Social Creature

by Tara Isabella Burton

  Louise can’t even breathe; Louise thinks make this better fix this do anything say anything make her happy calm her down make it right make it right and so she blurts it out, among the no’s:

  “I’m in love with you.”

  She doesn’t mean it. She doesn’t know if she means it.

  It is the only thing that will make Lavinia stop shouting at her.

  “What?”

  “I—the opera. I—like you, okay? I freaked out because I liked you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry—I know you’re straight—I know.”

  God, listen to yourself, Louise thinks. Not even Lavinia can be this dumb.

  But Lavinia is smiling.

  “Poor Lulu,” she whispers. She puts her hand on Louise’s cheek—so magnanimously, now—God, this makes her so happy—“Poor, poor Lulu”—of course everybody dies of love for Lavinia; she is just that beautiful; that is how it goes.

  She laughs a little bit.

  “It’s not your fault,” Lavinia says.

  She takes a deep breath.

  “Come on,” she says. “The light is beautiful in here. Let’s take a selfie.”

  Louise can breathe again.

  It’s worth it, she thinks. It has to be worth it.

  * * *

  —

  Louise has been this desperate before.

  She has wandered the streets of Bushwick at three in the morning, covered in blood, with a credit card and a driver’s license and a sweater and a bus ticket back to New Hampshire on her phone with four percent battery life, and nothing else. She made it work then.

  Just go to an all-night diner. Just go to a nightclub where the lights are real low. Just go to a shitty bar and wash your face in the bathroom. Fuck a stranger, just to have a place to stay that is not a night bus to New Hampshire.

  It’s not pretty, but it works.

  She’ll make it work now, too.

  * * *

  —

  Lavinia puts Louise’s lipstick on. Lavinia wipes the mascara off Louise’s face. Lavinia smooths back Louise’s hair.

  “Give me your phone,” Lavinia says.

  She moves the candles from the toilet tank to the sink to give them better light.

  She turns the camera inward.

  That’s when Rex texts Louise.

  I miss our Met outings.

  Another one soon?

  Is it weird that I miss you?

  * * *

  —

  Lavinia doesn’t even get mad. That’s the worst part.

  She doesn’t rage. She doesn’t throw things.

  “You’re moving out,” she says. She shrugs. “You’re moving out—now.”

  “Lavinia, let me explain—”

  “I don’t care.” Lavinia is carefully, very carefully, putting her lipstick back in her purse. “Whatever it is—I don’t care. Here—take the keys. Get your shit. By the time I come home I don’t want to see you.”

  “I don’t have anywhere to—”

  “All that cash,” Lavinia says. “And you don’t have enough for a hotel room?” She shrugs. “Stay with Rex. I don’t give a shit.”

  She throws the keys on the floor.

  Louise bends down to get them.

  She’s already on her phone.

  “What are you doing?” Louise can’t even think please, please anymore. Everything is so still. Movement in the room stops with the finality of it all.

  “I’m telling everyone,” Lavinia says. She closes the toilet, sits down. She types with both fingers. “I…had…the…most…ridiculous night.” She looks up. Just for a second. “Period. I found out that my crazy roommate stole my money and fucked my ex and tried to fuck me in a nightclub bathroom.”

  “That’s not what happened.”

  Lavinia keeps typing.

  “My crazy dyke roommate stole a shit-ton of money from my bank account while she was hooking up with my ex-boyfriend and trying to convince me she was in love with me—how do you spell deceitful—is it i and then e—come on, Louise, you’re a fucking SAT tutor, you should know!”

  “Don’t,” says Louise. “Please—please—I’ll go, just—”

  “It’s fine. I have AutoCorrect. My deceitful psycho dyke roommate I felt fucking sorry for stole four thousand dollars out of my bank account while I was letting her live rent-free in my sister’s bedroom.” She raises the camera. “Come on—fucking smile, Lulu!”

  Louise grabs the phone.

  “Jesus Christ, what the fuck is your problem!”

  Lavinia yanks it back.

  And Louise, all she can think, all she has left, is let them not know; let them not know; and she doesn’t know who it is that she cares about knowing, because she doesn’t care about Beowulf Marmont and she doesn’t care about Gavin or Father Romylos or Athena or Mimi or Hal and she doesn’t even like them, anyway, but in the moment she isn’t considering that. All she’s thinking is that nobody can know what she has done, and so she pulls harder, so much harder than she means to, and then she and Lavinia are on the floor, grabbing for it, and the stupid thing, the really stupid thing, is that the phone clatters under the sink, anyway, so that by the time Louise is pulling out Lavinia’s hair, by the time Lavinia is scratching at her shoulders, by the time she is yanking her up against the mirrored and the mirrored and the mirrored walls, by the time she hits her head on the sink, the phone isn’t even there, not the first time she hits her head, nor the second, nor even the third.

  * * *

  —

  This is how Lavinia dies:

  Putting a hand to her head. Looking down at her forearm: at the MORE POETRY!!! that is covered with droplets of blood.

  Looking up at Louise.

  Falling, with all the other Lavinias: against the mirror, against Louise, onto the floor.

  This, this, is how Louise fucks everything up.

  5

  LOUISE IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

  She has known, for years, that you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool everybody forever, no matter how good you are at this, no matter how hard you work at it. If you are a deceitful psycho dyke who steals money and also your best friend’s ex-boyfriend, no matter how thin you are, or how pretty, or how good that one piece you wrote for The Fiddler blog was, the truth is that everybody, sooner or later, will know.

  Anyway, it’s over now.

  Lavinia’s dead.

  * * *

  —

  The bass is thumping. People are screaming applause. Somebody’s knocking at the bathroom door.

  Lavinia’s phone rings.

  * * *

  —

  Whatever Louise does, she can’t scream.

  She puts her hand over her mouth.

  There are three hundred people in this club, right outside the door.

  Louise tries to breathe in that very calm and mindful way she practiced once, during therapy, that’s supposed to put things in perspective.

  It doesn’t work.

  Lavinia’s phone keeps ringing.

  * * *

  —

  Somebody keeps knocking on the bathroom door.

  Mimi’s face is glowing on Lavinia’s phone.

  Just breathe, Louise thinks. Just breathe.

  * * *

  —

  The phone goes to voicemail.

  Mimi sends so many texts.

  where r u???

  i woke up all alone

  Sad kitten emoji.

  Crying fox emoji.

  Weeping deer emoji.

  r u still here?

  * * *

  —

  Louise breathes.

  * * *

  —

  Louise wipes t
he blood off the floor. Louise washes blood off Lavinia’s forehead. She uses a hand towel and very expensive basil-smelling liquid soap. Louise hides this in the bottom of the trash.

  Louise pushes Lavinia’s long, loose hair over her shoulders. Lavinia’s hair is so long and luxurious that it covers her face. She takes off Lavinia’s necklace, which is enormous and glittering and bloodstained, and pins it to her hair so that the medallion falls over Lavinia’s forehead, like she’s wearing a crown, so that you cannot even see the blood.

  The banging on the bathroom gets louder.

  “You cunt,” cries somebody. “You fucking cunt!”

  * * *

  —

  There is nothing Louise can do.

  She opens the door.

  Twenty people are in line for the bathroom.

  There is no way, she thinks, that this is not the end.

  * * *

  —

  Lavinia is propped up in Louise’s arms.

  Lavinia is dead, and her eyes are open, and she is propped up in Louise’s arms, and a very skinny girl with fried blonde hair and a 1980s dress is staring straight at them both.

  She takes them in.

  She stumbles to the floor.

  She starts throwing up in the toilet.

  * * *

  —

  People swarm in around her—the girl’s even skinnier friend, who is holding back her hair, and some guy shouting gross, Jesus Christ, I’ve got to take a piss and then the drunk girl who is holding back the other drunk girl’s hair is getting in a fight with the drunk guy who just wants to take a piss and at some point he unzips his fly and gets his cock out and starts pissing on the wall and because everyone is watching him nobody notices Louise haul Lavinia, like she’s stumbling, like she just needs her hair held back, back toward the dank and narrow corridors that lead toward the stage.

  * * *

  —

  And still it is only a matter of time, and maybe, maybe Lavinia is not dead but only stunned (Louise has watched a lot of Law & Order but even so she’s not sure how much effort it takes to kill somebody because murder doesn’t really feel like a thing that actually happens in the real world), and it is so loud and so crowded and so dark that Louise just hauls Lavinia against the wall (which is sticky, and provides friction) and hides her body with her own, pushing her up, like it’s just the two of them, like they’ve gone in seclusion to some corner so they can make out, so Lavinia can finger her again, so that Louise can kiss her neck.

  “Get a room!” somebody is shouting, and Louise doesn’t even know if it’s at her, because there’s a guy getting a blow job out of the corner of her eye.

  * * *

  —

  There is an aerialist’s globe abandoned in one corner of the corridor. The fire-eaters have used it, already, and it smells like gasoline still.

  Louise lays Lavinia down there, under the skeleton of the globe, under the lights, under the fake chandelier jewels, which shine every time the house lights strobe.

  She feels Lavinia’s face. She kisses it. She feels her throat and her neck and her heart and nothing, nothing is beating, but still this cannot be real, because people do not die like this, because she is not a person who kills people, she is not a person who does anything wrong, ever, and killing a person is about the worst thing you can do, and also there is a God and He sends down lightning bolts at this sort of thing, and so if Lavinia were dead a judgment would be made and Louise would turn to ash.

  * * *

  —

  Except that the guy who smears himself in buttercream is up for an encore.

  This time, he’s making balloon animals, except they’re not made of balloons.

  * * *

  —

  Lavinia is so beautiful, under the aerialist’s globe.

  Louise leans over her. She tries to arrange Lavinia’s hair, again, so the blood stops showing, and she thinks that Lavinia would love this because Lavinia looks just, just like Ophelia right now and then she starts to feel sick because what kind of sick person justifies killing someone on the grounds that they have always wanted to be Ophelia, a little bit, or at the very least the Lady of Shalott.

  * * *

  —

  Then everyone starts screaming and the lights are blaring and some guy she has never seen before says “CROWD SURF” right in her face and the skinny girl (one of them) screams like this is the first time in her life she’s ever heard of crowd-surfing and then everybody is looking at them, straight at them, at this beautiful dead blonde white woman and this slightly less beautiful blonde white woman who is still alive and breathing and on top of her and everybody is screaming, screaming, like they are gods, and then they start rolling the globe with the two of them inside and everything is spinning and Louise thinks she is going to be sick—she is sick, and she thinks now, now is the moment they realize but they don’t, because the lights are pulsing and the sound is blaring and they’re crossing the orchestra pit, crossing the main hall, and then glitter falls from the ceiling, in a big grand-finale burst, and it falls thicker and harder than any blizzard Louise has ever seen and in this thickness it sticks to both of them: to the sweat and whatever that clammy thing is called that makes you a little bit wet after you die, and then they are both so covered in silver you cannot even see the blood, you cannot see (how is it that everybody cannot see?) that there is a dead girl with long blonde hair and open, confetti-sliced eyes.

  Louise pukes.

  Everybody cheers at that, too.

  * * *

  —

  As they roll the globe toward the wings of the stage, Louise catches a glimpse of Hal. He’s sitting with the ballerina with the pierced nipples.

  He raises a glass at them both.

  * * *

  —

  Now they are in the shadows.

  Now Louise is pushing, so desperately, against the wall.

  Now Louise finds the service door.

  * * *

  —

  She hauls Lavinia into the service alley. It smells like rotting fish, and sweet wine, and cooking fat.

  Lavinia isn’t even the only girl prostrate in that alley.

  She hauls Lavinia into a splintering wooden trolley. She pushes the crates out of the way. She avoids the rats.

  She cuts herself on one of the screws holding the wheels on. She looks down to see if she is bleeding, but Lavinia’s blood has stained her calves, too, and so Louise can’t even tell.

  * * *

  —

  Mimi is still fucking texting.

  Where are u? I’m upstairs? Are u here??

  * * *

  —

  And Louise thinks: I am not myself.

  This is not real life, Louise thinks. Police sirens are blaring, and they aren’t even for her.

  Louise decides.

  * * *

  —

  Louise grabs Lavinia’s phone. She calls an Uber.

  She pulls Lavinia’s arm over the back of her neck.

  “Come on,” she says, loud enough for everybody on the street to hear. “Come on, sweetie! Let’s get you home.”

  She is so chipper.

  She is just another overworked waitress, helping just another drunk girl to a cab.

  They are both covered in glitter. They’re both covered in puke.

  It’s one of those nights: in the city.

  It’s a Friday night and everybody’s screaming, and no matter how late it is it’s like daylight out; and it’s so uncanny but also it’s a relief, because it means you’re not alone.

  You can walk past so many nightclubs with blood on your face and nobody will even notice.

  You can walk down a city street, on the Lower East Side, in Bushwick, with blood on your face and nothing but a driver’s license
and a credit card and a phone with almost no battery life, and your knuckles bruised from when you have hit a man (you are not even the kind of girl who would lose control and hit a man) (you have always been that girl) (he always told you you were that girl), and nobody will even notice, or care.

  Louise has done this before. It didn’t feel real then, either.

  * * *

  —

  Louise waits for the Uber in the alley outside the club.

  There are so many people out there.

  A lot of people are drunk-crying, and so Louise gets on her knees and holds Lavinia real close, and real tight, and murmurs into Lavinia’s stiffening neck I know, honey, I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you and she doesn’t even know if she means it.

  * * *

  —

  Another text from Mimi.

  Questing exploring fox emoji.

  I’m all alone.

  did u go off w/ luis?

  are u ok????!!111

  * * *

  —

  Louise did not want to hurt Lavinia, when she hurt Lavinia. (She wanted to hurt Lavinia.)

  She did not want to hurt Virgil Bryce.

  (She is not that kind of girl.)

  It’s just that when you’ve had the same conversation over and over for a year, in a tiny little railroad apartment in Bushwick, and once again a man you love is saying I love you but also this is a benediction and a mercy, because I know you better than you know yourself and I have made the choice to love you anyway, and nobody else who knows you will, and he is both kissing you and also telling you you’d be hotter if you just lost a little weight. He is both fucking you and also telling you it’d be better if you both moved somewhere a little quieter, where you’d have a better chance at making it, because then you wouldn’t be disappointed, maybe, just maybe one time—instead of nodding, instead of sighing, instead of saying yes, yes, you’re right, you hit him so hard he falls backward, the way men hit women in films, the way men aren’t supposed to hit women in life.