled her towel up. “I’m awake,” she said groggily. “I’m fine.”
Lou Lucas, wedged on a plastic folding chair next to the rented apartment’s lead-paned windows, scowled through her binoculars. They hadn’t left the hotel all day. Had she gone too far? No. They’ll still be ruined tomorrow, she told herself. It wouldn’t be like them to skip tonight’s event. Even if they had the mother of all hangovers, Cat and Bess would try to get out, she was certain.
She stood up and looked around the apartment, a high-ceilinged attic space with broad beams and thick plaster walls that she’d found online. From this aerie set high on the hill of Montmartre and facing the river, she could see all of Paris and its tangled mess of alley-sized streets. Copper windows winked in the sun, terra-cotta chimneys popped up by the hundreds, and colorful laundry lines stretched all around her, their bounty swaying gently in the breeze, while horns honked, teenagers laughed, and smoke drifted up from cafés. It was positively cheerful. Lou forced herself to be optimistic.
This time next week, she told herself sternly, you’ll have everything you want. A bit tricky, to be sure. But everything that was truly valuable had to be earned. Nobody would give those things to you. You simply had to do what everyone else did: take it by force.
An exhausted Cat, propped up on the dirty steps in front of the Paris Opera, tried to stay awake as they waited for the Phoebe show, an unofficial presentation by an upstart local brand, to begin. She’d been sewn into a long column from Albert V., made from a blend of vicuña—a Peruvian wool so fine that it came in only one color, a nutty golden tone—and ivory artificial bee silk grown in a lab at MIT, and she strained at the discomfort of the tight stitching. A single rope of emeralds hung from her neck and looped down her back; she wore no other jewelry, carried no bag. Her fingers had been varnished with flakes of real rose gold. With her bloodless face coated in a snowy powder and her lips painted the palest of blush tones, Cat was a gift fit for a king.
Behind her, a perky Bess, her hair clean and worked into a braided updo by Edith, twirled for the cameras in a taffeta affair whose knife pleats lifted and separated to reveal themselves as the world’s thickest fringe. An underlay of dreamy gossamer floated beneath. She smiled and giggled for the cameras until they suddenly stopped, the photographers’ attentions dissipating as quickly as they’d arrived. Cat blinked in confusion while a commotion flared up rapidly in the street. Bess’s face fell.
Two of the four founders of Mania had arrived, Keira Bishop and her identical twin, Karoline. Until now, the only photos of the Mania team on their own map were usually based in their office, plain and casual Photograms taken while they sat at their computers. This was the girls’ first public appearance.
The twins wore matching pleated dresses in pastel shades that resembled upside-down flowers; the hems were sewn under to further emphasize the upended-tulip shape, and the oversized armholes revealed clear plastic bodices beneath. Their hair had been brushed out in huge disco curls and floated down their backs in big puffy clouds. Both girls wore real pink silk ballet slippers and walked en pointe with ease, flopping up and down and twirling as they walked into the opera.
Cat and Bess stood, openmouthed, and fell into the crowd that followed the two girls, who danced their way down the aisles and onto the stage. Everyone filed slowly into their seats while Keira and Karoline moved to the edges of the black stage. Nearly fifty models streamed from the wings and arranged themselves presentation-style, each one wearing ballet shoes and a variation on the looks sported by the Mania girls.
The models didn’t really look like models, though; they were muscled, and stringy, and short, and very very good at ballet.
“I think that’s the corps,” a surprised Bess whispered as they took their seats in the front row. Cat nodded. One of the Bishop girls caught her eye and winked. Cat smiled back; she couldn’t help it. The girls were clearly so excited, and she felt a proxy of delight on their behalf.
Sounds came up from the orchestra pit: strains of violin, harp, piano, xylophone; blasts of trumpet, oboe, flute. Drums sputtered out a handful of heavy taps. When the entire audience was finally seated, the lights dimmed and the orchestra played a suite from The Nutcracker.
The ballerinas danced their way offstage one by one and through the crowd, passing by the front row and down through the aisles, each one taking a moment to solo onstage before leaping off again. The Bishop twins remained posed at the back of the stage, each standing perfectly still, like little robots.
A dozen cameramen wandered through the space, pointing their lenses and zooming. The show was probably being broadcast in real time on Mania, tags appending to the images of boldfaced names mere seconds after they appeared on-screen.
Then the room went pitch-black.
Cat felt a shiver run down her spine. Bess squeezed her hand.
A few moments passed before the ballerinas—still packed into the aisles—turned on flashlights previously hidden all around the theater. The corps performed the remainder of their dance, holding their own spotlights on one another, while the orchestra played with gusto in the background.
As Cat smoothed the impossibly soft fabric of her dress, as she watched the dancers, she immediately found herself wondering how much of a gain for Mania tonight would represent—and how much of a loss for RAGE.
I have to nail tomorrow’s shoot. Cat felt the pressure with a deep certainty. Until now she’d dismissed Mania, thinking that their advertorial strategy didn’t have half the magic RAGE produced in their editorials, but…they’d participated in a glorious spectacle that had been tasteful, creative, effortlessly coordinated, and, perhaps most importantly, wholly unmarketed in advance. They weren’t desperate. At this moment, Mania was soaring toward the sun on their successes, while wretched RAGE tried to stiffen its own melting wings, the ground coming up beneath them in double time.
Sweat broke out under her armpits. She panicked, worrying about her career and the delicate fabric of the dress in equal measure. What if this is how it will be for the rest of my life? What if she got so far away from editorial work that she’d find herself begging for the appearance fees at energy drink launches, her assets dwindled and her fortunes reversed? What if, with each dress she put on, each RSVP she sent out, she was inadvertently scooping another shovelful of dirt out from under her own feet?
Cat didn’t pay attention to the end of the performance; she smiled blankly, always, now, aware of the cameras lurking nearby. Bess pulled a container of the hotel’s hand cream out of the handbag she’d hidden beneath the pleats of her dress and mindlessly rubbed it into the backs of her hands.
“Let’s get out of here,” Bess whispered as she dropped a dollop of the cream into Cat’s palm. Cat nodded and felt her heartbeat rise again with pure panic. When the crowd stood to applaud the presentation, they edged toward the stage door and slipped out into the alleyway.
“Holy shit,” Bess said. “I think I’m going to have a seizure. What a nightmare.”
“I thought it was kind of genius,” Cat replied.
“Are you serious?” Bess asked, her tone sharp. “That was ridiculous. That was designed for children with absolutely no attention span.”
“Wow, tell me what you really think,” Cat replied sarcastically.
“I think it was a spectacle. It didn’t have any value.”
“That’s condescending,” Cat snapped back.
Bess rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to be rude about it. So we disagree. Whatever.”
“Look, I know we’ve had a long day,” Cat said, “but you don’t have to be mad.”
“I’m just expressing what I actually think for once, Cat. You constantly bully me with your opinions. I’m finally expressing my own. You’re the one who’s being a…bitch,” she hissed, the word falling between them like a bomb.
“Wow. Bitch…I didn’t think we called anybody that, ever, especially not each other. Fuck you very much, Bess, because you have everything,” Cat retorted, her voice edging on nasty as she jabbed her finger toward her best friend, counting each indignity: “You have a home, and a boyfriend, and a family who loves you. You don’t need to have opinions.”
Bess looked hurt and a little bit stunned before transitioning into total and complete shock. She looked into Cat’s eyes.
“Are my pupils dilated?” she asked urgently.
Cat, annoyed and hurt, tried to walk away down the alley, carefully holding the hem of her dress above the pools of oil and gravel. “I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“I’m serious,” Bess yelled, chasing Cat down and grabbing her shoulder.
Cat stopped on a dime and looked at her friend, whose blue eyes were dominated by big, inky pupils. “Actually…yes.”
“You too.”
“We’re high,” they said at the same time.
Cat looked down at her $75,000 dress. “We’d better get back to the hotel,” she said, “before I destroy this one, too.”
Bess nodded and ordered a car. Ten minutes later, they snuck into the side entrance of the hotel, avoiding all the cameras. As far as the Mania map was concerned, Cat and Bess were still inside the Phoebe presentation.
Chapter Twenty
Hutton had been refreshing his email repeatedly for hours when a reply from the IRS finally appeared. There was only one Schedule K-1 that had been turned in for Lilac Futures, the taxes paid on time every year. The name wasn’t familiar. He ran it through the database. Nothing. The junior FBI agents ran it through theirs.
“She’s six years old,” one of the agents said.
“Fuck,” Hutton swore. That meant it was stolen. “You can go,” he said to the agent, who nodded and disappeared. Hutton dropped his head to the desk and groaned, then went back to his computer and stared at the form. It took him a few minutes to notice the address associated with the child’s name, but once he did, time stopped.
He noticed the flickering of the fluorescent tubes above him, their buzzing, the way the thick gray paint sat on the concrete walls, the beating of his own heart.
He felt a pressure build up, then remembered to inhale.
“It wasn’t stolen,” he said slowly to himself. “It was borrowed.”
He darted out of his office, jumped into the nearest squad car, and threw it into gear. He looked at his watch. It was 3:00 p.m. He turned on his sirens and drove like a maniac, weaving in and out of traffic. When Hutton was just a few blocks from Cooper, he turned them off, double-parked on Thirty-Ninth, got out, and strolled confidently into the Cooper garage.
He smiled at the door attendant before flashing his badge. “Hi, I’m Mark,” he said flirtatiously, standing a little too close. “My girlfriend Catherine Ono works on 46. Mind if I head up?” He took out his ID and handed it to her.
Gina couldn’t help but smile right back at this tall, gorgeous man. “She didn’t go to Paris?” she asked him. “That sucks.”
“What?” he asked, confused.
“Oh,” Gina said awkwardly. “Everybody’s in Paris, for the shows. The whole magazine.” She looked at him with pity.
Fuck. He wanted this arrest so badly he could taste it burning in his mouth like a handful of pennies, could feel it roiling in his stomach, next to his grief. He couldn’t tell the FBI their suspect had left New York; they’d begin the extradition process and the case would be officially removed from his jurisdiction. He thanked Gina and walked back to his car.
He sat in the driver’s seat, closed his eyes, and gave himself sixty seconds to meditate, allowing thoughts to move
freely through his mind without judgment. When he’d counted to sixty, Hutton opened his eyes, sat up, opened his phone, and booked a ticket to Paris. On the way to the airport, he reinstalled Mania.
When they got up to the Eurydice Suite, Bess repurposed the cut-crystal vases in the kitchen into very large water glasses and filled them each with an entire bottle of Perrier. She picked up the lobster phone from the piano and ordered more steaks and salad, but this time appending a “rapidement, s’il vous plaît,” sharply to the end.
“Tres bien, Bessoo,” Cat said as she collapsed on the couch.
Bess flopped down next to her, grabbing a pillow and holding it in a hug. She checked her phone. “Molly’s out on the town, I guess. How you feeling?”
Cat squinted one eye. “Not great. You?”
“I need to eat, I guess. Let’s get out of these clothes.” They cut each other out of their dresses and hung them up carefully in the closet.
“I’m gonna take another shower,” Cat said. “Can you start making a list of who might have slipped us something?”
Bess nodded.
Cat stepped into the shower and felt nauseous. She reached for the open bodywash on the shelf but slipped and sent the tiny bottle flying. She gripped the door and steadied herself, then tried to uncap a second one without falling over. After a few tense moments, she managed to squeeze the scented gel into her palm. Cat nearly smeared it onto her body before her mind flooded with recognition.
She knew this smell. It was the same scent that Vittoria had smeared on Cat’s face not once but twice at Bedford Organics, the one that said “For Happiness” on the label. She let the gel fall out of her palm and down the drain.
The room spun, the water fell over her head, and she opened the shower door, focusing only on the three remaining sets of Panacea products scattered around the bathroom. She scooped them up in her arms and ran naked into the dining room.
“Bess!” she cried. “It wasn’t our drinks. It’s Bedford Organics,” Cat exclaimed, tossing her the juniper bottle. “Smell that.”
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