“Come on,” Danny said. “There’s something I want us to do.”
He took her hand and pulled her out of the trailer and back into the party. They fought their way through the main room and out into the hallway. Danny picked up a wooden plank from a pile the guests had torn up from the floor and motioned for her to do the same, then led her back out to the courtyard. He walked toward his ice sculpture and, in one swift movement, walloped its head from the body with the wooden plank. He turned to her and grinned.
“Your turn.”
Cleo took the plank in both hands and thwacked it into the sculpture’s torso. The reverberation of the impact shuddered up her arms. The top half of the body cracked off and skidded across the cobblestones. Shards of ice flew like sparks around her. Danny knocked the remaining legs and feet to the ground and continued to smash them into smaller pieces with his plank. People were gathering around to watch and take pictures.
“Is this part of the show?” she heard someone ask.
Danny pushed through the crowd, still clutching his plank overhead. He ran toward the warehouse and struck the first window he saw. Glass shattered around his feet and onto the people gathering behind him.
“Dancing fucking star!” he yelled.
The energy passed through the crowd like an electric current. Somebody climbed into the taco truck and began hurling food from the counter window. A burrito exploded against the warehouse wall with a splat. Bodies were colliding and ricocheting off each other, everyone jostling to be near Danny, the anarchic pied piper. A burning torch got pushed over as a throng of partygoers surged forward into the warehouse. Cleo turned in the opposite direction.
She saw him from behind. Tall Anders, handsome Anders, shiny Anders for whom life’s difficulties slipped away like a silk dress sliding off a hanger. Someone was calling her name. She didn’t care. He thought she was Cleo the china doll, Cleo who cracked and broke under the pressure, Cleo who was hollowed out. Not anymore. She dropped the plank and picked up a silver ice bucket someone had just plucked a bottle of vodka from. She hoisted the bucket onto her shoulder, felt its weight tilt backward for one teetering moment, then pushed all her force behind it to tip it over Anders’s head. Icy water sloshed over his shoulders. The bucket landed perfectly over his head like a dunce cap. Ice cubes skidded across the floor around their feet. He scrambled to lift the bucket and turned to look at her, his hair dark and dripping, a look of profound shock on his blanched face. Someone grabbed her from behind.
“Jesus, Cleo.” Zoe was grasping her shoulders, searching her face. “Have you gone nuts?”
Security swarmed around them. Anders had thrown the bucket to the side and was bending at the waist with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. His eyes did not leave Cleo. He looked at her through a slash of hair. She could feel her hands being pulled behind her, her wrists pinched together. Then she was being lowered to the ground, her legs knocked out from beneath her.
“Let her go!” yelled Zoe.
Cleo’s cheek was against the cold cobblestones. The dull pulse of a heavy bass traveled through the ground under her ear. She lay completely limp, drained of all fight. Her wrists were being zipped together with plastic cuffs. Her scar. She hoped they did not see her scar. Above her was shouting, the clanging of metal, footsteps rushing past. Electric riffs of guitar serrated the air. A crowd was chanting Danny’s name. Somewhere a girl was screaming for Danny, out of time with the others, over and over in a long, pained wail.
Cleo closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Zoe’s face was beside her own. She had scrambled onto the ground next to her, so they were at eye level. She put her hand against Cleo’s cheek and made little hushing noises. Above them, a security guard was telling her to get up. His voice sounded like stainless steel.
“Just breathe, Cleo,” Zoe said. “I won’t leave you. I won’t go anywhere. You’re safe.”
Cleo smiled into Zoe’s gold-flecked eyes. Everything she had ever wanted to hear from a man was hers from the mouth of a girl. Zoe’s eyes were the color of Lyle’s Golden Syrup. Cleo had adored it as a child and poured it on everything. The logo was old-fashioned, even by English standards, an illustration of a dead lion surrounded by a swarm of bees. Underneath it were the words “Out of the strong came forth sweetness.” That was what Zoe was like. A lion filled with bees.
“Beautiful strong Zoe,” said Cleo.
Zoe’s eyes creased into a smile.
“Beautiful strong Cleo,” she said.
“What the fuck is happening here?”
Danny’s white boots appeared in Cleo’s eye line. Not one scuff. Zoe scrambled to her feet.
“Sir, this woman just assaulted a man.” That hard male voice again. “We had to restrain her.”
“Assaulted?” said Zoe. “She poured a bucket of ice on him. Big fucking deal.”
“Who are you?” said Danny.
“Her sister-in-law. Who are you?”
“I’m Danny Fucking Life. Wait a minute, her sister-in-law’s a sister? I thought she married some old white dude?”
“I did,” said Cleo into the ground.
“Sir, we’re going to have to ask you to step aside so we can detain this woman.”
“Look, that’s not happening. I hired you guys. You’re not the police.”
“She could have injured—”
“No, she could not have.” Anders’s voice sounded flinty and resigned. “Just let her go.”
Cleo was lifted to her feet. She looked at Anders. Anders looked at her. She had cradled that face in her hands, kissed its eyelids, pressed its cheek to hers, circled the dark cave of its mouth with her tongue. She knew his face. He knew hers. There was no undoing that. Anders was opening his mouth to speak when the art critic from earlier ran toward them with a wild look in his eyes.
“The warehouse is burning!” he yelled. “The warehouse is on fire!”
Behind him the back end of the building was indeed funneling a black cloud of smoke into the air. Cleo saw a single orange flame lick the black sky.
“Oh shit,” said Danny, and ran toward his life’s work.
Twenty minutes later, the party guests were all gathered at the water’s edge on a bank of rubble and rocks. The fire trucks’ lights illuminated their faces in flashes of scarlet and blue. The fire had been quickly contained, but everyone had been evacuated nonetheless. Of course the drama of this would only make the party more legendary. Marshall went to search for Alex and Quentin in the crowd, leaving Cleo standing between Audrey and Zoe. They looked out across the inky East River to Manhattan. A gray blanket a fireman had inexplicably provided was slung over all three of their shoulders.
“Guess those paintings he made with gasoline aren’t going to survive this,” said Audrey, shivering in her tiny dress. “What do you think Danny’s going to do?”
Zoe shrugged. “Call it performance art?”
Audrey laughed.
“Start again,” said Cleo.