* * *
—
Of course, there’s also the question of expenditures.
There’s ClassPass. Lavinia is always too hungover to work out, and usually Louise is too tired, but she insists they enroll for another month, anyway, and this time, she says, it’s Louise’s responsibility to make her do it.
Also, the time Lavinia sent her in the middle of the rain-soaked night to a sketchy street corner in East Harlem to buy some shrooms that weren’t even hallucinogenic, anyway. Also the cash tips for the bathroom attendants at the Met, at Trattoria dell’Arte, at Shun Lee, at all the places that Lavinia and Louise either surreptitiously snort coke or throw up.
Also the shifts that Louise misses, because sometimes not even the Adderall works, when Lavinia swoops in last-minute and says she has tickets for an aerialist performance that Athena Maidenhead’s friends are doing at this multipurpose space full of mirrors called House of Yes. The GlaZam work, because that’s so easy to say I’ll do later, and then the shifts she’s too sick for, sometimes, and then sometimes she even misses a lesson with Paul, even though he’s just a couple of blocks away.
* * *
—
So the second time Louise takes money from Lavinia’s bank account, when Lavinia is passed-out drunk on the sofa (because she’s been sobbing because they saw Rex and Hal, again, at the Mr. Morgan Spring Gala at the Morgan Library and neither of them looked at her but Rex raised his glass to Louise and smiled, and she is so angry that he has done this, and yet so glad), Louise doesn’t even think of it as stealing. She’s just balancing the books. Just a hundred here, a hundred there. Then another fifty. Then another hundred.
Somehow, she’s still always broke.
* * *
—
Here’s the other, funny, horrible thing: Louise has never looked better. She loses six and a half pounds. Mostly this is the Adderall, and the coke, although she and Lavinia actually make it to FlyBarre exactly twice before Lavinia loses interest and declares working out a Calvinist abomination. Lavinia does her makeup. She gets her hair done by professionals. This is at Lavinia’s insistence.
Lavinia knocks on her door, one night. Louise doesn’t answer, at first, because by now she’s learned that the only way to avoid dealing with Lavinia is to pretend to be asleep, but Lavinia knocks again.
“You’ve dyed the bathroom grout,” she says.
She sits on the bed.
“I what?”
“The tub. It’s yellow.”
Louise has been so careful. She has spent hours scrubbing.
“I’m sorry,” she says. She turns over like she’s falling back asleep.
“And the bathroom smells like bleach.”
“I’m sorry,” Louise says again.
“Look—I don’t care,” says Lavinia. “You could dye the house purple, for all I care. But my parents—you know—I’m not really supposed to have guests. And they’re very particular about making sure the place is, you know. In case they decide to retire back here. Or sell it. And, you know, it’s not ordinary grout.” She tightens her stained dressing gown around her shoulders. “It’s Italian or something. I don’t know. You’re not even really supposed to get it wet.”
She lies down next to Louise in the bed.
“You know what? I think you should go to Licari. That’s where I go.”
Louise is very, very good at sussing out people’s natural hair color. It’s one of the things she used to do on the train. It has never occurred to her that Lavinia’s hair is anything but perfectly natural.
“I’ve already made an appointment for us both,” Lavinia says. “Besides, I get a discount for bringing in a new client.”
She curls up against Louise. She leans her cheek against Louise’s back.
“I wish my hair were straight like yours,” she says. “It’s so shiny. God, I hate you.”
Lavinia falls asleep next to her in the bed, with her arm flung over Louise’s breast.
The color costs four hundred dollars.
She takes half of it out of the ATM the next day.
* * *
—
Other people notice how much better Louise looks. Her mother, of course, who for the first time in five years doesn’t bring up Virgil Bryce, but instead makes a comment about how all those nice young available men in their early thirties in New York must be lining up around the block. Paul actually checks her out during their sessions, which would feel violating if he didn’t start to stammer and blush and look so astoundingly ashamed of it that Louise almost pities him. Beowulf Marmont Facebook messages her at three in the morning to tell her he really liked her piece for The Fiddler and maybe they could have a coffee to talk about it sometime.
Also: that guy who ghosted her.
* * *
—
In May, he sends her a Facebook message.
Looks like you’ve been having fun!
Winking face.
Maybe we should take another stroll through Prospect Park, sometime.
I feel so bad we never got to do that again.
He doesn’t even apologize. He doesn’t have to.
Sure, Louise says.
Blushing face.
She carries this knowledge all day in her heart. She scrubs Lavinia’s countertops and she beats Lavinia’s carpet and she sews Lavinia’s fur collar onto Lavinia’s vintage opera cape and she spends the whole day smiling.
She doesn’t tell Lavinia.
* * *
—
Not until Lavinia has them go, one morning, to the King Cole Bar, at the St. Regis, which might be the most expensive bar in New York. But they’re famous because of their murals, and also because they apparently invented the Bloody Mary, and they charge like twenty-five dollars for them (before tax, before tip). Even though Louise doesn’t like Bloody Marys, Lavinia does, so there they are, hogging a table.
“You know what, Lulu?” Lavinia says. “I’ve just had the most incredible idea.” They’ve had two drinks each. Louise feels sick.
“What?”
“Tomorrow,” Lavinia says, “we’re going to go on a pèlerinage.”
“A what?”
“A pilgrimage. It’s French.”
“No, I know—” Louise hasn’t slept in three days. “But—”
“To the sea, silly! Let’s get up really early tomorrow morning and watch the sun rise from the Cloisters and then walk all the way to Coney Island.”
“Why?”
“To prove our mettle! To prove we can! Like—like the medieval pilgrims, you know—have you ever listened to Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage? We can recite ‘Ulysses’ again, can’t we?!” She points at the tattoo. “MORE POETRY!!!” She says it just like that.
Tomorrow Louise and the guy who ghosted her are going to Prospect Park to take a walk. She has suggested an afternoon date, especially, for a Sunday afternoon, because she knows Lavinia never gets out of bed before dusk on a Sunday afternoon.
“I’m sorry,” Louise says. “I have work.”
“What work?”
“I have a shift.”
“Why don’t I come by, then? I’ll come by the bar—I’ll sit and be very quiet, just like a mouse, and then when you’re done…”
“No,” Louise says—too quickly. “Not a shift. A lesson. Um—Flora, in Park Slope.”
“I thought you have Flora on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“It’s a makeup session. She’s—she’s going on holiday next week.”
“Where?” Lavinia signals the waiter. She orders a bottle of Chablis without asking Louise.
“I don’t know—why?”
“She didn’t say? I mean”—Lavinia laughs—“It’s the middle of the school year. Believe me—Cordy won’t shut up about her midterms; she’s be
en blowing up my phone…who’d let a student go on holiday?” She shrugs. “Well it’s fine. I can meet you in Park Slope.”
“Actually,” Louise tries again—she tries so hard. “I have plans.”
“It’s not a full walk, but it’s still a few miles from Prospect Park to the sea. We can go through Midwood—look at all the Hasidic men with their, you know, hair-things.”
“I have plans,” Louise says again.
“With who?”
“I have a date.”
“A date?” Lavinia’s laugh is sharp. “With who?”
“This—this guy I used to go out with. Nobody important.”
“Why didn’t you just say?”
“You’re right,” Louise says. “I’m sorry. I should have. I was embarrassed.”
“Why? It’s wonderful.” Lavinia pours herself a glass.
“I know I should have checked with you, I’m sorry.”
“Checked with me? Don’t be ridiculous, Lulu—you’re not my prisoner! You can go anywhere you want to!” She downs her glass. “It’s probably good for us to, you know, have a little time apart. I mean, I know I can be a bit much sometimes.”
“It isn’t that!” Louise starts, and then stops, and then tries again. “I mean, it’s just a date. That’s all.”
“Wait,” Lavinia looks up. Her eyes are shining. “This is The Ghost, isn’t it?”
“No,” says Louise, automatically, before saying “Yes.”
“What does he want?”
“No—we just started, you know, talking again.”
“Did he explain why he ghosted?”
“I’m sure he will,” Louise tries. “In person. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“You’re very forgiving, Louise,” says Lavinia. “If somebody did that to me—I’d never speak to them again.” She pours Louise a glass. “You really shouldn’t let people treat you like that.” She smiles a sad and sympathetic smile. “He probably just wants sex.”
“We’re going to the park!”
“Where?”
“Brooklyn.”
“He’s making you come all the way to him?”
“I mean—we just wanted to go to Prospect Park, that’s all.”
“I’m just saying, be careful. Men like that, you know. They like to see how far you’ll jump. Don’t be surprised if he just wants to sleep with you. Only—”
“What?”
“You’ll probably have to go through with it.”
“What?”
“I mean—don’t come back, like, late or anything. I want an early night’s sleep. I don’t want to wake up to buzz you in. So, you know, if you’re coming all the way from Brooklyn, you might as well spend the night.” Lavinia is editing a photo on her phone.
She doesn’t look up when the bill comes.
$220. Four Bloody Marys. A bottle of wine Louise has barely touched.
Lavinia keeps playing on her phone.
And Louise thinks say something, say something, say something.
Louise doesn’t say anything. She puts down her credit card. She signs.
“I think you should sleep with him,” says Lavinia. She’s still looking at her phone. “You really need to get laid.”
* * *
—
Louise doesn’t: not really.
She used to (all the time: she used to). Virgil (when Virgil would), and then when she finally (for once, for once) changed her number she’d have so many one-night stands and she fucked the male feminist, the night they met, in a bar bathroom in Crown Heights. She used to crave it (the touch; mostly the touch, but also the laughing and the biting and the God, you’re beautifuls).
Louise hasn’t had sex in four years.
Not unless you count what happened at the opera, but it’s hard to put a label on what happens between two straight girls when they’re drunk and neither of them comes.
Sex, Louise thinks, is probably a waste of time, anyway.
* * *
—
Louise tells Lavinia her date bailed.
“Men.” Lavinia shrugs. “I told you. Fuck them all.”
Louise skips her work for GlaZam. I am a little bit Concerned that you R Not taking this Project seriously? writes the woman in Wisconsin who runs the business. We need to Step things up OK??
“You’re just too good for everybody,” Lavinia says. “There’s nobody in the world who deserves you.”
* * *
—
That evening, Louise takes three hundred dollars out of Lavinia’s bank account at the bodega on the corner of Seventy-sixth and Lex, while she’s supposed to be at Agata & Valentina at Seventy-ninth and First, buying expensive cheeses Lavinia will never eat.
She takes a walk.
It is late, she knows, and she should be getting sleep (she has so much to catch up on; she has so much left to do), but she is afraid if she goes back to the house she will wake up Lavinia. If Lavinia wakes up she’ll want to talk to her, or do her hair, or take photos, and Louise can’t deal with that again, not right now.
She goes to the park (everything is in bloom; everything is pink), not Prospect Park but Carl Schurz, which is that little sliver of green by Gracie Mansion where you can see the East River and also there’s a statue of Peter Pan. Because everything is in bloom and in pink everybody is out, at sunset, and the people who love each other are holding hands, and leaning in. Every single person in New York City except Louise is out there kissing and being in love. And Lavinia is asleep or watching Fortunes of War in bed for the umpteenth time and all of a sudden Louise feels so lonely, so goddamn lonely, even though she shouldn’t, even though to be lonely is ungrateful, because Lavinia has given her so much (the room, the booze, the drugs, the parties, oh God the parties). And to steal money (it’s not stealing; it’s insurance; it’s reparations; she’s still flat broke anyway) is ungrateful. Maybe that’s just who she is, maybe, just the most ungrateful person in the world, that she could have all this and still wish she were in Prospect Park, holding hands with some guy who didn’t care enough about her to break up with her by text.
Louise isn’t angry. She can’t get angry.
She Facebook messages Rex.
Nice to see you at the Morgan Gala.
Nothing loaded. Nothing treacherous. Just pleasantries.
Haha, you too.
I hope I didn’t cause any problems?
To which Louise responds: No more than usual.
Good.
How are you doing?
You holding up okay?
To which Louise responds: The usual.
Is that a yes or a no?
I’m not sure, she says. It’s been a long day.
I saw.
Of course he saw. All the photos Louise posts are for him.
You two looked like you had fun. Very glamorous.
They were in vintage bathing suits. They had perfect flapper makeup on.
It’s the makeup, Louise says.
I don’t believe that.
I swear.
Prove it, says Rex.
How?
Take the ugliest photo of yourself you can manage.
She does.
She is afraid, but she scrunches up her face and sticks out her tongue and bugs out her eyes and takes a selfie.
Hm, Rex says.
The little box that shows he’s typing stops, and starts, and stops again.
It’s not the makeup, he says.
Then: I’m sorry.
Am I allowed to say that?
You’re allowed to do whatever you want, says Louise. Makes one of us.
Laughing face.
* * *
—
It is dark by the time Louise comes home.
&n
bsp; She puts the groceries down on the table.
“What took you so long?”
Lavinia is sitting in the dark, staring into space.
“Nothing,” Louise says.
Then: “I picked up some flowers for you.”
Lavinia looks so happy.
“I went all the way to Jerome—I thought you’d like them.”
“They’re beautiful,” Lavinia says. She puts her arms around Louise.
Louise has gotten so, so good at this.
* * *
—
It’s easy, so long as Louise thinks of it as a game.
She takes a couple hundred dollars out, every couple of days.
She takes ten milligrams of Adderall a day.
She takes so many photos.
She sleeps in Lavinia’s bed.
She stops sleeping.
She keeps it together.
* * *
—
In June, Louise gets fired.
It is not from GlaZam, although her work has suffered. It’s not from the bar, although she’s always late there, too, and out of it.
It’s Paul.
She arrives to do one of their thrice-weekly sessions, which at eighty dollars an hour and three hours a session and three sessions a week (Paul really wants to go to Dartmouth) is her best-paying gig by far. She is late, but not by much. She and Paul go over the difference between assent and assuage. Nothing is wrong.
Then Paul looks up.
“So,” he says. “It turns out I don’t need you anymore.”
He’s been quietly assured by somebody at Dartmouth that he will be able to go as a squash recruit.
“I mean, I’ve probably gotten everything I’m going to get out of these sessions, anyway.”
He gives her an extra fifty.
He’s on his phone before Louise even leaves the room.
* * *
—
Louise is fine. Louise can work with this.
Louise just has to take out a little more money from Lavinia’s account (Lavinia won’t miss it, anyway). Louise just has to make sure she doesn’t lose any of her other jobs.
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