Social Creature
Page 15
(Maybe you do this, once, and then you know he is right about everything he has always said about you.)
That is when you see that he sees that you are the crazy bitch he always knew you were, and that, that is the only way you can leave.
You are the crazy one, now. You always were.
“I was right about you,” he says, in this priggish way that almost, almost, sounds like he’s glad to be able to say it, and mops the blood from his cheek, “you’re a fucking psycho, Louise” and he grabs her by the back of her neck, like a dog, and pushes her out the door, and he is right, and it is the last thing he ever says to her.
* * *
—
It’s so easy, hauling Lavinia into the Uber. (Thank God, thank God she’s so thin.) It’s the only time Louise hasn’t hated how thin Lavinia is.
“Your friend okay?”
“She’s seen the fairies,” Louise says. She holds Lavinia on her lap. Lavinia’s eyes are still open. There’s blood on Louise’s miniskirt, on her legs (thank God, thank God I’m wearing black).
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“She smells like shit.”
“I know.”
“It’s a hundred-dollar fine, you know, if she does it again.”
“She won’t,” says Louise.
Lavinia’s nipple is showing, where the dress has slipped down. The driver is staring at her in the mirror.
Louise lets him.
* * *
—
There’s a joke Louise has always liked, about these two men who find a bear in the woods. This is the joke: You don’t have to be faster than the bear. You just have to be faster than the other guy.
She’s thinking about that joke now.
* * *
—
Louise has done the next part before.
Getting Lavinia out of a cab. Getting Lavinia onto the stairs. Getting Lavinia into the bathtub. Putting the water on.
Washing that long, tangled, glorious golden hair.
Washing the blood off.
* * *
—
should i just go home?
This is Mimi’s twentieth text.
lol I’m so drunk I’m getting blackout.
* * *
—
And Louise thinks: this cannot be real.
Nothing is real.
* * *
—
Lavinia’s eyes are still open.
* * *
—
This cannot, cannot be real.
* * *
—
Lavinia’s phone won’t stop ringing.
Louise will get through this, too.
I just need time, she thinks. I just need a little more time.
* * *
—
“Darling!”
Louise can sound so much like Lavinia, when she wants to. She knows her voice so well. “Darling—Mimi—I’m so terribly sorry!”
“Where are you?”
“Are you still at the P.M.?”
“Hal said you left. He said you got sick.”
“Just for a second—darling. Needed a moment’s respite, that’s all.”
“Where are you?”
And Louise thinks fuck, fuck, fuck.
And Louise thinks just let the world stop, just for one second, just long enough for things to start making sense.
“I’m so drunk!” Mimi wails. “I can’t even see straight. Come party with me!”
* * *
—
Louise taking an inert Lavinia across the dance floor.
That cannot be the last thing Hal sees. That cannot be the last thing anyone sees.
She just has to keep Lavinia alive a few hours longer.
* * *
—
“Just meet me at the Bulgarian Bar,” says Lavinia. Lavinia is always, always up for another adventure. “I’m in an Uber right now. I’m on my way, darling, I swear.”
“You’ll come?”
“Yes, of course, I’ll come.”
“Is Louise coming?”
It’s such a sour, pathetic little sneer.
“God no,” says Lavinia. “To tell you the truth, I’m a little sick of her, anyway.”
* * *
—
It is not as hard as you’d think, getting Lavinia’s dress off. It is not as hard as you’d think, rinsing it off, putting it on, covering the back with a fox-fur stole. Lavinia is so stiff, but she resists so little.
The hair is trickier—for now she can back-comb it, then put it up, so it looks like Lavinia’s tried to pin it up nicely and failed (Lavinia never pins her hair neatly, not once).
She puts on Lavinia’s lipstick.
She puts on Lavinia’s perfume.
She closes the shower curtain.
* * *
—
Lavinia posts their selfie in the cab. Best friends.
It gets fifteen Likes in four minutes.
* * *
—
Lavinia introduces herself by name to the Uber driver. She chatters so splendidly about art and life and how if you want it badly enough, you can make yourself into a work of art. You can create yourself.
“I don’t think people realize the freedom they have,” she says as they pull up on the corner of Rivington and Essex. She tips in cash, even though you don’t normally tip your Uber driver, so that he will remember her, and fondly.
* * *
—
Lavinia uploads another photo to Facebook: of Rivington Street, of the sky, of the stars, of the lights. Forget it, Jake, she captions it; it’s Chinatown. Technically, it’s the Lower East Side, but Lavinia wouldn’t let that stop her, because Lavinia believes that Art is nobler and more important than truth. She checks in at the Bulgarian Bar.
Mimi has sent her so many emojis: Lions. Tigers. Bears.
Be there in a sec, Lavinia says.
You should go in the ice cage.
* * *
—
Here’s how the Bulgarian Bar works:
Take off your clothes, get a free shot. Have sex on the bar, get a free bottle. Thirty bucks and you can enter the Soviet ice cage, put on the real vintage Soviet military uniform they give you, and also the Soviet fur hat, and then a bartender will take your phone and take pictures through the glass while you drink as much vodka as you can from a shot glass made of ice before it melts.
* * *
—
Now Mimi is in the Soviet ice cage. Now she’s naked, except for her underpants, and a Soviet military jacket. Also: the hat.
She’s pressed up against the glass, and a man Louise has never seen before and will never see again is kissing the back of Mimi’s neck and sliding his fingers through the triangle of her underwear.
* * *
—
Lavinia puts Lavinia’s card behind the bar.
She explains that she wants all of that drunk girl’s drinks on her tab, too.
She takes a photo of Mimi. She posts it. She tags it. Beowulf Marmont Likes it.
* * *
—
When Mimi stumbles out, Lavinia catches her.
“Darling!”
“Lavinia?”
Lavinia is whispering in her ear, with her hair falling on Mimi’s shoulder, with her perfume, standing right behind her. “I’m so sorry I made you wait.”
“WherewereyouImissedyouImissyousomuch.”
Mimi can’t even stand.
“I brought you another drink.”
She presses it into Mimi’s hands.
“Down it!”
Mimi does. Mimi sways.
Mimi puts a hand over her mouth, like
she’s going to throw up.
“IwassoscaredLavinia.”
There are so many people. It’s dark. They’re dancing.
“Iwassoscaredyouweremadatme.”
“I could never be mad at you,” says Lavinia. “I love you!”
“I missed you,” Mimi is murmuring. Her eyes are unfocused. Lavinia is always just out of her field of vision. “You have no idea.”
“Selfie!” Lavinia says.
They do.
Lavinia is leaning in, kissing Mimi’s cheek, features obscured by the flaps of her Soviet fur hat, so you can’t really see her face.
* * *
—
Lavinia posts this, too.
“We’re going to have a good night tonight, right?”
“The best,” says Lavinia.
She sails them both into the crowd.
She leaves Mimi in the arms of the man who was fingerbanging her earlier.
* * *
—
It’s four in the morning. Lavinia is still alive.
Whatever happens to her, next, tonight, is not Louise’s problem.
Not so long as she, too, has an alibi.
That is the logical next step, Louise thinks, once you’ve killed somebody. At least, she supposes it is.
* * *
—
Louise texts Mimi from her own phone.
Where are you guys?
Is Lavinia with you?
I need the keys.
Mimi doesn’t answer. She’s probably in bed with the stranger by now. But in the morning, wherever she wakes up, you will never get her to admit—not for a second—that she and Lavinia Williams didn’t have one of those gorgeous, epic, once-in-a-lifetime nights, or that they did not stay out until dawn.
* * *
—
At four in the morning, Louise calls Rex.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know who else to call.”
“Are you okay?”
He sounds so awake, for four in the morning.
“It’s just—I don’t have the keys.”
“What?
“Lavinia—she went out with Mimi, after this burlesque thing we—it doesn’t matter.”
“She has your keys?”
“There’s only one set,” Louise says. “I don’t have it. She’s not picking up her phone.”
“You didn’t go with her?”
“She didn’t invite me.”
She can hear Rex exhale on the line.
“Come have a coffee with me,” he says.
* * *
—
Lavinia goes into a bathroom at a twenty-four-hour diner. Louise comes out.
* * *
—
She has her hair up in a ponytail. She’s wearing a miniskirt similar enough to the ridiculous miniskirt they made her wear at the P.M. (there’s no use thinking about that job, now; she’s lost that one, too), a sweater over the top, which is slutty and sequined and makes her feel like Athena Maidenhead, but she needs to be able to argue that she never made it home.
She packs Lavinia’s dress so neatly, in a plastic bag, in case she ever needs it again.
Louise astonishes herself, sometimes.
* * *
—
Louise meets Rex near his place, in the East Village. They go to a 24/7 pierogi place called Veselka, with murals of people doing old New York things, and they sit by the window under the halogen light and watch the darkness fade, moment by moment.
Rex has bags under his eyes. He’s wearing a blazer.
“You didn’t have to get dressed up for me,” Louise says.
They’ve been sitting in silence for ten minutes, eating greasy pierogis, drinking burnt coffee, staring at each other.
“I didn’t,” Rex says. “I mean—I mean, I didn’t not. I mean—” He takes another sip of his coffee.
He sighs. Louise doesn’t say anything.
“Look,” says Rex. “I’m sure she’ll be home soon. Has she done this before?”
“Sometimes.” She looks up at him. “Not this late.” She swallows. She has to be so careful, now. “I mean—you don’t think something’s happened to her?”
Maybe Lavinia will get mugged in an alley. Maybe she’ll trip and fall in the park stumbling home. Louise can’t think about that right now.
All Louise can focus on is not screaming.
“Have you heard back from Mimi?”
Louise shrugs. “Not yet.”
“You don’t have the keys,” Rex says. He says it like he feels so sorry for her.
“It’s some co-op board rule.”
“Sure it is,” he says.
“Sure,” says Louise. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have woken you up. Not for this. It’s just—I didn’t know who else to call.”
“I’m glad you did,” says Rex. “I like talking to you.”
“If she finds out—”
“We’re dead,” Rex says, and Louise has to work so hard not to flinch.
The light is just starting, outside, and rosy fingers claw shadows out of the diner floor.
“I hate that I’m getting you into trouble,” Rex says.
“You’re not,” says Louise. “No—it’s my fault. Believe me.”
“I know it’s wrong,” says Rex. “I know that.” He exhales. “She’s a good person—deep down. Isn’t she?”
Louise doesn’t even know, anymore.
“Maybe.”
“It’s just—she’s so—”
“Much?”
“Yes,” Rex says. “Just—too much.” He sighs. “It’s not fair of her—to ask so much from you.”
“It’s fine,” Louise says.
Just a couple more hours. Just until morning. You can do this.
She’ll find a way to kill Lavinia in the morning.
“You’re smart, and you’re funny, and you’re nice.”
“Stop it,” she says quietly.
“And you’re a good friend—you are—and, I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t have to be here at five o’clock in the fucking morning—I’m sorry.”
“Stop,” she says again, “please stop,” but he doesn’t hear her.
“You deserve so much better,” he says. He takes her hand.
Here’s the thing: Louise doesn’t.
* * *
—
Louise has promised herself she wouldn’t cry. She has been so good at not crying. She hasn’t cried picking Lavinia’s body off the floor, and she hasn’t cried dragging Lavinia out of the theater, and she didn’t cry in the Uber or putting Lavinia in the bathtub or posting that photo of the two of them and so Louise doesn’t know why she is crying, now, but Rex is looking at her with such kind and magnanimous eyes. All Louise can think is that every terrible thing everyone has ever seen in her is true, has always been true, that there was no universe in which she would not end up doing this.
“I’m sorry,” Rex keeps saying, like this has anything to do with him, looking at her like nobody should ever look at her again, and if he keeps looking at her like that another second she will not be able to stop herself from telling him everything, “God, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have— it’s not my place.”
“It’s fine.”
She throws down a twenty on the table.
“I have to go.”
* * *
—
Here’s one way this night can end: Louise turns herself in.
Rex keeps looking at her—with those wide unblinking eyes, with his perfect faith—and Louise thinks in a perfect world people do the right thing, and although it is not a perfect world Louise decides it should be, and so she goes to the police and tells them, unstinting, everythin
g that she has done.
For a moment, at dawn, Louise is sure she will.
* * *
—
Rex follows Louise onto Second Avenue.
“Louise, wait!”
He’s out of breath. He’s forgotten his blazer.
Louise waves for a cab—frantically, wildly, tries to work out where you’re supposed to go, exactly, when you’ve killed somebody: if there’s a head office or if you Google your local precinct or just go up to the first cop you see and say there’s a dead girl in my bathroom, sorry?
Rex sprints the crosswalk so fast a cyclist nearly hits him.
“What do you want from me?” she asks him, and then he kisses her.
* * *
—
Rex isn’t kissing her.
He is kissing a girl with fine, blonde hair and docile eyes who is as good as he is. She is shy, clever and witty and kind, and she suffers so terribly and she means so well. He is kissing a girl who does not complain when her friend locks her out at four o’clock in the morning, and who goes to the Met when she is lonely. He is kissing a girl who never killed anybody.
She kisses him back, anyway.
* * *
—
They take that cab back to Rex’s place, even though it isn’t even ten blocks away, because they can’t keep their hands off each other, and Louise pays with all the cash in her wallet and leaves a ridiculous tip because it is Lavinia’s cash, and now she can’t even stand to touch it.