“It’s fake!” she said, realizing a moment too late that she shouldn’t have sounded quite so gleeful.
“Well, obviously,” Zo? said. “They’re not going to leave anything nice down here. The housekeepers are probably the only people who even use this bathroom in the first place. Not everyone has, like, the entire security team for an entire company in charge of their house, Madison.”
She felt the warmth ebbing across her cheeks. She thought for a few moments it was embarrassment she felt, before she became aware of her own heartbeat and recognized the sensation not as shame but rather as an anger so instinctive it felt as simple and unavoidable as a reflex.
Jared began clapping his hands together.
“Everyone please be the fuck quiet,” he said. He cleared everything from the tray and began, with an expert tapping finger, to shake the cocaine loose from its plastic bag. It fell onto the mirror in small, delicate clumps. He took out a credit card, his every motion fluid and stylish, performed for their benefit.
Zo? drew a fifty-dollar bill from her skirt, where it had apparently been tucked against her hip, and rolled it tightly until it was thinner than a cigarette. Jared looked at Madison.
“That’s what I figured,” he said when she froze.
“Come on,” Zo? said. “Just try it.”
Madison thought of a word her father loved, floozy, and how he would hate to think of her doing this with these other girls, snorting something up her nose, rubbing at her face distractedly the way Zo? was right now, like she’d forgotten what she looked like in a mirror.
“I’m good.”
Zo? turned to Jared and shrugged. “I guess it’s understandable,” she said in a stage whisper. “That she’d be so careful, right now.”
Zo? bent over the tray, jerking suddenly from her waist, like a marionette on a string. Jared put his hand to the small of her back and kept it there, as if soothing a sick child. Allie giggled, for no apparent reason, and came over to pat Madison’s hand with both of hers.
Madison took a round soap from a silver bowl and unwrapped it, waving it beneath her nose. It smelled clean, like lemons. The soap was freakishly smooth, like a tiny egg. She wanted to slip it into her pocket, but the white dress, quite obviously, had no pockets.
Then, through the pleasant gleam that seemed to overlay everything in the room, she thought of someone in her house, in the kitchen, in her mother’s pearlescent bathroom. Tiny things going missing, things the absence of which they’d never notice, until everywhere in the house there were holes in the textures she remembered.
But she couldn’t put the soap back; it was already unwrapped. She saw a burnished silver trash can beneath the counter and chucked it. It hit the bottom with a satisfying sound, and Jared looked over at her. She smiled.
Chip wasn’t with them. He was somewhere out there, still, in the house. She liked the way it sounded when he said her name; he always sounded like he was smiling, somehow, when he said it.
For the second time that night, she thought of her Grandpa D’Amico. He had haunted her childhood, staring out sunken-eyed from the small number of photographs her nonna kept on display, arranged at the center of her chipped credenza like a shrine. Madison knew so little about him, in the end. Even though he was the one who had named her, long before she’d been born. The last building he’d worked at had been on East Seventy-Second, between Madison and Fifth, and he always told her father it was the perfect name for a street, even better for a girl. Your mouth just wants to say it, he would tell her father. It sounds like a girl with no problems.
She knew her mother had not wanted to name her Madison. Her father had won, in the end. And then the twins had been given Italian names. Her mother hadn’t gotten to choose any of them.
“Get over here,” Zo? said, her voice growing more tender in its commands.
“Excuse me?”
“Come on, I’m sorry for what I said, Madison. I’m, like, blacked out. Come here for a second.”
Zo? took Allie’s lipstick and swiped it across Madison’s lower lip with two expert strokes, the gesture so curt and graceful Madison knew she must have learned it from her own mother.
“There we go,” Zo? said then, looking Madison in the eye. They turned together to the mirror and stood side by side, their hips touching, their lipstick the same. Madison tilted her head toward Zo?’s. Zo? might not know it, but Madison was doing her a favor. She was allowing it, all the little comments, bending her head in gracious indifference.
“You seem on edge,” Zo? said. “You know we’re all just teasing, right? You can totally tell me what’s going on. I’m here for you.”
“We’re going downstairs, right?”
“You have to have a sense of humor about yourself,” Zo? said, which seemed irrelevant.
AFTER THAT, they were in the ballroom. There was a piano in one corner, somehow as out of place as if it had been wedged into a corner of the kitchen. One of the boys Madison didn’t know sat down and plunked the keys with his fists.
There were mirrors everywhere and a wet bar sunk just a few steps below the level of the dance floor and the two chandeliers above them, and with the room dark except for the sconces in the corners, everything was flattering. The light bathed everyone’s cheeks and caught the whites of their eyes. Callan picked Allie up, threw her over one shoulder, laid her out on the piano and tickled her. She sat up and threw her legs around his waist, holding him from behind. Neither of them pretended, anymore, not to notice the other.
Music began to blast from invisible speakers somewhere in the walls, that M.I.A. song. Zo? pulled at Madison’s dress, yanking so hard that Madison’s breasts nearly sprang forward from the vicelike grip of the white lace bodice. They started dancing together. Whenever the sound of gunshots rang out during the song’s chorus, Zo? cocked both forefingers in the air above her head.
Chip was behind the bar, pouring Grey Goose into frosted shot glasses.
“No,” Callan said, “wait a minute.” He ran over to Jared, who was dancing by himself, sunglasses intact, a bottle in his right hand. Callan extracted the bottle and came back over to the bar. Chip watched, quiet.
“Madison,” Callan said. “You’ll love this, trust me. Let me show you.”
She could see every part of Allie’s body orienting toward Callan, wanting him to touch her again in the same unthinking, unguarded way he had just minutes earlier.
“Don’t do that,” Zo? said. “Don’t make her do Aftershock. Jesus, what are we, in the eighth grade?”
“Why don’t we let her decide for herself?” Callan said, pouring red liquid from the bottle into the two shot glasses. Wyatt materialized at his shoulder and smacked his hands together.