TWENTY-NINE
WE PULL UP in front of The Plaza hotel, past the shine of Columbus Circle, the row of flags out front swaying in the night breeze. Thanksgiving hasn’t even passed yet, but I swear, Christmas comes earlier and earlier every year. There are lights and trees covering every square inch of Manhattan already, the boughs sparkling with silver.
I remember coming here with my mother for my birthday when I was eight. The tables in the restaurant piled with elaborate, gold-dipped centerpieces of pinecones and holly. The huge tree in the center of the room, draped in twinkling white lights. My mother’s face as she plucked a small cake from a silver tray, placing it carefully on my plate. In the lobby, the portrait of Eloise smirking down at me, her plump, rounded figure dressed in black and white. It hurts to remember these things.
At the curb, the doorman opens the limo door and Giovanni tumbles out, lying in the gutter faceup and cackling like a demented snow angel. Someone throws Giovanni’s black duffel bag out of the limo and it lands squarely on top of his face, muffling his laughter and high-pitched shrieks. The red-carpeted steps stretch before us like a tongue, and I uncurl my legs, stepping over Alexa perched on Ethan’s lap. As I exit the limo, I reach down and grab Giovanni’s hand, pulling him to his feet. He sways there dreamily for a moment before grabbing his bag, throwing it over one shoulder. On the way here, I watched as Giovanni drank two bottles of champagne in quick succession, the bubbles moving down his throat effortlessly as he leaned into the bottle.
“You are a MESS.” I laugh, brushing snow off the back and shoulders of his long black coat.
“Look who’s talking,” he snaps, brushing past the doorman, chin lifted high. “You did enough blow in the limo to stun a small elephant into submission.”
I sniff loudly in response, the inside of my nostrils caked in concrete. I’ve reached the point in drug consumption where the coke no longer makes me feel spastic, but almost mellow. The cold air hits my lungs like a plunge into ice water, and I crane my neck upward to search for stars, but all I see are the drifts of snow spiraling down to the ground, waiting to cover us all.
“Are you going to stand there all night staring at nothing?”
There is a low voice in my ear, something between a growl and a purr, and it sends shivers down my spine. Alexa’s ruby lips are so close to my skin that her words are almost a kiss. When I tear my gaze away from the night sky and turn to face her, she is beside me holding on to Ethan’s hand, a wry smile on her face. She’s on her turf now, and I watch the confidence with which she strides into the hotel lobby, her fur coat thrown across her shoulders like a cape, her heels clicking purposefully across the marble floor. She removes her platinum AmEx from a Louis Vuitton wallet and pushes it across the counter.
Club kids file into the lobby in droves, posing insanely with the potted palms tucked into corners, legs wrapped around the trunks, heads thrown back. One black drag queen in a tight-fitting cocktail dress begins voguing through the lobby, using the marble floor as her own personal catwalk. Sebastian enters wearing huge, dark sunglasses and immediately starts rating the queen’s performance, screaming, “Ten, ten” and “Work it, bitch” at the top of his lungs while clapping wildly. I watch as the desk clerk, his face flushed with embarrassment, registers the queen’s antics, then looks away.
The suite is on one of the top floors of the hotel, and the carpet underfoot is a luxurious beige pile that seems to creep up my ankles as I walk. Most of the club kids immediately commandeer the living room area and begin raiding the minibar and calling room service, ordering bottles of Cristal and tequila. Alexa smiles triumphantly, sitting down on the long white couch, her body framed by a row of windows. She pulls off her heels, flexing her feet against the carpet with obvious pleasure. Ethan turns on the stereo and music floods the room.
“You’re not still mad at me, are you?” Alexa yells over the music, grabbing on to my arm and holding on tight. “Don’t be mad,” she continues with a hard look. “It’s boring.”
“Yeah, don’t be boring,” Sebastian parrots affectionately, pushing me to the side so he can sit in the middle of us, next to Alexa. The two of them immediately begin chattering like magpies, locked in their own private world, and after a few minutes of this, I begin to feel stupid and unnecessary. I get up, pushing past Giovanni and a bunch of club kids I’ve never seen before who are in the process of turning the living room into a makeshift dance floor, moving coffee tables and lamps out of the way, and walk toward the bedroom. Despite the fact that the suite is crawling with people, some of whom are supposedly my friends, I am suddenly lonely.
When I push the bedroom door open, I see Ethan sitting in a pool of light in the middle of a king-sized bed covered in gold silk, his legs crossed beneath him. When I close the door behind me, he looks up hopefully, his face falling slightly when he sees that it’s only me. At that moment, Aria and Amy come stumbling out of the bathroom clutching bottles of champagne, and switch on the large TV at the end of the bed. They settle down on the floor in front of it, giggling at the videos filling the room with color and light. Amy has a long blue ponytail that reaches her waist, and wears matching blue fake eyelashes. Aria is wearing a yellow tutu with a black unitard underneath. With her bright yellow tangle of curls, she reminds me of a bee or some other winged insect complete with poisonous stinger. I sit down on the bed and face Ethan, drawing my legs underneath me.
“Hey,” I say. “What are you doing in here? All the action is out there.”
“I could ask you the same question.”
He smiles, showing rows of even white teeth. I remember Julian’s slightly crooked smile, and regret clutches its fingers around my throat, stopping my breath momentarily.
“But you won’t,” I manage to say when it passes.
“No,” he says, reaching over to the bedside table and lighting a cigarette. Smoke drifts up, obscuring his face. “I won’t.”
“I thought you came here to hang with Alexa.” I pick at a loose thread on the bedspread and breathe in the scent of lilies in a gold vase on the dresser. Their sweet, cloying scent makes me think of Christoph, his face when I got up and walked out, how quickly it erupted in anger and resentment. INXS’s “Need You Tonight” flashes onto the screen, and Aria lets out a large whoop, immediately cranks the volume, points at Ethan, who more than resembles the lead singer, and whispers loudly into Amy’s ear.
“I guess she’s busy.” He exhales, and smoke drifts toward the ceiling. Although his face is impassive, I can see a glint of hurt in his eyes, and I know from working at the club for as long as I have what it must’ve cost him to get off so early.
“You really like her, don’t you.” My voice is flat, emotionless. Maybe it’s the coke, but I feel like I can talk to Ethan now without nervousness. Right now I feel like I could say anything.
“I thought I did,” he says, crushing out his cigarette in the ashtray. “But if she’s really that into all of this”—he gestures toward the other room and the crash of music and broken glass coming through the half-open door—“then I’m not so sure. For me it’s a paycheck, you know? This whole scene makes me fucking restless, if you want to know the truth. I mean, it’s not real.”
“And you want something real?” I ask, incredulous.
“Sure.” He looks at me levelly. “Don’t you?”
I think about the club, how in the beginning it made me feel so free, like nothing could touch me, all the weight of the day falling from my shoulders like a heavy coat sliding to the floor. Flitting through the fractured light on the dance floor, my skin shimmering and so alive I was giddy with it.
“I used to think I didn’t. Now I’m not so sure.”
Ethan smiles softly, waiting for me to continue.
“I’ve never been too comfortable with reality.” I look over at Aria and Amy, who are passing a bottle of champagne back and forth between them. “It kind of sucks in a lot of ways.”
“What do you mean?” He draws hi
s knees up, grinding his black boots into the bedspread.
“My realities aren’t always that great,” I say in a voice that comes out gratingly, as if I’m about to cry, and I realize that I actually am. I blink back the tears and look up to watch Ethan’s expression change. He says nothing, but his eyes dare me to tell him everything.
“Alexa and I are a lot alike, weirdly enough,” I begin, the words falling hesitantly, jaggedly from my lips. “On the surface, at least. We’re both from the Upper East Side—”
“I thought you lived downtown,” Ethan says, clearly confused.
“I do now, but I grew up on the Upper East Side. I even went to Alexa’s coming-out party.”
“What the hell is that?” Ethan laughs.
“Don’t ask. It involves white gloves and whole lot of pretension.”
“So I’m not missing anything?”
“Not by a long shot,” I say, laughing. “Anyway, I moved downtown six months ago because my mother . . .” My voice trails off the way it always does when I try to talk about my family. Watching Ethan as he waits for me to speak again, I have gone suddenly mute. But this time something’s changed, this time there’s an urgency building up inside me, a kind of heat, and I know that for once, the words are going to leave my lips whether I like it or not. For once, I’m going to say the truth out loud. I don’t know why it’s happening here in this room with Ethan, whom I barely know. Maybe it’s the simple fact that it’s easier to share things with someone you have no real relationship with, where nothing is at stake. Or maybe after all this time, I’m just ready, unable to hold it in any longer. I’m too tired of keeping it all inside, where no one can see, and for the first time, I don’t want to anymore. I want to hear the words out loud.
“Your mother what?” Ethan prompts gently.
I take a deep breath, and the words fly out all at once like air rushing out of a deflated balloon. “She hits me. She’s always hit me, ever since I was little. It was never any one thing . . . It was everything. It didn’t matter how good I was or how well I did in school. It was never enough to make her stop, to make her . . .” The words stick in my throat and my cheeks are suddenly wet. “Love me. That’s why I moved out. My father just watched it happen, and divorced her when he met someone else. I don’t know why.”
Ethan nods, his face solemn. He reaches for another cigarette.
“Why don’t you live with him?” he asks, but before I can answer, he jumps in again, the answer already written on my face. “Oh, I get it. She doesn’t like you, right? The girlfriend?” He raises one eyebrow, tapping his cigarette ash against the ashtray. “Is that it?”
“Well, no, she doesn’t. And the feeling is kind of mutual.” I look out at the buildings across the way, and notice that they look almost blue. “But I guess I don’t live with him because . . .” Words fail me once again, and I wish more than anything that I had a glass of champagne or a line to make it all recede far into the distance, to make everything hazy and unreal again. “Because he just doesn’t care.”
When I can finally look Ethan in the face, he’s staring at me through the gently curling smoke rising in the air. He doesn’t say anything at all, and I realize that the thing I dreaded seeing most on a person’s face when I finally was able to tell them about my family was pity. But there’s none of that in Ethan’s expression, just some kind of understanding. As we look at each other, it’s as if a veil has fallen away and I can breathe again, and I realize that the person I most want to hear the words that have just left my mouth is Julian.
“Hey, guys.” When I look up, Alexa is standing in the doorway. She walks over to the bed and slides down next to Ethan, curling her lithe body around his, her golden hair falling over his black sweater. “Guess what I have?” She looks up with an impish grin and opens one hand. Inside are three large capsules filled with white powder.
“X?” Ethan asks, reaching out and plucking one from her palm, holding it up to the light. “Where’d you get it?”
“Sebastian.” Alexa laughs. “Where else? He’s in the other room giving them out like candy.”
Ethan calls out to Aria, tossing her the X in his hand. She lets out a squeal of delight as she pops the pill into her mouth, drinking greedily from her bottle of champagne.
“I think I’m OK with plain old reality tonight.” Ethan stares at me, a faint smile on his lips.
“Party pooper.” Alexa pouts, screwing her face up adorably, a two-year-old on the verge of a tantrum. Any minute now she will stomp her foot.
“Are you going to?” I ask her.
Alexa looks down at the two pills still reclining in her palm. “I never have,” she whispers, looking at me intently. “I will if you will.” She leans closer to me, and I can feel the heat coming off her skin in waves. “Please, Caitlin. I don’t want to do it alone.”
I remember my first hit of X, Giovanni at my side. How the warmth of his skin made me feel safe, like everything would be all right one way or another if I could wait, if I could just learn, somehow, to be patient.
I tilt my head back, plucking the pill from her hand and swallowing hard. Alexa grins, bringing the pill up to her lips, and Ethan’s eyes cloud over, go blank, and I watch as he turns away, grabbing a beer bottle from the bedside table.
Forty minutes later, the world has gone hazy, the sharp edges of the night softened and pure. The music is streaming through the suite like shreds of shiny tinsel, and when I close my eyes, I think I can see the notes leaping beneath my closed lids in a golden parade. I sit on the couch next to Ethan, watching Alexa dance with Sebastian, the way she throws her hair back and unabashedly shimmies her small hips to the beat. I think of Julian, his shaggy hair falling into his eyes, how much I might have hurt him. I don’t know what to call the feeling that springs up inside my chest when I think of him, that small ache, a candle growing steadily brighter.
“Have you ever been in love?” I hear myself asking. My mouth feels funny and stiff, the words coming out slurred, floating somewhere above the music.
“I don’t know,” Ethan answers, staring straight ahead. His profile glows, sharply etched, the curve of his jaw so clean, it’s almost heartbreaking. Even through the haze of the X flying through my blood, I’m aware of the fact that Ethan is most likely the only vaguely sober person in this room. “I can’t seem to stay still long enough to find out.”
With Ethan’s words still ringing in my ears, I’m filled with a desire so intense that it levitates my body off the couch and into the bedroom. I want to talk to Julian, to hear his low, steady voice in my ear. Aria and Amy are curled up in a heap on the bed, huddled together for warmth and comfort. A group of five or six club kids sit on the floor, a mirror between them, long lines of coke laid out on the glass.
I walk past them and into the bathroom and pick up the phone I knew would be mounted on the wall next to the toilet. I sit down on the seat and dial Julian’s number, grateful that he has his own line, listening as the phone rings once, twice, three times, leaning my forehead against the cool wall as I wait. The wallpaper, strewn with birds and pink ribbons, swims before my eyes.
“Hello?”
Julian’s voice fills my ear—warm, scratchy, and full of sleep.
“It’s me,” I say into the receiver. “Caitlin.”
There is a pause, and I hear a rustling of bedsheets, then the click of a light being turned on.
“I’m sorry for the other night. I feel like . . . I feel . . . like I’m always apologizing, but I am. Sorry, I mean.”
Am I speaking out loud? The thought flashes through my mind so quickly that I don’t have time to stop it. If I’ve ever been this fucked up before, I don’t remember it. In the lull in our conversation, the music in the other room is turned up sharply, and there is the sudden sound of cheers and laughter.
“Where are you, anyway?” he asks, fully awake now.
“Plaza. Hotel. With Alexa Forte. And some other people.”
I’m vaguely awar
e of just how surreal my words sound. How disjointed. It’s getting hard to speak, to form complete sentences. Is my heart still beating? I reach one hand up to my chest and rest it there. My pulse throbs beneath my fingers, slow and erratic. A misstep. A stumble.
“Alexa Forte? How did that happen?” He laughs uneasily. “And why are you at The Plaza?”
“Long story.” I sigh, closing my eyes. “I want to tell you something. I do.”
There is a pause, and I hear the breath catch in his throat.
“What’s that?”
“I’m sorry. I am. Sorry.”
“You already said that.” Julian chuckles, and I wonder if he’s warm from sleep, his hair tangled against the pillow.
“Also . . .”
“Yes?”
“I like you.”
The blood rushes to my face, heating my cheeks. I can’t believe I’ve just said it, but I have. And now the words are out there in the world where I can’t take them back. So I say them again.
“I like you. And . . . I’m sorry I’ve been such a freak. There’s a lot . . . so much . . .” My voice trails off as the heaviness in my limbs begins to pull me down. “There are things . . . I should say. Tell you. I want to.”
“So tell me,” he says simply.
A wave of intense sensation crashes through me, my stomach dropping without warning, and I’m dizzy, the lights overhead as bright as stars. I realize that I might not be able to stand up and walk out of the bathroom, and the thought terrifies me.
“Soon,” I manage to get out, my eyes closing.
“Cat? Cat, are you still there?”
Julian’s voice sounds miles away, I’m on a boat, drifting further and further into rough currents, bobbing and dipping in the water, my body weightless. My head is too heavy to keep up, and I feel myself sliding down to the tile floor, the receiver slipping from my hands. Maybe this is it, the thought flashing through my head in a moment of clarity. I see Sara standing over the small, polished wooden box of my coffin, her face streaked with tears and regret. Wait! I struggle to sit up again, to focus. Not like this. Rewind the tape.
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