“No, thank you.” I am afraid to drink. I have been trying to get my nerve up all evening to tell him who I am and how I got here, but the drunker he gets, the less that seems like a good idea.
“Hitler never drank,” he says. It’s unclear why he thought that would be relevant. He definitely has more edge under the influence, a tendency to say inappropriate things like he’s daring you to scold him. I should wait. I’ll tell him tomorrow. Or after his birthday. There’s no immediate threat. I can wait. Forever. He downs half his cocktail, then looks hard at me. “You might want a drink for what I’m about to tell you.” And something in his tone makes menace in his red-ringed eyes.
He moves closer to me. I want to move away but instead I freeze. My tongue starts to buzz, numbed by fear. He tightens his tie, loosens it. “I was throwing away my mother’s dog . . .” For a moment it’s like time stops, and I slip into a world between his words. Everything, everything, that’s happened comes racing to meet me and I see it: those tricky stairs, Demi’s dead body, the hands and the teeth, the fire and the evidence bobbing up from underwater. And then my eyes catch on her ring on my finger, and I feel anchored to that at least. “. . . when I found something. In the trash.” My bowels loosen. I almost piss myself. Instead, I grip the seat. His eyes drop. He notices it. He notices everything. He can smell fear. “It was a bag and inside it was two hands, two feet, a collection of teeth.”
My voice is so soft, I doubt he can hear it. “You said you would help me.”
“Darling, it seems like you helped yourself.”
Across the room, two new dancers arrive. They line themselves up. They drop their fur coats. Their dresses glitter. Their legs part at the same time. I wish I were them. I wish I were anyone else.
“What did you do with the bag?”
“I haven’t decided.” He sips his drink. “I wanted to ask you first.” What do I say? What do I do? There’s no escape. I scan the seedy club but my eyes stick on one woman’s undulating back. Graham sidles closer. “Would you like to join me at an alternate location?”
I swallow hard. My voice cracks. “Where?” I’m panicking. Is he going to take me to the police? Is it all over? Is this how it ends? In a seedy private room at a fancy strip club surrounded by champagne and cocaine?
His pretty eyes shine. “Wherever I say. Right?”
* * *
I GO WITH him to a hotel next door. I have to. He knows. He didn’t tell the police. I don’t have a choice.
He said he wanted to help me but of course that was a lie. I was right not to trust him. I was wrong to get close to him. When I could have been running, I was shopping. When I could have been free, I was buying.
We walk into the vaulted lobby. All the staff recognizes him, welcomes him.
“Mr. Herschel! Mr. Herschel!” they exclaim like they’ve been waiting for him, hoping for him, all this time. He makes small talk, watching me all the while. He is enjoying this. He has me pinned. I look at the Maxfield Parrish reproductions along the wall and wonder what Graham is going to do to me. Whatever he wants.
He gets the presidential suite. Of course he does. We walk through the door and through a circuit of rooms to the master suite. He doesn’t turn on any lights. The walls are golden. He is drinking whisky from the bottle now. He takes off his tie, removes his jacket, unbuttons his vest and climbs onto the bed.
“Darling.” He looks up at me with bedroom eyes. “Tell me, whose teeth are they?”
I look at the glass doors leading onto the balcony. I could run. I could jump. “They’re Demi’s,” I find myself saying. “They belong to Demi Golding.”
This actually shocks him. He coughs. His eyes expand. But he doesn’t run. He doesn’t even move away from me. In fact, he moves closer. To help me, to trap me, to bask in my need. “I thought you were Demi Golding.”
“I’m not.”
He purses his lips, looks up at me through hooded eyes. “Who are you?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
He grabs my hand so tight, I can feel my own pulse. “Come here.” He tugs, then yanks me onto the bed.
I grasp, half-blind with fear, for the whisky bottle. Cheers to my demise.
He crawls closer to me. I can feel him breathing, feel his drugged heart beating, as he watches me with something like . . . appreciation?
“Tell me everything,” he begs me. “I want to know everything.” It takes me a second and several strong swigs to understand what he is saying. “Please! I want to know every dirty detail. From the beginning.”
So I tell him. My whole life, every tragic detail. He listens with rapt attention, like a little boy being told his first fairy tale. I tell him about Demi and Michael. Here he seems not to believe me.
“It’s all right if you did kill her,” he swears, squeezing my hands so the whisky sloshes in the bottle. “It’s all right!” And I feel a rush of gratitude followed by a dart of uncertainty: What kind of man thinks that’s all right? Money forgives everything, but this might be too much. “It’s beautiful,” he insists, kissing my temple. “Everything you did. Everything you had to do. It makes you so goddamn beautiful.” When I’m finished, he extracts the bottle from my fingers, places it on the bedside table. He sets me underneath him, arranges me like a doll, brushes my hair, kisses my forehead. “You’re the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.” His voice is blue and reverent. “Can I make love to you?” He kisses my neck. “Please?”
It feels so good just to be touched. And he is so handsome. And so, so rich. And I need money even more than I need forgiveness.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, I wake up alone in the presidential suite, redeemed. I don’t go back to the guesthouse. I don’t want to ever. I don’t even leave when I’m supposed to check out, although it grinds through me: Checkout time is eleven o’clock. Other people can check out. I won’t. I am the fucking president.
I order room service. Strawberries cut into heart shapes. A bottle of Mo?t. God, I can still feel him inside me. I have no past. I am all future.
LYLA
I wake up and have a glass of Mo?t. It’s not a party if you’re not drunk. Graham wasn’t in the living room when I came in, which doesn’t surprise me. He is probably at a private doctor getting his hangover drained from him on an IV. He’ll show up for the party immaculate. He’s going to be so impressed.
I sit with my Mo?t at the edge of the house, looking out through the glass at all of Los Angeles, spread like a dead flower below. My back is to the fountain but I see it in my mind’s eye. I am trying to puzzle through all the things I learned but it’s like the pieces don’t go together.
The front door lock clicks and my housekeeper lets herself in. She starts to clean. The light through the windows makes everything glow white.
“This is embarrassing,” I volunteer. “But I can’t remember your name.”
She stops cleaning. “Astrid.” The star on her neck glints in the light, and I remember where I’ve seen it, where I last saw it. Winking around Elvira’s dead neck.
“I really did adore Elvira.”
“I know,” she says. “She told me.”
I sip my Mo?t. “Were you friends?”
She swallows. “Sisters.” Her sister. Of course. I spoke to her on the phone. I try to remember her, but all I remember is her question: “You want to know why.”
She nods once. Then her hand darts out to steady herself on the front table. The gun clatters in the silver tray. We both see it.
I sigh. “I can’t tell you. There’s no reason.” My husband was bored. Bored and maybe more. Maybe he didn’t like that Elvira was my friend. Maybe it bothered him that I loved her and she loved me back. Maybe he is incapable of love, like Margo said. Maybe it’s not boredom but a wide, wild void. “Were you living in the van?” I say. “Did you break the gate? Did you . . . Bean?”