Social Creature

by Tara Isabella Burton

  “How wonderful!” says Lavinia, when she hears. “I’ve always wanted to go. I heard they have orgies onstage—do they have orgies onstage?”

  “I mean—I’ll be working!”

  “But you’re a bottle girl! All you have to do is stand around and look pretty and hold a tray, right?”

  “It’s work.” Louise tries again.

  “I see.” Lavinia’s smile turns sharp.

  “I just don’t want you to feel obligated,” Louise says. She is so careful. “I don’t want you to come to keep me company and be miserable because I’m stuck, like, pouring some finance bro champagne—I’m not going to be much fun for you.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Lulu,” says Lavinia. “You’re always fun for me.”

  “We can do something else that day.” Louise’s smile is so much wider. “The Chelsea Flea Market, maybe? Or jazz brunch at Hotel Chantelle—you love jazz brunch.”

  Lavinia doesn’t say anything.

  She rises, goes to the dining-room table.

  “Hey, Lulu?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I left a couple of rolls of cash on here. Not a lot—just a few hundred dollars, or so. I could have sworn there were five, but…” She looks very evenly at Louise. “You haven’t seen them, have you?”

  Louise’s heart is beating so quickly again.

  “No, of course not.”

  “I figured.” Lavinia gathers up the rest. “I just wanted to check.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out.”

  “Maybe there were four,” Lavinia says. “God knows I never remember these things.”

  And Louise casts about so desperately for that thing, the one thing, that she can do—that she can always do—that will make Lavinia happy again.

  “You know, the light’s really good right now.”

  “Is it?”

  “Let me take a picture of you. Just—you, on the couch, with the dressing gown, and the light on your hair.”

  “No, thank you,” says Lavinia.

  * * *

  —

  Now is the part you’ve been waiting for.

  You and I both know what happens now: Lavinia doesn’t make it.

  But the thing you have to understand is: why.

  Now you and I, we’ve been to parties before. We’ve done this a few times before already.

  But here’s the thing: you’ve never been to a party like this.

  That’s the whole point.

  When they hire the fire-eaters, the midget who takes the dildo up his ass, the guy who rolls around in buttercream, the conjoined twins, the glitter-eater, the woman who queefs show tunes, they do it because the most important thing in a party like this is that it should be unlike any party you’ve ever been to before, and if you throw up or cry or run screaming then so much the better, because at least you’ve felt something.

  The bouncer is short and the drinks are watered-down and the only people who pay for them are assholes, anyway, but the line goes all the way to the end of Chrystie Street, some nights, even though none of those people will ever get in (except Lavinia; always, always, except Lavinia), because it is the sort of place that finally, finally surprises you.

  * * *

  —

  Here is a girl who was the villain on Survivor one time.

  Here are some bros drinking frozen rosé.

  Here is the guy who invented this app that’s like Uber, except it’s for helicopters, except it goes to the Hamptons, except it’s five hundred dollars a person.

  Here is a former child star who does stand-up now (that’s the joke).

  Here is a guy who is getting married tomorrow, and doesn’t want to be.

  Here is Louise in a miniskirt, serving shrimp.

  * * *

  —

  It is hot. It is sweaty. Everything sticks to everything else. Two guys, already, have felt Louise’s ass (she isn’t allowed to object). Another guy has gone straight between her legs. Athena Maidenhead is completely naked except for these little pasties in the shape of Greek columns, jiggling the tassels in perfect figure-eights. The dwarf is in makeup.

  “Spoiler alert.” It’s Hal, in black tie. “The fire-eaters fuck.”

  Louise puts on her most docile and most flattering smile.

  “Shrimp, Hal?”

  “You know, they do horrible things to girls like you in places like this.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “It’s not a bad thing. You should go for it. Some illustrious Great Men around the place.” He considers. “Who knows, you could make a decent wife for somebody, one day. You seem like a nice enough girl.”

  “Another shrimp?”

  “What, you embarrassed to be here? You shouldn’t be. Nobody gives a fuck about you. You’re a complete nonentity.”

  She’s still smiling.

  “I’m not being an asshole, by the way. That’s a good thing.”

  “Tell me more.”

  She grits her teeth so hard she thinks they’ll break.

  “It’s freeing. Nobody expects anything from you.” His tongue lolls, like it always does, and he goes on nodding long after he’s finished talking. “I bet nobody cares whether you’re a Great Man in New Hampshire.”

  She starts making eyes at strangers, hoping someone will signal her.

  “Are you a Great Man, Hal?”

  “Fuck, no. I’m just a humble insurance executive. Just give me a classic six and a Filipina woman to iron my shirts and Wagner on my sound system and I’ll happily be first up against the wall when the revolution comes. Me ne frego.”

  “Sounds lovely.”

  She’s craning her neck now, looking so desperately at the guy who five minutes earlier grabbed her ass and wanted to know if she’d gotten butt implants.

  “You know Rex is crazy about you, right?”

  “What?”

  “It’s really fucking pathetic. I told him so. He’s a pussy.”

  “I’m Lavinia’s best friend.”

  “Sure you are,” he says. His teeth are yellow but they glint with the strobe lights. “You’re such a good friend.”

  “Is—he here?”

  “You think Rex would watch some girl get fucked by a robot?” He snorts. “He’d probably rush the stage and leap to her defense.” He takes the last shrimp off her plate. “If it makes you feel better, he feels super-guilty about it.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “He’s got a hair shirt on, under all that tweed.”

  “Don’t tell me,” says Louise. “I don’t want to know.”

  “All property is theft,” says Hal.

  He tips her a fifty and pats her on the ass.

  * * *

  —

  Louise keeps smiling at strangers. Louise does whatever Louise has to do to keep the wolves from the door.

  * * *

  —

  She smells Lavinia before she sees her. That same, familiar perfume: even here where it smells like bodies and sick. That cloying, heady smell of lavender and fig somehow gets through. Then she sees Lavinia’s hair.

  She’s worn it long and down tonight, and she’s in a dark velvet dress; she’s leaning back on the banquette and laughing and flashing her teeth.

  Mimi is with her.

  “Lavinia?”

  Lavinia looks up so idly. “Oh, hello, Lulu.” She leans back on the banquette. “You’re out of shrimp.”

  Mimi is smiling her dog-like smile.

  “Isn’t this place insane? There was one act—I swear to God—if that dildo thing was a trick…”

  “Mimi, darling?”

  “Mhm?”

  “Can you get me another glass of prosecco?”

  Mimi trots off happily.

  �
�God, this place!” Lavinia fingers the cocktail toothpick like it’s a cigarette. “God, Lulu, everything’s so filthy. It’s disgusting. Don’t you love it?” She laughs. “Isn’t it, like—what you imagine Pigalle was like, during the fin de siècle. Like, the real Moulin Rouge—was it shocking, do you think? Come sit.”

  “I’m working,” says Louise.

  Lavinia shrugs. She sips the remnants of her prosecco.

  “So,” Louise says. “Mimi’s here.”

  Lavinia smiles, too, like nothing’s wrong. “Oh, I know you don’t like her,” she says. “But she’s all right in small doses.”

  “I never said I didn’t—”

  “She’s just intense, that’s all. But then again, so am I—don’t you think?”

  Louise doesn’t say anything.

  “Don’t you think so, Lulu?”

  “I mean,” Louise has already lost, “a little, I guess…”

  “God, you must be so bored—”

  The woman who rolls in her own shit is rolling in her own shit onstage.

  “Poor Lulu. It must be a very great burden on you, putting up with me.”

  “Don’t be silly,” says Louise. “I love every minute of it.”

  “So—how’s Hal?”

  Louise freezes. “What?”

  “I saw you over there—chatting.”

  “He wanted shrimp.”

  “You like him, don’t you?”

  “God—Hal!” Louise doesn’t even think Rex likes Hal. “Of course not.”

  “I mean, it’s fine if you do. You should fuck him. I mean—he’s an idiot. But he’s a rich idiot. And he’s, you know, funny.”

  “I don’t want to fuck Hal, Lavinia.”

  “You should fuck someone, Lulu. It’d be good for you! You need a boyfriend. It’s not good for us, you know—spending, like, all our time together.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Louise can see Mimi, raptly applauding the woman rolling in her own shit.

  “I want to spend all my time with you, Lavinia,” she says.

  She keeps her eyes down. She is so good at this part.

  “We’re best friends, Lavinia.”

  She has always been so good at this part.

  “You were so good to come tonight, Lavinia. You knew—you knew I really wanted you here, deep down.”

  “I know.”

  “I wish I could be watching the show with you.”

  “I know.”

  “I know—I was stupid—I shouldn’t have taken this gig.”

  Lavinia just looks at her phone.

  “No,” she says. “You really shouldn’t have.”

  * * *

  —

  At ten-thirty, Mimi falls asleep on the banquette. She snores.

  Lavinia keeps dancing alone, under the neon lights that bathe her in red, blue, green.

  “Lulu,” she murmurs. Two more men have felt up Louise’s ass, by now, and it hurts so much to stand in heels. “My Lulu.”

  Louise hates how relieved she is.

  Lavinia sidles up to the bar.

  “You’re my favorite, Lulu. You know that.”

  “I know.”

  “We should get a picture. Just the two of us.”

  The aerialists are so high above them.

  “When I’m off shift,” Louise says. “We’ll take a photo. I get off at four.”

  “We should break into the green room! See if the dildo-fucking is real!”

  “When I’m off shift,” Louise says again, in exactly the same tone of voice, like it’s going to do any good.

  “We should break in and take photos with the robot!”

  “Please,” Louise whispers, “please, Lavinia, don’t—”

  But Lavinia is so certain and determined. “Mimi promised she’d do it with me. But she’s—well, you know Mimi—she can’t hold her drink; she isn’t like you; she’s not like us, Lulu.”

  “I don’t want to get fired,” Louise says. “Please.”

  “Christ, Lulu.” Lavinia rolls her eyes. “You used to be so fun!”

  She gets up.

  “I am fun!”

  Lavinia picks up her arm, points to it. “More poetry, remember? More fucking poetry—what the fuck did I get this tattoo for?”

  Louise can’t stay like this. She can’t talk to a customer (worse: a female customer); there’s the guy who tapped her ass already looking pissed, and Hal enjoying himself with one of the other waitresses in the corner, and if this job goes well they said there would be others, and sure she gets her ass squeezed but the tips are so great, and she doesn’t have time for this—fuck, she doesn’t have time for this—and if she could only explain—

  “Fuck it,” says Lavinia. “I’m going. Come or don’t come. I don’t give a shit.”

  She spits out a cocktail toothpick.

  “You can’t rely on anybody.”

  She turns.

  * * *

  —

  Things always turn.

  You pack up, push off; you get in a beat-up Chevy or a moving van; it doesn’t matter. You read poetry on the water or smoke a joint on a railroad bridge; you say I love you on the top of the High Line or in the middle of the Devonshire woods.

  It’s the same, either way.

  There’s the day you pick up the keys to this railroad one-bedroom in Bushwick and you think today, today is the day everything changes. You think you will never see Devonshire and its fading strip malls and its railroad tracks and its squat unhappy houses ever again. You swing the door wide-open and stretch out your arms and dance through the emptiness of every new inch of the space, with your hair short and dark and your eyes closed. When you open them Virgil Bryce is standing there, on his spindly legs, with his arms crossed, and he is telling you: don’t get too excited, dearest, who knows how long you’ll be able to make it work here, and even though you’ve argued on the way over, even though you’ve spent the whole six-hour drive arguing, you think no, no, this time is different, this time I’ve outrun it; this time I’ve won.

  Even when he comes so close to you. Even when he runs his fingers through your hair.

  Even when he says I just don’t want you to be disappointed when the world doesn’t see what I see.

  There’re the days you don’t believe him, not deep down. There’re days you do.

  * * *

  —

  “Lavinia!”

  Louise catches up to Lavinia in the green room.

  She’s out of breath. She’s covered in other people’s sweat. There’s a drag queen putting on fake lashes who doesn’t even look at them.

  “Lavinia—please.”

  “Go back to work, Lulu. I don’t want to put you out.”

  “That’s not what this is!”

  “I get it. You know what? I get it. I’m a lot. I’m a lot to fucking deal with—” She strides past a ballerina with pierced nipples. “You—Louise—you must be a fucking saint.”

  She is all the way to the backstage area, now, and Louise keeps thinking somebody is going to notice them, or stop them, but everyone is so drunk and the performers are looking in the mirror and the bouncers are dealing with a brawl, and so nobody does.

  “Jesus, Lulu, quit following me!”

  They pass ropes and red velvet curtains and lights and sandbags and everything smells like grease paint and cigarette smoke.

  Louise doesn’t even know why she’s following her anymore.

  “Christ—leave me alone.”

  Lavinia presses through a dark red door.

  Louise follows her.

  “Jesus—you want to watch me pee, now?”

  They’re in a mirrored bathroom, just between the stage and the dance floor. They are the only ones there. There are art nouveau n
aked ladies painted onto the ceiling. There’s a red velvet chaise. There’s a chandelier. Of course there’s a chandelier.

  Louise locks the door.

  “Can you just listen to me for a second?”

  A different Lavinia laughs in every mirror.

  “Fine,” Lavinia says.

  She hikes up her skirt.

  She takes a piss right in front of Louise.

  “I’m listening. Are you happy?”

  She bursts out laughing.

  “Are you fucking happy now?”

  She wipes, flushes.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Please.” Louise is doing such a good job. “Can we just talk about this?”

  “Go back to work, Lulu.” Lavinia has gone to the mirror. She is reapplying her lipstick. “God knows, you need the money.”

  Louise takes a very deep breath.

  Louise is very calm.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, in such a small, clear voice. “I miss you. Things have been weird, I know, I’m sorry.”

  “You want a raise?” Lavinia spins around, and all the mirrored Lavinias spin, too. “You want overtime?”

  She grins. She’s got lipstick on her teeth.

  “One card not enough for you? You want the Amex, too? God—how stupid do you think I am?”

  Louise’s heart is in her throat and her stomach is in her feet and nothing in her body is where it is ever supposed to be and she cannot think except to think it is all over, now. She tries to focus on just the practical things (a place to sleep, a place oh God to sleep, don’t let me go back home please that’s all I want don’t make me go back home).

  “I’d have just given it to you,” Lavinia says. “If you’d asked.”

  I will go anywhere, Louise thinks, I will never go back home.

  “Am I really that awful—that it’s so hard just to pretend you like me?”

  “I do like you.”

  “You hate me!”

  “I love you.”

  “Don’t lie to me!” Lavinia’s voice goes so high. “Like I don’t know—like I don’t know how much I fucking disgust you. I remember—I fucking remember the opera, okay? God, you couldn’t wait to get out of there—it’s not like we even did anything!”