“You prefer drug addicts. You like it when they need you.”
“At least I’m not married,” Gabriella says, shooting a sidelong glance to Phoebe, who is arbitrating some pointless conflict between preteens.
“You look good,” I say. “Good tan. You don’t look too broken up about the sudden ending of your very important love affair with Dane Wizard.”
I vaguely remember the man: skeletal to the point of looking unwell. Black eyes that were like shiny bugs about to fly away.
“I went to Thailand for a while and I reconnected with the real Gabriella,” she says.
“Which Gabriella is that?” I say with raised eyebrows.
“You mock me because you just have the one self,” she says. “I’ve got hundreds. Masks and personas. It’s hard to say who I would even be if it weren’t for the centering power of dance. Maybe you get the same thing out of your job?”
“Maybe,” I say. “Have you seen Henley? He is supposed to be here somewhere, right?”
“He came in last night,” says Gabriella. “I think he got into some kind of trouble in China. He’s very on edge. He was hitting on Phoebe as much as possible, which I think she enjoyed, but which was making Bernard rather irritated at him.”
“You and Henley have always been close,” I tell her. “Which is good because I can barely stand him anymore. I feel like he’s always about to confide in me, which would be tragic, because I don’t care.”
“You just have to breathe, and center yourself, and find the deep well of patience inside,” she says.
“To breathe, like your caftan,” I say.
“Yes!” she replies, pleased.
“Are you still making your soaps?” I ask.
“Helping people cleanse themselves—body and soul—is still my life’s work, yes.”
Gabriella has tried to start many businesses, but she has had the most success as an Instagram entrepreneur, selling soaps with earthy smells that she invents herself, sending the recipes to a facility for production in New Jersey. Pine and peat, cedar and rose, lime and grass. She has some marketing savvy, but she lacks what you might call a killer instinct. I check up on her more than she knows. Actually, this soap business is almost breaking even. I’m proud of her, but I know that I need to be a little withholding if I want her to keep striving for my respect.
“I have your pine and peat bar in my guest bathroom,” I say. “Everybody loves it.”
“That’s so sweet,” she says. “Do you know where I got the idea for that one?”
“No,” I say.
“This drummer I used to see,” she says. “For some reason, the floorboard of his van was always covered in pine needles.”
I nod to her, maintaining my poker face. So my guest bathroom smells like Gabriella fucking some homeless drummer in his van. Great.
“I’m gonna go look for Henley,” I say.
I wander through the many rooms and alcoves of Bernard’s ostentatious mansion. There are expensive paintings on all the walls and ornate vases in the corners. The décor is frat-boy brothel. I feel for Phoebe. She must have little say in how the money gets spent, seeing as how it’s all Nylo money. I pass through a library full of leather-bound tomes of history and law, all of which have surely never been read. I hope that at least Julian accidentally grows up to be a reader. Reading books is one route away from the loneliness of money.
I wind my way upstairs, dodging children and their harried parents, getting nervous looks from the peasants. That’s right: it’s me, fuckers. I peek in a few of the guest bedrooms, enjoying the stillness. There are seemingly endless empty rooms full of perfectly made beds and giant mirrors above empty dressers. Who sleeps here?
I hear voices in one of the adjoining bathrooms, so I creep into the bedroom and crane my head around the cracked door to see.
There is Bernard with his pants down around his ankles. A young-looking mom in a sleeveless dress and YouTube-makeup-tutorial-bright-red lipstick is jamming her ass onto his cock, watching herself in the bathroom mirror. Bernard catches my eye and then gently closes the bathroom door all the way.
Back in the hallway, I decide I could really use a smoke.
I root around in my purse, hoping I have a hidden pack that I didn’t purge from my latest attempt at quitting, while I look for an open balcony. I glance into a billiards room as I pass by, then retrace my steps, hopping backward.
A shadowy figure is leaning against one wall, blowing jets of vapor at the ceiling, scrolling furiously on his phone, and joggling one leg.
“There you are,” I say.
Henley starts at my words, but quickly collects himself and smirks, throwing his arms open wide. He spins the vape pen dexterously around his thumb and it disappears out of sight.
6
“You look very adult and serious and stressed-out,” he tells me.
“In fact, I am trying to smoke a cigarette,” I say.
“I bet you can light up in here,” he says. “This house is so big, what does it matter? Ashing on some of these rugs will give them character. They’re all so dreadfully new.”
“I don’t want to set off any smoke detectors. Does that window behind you open?”
He shrugs. I push past him and undo the latch. There is a mesh screen behind the window and a gleaming tripwire that must be part of the security system, but at least I can blow my smoke outside.
Henley doesn’t look bad. He is still as impish and wiry as ever, lacking Bernard’s solidness but also his middle-aged paunch and jowls. He also lacks the clean good looks and fitness of Gabriella, but he has always been attractive, albeit in a less obvious, more devilish way. He knows too much about other human beings. Of my four siblings, he has always been
