“Well, hunny.” Athena flings a white fur coat over a barstool. “Fancy seeing yew here.”
She sidles in next to her without even asking.
“It’s been a million fucking years.” She leaves a smear of foundation on Louise’s cheek where she kisses her.
Louise stammers something vague.
“You here with her?”
“I wish!” Louise shrugs, like shrugging is an easy thing to do (to be fair, it has gotten so much easier, with time). “Now she says she’s not drinking until the New Year.”
“Jesus Christ—I’d die! I hope you told her to drink at the MacIntyre party.”
“Maybe she’ll make an exception,” Louise says.
“Jesus, look at you—fuck—you look so skinny I’m worried about you!”
“Thank you,” says Louise.
“My life’s shit,” says Athena. She orders them a round. “I dated this guy a couple months. Turns out—he’s shorter than me! Can you believe that?”
“I mean—”
“Men,” announces Athena. “They’re all the same. Every last one.”
Then the bartender brings the bill back.
“Williams?” he says, as he slides the card back across the table.
Now, Louise thinks. The world is ending now.
* * *
—
Athena and Louise look at each other. They look down at the card, which is black and has LAVINIA WILLIAMS branded on it.
Athena is smirking.
“Well,” she says.
“I can explain—”
“Aren’t you clever?”
Stay calm, Louise tells herself. You can get through this, too. She always, always does.
“Actually,” Louise says, cocking her head at Timmy (she doesn’t look at Athena). “Why don’t we have two more?”
She slides the card back across the table.
“Let’s make it Taittinger,” she says.
Athena smiles so broadly she gets lipstick on her teeth.
“Look at you,” she says.
“Hey.” Louise downs her glass, the way Athena downs hers, without grimacing. “Lavinia’s not using it.” She toasts when the champagne comes. “I told you. She’s off the sauce. She goes to bed at eight.”
Athena snorts.
“You know,” she says. “You’d better be careful. She’ll notice—sooner or later.”
“You think she checks her statements?”
“Her parents might.”
“It’s not my fault,” says Louise, very calmly. “She keeps losing her wallet. If I didn’t hold on to her cards she’d leave them at every bar in town. Just the other night, she left her Amex at Apotheke.”
“Even sober?” Athena raises an eyebrow.
“Exactly,” Louise says. “Even sober.” She raises her glass. “To the girls who hustle,” she says to Athena. “Enjoy.”
Athena tilts the entire glass right into her mouth.
“To the girls who hustle,” she says.
“Which reminds me,” Louise says. “You wanted to go to the opera, didn’t you?”
Athena’s smile spreads across her face.
“I’m going with Rex and Hal tomorrow. We have an extra ticket” (they don’t, but Louise has a credit card). “Hal needs a date.”
“Of course he does,” says Athena. “His mouth is weird. And he’s retarded.”
“You don’t want to go?”
“I’ll be there,” says Athena.
Louise swallows as she asks for the bill.
Louise pays.
* * *
—
She thinks now is the time for you to run. There is no way, she thinks, she can keep this up any longer (if they start to worry they will trace the cards; Athena will talk; she will always talk). But her print piece in The Fiddler is coming out so soon, and Gavin has been talking about inviting her to the Five Under Thirty benefit that’s every winter, and there’s a Halloween party happening at the MacIntyre Louise wants to go to and also Rex has gotten them a reservation at Babbo and also has texted her to tell her he misses her because he hates not spending every single night by her side.
Just a few more days, Louise thinks. That’s all.
* * *
—
A last-minute orchestra seat to Carmen costs $260. Louise pays it, anyway.
Lavinia posts an extended meditation on her yoga poses: just in case.
* * *
—
Rex and Louise and Athena and Hal go to the opera.
They meet at Boulud Sud, an hour before curtain. Athena sticks her hand straight out when she meets Hal and shakes his hand so hard he grimaces.
“I’m Nathalie,” she says, and grins.
She doesn’t even speak with her New York accent, when she says it.
Louise doesn’t think she’s ever heard Athena’s real name before.
“Pleasure,” says Hal. He does a double take. “Have we met before?” (They have, actually; she was performing at the P.M., but Athena is wearing so much less makeup, now, and so many more clothes.)
“So, Hal?” Athena orders a bottle of champagne before anyone can say anything.
“You got any phobias?”
“What?”
“Like—heights or snakes or something?”
She leans her chin on her hand. She stares straight at Hal.
Hal shrugs. “I don’t like the Eurostar,” says Hal. “Going underground for too long dehumanizes a man. It makes us into animals.”
“What do you think of the subway?”
“I don’t take the subway.”
Athena brays.
“All I’m afraid of is the two Ds,” she says. “Death and death.”
“You’re a charmer,” says Hal.
It’s almost nice, Louise thinks, to exchange the kind of looks she exchanges with Rex, that night. Like the two of them are in on a secret.
* * *
—
Rose photographs the four of them that night for Last Night at the Met.
In the photo, they’re standing together, four abreast, on the grand stairs, and all four of them look beautiful.
* * *
—
Louise knows the mezzo now. She has seen this Leonora do Rosina in The Barber of Seville. She knows when to say bravo, and brava, and bravi.
Her hand is in Rex’s hand. Her hair tumbles over his shoulder. The music is so beautiful, and so dark, and so sad, and every time it swells Louise wonders whether he is thinking of the time he has heard it before.
* * *
—
Afterward they go back to Henry Upchurch’s apartment in the Dakota, because Hal wants them all to try this very special whiskey Henry Upchurch bought once, which Louise is reasonably certain Henry Upchurch wouldn’t want them to drink.
“You really should meet him, sometime,” Hal says to Louise, as they all gather under the portraits. “He’d love you. He loves bootstrap stories. He was the great chronicler of bootstrap stories. I mean—other people’s bootstraps, but still.” He grins. “It’d be good for you, young Louise—if you’re going to stick to this whole writing thing.”
Athena gives Louise a significant look.
“Well, look at you,” she murmurs.
She downs the whiskey like it’s meant for a shot glass. “Nice place you have here, Hal.”
“I know,” says Hal.
The four of them drink so much. They drink Hal’s whiskey and Henry’s whiskey and also scotch and also gin because the drunker they get, the sloppier they are, and even though they’re not celebrating anything in particular and even though they’re not drinking to forget anything in particular, somehow they get so drunk that Athena lets on that she performs onstage,
sometimes, and then Hal leaps to his feet.
“That’s where I know you.” He grins. “Fuck it—I knew I recognized you. I’ve seen your tits.”
* * *
—
Louise gasps.
“The P.M., right?”
“Fuck, no,” says Athena. “I don’t work there anymore. Fuckers tried to stiff me on tips.”
She pours herself another drink.
Hal just laughs.
Rex and Louise laugh, too.
* * *
—
Hal brings out the modafinil at three, so that they can stay up late. Hal shows them all photographs he’s taken on his phone of dinner parties he’s attended, the labels on the bottles of wine.
No people. Just wine.
“I’m going to ask out India,” he says, to nobody in particular. “I’m going to invite her to Miami, next week.” He puts his feet up on the coffee table.
“Look at you,” says Rex. “Getting serious.”
“Please,” Hal says. “I never want to get married.” He crushes another pill and snorts it.
There is snot dripping out of his nose where he has snorted. He doesn’t wipe it.
“Do you know what I want in a wife?”
He turns to Athena. He puts his arm around her.
“We will discuss the morning paper and the children’s education and absolutely nothing else. How does that sound?”
Snot is still trickling so slowly out of his nose.
Rex takes a handkerchief out of his breast pocket. Hal ignores it. He lights an enormous Cuban cigar and blows smoke in Louise’s face.
“Also, she should have a patrician nose. The Upchurches are very big on patrician noses. Jeremiah Upchurch’s wife—a fine woman, a Havemeyer—had the most delicate, upturned nose—look!” He waves the cigar at another, smaller portrait. “The age of eugenics is upon us.” He goes to the stereo. He puts on Wagner. It’s Tristan.
“I love this part,” he says, and maybe it’s the wine or maybe it’s the whiskey or maybe it’s the modafinil they’ve been snorting but Louise thinks everything we do we have done before.
For the first time, Louise is almost bored.
There is nothing, nothing, Louise thinks, that does not belong to her.
* * *
—
Then it is four.
“Fuck,” Hal says. “Fuck! Everybody needs to shut the fuck up!”
“What ate your ass?” Athena is puffing on Hal’s cigar.
“It’s three in Beijing.”
“What?”
“In the afternoon—Christ.” Hal clears his throat very ostentatiously. “I have a work call.” He plugs in his cell phone. “My boss is a Very Great Man. His name is Octavius Idyllwild.”
Athena snorts.
“Maybe you’ve heard of him.”
“Sure,” says Athena.
“He lives between New York and the Cotswolds. He has a classic car collection. He and his wife are the same age—can you imagine that?” He starts dialing. “Listen.”
* * *
—
Louise and Rex sit, and Athena sits, and they listen to Hal talk to Octavius Idyllwild about spreadsheets, and at first Louise thinks this is whatever Hal’s sense of humor is, and they’re all supposed to laugh at Hal performing Hal, but it’s only when ten minutes have gone by and they’re all still listening in silence to an elderly and very posh British man talking about compliance regulations on speaker, and Hal has shown no signs of stopping, that Louise realizes he isn’t in on the joke.
“Don’t trust Alex Elias with the numbers,” Hal says. “He’s fucking incompetent, and he should know better than to think he isn’t.”
Hal’s grinning at them, and winking, and pointing at the phone like they’re all supposed to applaud him.
They all stare right back at him.
“Henry,” says Octavius Idyllwild. “Language.”
“There’s nothing worse than an incompetent fucking underling,” Hal says. “Nothing at all.”
He winks at Louise again.
“Language, Henry.”
Hal hangs up the phone.
* * *
—
“Will you look at that,” Hal says. Dawn is breaking out the window. “Men like that—I swear.” He snorts. “Don’t mind me. I’m just your ordinary bro.”
He turns to Athena.
“I want nothing in this life,” he says. “Isn’t that wonderful?” He puts his hand on her knee. “Just a beautiful woman and a nice glass of whiskey and some Nazis on the radio. That’s all.”
Rex and Louise exchange looks.
“I’m not like Rex,” Hal says. “Rex is a romantic. Women love Rex. Just look at those big brown eyes—aren’t they adorable? Don’t you just adore him?”
Athena shrugs. She shows all her teeth.
Hal goes on: “Not me. I know what I am. I’m…a Stoic. I don’t feel anything.” He thumps his chest, just to make this clearer. “What do you think, sweetheart? Which would you prefer?”
He leans in real close to Athena.
“You’re not the woman I’m going to marry,” he says. “But you’re better than a blow job on Tinder.”
Athena slaps him.
* * *
—
It’s such a forceful, astounding blow that Hal staggers back; he drops the whiskey and the tumbler spills all over Henry Upchurch’s perfectly upholstered cream-colored sofa, all over Henry Upchurch’s Oriental rug.
“Fuck,” Hal says.
“Fuck—fuck—fuck!”
He has gone white.
“Motherfuckers!” He throws the empty glass clear across the room.
It hits the fireplace and shatters.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
He gets in Athena’s face. For a second, Louise thinks he is going to hit her.
“What the absolute fucking fuck is wrong with you?”
“Hal!”
Rex is already on it. Rex is touching Hal’s shoulder so lightly, like he knows what to do, like he has done this all already.
“Didn’t your pimp ever fucking teach you anything?”
When Athena stands up, she’s taller than he is.
“Don’t you know how to behave in other people’s houses?”
The snot is still dripping from his nose.
Also, he’s crying.
“I’m out of here,” says Athena. She says it very quietly.
She says it out of, without her accent, and it is the first time Louise has ever clocked that the accent is not real.
She turns to Louise. She kisses her on the cheek.
“Next time,” she whispers. “Just give me cash.”
She takes the rest of the bottle when she goes.
* * *
—
Hal is on his hands and knees on the floor, rubbing so hard the suede flakes.
Rex is helping him.
“Don’t touch it,” Hal keeps saying. “Fuck you, Rex—don’t touch it—you’re making it worse.”
Louise knows what to do.
Louise gets the white wine from Henry Upchurch’s sideboard. She gets salt.
“For fuck’s sake—she was a whore, wasn’t she?”
Louise doesn’t say anything. Louise scrubs.
“I’m not the asshole here!”
Louise gets the stain out.
* * *
—
When she does, Hal smiles like nothing has even happened.
“See?” he says. “That’s why you need a woman. They know things. You’re so lucky, Rex, to have a woman like this.”
He sits back down on the sofa. He puts his feet back up on the coffee table.
“I wasn’t r
eally angry,” Hal says. “Actually—I was performing anger.”
Nobody says anything.
“It’s important for a man to perform anger, sometimes. So people know they can’t get away with things.”
Louise puts the dirty paper towels in the sink.
“You know, I did her a favor,” Hal says. “Next time—she’s going to spill something on something actually priceless. If she’s not careful. Now she knows better. Now she can bag herself a rich husband.” He chuckles to himself. “I call it broblesse oblige.” He nods at Louise. “You know how it works, don’t you, young Lulu?” He pats the stain where she has cleaned it.
Louise flushes.
She looks over at Rex—waiting for him to say something, to object, to defend her. But Rex only smiles a sad, soft smile.
“You’re going to make a very good wife one day,” says Hal.
“Thank you,” says Louise.
* * *
—
Louise and Rex take the elevator down, together. It is morning.
She does not know why she is so angry at him.
“What is it?”
He puts his arm around her. He kisses her head. She recoils without meaning to.
“What’s wrong?”
She exhales so slowly.
“He shouldn’t have said that to her,” Louise says, as they walk down Central Park West.
She doesn’t even know why she’s defending Athena. She doesn’t even like Athena. Athena has just blackmailed her.
She is angry, anyway.
“It’s Hal,” says Rex. “What can you do?”
“He called her a whore!”
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