Social Creature
Page 12
She just has to be out of the house at the same time, every day, so that Lavinia won’t know (nine hours a week, there are only nine hours a week where she can be out of the house and Lavinia knows not to ask after her).
She can take walks.
She can get work done at cafés.
She can see Rex.
* * *
—
Not that Louise sees Rex regularly, or anything like that.
It’s just that they had one text message conversation, then another, and he asked her about the stories she was writing and told her he thought the one about those runaways from Devonshire Academy was pretty moving, and she asked him how the second year of grad school was going and he told her it was a lot of work, especially Classics where there’s a lot of language classes, but that it was rewarding to do something you really loved. Louise said sure, and said something about wanting to go to the Met to see the Greek and Roman sculptures and he said it’s a shame, I’d love to go with you sometime, I haven’t been for ages and she said haha that would cause WWIII and he said haha and she said I’m going Wednesday at like four wouldn’t it be funny if we ran into each other haha and he said well that would be a coincidence and then they do.
“It’s nice,” he says, as they walk from hall to hall, and from statue to statue. “I always feel peaceful in museums.”
Louise has three whole hours to feel peaceful.
“I used to come here all the time as a kid.” Collegiate was just across the park. “Whenever, like, I needed to get away.”
“Not exactly the Devonshire Mall,” she says.
“Was it weird?” he asks her.
“What?”
“Growing up in a campus town.”
It strikes Louise, suddenly, that Lavinia has never asked her anything like this.
She shrugs. “I guess it’s a bit like growing up next to a museum,” she says. “It’s nice to have it there—but, you know, it’s not, like, real.”
She tells him the story about the time she was sixteen, and spent a whole week in the dining hall before anybody noticed, and when he hesitates she’s afraid she sounds crazy, but then he laughs.
“Did you go to any classes?”
“No!”
“Why not? You should have!”
“They’d have noticed.”
He shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “People are pretty oblivious.”
They stare awhile at an armless Aphrodite.
“It’s a good story,” says Rex. “Even so.”
“No it’s not,” says Louise. “If it were a really good story, I’d have gone for the whole year.”
Rex sighs. “I think being in a really good story is overrated,” he says.
They both focus very hard on Aphrodite.
“I just want a quiet life,” Rex says.
* * *
—
They say goodbye on Eighty-sixth and Lex, because Rex is taking the subway home to the East Village, and they stand for a little too long by the station stairs.
“I had fun,” says Rex, and Louise says yes, so did I.
“I hope—you know.” He takes a breath. “Is she okay?”
She doesn’t know why it stings that he cares.
“She’s fine,” Louise says.
“Don’t let me—”
“Of course not,” Louise says.
They shake hands awkwardly and then he vanishes underground.
* * *
—
“Lulu!”
Louise’s head snaps up.
“Lulu!”
Lavinia is across the crosswalk.
It’s the only time Louise has seen Lavinia out of the house on her own.
For a second Louise thinks she has seen everything; her gut plummets. She did not know it was possible to be so afraid. She can taste her own heartbeat.
“I thought you were teaching!”
Lavinia’s arms are laden with shopping bags.
“Christ, I was so bored, all afternoon!”
She is smiling, Louise thinks. Thank God, thank God, she is smiling. She doesn’t know.
“Why aren’t you at your lesson?”
“It ended early.”
And Louise thinks how close will you come to fucking it all up.
“I’ve got a present for you,” Lavinia says. “I was so bored I went to Michael’s—it would look perfect on you.”
She hands it to Louise in the middle of the street.
It’s the most beautiful dress Louise has ever seen.
It’s bias-cut. It has a halter. It has sequins all the way to the hem.
“I told Mimi, this dress would look perfect on Lulu. I just had to buy it for you! Don’t you love it?”
“You went with Mimi?”
Lavinia shrugs. “You were out! And she was available. Come on, Lulu, don’t be mad.”
“I thought you hated her.”
“Anyway—let’s go home and change. I want you to wear this tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“It’s The Fiddler’s spring fling—didn’t I tell you?”
Lavinia is already half a block ahead of her.
“You might want to take an Adderall now,” Lavinia calls out. “It’s going to be a late one. Ugh—it’s going to be a shit-show. Beowulf Marmont has an interview with Henry Upchurch in the next print issue and he’s telling everyone who will listen he’s going to be one of their Five Under Thirty. God, I fucking hate these people.”
* * *
—
They go to the party.
They do lines with Gavin Mullaney’s quasi-feminist girlfriend. They do shots with Gavin, who tells Louise she should pitch another story to them, maybe for print this time, and Louise says yes, of course, when I have time.
They dance until dawn, because Lavinia has the keys, even though Louise is in heels.
The next morning, Louise sleeps through her shift at the bar, and then she’s fired from there, too.
* * *
—
“Just as well,” Lavinia says, when Louise tells her. She is painting her nails and doesn’t even look up. “That job was beneath you. You’re supposed to be a Great Writer. Besides, it’s not like you have rent to worry about.”
Louise stops texting Rex after that.
She figures it’s probably for the best.
He just wanted information about Lavinia, anyway.
Louise is fine. She is still fine. Everything is fine.
* * *
—
Louise is so fucking good at keeping it together.
Even without half her SAT income. Even without the bar shifts. Even without Rex.
She just has to take out a little more money, that’s all, just a little more often.
It’s not like she has to pay rent.
It’s not like she’ll ever need a deposit for a new place.
I can do this, Louise tells herself. I can do this.
* * *
—
Until the night Louise comes home from teaching Flora in Park Slope, and nobody lets her in.
She stands for a while in front of the door—idly, stupidly—like maybe Lavinia’s just in the shower.
Nobody answers Lavinia’s phone.
Louise stands like that for almost an hour, even though it’s raining, because her bag is heavy with SAT prep books and her laptop and her charger and she has no idea what else to do, and it’s only when she sees Mrs. Winters coming down the stairs through the glass in the door that she bolts, because—of course—she does not live there.
I can do this, she tells herself.
* * *
—
So Louise goes to the Carlyle.
She walks so sl
owly. She walks with her head high. She walks in like she belongs; maybe she does.
* * *
—
Her dress—it is Lavinia’s dress—is beautiful. Her hair is impeccable. She has Lavinia’s cash in her wallet.
She sits at the bar. She keeps her hands in her lap.
She orders a drink—just like Lavinia would—without betraying the slightest sense that her world is falling apart.
She sips her champagne very, very slowly.
“Thank Gawd, hunny.”
It is Athena Maidenhead.
It is the first time Louise has seen Athena here alone.
“I got stood up—can you believe it?”
She always talks with an exaggerated New York accent, like she’s chewing gum.
“That’s the last time I evah make a date on OKStupid—that’s what I call it, yannow? Okaystupid. Get it?” She laughs a mannish, throaty laugh and smacks Louise on the arm.
Louise smiles, like Lavinia isn’t missing, like her world isn’t about to end.
“From now on,” Athena says. “I’m sticking with What’sYourPrice.”
She orders herself a glass of champagne, too.
“You looked cute the other day. At the opera. Whaddya see?”
“Roméo et Juliette.”
“The opera. Gawd, I would die!”
She leans in real, real close. “I would love to go to the opera, yannow. You should get Lavinia to get me a ticket, sometime.”
She laughs like this is a very funny joke.
“You think, maybe, sometime, you can get a plus-one?” There’s lipstick on her teeth.
“Maybe,” Louise says.
“Smart girl,” says Athena. “Keep your cards close.” She gives Louise another playful shove. “Girls like us,” she says, “we gotta stick together. You ride it out while you can. Just—you know—be smart.”
“What do you mean?”
“How long you known her?”
“Six months. Give or take.”
“Yup.” Athena taps her wrist. “Thought so. Right on time, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t panic, yet. You probably have another coupla months.” She raises one painted eyebrow. “But if I were you—I’d have a backup plan.” She gestures for another round of drinks, even though Louise hasn’t finished the first one. “When she kicked Mimi out, she had to move back home for, like, two months just to get a deposit together—it was so sad. And the one before her—Lisabetta, God, I think she just packed up and left—”
“Before Mimi?”
Athena shrugs.
“I’m just saying. Sell up while you can.” She brays a laugh. “The meek don’t inherit shit.” She downs her glass. “Get me an opera ticket, sometime.”
She leaves Louise with the bill.
* * *
—
It is midnight by the time Louise gets home. It is still raining. Lavinia is still not there. She doesn’t answer her phone.
Louise waits across the street, on the stoop of one of the brownstones, so that if Mrs. Winters comes, she will not see, even though there is no awning there and it’s still raining.
Louise does numbers in her head to keep herself calm:
First and last month’s rent: sixteen hundred dollars—no, that’s a lie, she won’t find a studio for eight hundred—that one was rent-stabilized—she’ll have to find another roommate—oh God, one with a second set of keys—somewhere so much further out; oh, God, the commute.
She has sixty-four dollars in her bank account.
She has three hundred dollars of Lavinia’s cash in her pillowcase.
She barely even has a job.
I can do this, she thinks—she makes herself think—I can do this.
Here’s the thing: Louise can’t.
* * *
—
Lavinia gets home at two.
She stumbles out of a taxi.
She falls over in front of the building.
Her stockings are torn. Her dress is inside out. She’s bleeding from the lip.
“Jesus!”
Louise is there, so fast, to help her up.
“Where the fuck did you come from?”
Lavinia’s eyes aren’t focusing.
“I’ve been waiting for you (don’t get angry; don’t let yourself get angry). I don’t have keys.”
“Oh.” Lavinia drops them. Louise picks them up. “Okay.”
“Where were you?”
“Nowhere. Out.”
They go into the lobby. They go up the stairs.
“Your dress is inside out.”
Lavinia doesn’t say anything. She climbs up the stairs on her hands, on her knees.
“I was worried about you.”
“No, you weren’t!”
Lavinia tries to pull herself up on the railing, but she falls over again.
“You were glad—weren’t you? You were glad—you had the whole night to yourself, didn’t you?”
There are tears in Lavinia’s eyes. There are tears streaming down Lavinia’s face.
“I mean, I was locked out of my house, so—”
“Fuck you,” Lavinia screams. “Fuck you—it’s my house! My house—mine and Cordy’s!”
* * *
—
A door opens at the end of the hall.
“Really.”
Mrs. Winters is standing in the doorway.
Louise mouths another apology.
Lavinia just starts laughing.
“Can you believe it?” she says, right in Mrs. Winters’s face. “This bitch thinks it’s her house, now.”
“I’m just putting her to bed,” Louise says. “I’m just taking her home—that’s all. Then I’m going.”
“I should hope so,” says Mrs. Winters.
She raises her eyebrow. She closes the door.
* * *
—
Lavinia keeps laughing when Louise forces the door open, pushes her inside.
“Christ—don’t touch me! What’s wrong with you?”
“Just get inside,” Louise says. She’s so tired. “Please.”
“Don’t fucking touch me!”
“Just tell me what happened!”
Louise sits her down. Louise gets some ice for the lip.
“Did—did someone do something to you?”
“What, you jealous?”
Lavinia tosses that long, unnatural hair.
“What—you want to make another pass at me, is that it?”
“I’m going to bed.”
“Fine! Go to bed! I don’t care—I don’t fucking care what you do.”
* * *
—
Louise can’t sleep.
She stares at the ceiling, for a while; at Lavinia’s chandelier, at Lavinia’s painted gold moldings, at Lavinia’s ten-foot oil painting of a naked Parisian courtesan that’s probably fake, anyway.
She gets up.
She goes into the living room.
She opens the door to Lavinia’s bedroom.
Lavinia is lying there, with the light from the moon falling on her in slanting rays. Her hair is golden and billowing and haloed all around her, like a Rossetti angel, like Ophelia drowned. She’s wearing a nightgown.
She still sleeps with a teddy bear.
And Louise thinks oh, God, don’t let it be true.
She goes to the bed. She sits on the edge. She is so careful. Lavinia is clutching the teddy bear so tightly.
Maybe there was a Lisabetta, she thinks, maybe there was a Mimi.
She’ll do anything, whatever it takes. She’ll lie about the novel. She’ll stay up late no matter how many shifts she misses. She’ll sto
p taking out money. She’ll never speak to Rex again. She’ll take photos for Lavinia, however many photos Lavinia wants, of Lavinia looking beautiful and glamorous and maenad-ish and world-destroying, whatever Lavinia needs. Just as long as she is not like the others. She won’t even ask for love; she doesn’t even know if Lavinia can love. Just as long as Lavinia needs her.
Louise gets into the bed and Lavinia’s back is still to her.
She is so careful, putting her hand on Lavinia’s shoulder. She is so careful, sliding her arm against Lavinia’s arm.
Lavinia doesn’t move.
Louise lies, so stiffly, against her.
“I love you,” she whispers. “I love you; I love you; I love you.”
Lavinia doesn’t say anything.
They lie there a little longer, in silence, and then Louise gets up and goes back to the other bedroom, and then the next day this is just another thing that never happened, and also Louise sleeps so late she misses her last GlaZam deadline and she’s fired from there, too.
The next morning, Lavinia sends Louise out for croissants from Agata’s, and it’s like nothing ever happened.
* * *
—
The last party Lavinia ever goes to is at a sex club that’s not a sex club.
It’s called the P.M., which is supposedly short for petit mort, and it’s bottle service only. It’s housed in an old theater that looks like a bordello and it’s impossible to get in unless you know somebody (even if you pay six hundred dollars for prosecco; even if you pay eighteen hundred for champagne). One of the sideshow acts is a little person taking a dildo up the ass, and another is a woman who covers herself in shit, and someone who can whistle show tunes with her cunt.
Lavinia isn’t even supposed to be there.
It happens like this:
There is a special party that night. Athena Maidenhead is performing her fan dance except with a cat-o’-nine-tails, but they’re short-staffed and they need more girls and so she does Louise a solid and hooks her up.