My shopping bags are scattered on the ground. I don’t remember dropping them. My Chanel necklace winks like it’s in on the joke. I can’t catch my breath. I see the dog even when I’m not looking. I have this weird, wet feeling that I am somehow responsible. I imagine all the different ways that I could be, contort myself in guilty shapes, like I hope to one day be held accountable.
Graham holds me. Lyla is cold, watches me with arch eyes. She tells me the dog belongs to Margo and not to say anything. Graham scolds her, pets me like one of his animals. The guesthouse is my enclosure.
I shake it off. “I’m fine. It’s just shock.”
Graham helps me with my bags. He scoops up the necklace, delicately lowers it into the case, tucks it in the bag, arranges the tissue paper.
He offers to help me down the stairs. I insist I’m fine. I don’t know why I’m so upset. Demi’s body didn’t have nearly the same effect on me. I do love animals but I think it’s more than that.
It’s easier to cry over a dog than a human being.
* * *
THE SCENT OF heroin is almost comforting when I step back into the guesthouse. I should have stayed inside. I definitely shouldn’t have gone shopping. It’s like I’m losing touch with reality. This place brings me back to earth.
Michael is in his corner, nodding out. He rouses himself enough to sneer, “What is that?” at my shopping bags.
“Upstairs bought it for me.” I set the bag in the bedroom, where he won’t see them. Then I come back to the living room, where he has nodded out again. He seems more high than usual, which only makes me surer of what I am about to ask. “Michael?” My voice has a dangerous snap. “Did you kill that dog?”
“What?” He blinks awake. “No! I wouldn’t kill an animal.”
“I saw you kill a human being.”
“I wouldn’t kill a dog.”
“Then who did? There’s only you and me here.”
“Probably he killed it. The guy in the suit.”
“Why would he kill his mother’s dog?”
“Why would I?”
“Because—,” I start, and then think, Astrid. Last night the dog was barking at her. What if it got loose? What if it revealed her location? “Hey, do you know there’s a woman living in the van outside?”
“?’Course. Astrid. She helped me break the gate into the garden. She has this magic tool. Clomp! Cuts right through it.”
My heart is pounding in my brain. “Do you think she broke the gate upstairs?”
He shrugs. “Probably.”
“Why?” I ask out loud but he doesn’t answer. I know the answer. She’s spying on them. She thinks they killed her sister. But who? All of them? I remember Graham’s weird warnings: Be careful with her. I don’t want to scare you. I’ve always tried to help people. But some don’t want to be helped. Lyla. At the time, I ignored Graham. I assumed he meant she was a Mean Girl. What if he meant she was a Murderer Girl?
“We should leave,” Michael says. Michael. He pushed me to stay.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” He shivers so hard, his eyes wobble. “Just a feeling I have. A bad feeling.”
That night, I toss and turn in my bed. I don’t want to leave. It’s dangerous to stay. There’s no way out except—there is one way.
I could tell Graham everything. I could make him understand it was an accident. I could trust him. He could help me. Only he could. He said he liked to save people. He could save me.
I shouldn’t trust him. I never would have thought I could. But all this good fortune has changed me.
Hope is burning a hole in my chest.
* * *
I AM WAITING for him outside the next time I hear footsteps on the stairs. I found a birthday present among Demi’s possessions. It’s silly but I think he will like it. But when I turn to look, I see gray pumps. It isn’t Graham; it’s his wife.
She is dressed in her utilitarian gray like someone sucked the life out of her clothes. She insists I come shopping with her and her friends, in the odd way she has, like I’m her target, like she has to meet a deadline. And Graham’s words are in my ear: I don’t want to scare you. Be careful.
She smiles fiercely at me. “He talks about you all the time. I think he has a crush.”
“He’s your husband,” I remind her.
Her laughter plays an uneven beat. She says they’re separated. I feel his hand on my ear.
“I just want Graham to be happy. He’s such a good man.”
She takes me shopping on Rodeo Drive. She’s jumpy and drunk. Her friends are all assholes. Sometimes I catch her reflection in the mirror when she’s not looking, and think, Is this the face of a killer?
But then, I might as well be looking at my own reflection.
DEMI
Lyla drops me off outside. I am just grateful I survived the shopping trip. Michael is right. This is all getting too complicated. I need an exit strategy. I need Graham. And then, like money magic, he appears.
“Hey.” He is stepping out of his front door as I step into the courtyard. He smiles at me all the way to his ears. “How was shopping?” He thumbs through his keys, locks his door.
“It was fine. Lyla bought me a dress.” She wanted us to wear the same thing: twincesses! I didn’t protest. I doubt I’ll even go to the party. If I tell Graham everything, I doubt I’ll ever see her again. “Oh!” I say, remembering. “I got you a present. It’s silly.” I reach into my Chanel bag, pull out the book from Demi’s bookcase. He walks all the way to me and I hand it to him.
“Fear,” he reads.
“It’s a joke. I have no idea what it’s about. I was trying to think of something you wouldn’t have and . . . the only thing a rich person doesn’t have is fear.”
“That’s very clever.” His face has warmth, like he’s not used to getting gifts. He flips to the title page. “?‘For Demi. Hope this scares you!’?”
I shudder. How could I not have checked for an inscription? I think of Demi suddenly, dead on the floor.
“I love it.” He winks. He shuts the cover, slips the book in his coat pocket. I need to tell him. I should tell him now, but up close, I’m afraid. I’m afraid he won’t like me anymore. “Hey, how would you like to come to a party?”
“Lyla invited me already.”
“No, not tomorrow. Tonight. Me and some of the boys. Do you want to come?” He looks at me through long, lazy lashes. My cheeks warm.
“Okay.”
He grins. “I should warn you, they’re terrible people.”
“I know. I met their wives.” He bursts out laughing. It echoes through the courtyard.
* * *
GRAHAM’S FRIENDS ARE doing cocaine in a private room on the top floor of a strip club. Rich people never get points for creativity. There are about eighteen bottles of Dom scattered on the table. They’re mixing it with top-shelf whisky. Graham is drinking along with everyone else but he is sitting with me in the far corner, away from the action. He hasn’t left my side all night.
His crew bursts into riotous laughter and I lean closer so he can hear.
“You never told me your favorite book.”
“Bambi.”
“Really?” He nods, eyes glassy and sincere. I sit back a little. “I bet you every last man here would say something by Brett Easton Ellis.”
He shakes his head, tugs at his tie, which is like a nervous tic—he loosens it and tightens it once every ten minutes. “I can’t stand him. Patrick Bateman’s a pussy,” which wasn’t my exact criticism but I joke back anyway, “Yeah, Bambi was tough.”
He tugs the bottle of Dom out of the ice bucket and tops up his glass. I have been around a lot of drinkers but I don’t think I have ever seen someone drink so much so fast and stay so even. We’ve been here for hours and it’s only now starting to show in the loop of his movements, in his oversolicitousness, the way he bites his bottom lip. “You sure you don’t want a drink, darling?” He shuts one eye as he pours the dark whisky over the top. It weaves like blood through the crisp champagne.