“I was just throwing away some bottles.” I have no bottles. She might have seen me come out here empty-handed. She might know I’m lying. I search her for signs of suspicion, but she just looks like her eerie self: worried, astrological. I have to be smart. I have to turn my suspicions on her. “You’re out here late.”
She presses her lips together. The dog barks viciously from above.
“They don’t have you working this late, do they?” That’s when I see it: the open door of the van. The van in the street. She’s living in the van.
“You need to leave here,” she says. Her lips are blue in the half-light.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.” I put my hands up. “I’ll just go back down.”
“Leave.” She knows. She knows and she is giving me a chance to run.
“Thank you. Thank you so much.” I keep my hands up, which probably doesn’t help my case. “I’m leaving. I’m leaving soon. I just need a little more time.”
“Bean!” a voice shouts down from above, magnified, so close. “Bean! Come here! Stop that barking! What are you barking at?”
Astrid comes toward me. My first instinct is to block her. She grabs my hand. “They said my sister killed herself. She was their tenant, too.” It’s not Demi she’s talking about. It’s someone else. I’m safe. “Be careful!” She doesn’t know who I am.
“Bean, damn it!”
I run.
My heart is still racing when I get downstairs. I can’t go back for the bag, not with Astrid living across the street. It’s too late. I will have to hope whatever God there is will help me. Or else, I’ll have to help myself.
DEMI
The next morning, I put on a pair of Demi’s headphones and open up her laptop. I need to check in. I need to make sure no one is getting suspicious. But there are no new messages, no new e-mails. Who was this woman? Why was her life so easy to take? I click through her in-box, looking over old messages again. I realize they are almost all work related. A few friends slip in here and there, but their messages are shallow. They’re effusive, but they lack definition:
I miss you, babe! We need to have drinks soon!
Sorry it’s been so long.
We’ll have to catch up next time! Love you!
Not one person is worried. Her life is mine for the taking. I put the laptop on the table, then get down on my hands and knees. I reach underneath the sofa until I find her wallet. I don’t look enough like her to use her ID, but her cards are all there: black, silver, gold. Begging to be used.
All my life I have apologized for who I am, ashamed, exhausted, overwrought. All my life I have wished for just a glimpse of what it was like on the other side. And now I’m surrounded by it.
I look at the flowers in Michael’s corner and I rankle. I walked in that same garden and didn’t even touch a single petal. I was careful not to squish the grass. I made sure to wipe my feet. What the fuck is wrong with me?
I set fire to a dead woman’s body but I won’t use her credit cards? A billionaire wants to save me and I don’t think I’m worth it?
I need to stop apologizing.
I need to think rich.
* * *
I GO TO Rodeo Drive, because it’s the poor person’s conception of where the rich person shops. I go to Chanel first. I’ve always wanted one of their bags. Demi doesn’t have one. I walk into the store and I think, But she has other bags, dozens and dozens of bags! It’s wrong—it’s immoral—to have more than one bag.
I walk through the center of the store, like I’m afraid of what will happen if I get too close to anything. Alarms will go off, shutters will come down, the world will end. I see Demi’s cold face turned up from the floor. I cover it with a blanket.
I approach the cashier. “I wanted to get a bag.”
She analyzes me, assessing my value. I think she will see through me, like designer shopgirls are half Divine, but all she sees are Demi’s clothes. “Which one?”
“Um.” I am scared to look around me. Scared to touch. It’s like I’ve walked into a police station and confessed to a crime: I want a Chanel bag. Lock me up.
“I always wanted a black one. Just classic. And a necklace, you know, with all the little charms? Like in the movie . . .” I drift off, can’t remember the title, can’t remember my own name. Buying designer clothes is like dying a little. La petite mort, the little death.
She looks at my clothes again, double-checking I can afford it. Then she shows me bags. She opens and shuts them. She shows me their size, makes comments about the life she imagines I have. I pick the one I want, not the one I can afford. I don’t even look at the price. Then she shows me necklaces so heavy, I can feel my own importance. They drape between my breasts, hang heavy over the sweat collected there.
I look amazing. I look like a million bucks. All the bad days disappear from my reflection in the mirror. It’s not the same as Demi’s clothes. These are my clothes, and I have this wild idea that I will replace everything, start over, become a new person, myself in her.
I don’t stop at Chanel. I am carrying so many shopping bags that I look like a girl in a movie, the way no one shops in real life. When I get tired, I stop at a restaurant. All my bags gather around my feet like tributes. I drink expensive wine and eat raw fish.
If I could choose a moment to end my life, this would be it. I can’t imagine that things will ever get better. It’s stupid how wonderful it is. All my life I’ve been told that true happiness comes from friends and family. It’s been drilled into my head: You have everything worth having if you have love.
Bullshit.
I loved my dad more than anything and it never felt like this. It hurt. Watching him do things I hated, watching him suffer and get it wrong. This feels like clarity, like the answer to every question. It’s like heroin is to Michael, an absence of struggle, every bad thing disappears, maybe every good thing, too, but isn’t happiness a kind of pain? In knowing, always knowing, it will end?
I think of Graham’s offer. I want his help. I want to live like him. I can’t take back the things I’ve done.
But money forgives everything.
DEMI
On my way home that evening, I pass by the tent city in my car. I have money in my pocket. I could stop. I tell myself it’s too dangerous. I don’t want to be recognized. I dropped tens of thousands of dollars on designer clothes I didn’t need and I can’t even toss a dollar out the window.
As we climb up the hills, I justify it. It’s different for me. I earned this. No one helped me. I helped myself. I was poor. I don’t want to be poor again. I wasn’t born privileged like Graham and Lyla. It’s not fair that I should have to share with anyone. I think of my dad, the way he used to give everything away like it was nothing. But he was wrong. It was something, and I lost it. I deserve this. It’s only fair.
The Uber drops me off in front of the house. I collect my shopping bags. I thank my driver. I walk to the open gate. The smell of death washes over me so strong, it’s like something from a dream.
It’s all right. You’ve been through this before. You’ve walked through fire to get here. You’ll keep walking.
I grip my shopping bags, protection. I step into the courtyard. There is blood on the stairs. I follow it to the body. The red dog from the street with its head snapped back, like it reached too far and broke apart.
I scream. I fall back against the railing, fight the cage of my ribs for my breath. I don’t know what I am afraid of—everything suddenly overwhelms me: Astrid’s warning, Demi’s hands, the camp beneath the underpass, the nothingness in Margo’s garden.
I feel a body close to mine, a hothouse scent. Strong arms wrap around me. A voice hums in my ear. “It’s all right, it’s all right.” Everything is all right.