Everybody is spilling out into Lincoln Center: in their black tie, their silk dresses, their velvet trousers, their heels.
Mimi is falling over.
She’s half-lurching, half-kissing Beowulf Marmont.
He hails a taxi. He hauls her in.
“Someone’s getting raped tonight,” says Hal.
“Jesus, Hal!”
“Christ, Rex, I’m not making a rape joke.”
He puts his arms around both of them.
“I take rape very seriously,” he says. “I’m a very, very good feminist.”
Nobody says anything.
“Now, if I said he was taking her home to make love to her in a very gentle and assured and consensual manner,” Hal says, “now that would be a rape joke.”
Louise and Rex exchange looks.
“Besides, all men are rapists. Just read Rolling Stone.” Hal straightens his dinner jacket. “Poor Michelle. Lol.”
“Michelle?”
It has never occurred to Louise that Mimi has a real name.
“She was fun,” Hal says. “I miss her putting on a show at parties. Remember New Year’s 2014, Rex? Wasn’t that great? We walked in on Lavinia and Mimi making out in the bathtub at the MacIntyre, didn’t we, Rex?”
“Stop it, Hal!”
“What was the theme, Rex? Do you remember? Was it The Great Gatsby? It’s always The fucking Great Gatsby. But it was a good party—not like this year, don’t you think so, Rex—they’re getting worse and worse.”
And Louise thinks this, too, was for them; this, this, too.
“I have to go.”
Rex pushes past them both.
“Oops,” says Hal. He looks at his watch.
“By the way, young Louise,” he says. “Lavinia’s looking for you. And she’s not happy.”
“Shit.”
“I told her you were hanging out with Rex.”
“Shit—shit!”
The square is full. The party’s over. The busker’s playing ah, je veux vivre at full forte.
There are so many people in sequins and not a single one of them is Lavinia.
“Chop chop, Cinderella,” says Hal.
Louise runs.
* * *
—
Between waves of champagne and whiskey and the coke comedown Louise thinks all the thoughts she always thinks, except this time they’re louder and clearer and more true.
This, this is how she’s fucked it up; Lavinia hates her, now—Lavinia will be so angry—and now she has no money for rent and she doesn’t have the keys and her subletter has moved in, already, because an empty rent-stabilized place doesn’t even linger five minutes in this city, and Louise thinks oh God oh God and she thinks just let her not be mad and she thinks I will even let her fuck me, just please God don’t let her be mad.
She doesn’t even have the fucking keys.
* * *
—
Lavinia isn’t anywhere. She’s not on the landing and she’s not on the Grand Tier and she’s not on the balcony or in the box or anywhere in the orchestra, and Louise tries to call four or five times but Lavinia has turned off her phone, but somehow that just makes Louise try to call more times, even though it goes straight to voicemail, because if there is a definition of insanity it’s trying the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.
* * *
—
And Louise tries so hard not to panic or to cry or to scream and she tries to focus on the next steps she can take: she can go back to the apartment and wait by the buzzer (what if Lavinia never comes home? What if Lavinia is already home and won’t let her in? What if the neighbors who come in and out see her and think she is loitering like a criminal and call the police?).
She could call a friend (she has no friends). She could get on Tinder and hook up with someone, but then she would have to explain to her supervisor on her shift at the bar (oh God, her shift) why she has shown up to bartend brunch in a taffeta dress that makes her look like Shirley Temple, because everything she owns (her clothes, her clean underwear, her laptop which she needs for her GlaZam job; fuck, fuck, her GlaZam job) is all with Lavinia, who now is furious with her.
Then she sees her.
Lavinia is passed out on the side of the fountain.
“Christ, Lavinia—”
Louise runs so fast she loses a shoe and has to carry it, limping, across the square.
“Jesus Christ!”
Her eyes are open.
She reaches down to help her.
Lavinia grabs her so violently she drags her down, instead.
“Where were you?”
It’s a snarl.
“I’m sorry.”
“Where. The Fuck. Were you?”
“I’m sorry—I had to pee.”
“You left me alone.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I needed you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I do everything for you—fucking everything. And you left me alone!”
She’s sobbing so hard she chokes.
“Were you with him?”
“No! I mean—I had a cigarette—I gave him a—”
“Did you fuck him?”
“No! Of course not.”
“You fucked him! You fucked him and you laughed about it, the two of you, you laughed behind my back!”
“I would never!”
And even as she’s saying it she thinks almost, almost. Even as she’s saying it she thinks maybe.
“You’re so fucking ungrateful!”
Lavinia sits straight up.
“After everything, what more do you want from me?”
“You’re tired.” Louise is so calm. “You’re drunk. You’re tired. That’s all. You want to go home.”
“I let you live in my house.”
“Please!”
“Give you—give you a fucking gorgeous dress to wear, buy you booze, give you—give you a fucking free room and you can’t even sit through a whole fucking opera with me?”
“It’s not like that.”
She does not know if Lavinia has forgotten fucking her, or only wants to forget, pretend it didn’t happen.
“What more do you want from me?”
“Lavinia, I—”
“What—you want cash, too?”
Lavinia throws her purse.
It hits Louise square in the chest.
She doesn’t even think to catch it.
She lets it fall, clattering, to the ground.
* * *
—
Wordlessly, Louise kneels and picks it up.
Lavinia is sobbing; she tucks her knees under her and bites her own palm, just to stop from screaming.
Louise just watches her.
* * *
—
Louise can’t get upset. Louise can’t get angry.
Louise doesn’t have the keys.
* * *
—
“It’s okay,” Louise says. “You’re fine. You’re fine. You’re okay. I’m here. It’s okay.”
Here’s the thing: she’s lying.
* * *
—
You’d never know it. Louise is so good, wrapping Lavinia’s coat around Lavinia’s shoulders, smoothing Lavinia’s hair out of the way of Lavinia’s collar, whispering Lavinia’s name. She is efficient, in the way that she holds Lavinia’s hair back, when Lavinia throws up, when Lavinia wipes her mouth on the beautiful, unsullied taffeta. It is like Lavinia never fingered her in an opera box to make Rex jealous. It is like Lavinia never called her a whore.
The busker has started playing “New York, New York” on his violin.
Lavinia tries to sing along, but she’s too drunk, and
her voice cracks, and all she can manage is I want to be apart.
I want to be apart.
“We should tip him,” murmurs Lavinia. She lies back down on the ground. “Do you have any money?”
“No,” says Louise. She’s lying now, too.
“We should give him some money! He’s so good!”
“We should get you home.”
“No!” She drops her purse again. She picks up the credit card and drops this, too.
“You can’t stand.”
“Please, Lou—please. Get some cash out, okay?” She’s smiling so helplessly now. “My PIN number is 1-6-1-9. Just—give him a hundred, okay?”
Louise starts to say we have to get you home, but then Lavinia starts screaming and Louise realizes she doesn’t have a choice now, either.
So she gives the busker a look, a significant, pleading, humiliated look that she hopes to God conveys I’m getting you your hundred dollars, okay? So just make sure she doesn’t choke on her own vomit until I get back, and then she goes to the Duane Reade across the street.
* * *
—
It’s not that she means to hit the balance button. But it’s not that she doesn’t mean to, either.
Lavinia has 103,462 dollars and forty-six cents.
Lavinia lives in an apartment her parents own, and she has 103,462 dollars and forty-six cents.
Lavinia lives in an apartment her parents own, and has 103,462 dollars and forty-six cents, and fingered Louise in an opera box just because she could.
Also, she made Louise pay for the cab.
Louise takes two hundred dollars out of Lavinia’s account.
* * *
—
Lavinia has jumped into the fountain. She’s standing with her arms outstretched, with her hair dripping and the violinist watching her and still playing “New York, New York” on his violin, over and over. Louise puts six twenties into his case.
The final twenty is from her.
“Look at me!” Lavinia cries. “I’m Anita Ekberg.”
“Of course you are,” says Louise.
“Take a video of me.” Lavinia makes such a big splash. “But make it black-and-white.”
Louise does.
* * *
—
“I’m the worst,” Lavinia murmurs, when at last Louise gets her into bed. She held back her hair for an hour or two or three while Lavinia sweated out all the coke and Louise apologized, not for the first or last time, to Mrs. Winters who lives next door, who is a friend of Lavinia’s parents and has had it up to here with the loud music and the banging at all hours and has half a mind to write the Williamses herself and tell them to come home and take care of the problem. “I’m the worst; I’m the worst; I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I shouldn’t have—I know, I know you really like me.”
“Good,” says Louise.
“And I’m sorry we—you know.”
“It’s fine. It happens.”
“It didn’t mean anything, you know. It was just—you know, the opera.”
“Of course.”
“Like—I’m straight.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m too much. I know—I know I’m too much.”
“You’re not too much.”
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
“Don’t leave me, Lulu,” Lavinia says. “Please—please.”
“I won’t leave you.”
“I love you, Lulu.”
“I love you too, Lavinia.”
Here’s the most painful part: she still does.
* * *
—
Louise waits until Lavinia falls asleep. She extricates herself so gingerly, so that she won’t wake Lavinia, and then goes into the other room, the one that is nominally hers, with Lavinia’s closet overflowing with Lavinia’s dresses and Lavinia’s jewelry and makeup overflowing all over Lavinia’s vanity, in this apartment where she isn’t on a lease, where she doesn’t even have a key.
She goes to the dining-room table.
She opens up her purse.
She counts them: the four crisp, inalienable twenty-dollar bills.
Not even half a ClassPass membership.
She opens up her laptop. The light is so bright it hurts and she has to close her eyes, just for a second, which only reminds her how tired she is.
She has two more hours of work to do for GlaZam tonight. She has a shift tomorrow at noon. She has a lesson with Paul right after.
Louise goes to Lavinia’s drinks cabinet, which is so full of good booze. Louise never noticed how good it was, before, but she notices it now—the Talisker and the Laphroaig and Hendrick’s and Rémy Martin and she fingers the labels on all of them and thinks this, this is where you live now.
She pours herself a glass of whiskey.
She gets to work.
4
“QUEEN MAB HATH BEEN WITH ME.”
That’s all Lavinia ever says about that night.
She says it once, in the morning, clicking through all the photos Louise has taken of her. She changes her profile picture to the one that made Last Night at the Met. She sits at the dining-room table with her feet up on either side of the stale croissant she’s photographing atop turquoise china she had shipped all the way from Uzbekistan.
“You know, Lulu?”
Louise clears the table. Louise pours the tea. Louise sets down the eggs that she has made.
“Yes, Lavinia?”
“I think I saw the fairies last night.”
Lavinia leaves it there.
So Louise does, too.
“It’s a good video,” Lavinia says, of the one in the fountain. “I’m going to send it to Cordy—just to annoy her. She’s always telling me I go out too much.”
Louise gets dressed in silence.
“Where the hell are you going?”
“Work.”
“Work?” Lavinia gives a little laugh. “Jesus, how are you up?”
“It’s eleven.”
“Exactly! Just call in sick!”
“I can’t.”
“You shouldn’t go out. You look like hell.” She stretches out on the table. “Come on—let’s pull a sickie. It’ll be great—we can watch every single episode of Brideshead Revisited—we’ll do tea and scones and—like, I think I have a teddy bear somewhere we can carry around.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want to do it alone.”
“I’m sorry,” Louise says. “It’s work. I can’t miss it.”
“Of course,” Lavinia says. “Of course—you’re right. I’m being selfish. I’m selfish. You’re right. Don’t let me stop you.”
Louise buttons up her top button. She pins up her hair.
“Hey, Lulu?”
“Yes?”
“Can you pick up dinner on the way home? I don’t want to cook. Just, you know, whatever they have at Agata’s. Like—a roast chicken, maybe? And, like, a few—fuck it, I’ll text you a list. I’ll pay you back.”
Lavinia’s grocery list at Agata & Valentina comes to $61.80.
Louise pays for it with the money she has taken out of Lavinia’s bank account. Lavinia doesn’t pay her back.
* * *
—
Louise does such a good job, being Lavinia’s best friend.
She sews Lavinia’s dresses. She mends their hems because Lavinia is always tearing them. She cleans the house. She buys the groceries. She does the laundry. She irons. She sweeps crumbs off the steamer trunk.
She apologizes to Mrs. Winters, again, when she sees her in the hall.
She is very careful to emphasize—Lavinia has made this explicit�
�that of course she doesn’t live there (the co-op board, Lavinia says and says and says again, is very strict). She’s visiting.
She reads Lavinia’s novel (it is always the same novel; there are only twenty thousand words of it and Lavinia never writes any more) over and over, and tells her every time how great it is, and when Lavinia starts to cry and say that she is too much and the book is trite and that nobody could ever like a trite book written by such a terrible person as her Louise says no, you’re beautiful and holds her hand.
* * *
—
They don’t do their cowriting sessions anymore. Lavinia has stopped asking for them.
It’s just as well. Louise doesn’t really have the time.
* * *
—
Louise saves three thousand dollars a month, being Lavinia’s best friend.
She works it out, one time, on the back of a napkin.
Lavinia buys Louise at least two drinks a night ($20 each, including tax, including tip) ($40 x 30 = $1,200 a month: entertainment).
Louise saves eight hundred dollars a month (nine with utilities) (more if you take into account location, location, location, but Louise is being conservative, here).
($900 a month, rent)
Lavinia also gets all their Ubers ($900 a month, transport).
That’s before you count the clothes, which are castoffs so don’t cost money, exactly, but are still more beautiful than anything Louise has ever worn before, even if Lavinia slams a car door on her hem, even if Lavinia spills something on it, even if Lavinia insists they break into Central Park after a black-tie function and so the skirt becomes covered in grass stains and Louise can never wear it again. That’s before you count the Seamless meals (Lavinia doesn’t really cook, so most of the groceries she has Louise buy she throws out). That’s before you count the enormous oil portrait of a naked courtesan Lavinia buys at the Flatiron flea market one day, and puts above Louise’s bed as a gift without asking her.
That’s before you count the Adderall.
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