Social Creature

by Tara Isabella Burton

Of course, Lavinia doesn’t mean it like that. Lavinia doesn’t live in the real world, which is a world where when a white woman tells a black man he should be hanged it does not mean what it means in Lavinia’s world, where men still fight duels with muskets or swords or bow to each other in the morning—Louise knows this. It doesn’t even occur to Lavinia—not even now, not even when he’s looking at her like she’s hit him—what she has done, and all Louise can think is fuck, fuck, and then she’s running out of the van; then she grabs Lavinia so hard by the arm Lavinia yelps and she screams let’s go and almost throws her in the passenger seat; she grabs the keys and presses the pedal down because God knows Lavinia can’t drive this thing, and the tires screech and they are all the way into Park Slope before anybody says anything.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Lavinia is rubbing her arm where Louise has grabbed it.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Louise says.

  She keeps her eyes on the road.

  “Done what? Defend you?”

  “Said what you said.”

  “What did I say? He—he insulted you!”

  “You can’t just—” Louise’s heart is only just going back to normal. “You can’t just—fucking—say things without thinking about them.”

  She doesn’t know why she is protecting him. He has done nothing for years but follow her home. He has done nothing but call her names, and tell her he’s going to fuck her, or else he wouldn’t if his life depended on it. She has given him a black eye.

  Maybe he was just trying to be friendly (how can she even think that, now?).

  Maybe I should have just asked his name.

  And Louise is so angry with herself and angry with Lavinia for being so stupid and angry with Lavinia for meaning so well and angry with Lavinia for not knowing why she is angry and she doesn’t say anything.

  They drive in silence all the way to the Upper East Side.

  “You know,” Lavinia says, when Louise stops the truck, “I thought you’d be grateful.”

  * * *

  —

  The bed is soft. The bedspread is jacquard, fur-lined. The walls have moldings on them. There’s a midcentury modern chandelier. There are Persian carpets, and an art nouveau wardrobe Lavinia bought at the flea market in the Flatiron and there are antique postcards from all the childhood places Lavinia and Cordelia have been to. There is a framed photograph of the sisters on the bedside table.

  There is no room for Louise’s clothing in the closet. Lavinia has filled it up with formal dresses—ball gowns and vintage taffeta and silks and sequins and feathers and the long velvet trousers Lavinia wears those nights she wants to look like Marlene Dietrich.

  “I’m sorry,” Lavinia says. She is in her powder-blue gown with the stains on it. Her hair is halfway down her back. “I didn’t think. But, I mean—it’s not like you have a lot of clothes, anyway. You can always wear mine!” She says this very brightly. “It’s so good that we’re the same size, isn’t it?” She brings Louise a glass of champagne. It’s ten o’clock in the morning. “Speaking of which…” She sits on the bed, right on top of Louise’s sweatshirts. “I was thinking. You should join ClassPass. I’m going to. That way we can work out together, in the mornings. God, I know, I know—but I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m going to get up early—we both are. Apparently your metabolism starts to slow down before your mid-twenties—I’m going to have to be so much more careful.”

  It takes Louise a second to register that Lavinia has no idea how old she is.

  “Here, give me your phone. I’ll sign up for you.” Lavinia grabs Louise’s purse. “Do you have a credit card in there?”

  “How much is it?”

  “Not a lot. Like—two hundred? One ninety? Something like that.”

  Lavinia grabs the card.

  “That’s kind of expensive.”

  “Oh, don’t worry!” Lavinia beams. “It’s unlimited. You can take as many classes as you want—we can go twice a day, even!”

  “I don’t think…”

  “It’ll be so much fun! You know me, Louise—I’ll never do anything unless you make me. I’m positively useless. I wouldn’t even write—and then this whole sabbatical—it’d be a waste, wouldn’t it? If it weren’t for you I’d just lie around the house all day and drink—you see, you have a moral obligation to me. My life is in your hands!” She lies back on the pillows. “Besides, aren’t you saving a bunch of money in rent?”

  “I mean, some.”

  Lavinia sits straight back up. “How much did you pay? You know—in that place?”

  Louise hesitates.

  “Eight hundred.”

  “Is that all?”

  “It was rent-stabilized.” There were months eight hundred seemed impossible.

  “So, that’s perfect. Save eight hundred, spend two hundred—you’ve still got six hundred a month more than you did before, right?” She dangles the card. “And we’ll both get so skinny—oh my God! We’re going to be like—sylphs.”

  She cocks her head at Louise, like a dog.

  “Come on—say yes, please.”

  Louise is so, so grateful.

  Isn’t she?

  She takes her card. She takes the phone.

  “Do it now—come on.”

  Louise does. Two hundred dollars a month.

  “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” She kisses Louise on the forehead.

  Then: “Come on!”

  She holds out the phone.

  “Photo,” she says. “Wait—no.” She puts on lipstick. She grabs another dressing gown. “Put this on.”

  They take a selfie lying on the Karabakh carpet in the living room.

  Lavinia titles it en famille. Everybody Likes it.

  Even Mimi Kaye.

  * * *

  —

  “What are you going to wear tonight?”

  Louise is very tired. She has a lesson with Paul and another with a boy called Miles and a third with a girl called Flora, all the way in Park Slope. She has at least three hours of work to do for GlaZam. She has a barista shift in the morning.

  “What’s tonight?”

  “What do you mean, what’s tonight?” Lavinia laughs. “God—what’s wrong with you today?”

  “I don’t…”

  “The premiere. Roméo et Juliette.”

  “Fuck. The opera.”

  Louise has completely forgotten.

  “Christ—Lavinia—I’m so tired!”

  “But don’t you see—it’s perfect! Now you don’t have to worry about getting all the way home. We can just take a cab, after. On me.” She says it so innocently, like Louise hasn’t just spent two hundred dollars on ClassPass just to make her happy. “Come on—we should celebrate! We’re roomies now—wasn’t that the whole point?”

  Her smile is frozen on.

  “Of course,” says Louise. “I’ll be back after my shift.”

  “Right,” says Lavinia. “There’s just one little thing. The co-op board here, you know. They’re really strict about copies.”

  “Copies of…”

  “So Cordy has a set and I have a set, but that’s it. Not even the maid has a set. So—I mean, you’ll have to buzz up for me to let you in.” She shrugs. “That’s not a problem, right?”

  “Of course not,” says Louise.

  * * *

  —

  She teaches her lesson with Paul. She teaches her lesson with Miles. She goes to Park Slope to teach Flora, and then comes all the way back.

  She buzzes in.

  “What took you so long?” Lavinia is in a long red silk dress that shimmers as she walks. She has pinned and gelled her hair into fingerwaves.

  She has probably been getting ready since Louise left.

  “Subwa
y.”

  “Well, hurry…”

  It’s only four. Louise wants to get at least a couple hours of work in at GlaZam.

  “I’ve just got some stuff I need to finish.”

  “Can’t you do it tomorrow?”

  There will be more work tomorrow.

  “But it’s a gala night,” Lavinia says. “Listen—listen, I have the perfect dress for you. I want to dress you in white, okay? I have this one I got from this seller on Etsy I know in Paris. It’s from the fifties—cost me an absolute fortune but it’s so beautiful and I’ve worn it so much I’m just—I’m just completely sick of it. I’ve already laid it out for you.”

  It is taffeta and silk and enormous and princessy. It is not something Louise would ever wear.

  “Are you sure?”

  “You’ll look gorgeous! And I’ll do your hair, too—it’ll take a while, but I think we should curl it, a little bit. Give it some body! God, I’m so excited! And Rose will be there tonight, too—she’ll be taking photos for Last Night at the Met.”

  She has Louise strip. She zips up the dress. It just about fits.

  “I’d never wear it again,” she says.

  “Why not?”

  “Tragic memories.” Louise can see Lavinia smile in the mirror. “I lost my virginity in this dress.”

  “Jesus!”

  “It’s dry-cleaned. Plus I took it off first. Obviously.”

  * * *

  —

  Lavinia sits Louise down in front of the vanity. Lavinia plugs in the curler.

  “Stay still.”

  Lavinia yanks Louise’s head to the left. She twists her chin up.

  “How did you lose your virginity?”

  Lavinia takes a chunk of Louise’s fine, finely dyed hair, and wraps it around the iron. She burns her ear.

  “I mean—the normal way?”

  “Was it nice?”

  “It was fine.”

  It was not fine. Louise had to beg for it.

  Of course, she wasn’t pretty then.

  “Was it—what’s his name? Victor?”

  “Virgil.”

  Louise is so tired. Louise doesn’t want to talk about it. But Lavinia is being so soft with her, now. She is stroking her hair idly.

  “What an idiot,” Lavinia says. “I mean—I’m assuming. He didn’t know what he had with you. I can’t imagine a man in the world deserving you—look at you.” She tilts Louise’s chin up. “You’re beautiful.”

  Even now this makes Louise smile.

  “He should have taken you to—to—what’s the most romantic place in New Hampshire? The—the nature! He should have taken you to, like, a cabin with a great big roaring fire and animal skins.”

  As it happens, Louise did lose her virginity in nature. It was in the woods behind the Devonshire Academy tennis courts.

  “I lost my virginity after the opera,” Lavinia says. She says it so idly. “I was seventeen.” She is staring, vaguely, into the mirror, which is the only way Louise can look at her. “Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “We’d been together about a year—it’s a long time, now that I think about it. But we were both, you know. We were very sweet. He was very gentlemanly—I told you. He’s old-fashioned. We got student rush tickets to the Met. It was the first time I ever went. We held hands the whole time—it was pathetic, the two of us, both of us, these scared little virgins, holding hands, but—it was Carmen and I was seventeen and there’s that bit, at the end, when he kills her—and there’s a bullfight and there’s this great skinned bull on one side of the stage and he’s got his hands around her throat on the other and—God, our hands were so sweaty. And it was so perfect. And I remember thinking—I remember exactly what I was thinking. I want him to remember me. If he hadn’t been a virgin, too—I mean, I was such a little prude. I wouldn’t want to be one of a litany.”

  She exhales slowly.

  “Of course we couldn’t go to my place and we couldn’t go to his place because of our parents—my parents lived here, then; this is back before they fucked off and bought this place—and nobody would give us a hotel room because we were both underage and we went to the Carlyle and the Algonquin and all these places and we swore we had money but they didn’t believe us. We had to go all the way to—God, it was so awful—to this horrible place near the Flatiron I found that had bulletproof glass at the check-in desk. We were both so embarrassed. But we closed the curtains and turned the lights down and lit a candle and put on Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3 and—well, it was the most beautiful night of my life.

  “You know, he’s the only man I’ve ever had sex with? It’s stupid—I know. I just—if things can’t be that perfect, you know, then I don’t want them. I don’t want an ordinary life. And—fuck!”

  The fire alarm is blaring.

  There’s smoke coming from Louise’s hair.

  * * *

  —

  The thing is: Louise hadn’t noticed, either.

  She has been thinking of what it must be like, to go to the Carlyle, or the Algonquin. Or it wouldn’t even matter if it were a by-the-hour place with bulletproof glass. Not if somebody loved you that much.

  * * *

  —

  They tuck the singed strand of hair underneath.

  “I think you’re beautiful however you do your hair,” Lavinia says. “But this is precisely why I need you. I’d set my house on fire, telling stories, without you.

  “I need you,” Lavinia says, and squeezes her hand, and then it all feels perfect.

  * * *

  —

  Except when Mimi texts, while Lavinia is finishing her makeup.

  omg did u move in w/ Lavinia?

  (shocked-looking lipstick-wearing pig)

  (yes, says Louise, today)

  omfg that apartment is soooo nice

  i loved living there.

  (gingerbread man in a gingerbread house that gets smashed)

  what are you two up to tonighhht?

  * * *

  —

  “Hey, Lavinia?” They are in the cab.

  “What?”

  “Did Mimi used to live with you?”

  “Of course not. Why?”

  “It’s nothing. She just sent me this weird message—”

  “I let her crash for a couple weeks between places.” Lavinia is reapplying her lipstick with her cell phone camera. “That’s all.”

  She gets out of the cab.

  She lets Louise pay.

  * * *

  —

  Tonight the full moon is smiling on Lincoln Center.

  They take so many photos.

  Lavinia takes some of Louise, pirouetting on the fountain’s edge. Louise takes so many of Lavinia under the archways.

  Lavinia posts them with the caption ah, je veux vivre!

  * * *

  —

  They do a line of coke in the bathroom before the curtain.

  Lavinia leaves a twenty in the bathroom attendant’s tip jar.

  They buy a glass and a glass and another glass of champagne, at fifteen dollars a glass, and Lavinia buys most of them but Louise also buys some, and because she is drunk she is not keeping track of how much money she is spending but she knows she has six hundred dollars a month that she did not have before, and that champagne tastes so good, and that they both look so beautiful tonight.

  They really, really, do.

  Even people they don’t know tell them so. Old women and tourists stop them, to tell them so, and Lavinia smiles so magnanimously and says thank you, thank you.

  * * *

  —

  On the stairway, Louise sees Athena Maidenhead. Her hair is piled neatly on her head. She’s wearing pearls. She is in a long rose-colore
d dress and is on the arm of a man with no hair.

  Also, Anna Wintour is there.

  * * *

  —

  Lavinia takes Louise to the press room, which is half-hidden off the bathroom and which nobody but press (and Lavinia, who is not press but knows things) knows about.

  Beowulf Marmont is there already. He is trying very hard to muscle into a conversation between two older men, making booming and staccato pronouncements about the significance of Wagner calling his operas dramas.

  “That’s the problem with Gounod,” Beowulf says. “Their emotions are just so straightforward—it’s all very expected, isn’t it? It’s emotive, but at the risk of complexity.”

  Gavin Mullaney punches Louise on the shoulder.

  “I have to say,” he says, “I’m impressed by you. And that’s off-brand for me. So be proud.” He turns to Beowulf. “Of course you know Louise Wilson. She writes for us now.”

  Beowulf looks appalled.

  “Of course,” says Beowulf. “What a pleasure.”

  He’s still looking over her shoulder, of course (the two older men, who are married, work for The New Yorker and The New York Times, respectively), but this time he stays perfectly still.

  “Wellhellothere!”

  Somebody pushes in.

  “You’reBeowulfMarmont.”

  Mimi thrusts out her hand.

  She’s wearing a sequined dress with a neckline that goes all the way down to her navel, and a hem that goes all the way up to her ass.

  “I am,” says Beowulf, who doesn’t know who the fuck she is.

  “You’re Lavinia’s friend.”

  “Sure.”

  “You write for The Fiddler and The Egret and you’re doing your PhD at Columbia.”

  “Okay.”

  “IreadwhatyouwroteaboutJoanDidionforTheEgretIthinkyou’retotallyrightandshe’sabsolutelyresponsibleforthepervasivefeminizationofnarrativenonfictionwillyoupleasetellmemoreaboutit?”

  Then, and only then, does Beowulf Marmont smile.