He salutes me with pride, like I’ve passed some test, then hurries up the stairs.
Bang! Over our heads as I watch him vanish. Suddenly I don’t want to wait out the game. I want to play it. I want to have fun. I want to enjoy the game.
* * *
I FOLLOW THE path at the back of the house until I find an open door leading into the far section of the house. It’s quieter here. There is a stairwell that leads to the overhang above the entryway. I could take a spot up there, shoot them all down like a sniper.
Or there is a servants’ stairwell, darker and narrower but hidden, more secret. They will never see me coming.
I bound up the steps. They lead me into a dark hallway. I hear shots firing, but the sounds are far away, muffled. Still, the paintings rattle on the wall. The hallway is cluttered with dozens of oil-paint portraits, not of a person but of a red dog. The same dog I saw out walking every day. The same dog I saw dead on Graham’s front stoop. Margo’s dog.
The shots are sounding farther and farther away and I slow. I don’t want to leave the game. I’m going the wrong way. I am about to turn around when I hear a voice. “Hello? Viola? Where did you go? I need you. I need help!” I follow the voice to a gilt door cracked open at the end of the hall. That’s when I realize I am out-of-bounds. I am in Margo’s room.
She is perched in a bed as big as an ocean and just as turbulent. Frothy white blankets roll like waves across its surface. The room is a maze of mirrors. This house is like a fun house. I slowly step back. “Wait! I see you!”
I could run, but if she yells and someone comes, they will know I’m out-of-bounds. I’ll be thrown out of the game. I have to win.
So I freeze, straighten my dress, set my gun down on the side table.
Bang!
I put on my most subservient expression. “Can I help you, ma’am?” I step into the room. A portrait hangs over her bed, this one featuring a much younger Graham grinning with the red dog in a choke hold.
“Viola was supposed to rub my hands,” Margo protests, wringing her wrinkled palms.
I recognize Margo from the street. She was the woman who kept smiling at me. She doesn’t recognize me. She looks older, frailer than I remember. She has one of those faces that’s made for makeup, and without it she looks pinched and undefined.
“Where is everybody?”
This whole house is hers. And the one below and the guesthouse. All the houses and everything in them. Even Graham.
“I think they’re helping with the game,” I say. “I’d better get back to work.”
“Wait!” She frowns. “Who are you? I don’t remember your face.”
“I’m just here for tonight. Lyla asked me.”
Bang!
She covers her ears. “I can’t stand all this noise!” She shakes her jeweled hands. The noise stops for a while, long enough for her to catch her breath. “You’ll rub my hands, won’t you?” She stretches her fingers like claws. “I’m in the most terrible pain. And it’s always my hands that get it. All of my pain goes right to my hands.” She clenches and unclenches her fingers.
“Okay.” I need to leave, but I can’t run now. As I cross the room toward her, my nostrils fill with her heavy scent. It’s like a body in a bath of milk. It’s like death but more expensive. Up close, her face is a mask of fillers and stiffeners, swollen as a stone balloon. But her eyes are extraordinary. Even watery with age they have a purple cast.
She holds out her hands. “Help me. It’s all in my hands.” I reach for her and she grunts, “The lotion.” There is a bottle of Crème de la Mer on her bedside table. “Don’t be stingy.”
I scoop up fifty dollars’ worth. She takes off her rings one by one. They are as thick as teething toys. I rub her hands. They are old and crinkled, strung with bones. She deepens her breath. “Yes, that’s better. Can you believe my son is thirty today? I never thought he would live this long.” Her voice is low, confidential, like we are on intimate terms. Her staff is her best friends but also totally interchangeable. “You won’t believe the trouble it took to get him here, a boy like that! But he’s special, very special. He’s not like other people.”
“No—,” I gasp.
“His father, you know, he ran off with the maid. My maid, if you can believe it. And Graham is like him—”
Bang!
“He has a great love of poverty. He’s a great connoisseur of it. When he was younger, he used to— Oh!” Her eyes expand with delight. I think she’s high out of her mind, sitting alone on her diaphanous bed. “We would find him asleep out in the garden and he would say”—she puts on a voice—“?‘Oh, Mummy, I don’t need a bed! I don’t need a house!’?”
Bang!
“He used to blame me for not allowing him to struggle. He said, ‘Mummy, you ruined me!’ But I made him. I made him better than other people. He’s like a god. Nothing touches him. It’s the poor that are the real monsters.”
Bang!
“Saddling everyone with their needs.” I squeeze the space between her fingers. “That’s too hard! Not so hard!”
Bang!
She grunts, shifts in her bed. “Have you seen the people out there?” She indicates the window with her hand. “Living on the streets? For free— Well, not for free because I pay for it. I pay for it dearly, having to see all this hideousness every goddamn day.”
Bang!
“I’m convinced they killed my dog. Some poor person! They probably wanted her to eat!”
Bang!
Her knuckle cracks beneath my fingers. I want to kill her. I think how easy it would be. A silk pillow. No one around. Why should I be a good person when nobody else is?
Instead, I release her hand. She grunts, “You’re not done yet.”
“No, I am done.” I stand. “I don’t work for you. You don’t know me, so let me tell you who I am: I’m poor. And last night I fucked your son. And you know what? It was strictly ordinary.”
DEMI
I am going to kill them all. I don’t care if it’s just a game. I am low on bullets, so I head toward the gallery.
Bang!
I am going to take every last bullet. I’m going to cheat—so what? They all do all the time and no one says a word.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
I pass through the hall of mirrors and see Demi over my shoulder, just out of reach, running away from me. I spin and fire in one slick movement.
Bang!
I shoot myself in the mirror. I wasted a bullet on my own goddamn reflection.
This place is like an empire crammed into a house: armor and art and artifacts now lit with gold vomit. Someone to my left.
Bang!
“Bitch.”
“Give me your gun.”
But he doesn’t. He just frowns and runs off, gold paint bleeding down his pant leg like piss.
My temple throbs. I wish these were real bullets. The house is dark. It throbs with my head. I feel a line run down my forehead and think its blood. I wipe it away. It’s sweat.
The closer I get to the gallery, the more gold paint oozes down the walls. The party guests seem to have taken special care to destroy anything valuable, so all the paintings, all the statues, weep gold. One of them, I’m sure, is a Monet. Another could be a Rembrandt. My heart is pounding in my ears. I grip my gun.
I see the house I grew up in, how cluttered it was with furniture and cords and electronics, a tangle of wires on the floor. I trip. My hands are sweating. I can feel my breath pull through my lungs like I am threading a needle. Someone to my left.
Bang!
“Ack! You nearly took off my finger.”
I don’t apologize. “You’re out of the game.” My voice is a husky whisper. Every kill brings me closer to him, to Graham. What do I want from him: his money, his love, his head?
All my life I believed, I bought into this idea, that I was somehow worthless. That I should apologize for the tragedy of my existence while these people—
Bang!
—while these people—
Bang!
—blew my life to pieces. His money. His love. His head. It’s like a game of Russian roulette. And I’m down to one bullet.
The entryway blasts open, a vast chasm of gilt-laced ceiling, domed so it could be a stunt double for the sky.
“Hey—”
Someone to my right.