“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” Lou said quickly before hurrying off to another group.
“I think we got her,” Cat whispered conspiratorially, feeling the tension between them finally dissipate.
At that exact moment, the now-famous model in the burlap gown stepped out onto the balcony, a small plastic bag in her hand. Cat watched her tap out a pile onto the hollow next to her thumb and take a surreptitious sniff.
A second later the woman’s eyes rolled back into her head. Her balance wavered.
“Excuse me,” Cat said to Janet and Rose. “I’ll be right back.” She hurried over and grabbed the model by the arm, steadying her while she pried the bag out of her hand.
“Are you okay?” Cat whispered, hiding the bag of brown powder in the pocket of her jacket.
“It’s none of your business, Cat,” the woman said, her voice trembling slightly. She stumbled as her ankle rolled underneath her. Cat looked at her face, finally, and realized who she was—Callie, the bartender from King’s Landing.
“I think you need to sit down,” Cat said.
“Okay,” Callie agreed, allowing Cat to lead her inside and down the hallway into the apartment’s private quarters. Cat opened the first unlocked door she found. It looked like a small library, the walls lined in bookshelves and the only furniture a button-tufted chaise longue upholstered in delicate gray linen. She helped Callie sit down on it. The girl lay back right away before closing her eyes and passing out.
Cat sat on the floor next to her for a few minutes trying to figure out what to do. She still had the bag in her pocket. Get rid of it, she told herself, standing up and walking to the adjacent powder room. The little plastic bag disappeared down the toilet with just a single flush. She sat down and peed, trying to think about how to help Callie get out of the party without anyone seeing her, before flushing the toilet a second time and walking back into the study, where she stopped, shocked.
Callie was sitting up, grasping at her throat.
Her beautiful face was turning purple.
She was choking.
Cat climbed onto the chaise and wrapped her arms around the model’s body, trying to force air out of her throat in a Heimlich maneuver, but the girdle beneath Callie’s dress was too tight; it wasn’t possible to exert the needed force through the undergarment. Callie kept choking, her face so desperate and terrified that Cat didn’t give up. She used all her strength, squeezing in sharp hugs, trying to find some leverage, between screaming for help. Callie squirmed, grabbing Cat’s long black hair and tugging on it, trying to communicate. She managed to pull out a fistful before she went back to pawing at her throat, the strands interwoven between her fingers. Cat tried to push Callie over the edge of the chaise, but she wasn’t strong enough and they stayed locked in an upright position.
After the longest minute of Cat’s life, Callie fell limp.
“Nononononono,” Cat screamed at the model, leaning her back on the chaise. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking give up.”
She grabbed the model’s jaw, then shoved her fingers down Callie’s throat and tried to dislodge whatever was in there, screaming the entire time, screaming herself hoarse, trying to open the door with her foot. Cat failed on every count. Nobody came to help. Callie didn’t move. She felt her fingernail break off somewhere in Callie’s esophagus.
Eventually Cat let go, because nothing helped. She looked at Callie’s face and watched the life disappear from it.
Callie was dead. A moment later Cat was sitting on the floor calling 911.
Five minutes later, the model’s body remained on the chaise longue. Her eyes were still open, looking toward the ceiling, and Cat’s hair was still wrapped in her fist. Tears had run down her face as she choked to death, streaking her eye makeup into watercolor ribbons that slashed across her cheeks.
A blank space hung in the air. Cat supposed it might be the distinction between life and death, between the atmosphere generated by a soul and the mere physical presence of a corpse. Time had slowed to a nothing, though the party raged on around her. Voices from the party mumbled senselessly as the stereo’s bass vibrated the room’s peach silk lampshades.
Her call to the paramedics had been surprisingly calm. “Hello, my friend has choked and she’s not breathing, and I can’t get it out,” she’d said. “Please come to the penthouse at 150 Central Park West right now. We’re in the library, I think.”
As she sat on the floor next to the body, Cat reached out and grabbed Callie’s hand. She didn’t know what else to do. Peals of laughter bubbled up through the din. The air smelled like a Christmas tree.
Five more minutes passed.
An odd stiffness, a rubbery quality, passed through the girl’s fingers, but Cat didn’t let go.
Eventually someone barged in. There were flashing lights; the party dissolved; someone made her let go of Callie. The police kept trying to ask her questions. But Cat couldn’t speak. She didn’t have anything to say.
She found herself sitting on another linen sofa in the apartment’s parlor, facing a paramedic. The world came back into focus.
“What did you take?” the paramedic was asking. Cat stared over his head at an oil painting of a ship. It had big foamy waves and a yellow sky, like a Turner. It probably is a Turner, she realized.
“I didn’t take anything,” she said. “I had a glass of wine earlier. But I didn’t take anything.”
“What did your friend take?”
“I don’t know. She sniffed something and threw it out on the balcony. I brought her in here to see if she was okay and so that she wouldn’t embarrass herself. I went to the toilet and when I came back, I found her like that. She was grabbing her throat. I tried to stick my fingers down it, to get whatever it was out. I tried to push on her stomach. But I couldn’t do anything. The girdle was too tight, I think. I called 911. She died right in front of me. I couldn’t help…” she said, trailing off.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lou speaking to a police officer, showing him her ID. She looked around the room for her handbag and found it folded in her lap.
“We need to give you a blood test,” the paramedic said.
“Okay,” Cat agreed. “Go ahead.”
He took a sample from her left arm; rubber tourniquet, needle, cotton ball, bandage.
Cat felt herself dissociate completely from the scene around her as her mind retreated to a comfortable space far, far away from here, in her mother’s barn. The smell of sweat when you take off a saddle; the way dust comes up from a currycomb. The fur of a foal, matted and wet and new.
She remembered the time they’d had to euthanize Fielt, their squat Brabants trekpaard—thirteen hands, a runt for his breed but strong—who had broken the lower shin of his left foreleg, the cannon bone, plowing a neighbor’s field. The break grew infected and they had to put him down in his stall a week later. She’d held his face while he died.