*
Waiting for her in the suite’s sitting room are a bottle of champagne in a pewter ice bucket and a plate of fresh, halved strawberries. She kneels down next to the coffee table and pushes the gift aside, leaving wide streaks of condensation along the glass surface. Then, Alice notices something else: a note from Eloise, typed on Claridge’s thick, pulpy stationery, welcoming her to London and begging her to enjoy the booze and fruit. She rips the envelope in half and uses the card to cut the dust from two crushed Klonopins into a trio of fat yellow lines. With a rolled-up five-dollar bill she snorts the first of the lines and collapses back onto a sofa. Letting her head fall against the cushions, she tastes the drug’s cloying sweetness as it worms its way through her sinuses and trickles down the back of her throat. The real effects—the sensation of walking on pillows of air, of being cloaked in a thick, invisible armor of ambivalence—won’t come for another five minutes. And when they do, they won’t hit her squarely, like cocaine, but will rather wash over her gradually, cleanly; chances are she’ll hardly notice them at all until, suddenly, she won’t be able to imagine living without them. Still, even as she waits for that blissful state of uncaring, she starts to feel better, somehow put back together. Her anger continues to lurk, but it’s focused now, and more resolved.
Outside, she hears the faint whine of a siren. She listens to it echo down Brook Street and then dissolve into the rest of London. She worries that the Klonopin’s taking longer than usual. Lurching back to the coffee table, she positions herself over the second line. There’s no harm, she figures, in helping the drug along.
Wiping her nose, she reaches for the bottle of champagne. A Pol Roger Réserve Brut that would typically go for forty bucks. Given Claridge’s extortionate markups, though, Alice guesses Eloise paid nearly five times that amount. But then, what was two hundred dollars to her sister? What was a Mivart suite to her sister? What was struggle, what was shame, what was empathy? She uncorks the bottle and fills her mouth with so much champagne that she worries her cheeks might burst. Then, in a moment of perfect clarity, she sprints to the toilet and spits it out. The water turns to a cheap, evanescent gold, which deepens to a brass as she empties the rest of the bottle.
In the living room, she polishes off the third and final line. Her rage now a fierce point of medicated light, she asks herself the same questions she’s asked herself for years: How can her sister’s compassion be so profoundly and selfishly misguided? Is she really the only person to realize that behind all Eloise’s giving and caring is a subconscious, though thinly veiled, scheme to lord privilege over her siblings? It’s a sort of false altruism, Alice considers, that’s actually blind to the complications and nuances of other people. What infuriates her more, though, is how Eloise’s goodness shields itself from reproach or criticism. After all, isn’t she—Alice—presently lounging in some doped-up, drugged-out state in one of the nicest suites in London? Didn’t she just squander a bottle of mediocre, overpriced champagne during what is surely only the beginning of an adolescent temper tantrum? And hasn’t she been afforded the opportunity to do it all—to keep doing it all—on Eloise’s dime? Never mind that Alice wanted to impress Eloise, to show her that she was just as capable of having nice things, and that Eloise brutally robbed her of that chance with her unwavering generosity. Never mind those facts. Because from the outside, if anyone’s acting like a bitch here, it’s her, it’s Alice. What’s worse, there’s no way around it. No way to argue her way out of it. Nothing pisses her off more.
She stands up and begins pacing the sitting room, banging her knee against the wooden leg of an armchair in the process. She kicks it and feels pain radiate through her toes and ankle. The room feels overcrowded: every corner has a chair, or a love seat, or a settee. From where she stands next to the window, she can see her red face reflected in three separate mirrors. She hates it; she hates her sister for upgrading her. Suddenly, she craves the cool, sterile simplicity of a room at, say, the Marriott. The air-conditioning cranked up too high, the sheets an unnatural shade of white. Bad, mass-produced art on two of the four walls.
She remembers Dennis, and wonders if he’s still sitting downstairs, waiting for her, watching her coffee get cold.
Her pulse drums at the base of her throat—she can feel it—and she considers crushing up another Klonopin, but she stops herself. Three might be overkill, even with her liberal standards. There’s also the matter of logistics, she thinks: she’s got two weeks ahead of her. Two weeks of hen dos, and dress fittings, and speeches, and Eloise’s simpering magnanimity. And Alice would rather throw herself into the Thames with a hundred open wounds before enduring that shit show sober. No, she’ll save the pills that she has left, let the supply that’s already in her take its course. Besides, the rage and self-pity that she’s feeling are drugs unto themselves. After all, there’s a certain high that comes from knowing that no one could possibly understand what you’re feeling. She imagines this is what Paul must feel like most of the time—and if that’s the case, there’s a chance that here, today, she understands her brother a little better than she did before. In fact, maybe Paul’s had it right all along: while Alice has been tripping over herself to pretend everything’s okay, maybe the better solution is to be perpetually pissed off.
The drugs are definitely not working as well as they should.
She walks to the other side of the room, where there’s a small leather portfolio containing the menu for room service and the suite’s minibar. Leaning against the wall (there’s the Klonopin), she opens it. As expected, the prices are exorbitant. Ten pounds for a packet of peanuts. Fifteen for fifty milliliters of Beefeater gin. She flips a few pages further, to the midmorning offerings. A standard English breakfast goes for thirty eight pounds. Christ, Alice thinks. Over fifty dollars for a pair of soggy scrambled eggs, a charred tomato, and an assortment of shriveled meats. Throw in a bowl of berries and a glass of orange juice, and she’s basically looking at what she pays to rent her studio in Westwood.