The final paragraphs were so ludicrous that Hutton laughed out loud before remembering that it was his own name on the screen.
Callie didn’t think anyone at the party would notice her stuffing gum into her mouth and heroin into her nose. She grabbed the couture-clad arm of RAGE editor Catherine Ono and dragged her into a private room as she choked.
Ono tried desperately to save Callie’s life, even breaking a nail on the wad of gum in her throat as she tried in vain to dislodge it. Before she knew it, Callie was dead and she was being interviewed by an aggressive pack of NYPD officers. And now? The world would have already forgotten Callie Court—if it wasn’t for RAGE’s bravery in publishing this story.
Feminism cannot be about lifting yourself up while your sisters are trampled behind you. It is a movement for all of us. We must be united. We must be one. Women of the world: we must stop throwing ourselves upon the altar of male indifference. Like the logoless clothing worn by Court in the accompanying photo shoot, we must stop branding ourselves with the names of people who don’t deserve us—a lesson she learned too late.
If Callie Court—fashion’s most beguiling muse of the last twenty years—couldn’t love herself enough to survive loving someone else, how will we ever survive? How will the rest of us ever love ourselves if we don’t love each other?
I offer a simple solution: Be the matriarch. Find your feminism. Live in sisterhood.
Hutton actually snorted when he read the last line. He felt blood rushing to his face, and he pulled at his collar, peeling off his sweater and unbuttoning his shirt. The feeling in his stomach—a combination of shame, surprise, fear, and adrenaline—was quite possibly the most unpleasant thing he had ever experienced. He wanted to smash the file into pieces, though he knew there were millions more, probably being stacked on newsstands at this very moment; he wanted to burn down the world. Hutton recalled a phone conversation from September, when Cat found her name in the newspaper while they were talking and cried because the article was so mean. He’d told her to get over it and changed the subject. How stupid was I? he thought. I had no fucking idea what I was talking about.
He scanned back through the article, this time highlighting details only Callie would have known—the day he went to her apartment in Carroll Gardens and spent three hours working up the courage to tell her he’d met someone. Or two years later, their six-hour dinner. Her scarf had burned on the candle. He only vaguely recalled laughing in shock, the waitstaff laughing, too, as he simultaneously put out the fire with a damp napkin and ordered another round of drinks. They’d talked until the restaurant closed.
She’d worn that scarf every winter for the rest of her life, the article said.
Who would she have told all of this to? Callie didn’t have friends like this, not people she poured her heart out to like they were her…diary.
It was, he suddenly realized, taken straight from her diary, the one he hadn’t been able to find. That she “crashed against his indifference and broke every bone in her body”—that was true, he realized, recognition bubbling up so fast he nearly choked on it. “Your indifference is tearing me apart,” she’d told him once.
As he read the article for a third time, he became certain that it was a mixture of her diary and the extrapolations of a salacious narrator, their heavy prose stitched onto hers with the drool of a tabloid screenplay.
Hutton read the lines that were meant to describe him over and over. Was he really a “self-involved playboy whose handsome face and bottomless wallet kept him safely insulated from consequences of any kind”? No. She wouldn’t have said that.
Callie Court had been a lot of things, but she wasn’t hateful—she was simply trapped by an emotional birth defect, a hole in her heart that she filled unsustainably, with parties, with sloppy, dramatic friends, with drugs. It stopped her from growing up. It had kept her living a decade behind Hutton. I didn’t want a ward, he’d reminded himself, had no desire for a woman who would follow him around like a puppy, who needed to be cared for and monitored and chastised and cleaned up after. He’d wanted a partner. It’s not wrong to want to be with someone who faces the same challenges, he tried to tell himself, repeating the mantra he’d adopted since the night she died. You didn’t betray her. You didn’t abandon her. You moved on. It’s not a crime.
The photos made him deeply sad. In one of them, Callie was doing an exaggerated bend while wearing a rough cloth gown the size of a house, tears streaming down her face. She was positioned underneath the whale that hung from the ceiling in the Museum of Natural History, the background blurred behind her. The next page showed Callie lying practically naked on the floor of the planetarium, fake starlight dotting her skin and a large straw hat covering her torso. The next had Callie jumping from Belvedere Castle, her skirt swirling up around her as two very real-looking firemen stood below with a trampoline. On and on it went, each image more imaginatively implausible than the last.
Halfway through them Hutton felt tremors of grief cross his chest. He closed the laptop and shoved it in his briefcase. He wished the windows opened so that he could throw it out, and he imagined breaking one; saw the cabin depressurizing as his eardrums broke and anything not strapped down was sucked out the insatiable vortex of the tiny window—then blinked his eyes and returned again to the calm, blank space of Premiere Classe, the laptop and its contents corralled only by the thin leather walls of his briefcase.
Envy is the fuel of the capital engine, Cat had told him once over the phone, when he’d asked point-blank how she could possibly take her job so seriously. It’s both literally and figuratively a beautiful woman. You’ll do anything—get a job, wear a suit, take her to dinner—so that you can fuck her brains out. Beautiful women are the fire upon which the world burns.
That’s desire, he’d argued at the time, not envy.
Same difference, Cat had replied.
Hutton grimaced at the memory.
The sun, burning a thin yellow through the quilted gray skies of Paris, was just starting to hoist itself over the horizon. Lou’s phone beeped—time to get up—but she didn’t need the alarm. Every fiber and sinew told her it was time for her morning application. She rolled over toward the opposite nightstand and grabbed her tubes of lotion, squeezing thick white lines onto her legs, arms, hands, and feet, mixing the eucalyptus hand cream and the jasmine lotion, along with a teeny-tiny dose of the juniper night cream on her face, to keep her perfectly balanced. She lay still for a few minutes and waited for it to dry.
Lou stretched her limbs, threw back the scratchy white duvet of her rented apartment with joy, and peered quickly through her binoculars to the Eurydice Suite; the curtains were still drawn. They must be passed out. Perfect. She marched into the living room, temporarily transformed into a closet, where three nearly identical day dresses were draped over the sofa, all of them custom couture that she’d ordered on a whim from the shows last year when she’d still been married to Alexander Lucas and his bank account. For the first time in months she didn’t need to dress down—to look like Lou Lucas, a hardworking mummy doing her best on the alimony she’d been given, for whom any one of these $25,000 dresses would have been an absurd extravagance—no, no, no. Not today. Today she would be Madame Lucas again.
She dragged her fingers over the fabric of each dress: the first, bloodred handloomed silk cady; the second, a virgin-white broderie anglaise cotton; and the third, a flowery 3-D-printed plastic. They were all ladylike, hems dropped below the knee, waists belted appropriately, and sleeves extending below the elbow, but they were varied in tenor. The red silk was fluid and sexy, the white cotton overtly feminine, the printed plastic futuristic and strong. That was the one. She pawed through her suitcase for a high-waisted pair of opaque briefs and matching bra to wear underneath the semitransparent dress.
She selected a pair of ruby suede stiletto boots, their color a perfect match for the smattering of flowers melted through the bodice of the dress, added a huge cuff bracelet
resembling a mermaid’s tail, and sighed with satisfaction.
She stopped in the bathroom, brushed her hair, and rolled it up into hot curlers, then walked back into the kitchen, poured herself a cup of strong coffee, and popped open a snack-sized can of chocolate Ensure. A sudden surge of energy gripped her, and she responded to it by dropping to the floor for twenty push-ups and a two-minute plank. When she’d finished, her coffee was the perfect temperature, and she knocked it back while applying her makeup and a light swipe of deodorant, though the sweat glands in her armpits had been surgically removed for convenience.
After completing her face—black liquid liner, tangerine blush, flamingo pink lips—she dressed, stepping into the nude briefs and bra before zipping and belting herself into the plastic dress, its wide skirt undulating in Jetson fantasy waves beneath the 3-D-printed flowers.
All she needed was a handbag. Lou rooted around in her enormous suitcase, throwing skirts and pants onto the floor until she found a circular clutch plated in 14-karat gold, the iguana-leather strap designed to hold the bag in her palm like a discus. She filled it completely with a full tube of the eucalyptus hand cream and walked out the door.
Nestled safely in the backseat of a silver Audi, Lou checked her phone one final time: 9:55 a.m. Perfect. The shoot in the Le Narcisse ballroom should be springing to life at this very moment—and, thankfully, Cat and Bess wouldn’t be anywhere near it.
It was time for Madame Lucas to save the day.
Chapter Twenty-One
Hutton found himself standing inside the lobby of a petite Versailles, waiting patiently for the Poirot-shaped desk clerk to finish a phone call. He shifted his weight and tried to catch the man’s attention, only to receive a raised finger in response; one moment, the finger said. Hutton nodded and forced himself to wait, standing a few feet back from the counter. He looked at Mania again, at the photos of Cat—dirty, thin, wild-eyed, her hair shorn off—stumbling into this hotel two nights ago. She hadn’t appeared on the map for over twelve hours. Though he ached with impatience, Hutton didn’t want to embarrass her any further; he’d done that enough for one year. He tried to remain calm.
Suddenly, a chime rang, echoing loudly off the polished walls and floor. The brass doors of the elevator at the far end of the lobby parted to reveal a dozen shellacked and perfumed sculptures.
Many of them appeared to display a permanent smile, huge veneers glowing ultraviolet beneath the stretched skin of their rosy lips and wet eyes. It was a cluster of statues, he thought at first, until suddenly—one moved, and they all moved behind it. It took Hutton several moments to recognize them as human women, so carefully had they been cosseted and finished.
The horde descended upon him, making their way toward the front doors of the hotel in formation, their voices glancing off the marble ceilings and walls in an unintelligible cacophony. He closed his eyes and listened. Once he’d parsed the syllables—Russian and Mandarin, mostly—he became aware, finally, of their youth.
Some were impossibly young, barely legal, though each member of the pack had enormous diamonds hanging from their ring fingers. Ropes of gold banded the prominent sinews of their necks. When the first—a brunette, eighteen if she was a day—passed him, she turned her painted lashes up flirtatiously and let her mouth go slack, parting her lips. He tried to look away but found it impossible, and so he moved, to make his way past their bodies to the counter, but they insisted on passing him closely. Each one touched his jacket or brushed his arm. Hutton closed his eyes again and waited for the clacking of their heels to meet the whoosh of the revolving door at the front of the hotel.
When the last one had exited into the throng of photographers waiting outside, Hutton opened his eyes to find the mustachioed desk attendant staring at him with bemusement.
“Monsieur?” he asked.
“I’m here to see Catherine Ono,” Hutton explained, showing his passport. The Premiere Classe ticket was still jammed into its pages, and the desk attendant smiled a twitchy little grin. “It’s a surprise,” Hutton explained lamely, though the concierge did not hesitate; this was a place where first-class men received first-class service.
“Bonjour, welcome, you must take the private elevator over there,” he replied, handing Hutton a key and pointing to a small gold door at the end of the lobby. “Thank you, enjoy your stay.”
Hutton dashed toward the elevator. Moments later, he stepped into a huge foyer and found himself facing a very large door. Hutton waved his key over the lock and ran inside to discover a room so elaborate it made the lobby look like a dentist’s office—where Cat and Bess sat calmly sipping coffee.
“You’re okay,” he said, surprised, anxiety leaving his body.
“Hutton?” Cat said in disbelief. Shocked, she stood up from the table. “How did you get a key to our room?” she asked warily.
“Bad security,” he said. “I found out who’s funding Bedford Organics.”
“Lou,” Cat and Bess said together. He looked surprised again.
“She tried to poison us,” Bess said.
“We’re fine, though,” Cat explained quickly. “We were discussing what to do.”
“Don’t do anything,” he said firmly. “I’m here to arrest her.” Both women smiled. “Where is she?” he asked.
“I would guess that she’s on her way to the hotel,” Bess answered. “Do you need us to find her?”
“Could you?”
Bess glanced at Cat, then nodded, shut her laptop, and walked past him. “I’ll look for her. I’ll be back,” she said, then closed the door behind her.
The room was empty except for the two of them. Hutton stared hard at Cat with an expression she didn’t understand. She rubbed the top of her shorn head self-consciously. “I cut my hair.”
Unexpectedly, Hutton grabbed Cat and pulled her into his body, holding her so tightly that she thought he just might squeeze all the air out of her. He rested his chin on her head and she felt his chest heave. She tried to look up at him, but he wouldn’t let her move. The air around them shifted. After a minute passed, she relaxed, resting her sallow cheek against the copse of gray and white and golden hairs on his chest, and she was so glad he was here. Though Cat had saved herself, Hutton had finally shown that he cared, first and foremost, about Cat’s personal safety.
“I’m so sorry,” he finally said, and she understood that he was apologizing again for the arrest, and for what he’d learned about her role in Callie’s death, for her pain, for disappearing from her life. “I’m so, so sorry.” He meant it.
“I’m sorry for you,” Cat replied. “I didn’t know about you and Callie. That must have been really hard,” she said, her voice small. “I’m sorry for your loss, I truly am.”
He pushed his cheek against her head and went quiet again. A nearby church bell chimed the hour, the bells ringing ten times, loud and clear, until he relaxed his grip and let her go before kissing her on the mouth.
Cat reached up, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him back. He still tasted and smelled like cut grass. Their kisses grew frenzied. She dragged him into her green bedroom and shut the door tightly. He peeled off her dress. She shoved him against the wall, leaning over to grab a condom out of her bag.
He picked her up. Cat dug her fingernails into his back and bit his shoulder—hard—before he moaned and put his mouth back on hers. They moved together until her face contorted and her cunt shuddered. With his face buried in her neck, Hutton gripped her body so tightly that Cat thought her ribs might snap.
“I have to find Lou,” he said into her ear. “But I want you to know that everything is going to be okay, Cat. I won’t screw up your life this time.”
She leaned back and looked into his eyes, shining with the same sincerity she’d seen on the day they met. “I know,” she said decisively, using her bare fingernails to trace the line of his jaw through his golden stubble. “But tell me your plan anyway.”
Molly had been up since well before daw
n, working with a set of local construction workers to transform the historic ballroom of Le Narcisse. Scaffolding had been erected above each of the seventeenth-century murals that lined the room—each one depicting a different scene in the Narcissus myth—so that the models could be hung from above, floating on air for each shot. Hillary’s sketches and notes for the shoot envisioned the models as marionettes. The inspiration board was covered with images from a Valentino campaign that had been plastered all over New York during the previous spring: a young woman’s abundant body, her face cropped out, was squeezed and wrapped into a tiny wedding gown. Laces split and pearl beadwork popped off as the model’s velveteen skin brimmed over the fabric, a vagina and a breast and a dress all at once.
Molly watched a construction worker climb down from the final set of scaffolding. “Fini,” he called out. “Mercieee,” she called back, then checked her watch. This was getting ridiculous. Was she expected to begin the shoot without them?
Cat and Bess had been sleeping when she’d left the suite, but Molly had scheduled their wake-up calls for over two hours earlier. The models were nearly done with their hair and makeup. The remaining RAGE staffers had arrived on the morning flight, and they stood over the breakfast buffet, drinking coffee and chatting. Molly smiled awkwardly at Constance Onderveet. Constance did not smile back. It was almost eleven. Molly sent her tenth frantic text message to Cat and Bess.
“Beans!” a voice echoed behind her. Molly turned to find Lou Lucas zooming across the room on her plastic Barbie-doll feet with astonishing speed.
“Hello, darling dear,” Lou yelled, kissing Molly on the cheek. She practically reeked of a floral bouquet; jasmine, honeysuckle, juniper, and eucalyptus followed her in a rotten cloud. “Isn’t this just the fur knickers.” Lou grinned approvingly at the room. “I really do love this marvelous fucking hotel.”
I'll Eat When I'm Dead Page 30