Our Little Racket

by Angelica Baker

  Then, through the pleasant gleam that seemed to overlay everything in the room, she thought of someone in her house, in the kitchen, in her mother’s pearlescent bathroom. Tiny things going missing, things the absence of which they’d never notice, until everywhere in the house there were holes in the textures she remembered.

  But she couldn’t put the soap back; it was already unwrapped. She saw a burnished silver trash can beneath the counter and chucked it. It hit the bottom with a satisfying sound, and Jared looked over at her. She smiled.

  Chip wasn’t with them. He was somewhere out there, still, in the house. She liked the way it sounded when he said her name; he always sounded like he was smiling, somehow, when he said it.

  For the second time that night, she thought of her Grandpa D’Amico. He had haunted her childhood, staring out sunken-eyed from the small number of photographs her nonna kept on display, arranged at the center of her chipped credenza like a shrine. Madison knew so little about him, in the end. Even though he was the one who had named her, long before she’d been born. The last building he’d worked at had been on East Seventy-Second, between Madison and Fifth, and he always told her father it was the perfect name for a street, even better for a girl. Your mouth just wants to say it, he would tell her father. It sounds like a girl with no problems.

  She knew her mother had not wanted to name her Madison. Her father had won, in the end. And then the twins had been given Italian names. Her mother hadn’t gotten to choose any of them.

  “Get over here,” Zoë said, her voice growing more tender in its commands.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Come on, I’m sorry for what I said, Madison. I’m, like, blacked out. Come here for a second.”

  Zoë took Allie’s lipstick and swiped it across Madison’s lower lip with two expert strokes, the gesture so curt and graceful Madison knew she must have learned it from her own mother.

  “There we go,” Zoë said then, looking Madison in the eye. They turned together to the mirror and stood side by side, their hips touching, their lipstick the same. Madison tilted her head toward Zoë’s. Zoë might not know it, but Madison was doing her a favor. She was allowing it, all the little comments, bending her head in gracious indifference.

  “You seem on edge,” Zoë said. “You know we’re all just teasing, right? You can totally tell me what’s going on. I’m here for you.”

  “We’re going downstairs, right?”

  “You have to have a sense of humor about yourself,” Zoë said, which seemed irrelevant.

  AFTER THAT, they were in the ballroom. There was a piano in one corner, somehow as out of place as if it had been wedged into a corner of the kitchen. One of the boys Madison didn’t know sat down and plunked the keys with his fists.

  There were mirrors everywhere and a wet bar sunk just a few steps below the level of the dance floor and the two chandeliers above them, and with the room dark except for the sconces in the corners, everything was flattering. The light bathed everyone’s cheeks and caught the whites of their eyes. Callan picked Allie up, threw her over one shoulder, laid her out on the piano and tickled her. She sat up and threw her legs around his waist, holding him from behind. Neither of them pretended, anymore, not to notice the other.

  Music began to blast from invisible speakers somewhere in the walls, that M.I.A. song. Zoë pulled at Madison’s dress, yanking so hard that Madison’s breasts nearly sprang forward from the vicelike grip of the white lace bodice. They started dancing together. Whenever the sound of gunshots rang out during the song’s chorus, Zoë cocked both forefingers in the air above her head.

  Chip was behind the bar, pouring Grey Goose into frosted shot glasses.

  “No,” Callan said, “wait a minute.” He ran over to Jared, who was dancing by himself, sunglasses intact, a bottle in his right hand. Callan extracted the bottle and came back over to the bar. Chip watched, quiet.

  “Madison,” Callan said. “You’ll love this, trust me. Let me show you.”

  She could see every part of Allie’s body orienting toward Callan, wanting him to touch her again in the same unthinking, unguarded way he had just minutes earlier.

  “Don’t do that,” Zoë said. “Don’t make her do Aftershock. Jesus, what are we, in the eighth grade?”

  “Why don’t we let her decide for herself?” Callan said, pouring red liquid from the bottle into the two shot glasses. Wyatt materialized at his shoulder and smacked his hands together.

  “Fuck yes,” he said. “Madison, you done this before?” She shook her head. “Do you like cinnamon?”

  “I fucking love cinnamon,” she said. She was so surprised by her own words she almost clapped her hand to her mouth. Callan ceded the floor to Wyatt, who pulled a lighter from his pocket with a flourish and showed her how to light the shot on fire, how to slam your palm down over the lip of the shot glass and hold it there for a second.

  “You need to wait for that suction,” Wyatt said, winking at her.

  “Don’t we all, though,” Callan said, and they slapped five. She ignored the nauseous flip in her stomach. It was refreshing, even, to be feeling nausea from so many different sources. It was like standing in front of a clamoring crowd of angry people, all shouting over one another. You were absolved of all responsibility; you no longer had to listen to any of them.

  Wyatt lit the shot for her, and she covered the burning liquid with her hand, feeling the sticky suction ring forming. She was learning, too, that everything went down easier once you had a few drinks down there already. She was aware of how unpleasant the shot tasted, but it was remote. The pain was far away, she would fix it later.

  Chip was still looking over at them, not even pretending to ignore her. Callan reached out and pinched her skin through her dress, just above her hip bone, and within seconds Chip was up from the sunken bar, shouldering Callan away from her.

  “Give it a rest,” he said, putting one hand to Madison’s arm and moving her steadily backward, away from the boys, ignoring their laughter. He put his other hand to the small of her back and they were on the stairs, up and out of the room.

  HER MOUTH WAS STILL TANGY from the shots, and Chip was moving ahead of her through an unfamiliar part of the house. She was only holding his hand by two fingers, four of their fingers all locked together.

  You’re not my mother, she had said to Lily in the car. Everything felt spiky, now. Every possible image applied an unwelcome pressure, as though with each errant thought she were pressing her own fingertips against fresh bruises all over her body. Lily in the car. Her father sprawled out on the floor. She walked with Chip down a darkened hallway.

  She stopped near a pair of French doors that looked out over a side patio. There was an outdoor fireplace, mysteriously lit—so Zoë was right, there were still people around, wandering the house. Chip had moved away again, and she stood there, neither outside nor where she was, waiting for something to happen. So when he walked up next to her, put his hand to her shoulder and cupped it as though it were a fragile animal he was afraid to crush, it felt expected, inevitable even. She was barely even excited.

  “Making a break for it?”

  She smiled but said nothing, an instinct for which she later felt an absurd, awestruck gratitude.

  “Everything okay?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, if that’s okay.”

  “I wasn’t. I was talking about—you just seem tough. I see how you ignore, you know, Zoë’s bullshit.”

  “She’s the brave one,” Madison said. “She would never have been this brave two months ago, trust me.”

  She could feel Chip’s breath on her neck.

  “Well,” he said, “she’s probably just trying to get a rise out of you. It’s pretty exotic, you know, for someone like her. And I think Wyatt is actually afraid of you. Which is very impressive, I have to say.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “I’m serious.”

  “Did he—I mean, is his costume a joke on
purpose? Does Wyatt understand, you know, irony?”

  She was worried she had used that wrong. They taught it in English every year, but no one ever learned it well enough not to keep making the mistake.

  Chip laughed.

  “All I know is, I wish I’d gotten here sooner to see his face when you saw that costume. It’s kind of endearing, when you think about it. It would never have occurred to him that it might be awkward, not until you walked in. He’s like this big idiot that can’t help bumping into things.”

  “It’s not awkward.”

  “No, I know. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  His hands were on her waist, kneading the fabric of her dress. “Was everything okay with Amanda, earlier? She kind of Irish exited there.”

  “Could we not talk anymore?” Madison said. She’d said it from somewhere purely sincere, but he swallowed and she saw that he’d taken it for a dare, an invitation.

  He cradled her chin, her jaw. His other hand was on her shoulder, drawing her toward him, so that even when he was reaching for her, it felt like she was leaning into him.

  Once it was happening, once they were kissing, he took his hand from her shoulder and pressed it to her hip bone, his fingers warm through the fabric of her dress, and pushed back until her entire body was flush with the door behind them.

  She thought for a moment of the phantom adults somewhere in the house, that familiar clinch of panic. That reluctance to be spotted if she didn’t know she’d been spotted.

  But then Chip took her bottom lip lightly between his teeth, pressed their bodies closer together, and reached for the thick silk curtains next to them. He drew a curtain around them, hiding everything but their entwined feet, and they stayed there for a few minutes, everything about him both hard and soft, pressing into her with delicious force. His hands never straying from her face and her hips so that she didn’t have to make any real decisions.

  “Where’s Abbott?” Wyatt’s voice came ricocheting down the hall, the open ballroom door allowing a wedge of warm light to pierce the darkness. “He said he was getting more beers from upstairs. If he is wandering around up there, I swear to God—”

  “Dude, will you give me a fucking break?” Chip yelled over his shoulder, but he’d already stepped out, and he barely looked back at her as he pinched the skin above her elbow and then broke into a jog, disappeared.

  She went back to the ballroom, to the soft lights and the reflections of everyone dancing in the mirrors all around them. To the T.I. song blaring as Allie mouthed along to the lyrics, which of course Madison had never realized were all about sex, of course they were. Zoë and Wyatt had disappeared from the party and Allie crawled on top of Callan on a brocade love seat in the corner.

  Madison stood near the other boys, and tried to remember to smile whenever they all laughed.

  Soon Zoë was back, black makeup gathering at the corners of her eyes and her face otherwise untouched. She asked if Madison wanted a ride home, she’d called one of her housekeepers. She’d come get the car tomorrow, whatever, she didn’t want Allie harassing her about it. Allie didn’t even look up at the mention of her name. She was still coiled on top of Callan, her legs thrown across his lap, when Madison left them there, the lights still casting colored patterns on all the walls and mirrors, the music blaring.

  AN SUV THE COLOR OF FADED PENNIES was parked near the fountain. They stood uncertainly in the doorway of the house at first, Zoë swimming one hand into the air behind her, until Madison stepped forward and caught her. Zoë draped her body over Madison’s like a scarf, her heels dragging on the cobblestones. A woman had already jumped down from the driver’s seat, pausing only to clutch Zoë’s chin in her hand and roughly shake her.

  “She’s fine. Just a mess. Get in,” the woman said to Madison, her voice quieter than seemed to match her brusque, angry treatment of Zoë’s unfolded body. “I’ll drive you, too.”

  She had a thick Jamaican accent and her eyes in the rearview mirror tracked Madison’s every movement. When Zoë had finally agreed to buckle her seat belt, they left.

  Madison wondered if Wyatt could see them from his bedroom. If that’s even where he’d taken Zoë, or if they’d stopped at some more accessible spot. It was so easy for them to shut themselves up in a room, like they owed you nothing at all. Her mother, Lily, even poor Mina Dawes—each one of them was running on the fumes of her own fear these past weeks, that Madison might ask a question with no acceptable answer. But men didn’t feel that fear. They just took themselves out of the running, so that you felt foolish, grasping, if you wanted to ask them anything at all. Madison could never have wandered upstairs to knock on Wyatt’s door, ask him to help her carry Zoë to the car. She knew this without question.

  Zoë crumpled against her window and jammed her head at an angle, gazing up at the night outside as it streamed past. Madison’s stomach sloshed, the edges of her vision both slurred and sharp. She tried to parcel out the memories of Chip, knowing that if she thought of all of them right now they’d begin to lose their luster, become imagined. They’d cross into the past, and she’d have to fight for her version of what had happened, defend these images to an invisible jury. This was real, the soft, fuzzy patch at the edge of his chin. Or the callus on his thumb; I felt it.

  The car had pulled up at her parents’ gate before she even realized that the woman driving hadn’t asked her for directions. She wondered if this woman knew Lily, and then wondered if that was an offensive thing to wonder. She thanked her, and as she grabbed the door handle, Zoë, suddenly reanimated, grabbed at her wrist.

  “Wait,” she said, “you need this.” She reached into her purse and slid out three sticks of gum. “Don’t worry, it’s sugarless, but you need it. They smell it on you.”

  Madison looked down at the gaping purse, at the pack of gum.

  “These are your last three,” she said. “You smell more than I do, you’ll need them.”

  Zoë let her head loll back onto the seat, her job done, and closed her eyes.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t. Just take them.”

  MADISON UNWRAPPED EACH PIECE of gum, one at a time, and then began to chew, letting the false sweetness spread across her tongue. As the car disappeared into the darkness she stood, alone, listening to the night around her. She could not see her house, of course; it was protected from view by the oak trees, set too far back on the property to be seen from the road. And yet she could feel it there, floating in the darkness up above her, waiting.

  She turned to her left and looked at the black sedan parked about two hundred feet down the road, its right wheels sunk into the muddy grass beside the tarmac. She started to walk down the road toward the car. It was getting harder, as she got tired, to walk in her mother’s shoes, and of course she was also drunk. No one was watching; there was no harm in admitting this here, on the dark road, to herself. No one was awake up above her. Whatever the house was waiting for, it wasn’t her.

  “I’m drunk,” she said into the night.

  The black sedan, though, was a different story. Someone was in there because he’d been told to sit there all night long. He was surely watching her now. He was waiting, she knew, to swoop in just before any potential danger made its presence felt. And wasn’t this dangerous, right now? She was drunk, wandering down a poorly lit road, practically begging for some loaded suburban teenager to run her down. And wouldn’t that be perfect, she thought, wouldn’t everyone eat that up. In most of the things she’d read about her father online, she and the boys had been, at most, impersonal footnotes included in the final paragraphs. In part, probably, because she was pretty dull, as teenage girls went. This was like the most exciting night she’d ever had, and she hadn’t even done any of the available drugs.

  But this, she thought, this could definitely be its own headline. Disgraced financier’s daughter wanders dark suburb alone, unsupervised, jumps in front of reckless driver. Isn’t that just what everyone expected of her, why Zoë watche
d her so closely, why Chip took pity on her? She was even better, at this point, than something truly volatile; she was something that, at any moment, might become volatile. Wasn’t that why Lily hated her lately?

  Even alone, even when she didn’t say it out loud, the word, disgraced, settled in the back of her throat, threatened to keep her from breathing.

  The point was that this man should already be out, walking toward her, hands up in a gesture equal parts defensive and soothing. He should be asking why she was out there, if she needed help. She was close enough, now, that he must be able to see her in the rearview. This man wasn’t doing his job.

  But no, because her father wouldn’t have hired someone like that. Whatever had happened in the city, it hadn’t been because her father didn’t know how to keep her safe. She knew this even when she herself was angry, even when her mother had bitten her bottom lip while they talked about him that night, in the bathtub. They still knew this.

  She stopped in the middle of the road. Another five or six steps would have brought her close enough to touch the trunk of the car. It sat there, untroubled, its lights dark, its engine off. How much nearer would they let her get before they admitted to themselves, to her, that she was trying to get their attention? It seemed strange to her, now that she was considering this, that this one car was enough to do the job. But then, didn’t everyone think her father was still in the city? She thought again of the men in the car, of the information they had that she did not, of everything they might be able to tell her.

  She stood there for so long she was convinced she could hear the men, because now she was sure there must be two of them. But of course their windows wouldn’t be open. It was a chilly night for Halloween, unseasonably crisp. The car sat there still, unapologetic, giving up nothing. She closed her eyes, and waited.

  EVENTUALLY SHE WALKED UP THE DRIVE, disabled the alarm system, and entered the house. She slipped off her mother’s shoes in the mud room. She left them where they fell, like evidence to be tagged later by the crime scene investigator.