The Regulars

by Georgia Clark

  Velma looked amused. “I love you too.”

  “No!” Evie shook her head. “I mean, hi. I’m Ev—Chloe.” The link between her brain and her mouth was as stable as a bubble bath. “Chloe Fontaine.”

  “I’m Velma Wolff.”

  “Yeah, I know. There’s a really big picture of you above the stage.”

  Velma grimaced at it, taking a half step closer to Evie as she did. “Hideous. Publicists, you know. Not my idea.”

  It sounded as if she actually cared that Evie believed that. “I’m here to interview you. For Extra Salt. A web series. Can I meet you after the reading?”

  “Sure.” Velma glanced around. “Where do you want to . . . do it?”

  Evie blushed. She couldn’t help it.

  Velma’s eyebrows pincered, surprised. Then, pleased.

  Evie couldn’t meet Velma’s gaze. “Over by the chocolate fountain. I’ll be the one swimming in it.”

  Velma laughed. A genuine, unexpected laugh. “Okay.”

  A woman wearing a headset tapped Velma on the shoulder. “Babe. You’re up.”

  Velma nodded. “See you after,” she said to Evie. “Chocolate fountain.”

  “Swimming.” Evie continued to speak even after Velma had turned away. “Really looking to . . .” And now her voice dropped as she stared, starstruck, at Velma’s retreating behind. “Work on my form.”

  27.

  She’d been at Lenny’s for over an hour before Mark came in. When they locked eyes, he froze. After a second, he spun around, but there was a group of people behind him, and in the few seconds he got caught up in the which-way-are-you-going dance, he looked back at her. She smiled at him, laughingly. He shook his head and smiled back.

  “Hello again,” Willow said.

  “Hello, Caroline.” Mark nodded at the bartender and ordered a Brooklyn Lager. He glanced at the empty stool next to her. “Is anyone . . .”

  “No. Please.” She liked the way Caroline’s voice sounded airy and expansive, like a house made of glass. She hadn’t even been sure that Caroline would reappear a second time: Krista hadn’t specified whether the Pretty worked the same way with every dose. But the single drop of purple that hit her tongue after Evie was safely out of the apartment heralded the encore of her simpering blond alter ego. Briefly, she’d considered discussing the decision with Evie, the friend whose moral barometer she could always trust. But Evie had been more interested in getting her opinion on shoes, and hairstyles, and to-cat-eye-or-not-to-cat-eye, and in the end, she’d made the choice on her own. And so Caroline was back.

  Mark took his seat as if he couldn’t remember the normal way to sit on a bar stool. “What are you reading?”

  She showed him the cover of a tattered paperback that looked straight out of the 1970s; Lacan and the Shadow Self by Dr. Thomas F. Pfiefferson, MD. “Heavy stuff.”

  Willow shrugged, fingering the pages. “There’s a lot in here I relate to.”

  “Really? What are you, like, a philosophy student?”

  She dropped her gaze down to the book shyly. When she looked up at him again, her eyes were dancing. “Yes. Exactly.”

  “Really? Wow. That’s so cool.”

  “Is it?”

  “This is going to sound dumb, but that’s something I always wish I’d done. Studied philosophy.”

  I know. “I bet you studied something like industrial design.”

  Mark gaped at her. “You must be a mind reader. That’s exactly what I studied!”

  “What do you do now?”

  “I design glasses.”

  She held up her wineglass in a question.

  He shook his head, smiling, and tapped the side of the glasses he was wearing. “Eyeglasses. I founded a start-up with a friend from college. We create sustainable eyewear right here in New York using locally sourced materials.”

  The first time Mark had told her this, sometime after midnight at the party in Park Slope, Willow fumbled for a response. “I didn’t realize people actually designed glasses,” was what she’d said, and he’d frowned at her, as if she’d just asked him what kind of cheese the moon was made of. She’d replayed this moment repeatedly for the next week, scratching the itch of intellectual humiliation over and over again. Mark was smarter than she was. He knew it, and so did she. She suspected he liked this: if Willow had money, and connections, then at least he was smarter.

  But Mark wasn’t necessarily smarter than Caroline.

  “Isn’t the optical industry a perfectly integrated monopoly?” she asked. “I bet you’ve had some success being able to offer a lower price point.”

  “Exactly!” Mark’s face lifted in surprised delight. “That’s exactly right!”

  Mark’s entire beer was drained by the time they stopped talking about the social impact of affordable eyewear. While he was in the bathroom, she checked her phone: 9:45. She—Willow—was supposed to be meeting him for a late dinner at 10. His idea. She sent him a text. sry somethin came up. see u later this wk?

  A strange feeling enveloped her when she pressed send. A blinding, joyful recklessness shot through with an undercurrent of sadness, of pain. She didn’t want Mark to leave the bar; she was having fun with him. She wanted to hurt him; he was flirting with someone else. It felt like shoplifting: the excitement and the fear combining for a full-body rush. Or, more specifically, it felt like being an artist: accessing something beyond the ordinary, something dangerous and deep and true.

  Be unsafe.

  Mark slid next to her and gestured to her empty glass. “Another?” He sounded defiant.

  Willow propped her head up with one hand, her cheek pressing into her palm. “You don’t have to see your girlfriend?”

  He flinched badly.

  Willow giggled. “Relax. I have a boyfriend.”

  “You do?”

  She nodded, tucking wisps of blond hair behind her ear self-consciously. “Of course I do.”

  Mark let out a breath. “Right. Of course you do.”

  “We’re not doing anything wrong.”

  Mark nodded, unsure. He signaled the bartender and ordered another round.

  “What’s she like?” She didn’t need to clarify who.

  Mark shifted. “She’s great. What’s your boyfriend like? Is he a student too, or—”

  But Willow swatted his words away. “You didn’t answer my question.” She cocked her head, words low, almost dangerous. “I bet she’s gorgeous.”

  Mark laughed nervously. “Sure. Of course.”

  “You don’t sound that convinced.”

  He took a sip of beer. “I don’t know if I’d call her gorgeous.”

  She looked at him sharply. “No?”

  “It’s too pedestrian a phrase.” He frowned. “Willow is more . . . unusual. More of an acquired taste.”

  Something began spreading inside her, something thick and wet and hot. She swiveled to face him fully. “Do you love her?”

  He shifted his weight, his unease clear. “I don’t know. Do you love your boyfriend?”

  “I don’t know either.” She laughed suddenly. “I have no idea.”

  He smiled at this, stuck somewhere between fascination and terror. “At least you’re honest.”

  Willow stretched both arms out in front of her. “If I’m honest,” she said, “then I’d say I don’t think my boyfriend is trustworthy.” She turned her arms over. Blue veins traced all but invisible lines under the skin at her wrist. This body is a map. Where is it taking me? “Or maybe that’s me.” She looked up at Mark. He stared back, captivated. Captured. “I can’t tell.”

  28.

  Although the ballroom was completely full, Evie felt like she was the only one there, listening to Velma read in a tone as lazy as Sunday morning.

  “ ‘You have never tasted anything. You think you have tasted lemonade. You think you have tasted salted french fries. You think you have tasted apple cake, and hamburgers, and delicate Swiss chocolates. But you have never tasted any of these
things. Because you have never tasted blood.’ ” Velma turned a page. The room was utterly silent. “ ‘After three days, the boy stopped trying to escape. Three days was usually how long it took. For someone to give up hope. For someone to stop screaming. For someone to simply stop. After three days of being locked in the old ski lodge’s basement, the boy stopped thumping, crashing about like a bird who’d flown in through a window. Silence feathered into the dimness. It settled into the sturdy wooden rafters. It stretched out, languid, on the piebald velvet sofa where Lita sat, lost in a yellowed paperback. The basement was silent. She raised her head. It was time.’ ” Another page turn. Evie’s skin pimpled with goose bumps. “ ‘Blood is not metallic,’ ” Velma continued. “ ‘It is not wet, or red, or messy. Blood, you see, is this: laughter that has begun to hurt. The whoosh of warmth from a firelit room when the night has turned nasty. A generous, sympathetic smile.’ ”

  Velma looked up, laconic and sheepish. She closed her novel. The room exploded with applause.

  Evie was on her third chocolate-covered strawberry when Adrian nudged her. “Here she comes.”

  A full hour had passed since Evie had confessed her undying love to Velma Wolff, but that didn’t mean her nerves weren’t still on high alert. Velma cut through the room like a shark. Evie subtly wiped her chocolatey fingers on the tablecloth and tried not to look terrified.

  Velma nodded a hello to Adrian and Lo before addressing the girl in the gold sequined dress. “So. Evidently I’m not your only love.”

  Evie froze. “Wh-what?”

  Velma wet the back of her thumb and smudged the corner of Evie’s lips. Evie almost lost equilibrium, as if she’d been tossed into a dryer, put on full spin. Then she realized Velma was wiping away chocolate. As if she were a child.

  “Oh god.” Evie pawed at her mouth. “Is it gone?”

  “Sadly, yes.” Velma slipped both hands into her pants pockets and took a step back.

  Lo hitched a boom mic. Velma flicked her gaze to Adrian, who was shouldering the camera in front of them. “All set?”

  The light on the camera turned red. “Rolling.”

  The interview had started so unexpectedly that Evie completely blanked on the first question. “Hi,” she blurted.

  “Hi,” Velma replied.

  “I’m Chloe. From Extra Salt.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Evie heard someone snicker. She willed herself to ignore the camera and sets of eyes behind it. “Velma Wolff. Your novels are known for their unreliable narrators. You delight in reversing your positions and confounding reader expectation. What’s your stance on truth in fiction?”

  Now it was Velma’s turn to fumble, just for a second, before finding an answer. “I guess I don’t really believe fiction can create truth, because each reader creates truth for her- or himself.”

  “How do you think your characters create truth for themselves?”

  “I think most of my characters are completely delusional,” Velma drawled, prompting titters of laughter.

  Evie raised her eyebrows. “More or less so than actual people?”

  “Equally.”

  “So you don’t think people have great self-awareness.”

  Velma’s voice hitched up in what sounded like surprise. “No.”

  Evie’s voice became more confident. “Lita claims she resents being a vampire, but she gives in to her bloodlust continually and joyfully. Why is that?”

  “She’s a hypocrite.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the body will always win over the mind.”

  “Is that your view on humanity in general?”

  Velma shot a quick glance at someone watching. “Don’t you want to ask me about what I’m wearing?”

  “I couldn’t care less what you’re wearing.” Unless you’re taking it off.

  As if she’d heard the thought, Velma held her gaze. For one second. Two. Three. Her eyes: gunmetal gray, the color of rain. Evie’s chest constricted.

  Velma blinked, looking like she was consciously pulling herself from a moment she hadn’t planned on. “I think that’s a wrap.” She nodded at Evie, and her gaze bounced away.

  Adrian switched off the camera light, Lo dropped the boom mic, and suddenly it was all over. Evie exhaled harshly, not sure if she was angry, excited, or disappointed. Maybe all three. It was that look that had thrown her off. That knowing, intimate look, as if they were already lovers and Velma had just proposed something scandalous—a quick fuck in the bathroom. Velma was the conductor; Evie was the orchestra, performing on command, almost beyond her own will . . .

  “Chloe.”

  It was her. One hand on her arm, squeezing it slightly. Voice as discreet as a spy’s. “A few of my friends are getting together in one of the suites upstairs. Would you like to join us?”

  29.

  It had taken Evie longer than it should have to realize the question was a direct invitation, but by then, Velma had already been absorbed by the clutch of literary hipster types who’d been trailing her all night. The friends, presumably. She had no idea if she was supposed to follow them, so she busied herself with thanking Adrian and Lo and seeing them off. She lingered at the entrance. From here, she was equidistant from the huge stairway that swept upstairs to the hotel’s suites, and the cobbled Soho streets outside. But she couldn’t wait around like a crazy fan forever. She had just decided to leave when Velma breezed out of the ballroom.

  “Chloe. I’m so glad you’re still here.” Velma offered her an arm.

  Together, they ascended the stairs, Evie caught up in Velma’s followers like debris in a tornado.

  The suite was already crowded by the time they arrived, brimming with music and laughter and the smell of weed. Like the ballroom, the interior design was Renaissance-meets-modern. Velvet rubbed shoulders with chevron. Bold black-and-white artworks hung on the bright red walls. Balcony doors were flung open, inviting the low roar of New York City into the room. Velma disappeared, swallowed up in a scattered round of applause. Evie hung in the doorway and tried not to be intimidated by the fact the suite was bigger than her entire apartment and probably cost a month’s rent per night.

  “Great dress.” A woman with a long black braid and a short green dress appeared at Evie’s side. She flicked salt off the rim of a margarita glass with her tongue and smiled approvingly. “How do you know Velma?”

  “I don’t, really. I just interviewed her.”

  “Oh!” The woman twisted to face Evie in full. “Are you a journalist?”

  Evie puffed out her chest. “Yes.”

  “Maybe you can interview me.” The woman batted her eyelids coquettishly. “I’m a designer. My name’s Luksus.”

  “I’ve heard of you!” Evie exclaimed. “I mean, I’ve seen one of your designs. Green snakeskin catsuit?”

  “Yes!” Luksus batted her arm. “Clever girl!”

  “My style team showed me it. As an option for one of our shoots.” It felt pretty cool to say style team. And shoots.

  “You’re on camera? Oh, you have to wear it! It’d look so beautiful on you!” Luksus purred. “Promise me, promise me you will!”

  Evie laughed, overwhelmed and excited. “Okay, maybe! But only if I can do a quick interview with you.” She wasn’t sure where this might go, but the opportunity seemed too good to pass up.

  “Of course! Let’s get you a drink first.” Luksus slipped her arm through Evie’s. She smelled like tequila and vanilla perfume. “What’s your name, gorgeous?”

  “Chloe.”

  “Out of the way! Chloe needs a drink!” Luksus tugged Evie off the wall and into the writhing mass of the after-party.

  One hour later, Evie had met Velma’s agent, Velma’s agent’s boyfriend, Velma’s agent’s boyfriend’s best friend, and basically everyone short of a partridge in a pear tree. She’d been expecting wall-to-wall celebs, but so far, the selection seemed far more random. Hannah Hart was in a deep conversation with either Carrie Brown
stein or someone who looked exactly like Carrie Brownstein, and she thought she saw Cara Delevingne in the line for the bathroom, but apart from that, all the famous people were gone.

  But that didn’t matter, because after she interviewed Luksus, the designer started introducing her as “the next Alexa Chung” or “the hottest thing on the net right now.” The guests all nodded, wide-eyed, immediately believing her. After a while, Evie almost believed it herself. Even though Velma was nowhere to be seen, she was having a blast. The more margaritas she downed, the easier it became to meet people. And people wanted to talk to her. Often she found herself talking to three or four people at once, the center of attention without even trying. After a while, Evie had her own entourage: Imogen and Ivy, two impeccably dressed style bloggers (“actually, we think of ourselves as ‘curators’ ”), and two sarcastic, handsome gay guys who were both called Declan. They refilled her glass, laughed at her jokes, and whispered bitchy gossip in her ear. To them, she was “fabulous” and “essential” and “totally adorbs.” Whenever they asked her something, they listened to her answer as attentively as if she were doling out the secret of eternal youth.

  Actually, she had that. It was in a little purple bottle in her bathroom cabinet.

  “Excuse me,” she said to the Declans. “I need some fresh air.”

  “Baby,” one of them cooed. “You are fresh air.”

  On the balcony, New York City spread out before her, bright and insistent. She slipped off her heels and leaned against the railing, breathing in the city air. She couldn’t stop smiling. She felt like a rock star, like she was radiating light, like she was really and truly alive.

  When someone came to stand next to her, she wasn’t surprised to see who it was.

  Velma said, “You’re in trouble.”

  Evie addressed the city, not the woman next to her. “Oh really?”

  “You’re more popular than I am. And it’s my party.”

  Evie glowed. Velma had been watching her. “You should try wearing a gold sequined dress.”