“There’s no need for that,” I tell her.
KK laughs. “Since when did you become such a defender of footwear?”
“Caspian is not a sock.”
“What is he, then? An oracle, too?”
“Caspian is CASPIAN.” I have no idea why I’m shouting at her. “And if you’re not going to treat him like everyone else, you can go back up to your own apartment and order all the sushi you want.”
KK’s eyes sparkle. “But I am treating him like I treat everyone else, don’t you see?”
Ilsa, of course, backs her up. “She has a point.”
Jason sighs theatrically, looks at KK, and says, “You’re awful.” Then he turns to Ilsa and says, “You’re not much better.”
“Stop,” I tell him.
“Why are you defending her?” he replies.
There have to be thousands of answers. I just can’t think of one at the moment.
But it’s not like I even have a chance.
“Why are you still in love with him?” Ilsa accuses.
“Ilsa,” Parker says in a voice you’d use with a bear that’s picked up a toddler.
“I really like the lasagna.”
At first, I don’t even know who’s spoken. Then I realize it’s Johan.
He goes on.
“When I was a kid, my mom did this thing with lasagna—she would use alphabetic noodles to spell out messages for us, usually in the bottom layer. So we had to eat it very, very carefully. Usually we’d be rushing through dinner—I have four brothers—but when it was lasagna, you would have thought we were excavating a dinosaur. Sometimes she’d make it so each of us got a word, and we’d have to wait until everyone was finished to see what the sentence was. You have to keep in mind—this was a totally rigid household. Everything was run with military precision. So when our mom would do this, it was almost like…I don’t know. Like there was an underground. A rebellion. So, you know, I can’t eat lasagna without thinking of that.”
I have no idea why he’s telling us this. And then I realize he’s telling us this to shut everyone else up. And I feel…grateful.
“My mother did that with sushi,” KK chimes in. “She’d have the sushi chef write messages with soy sauce on the inside of the seaweed wraps. Things like Eat the rich and Die banker die. Come to think of it, maybe it wasn’t my mother telling him to write those things. I’m kidding, of course.”
When none of us laugh, KK sticks her tongue out. Then she says, “Fine. Be that way. In the meantime, I believe my dear friend Ilsa has a big announcement she wants to make.…”
nine
ILSA
Poor, sweet Sam. He’s the only emotionally stable person at the table. Or, as usual, he’s trying too hard to be.
KK smells blood. She gets like this. When there’s the chance for a massacre, she immediately wants more, before the knives have even officially come out, or before the sock puppet gets flushed down the toilet. She needs an infusion of rapidly escalating high stakes that result in complete carnage, jam-packed within a short period of time. She watches too much Shondaland and Game of Thrones. Forgive her.
She wants me to make the announcement about my new living situation so she can witness the fallout: Sam wailing about me moving into his beloved room at Czarina’s, and then him losing it at me for keeping my plans secret for so long. Jason G-C gloating that I am in my beloved brother’s bad graces. Parker betrayed that I would unsettle his best friend. Johan hastily putting his Dollygurines back in his violin case before they’re used as battle props. Li Zhang stress-eating the entire lemon tart Sam prepared for dessert.
I’m not playing KK’s game. I evolve at staring-at-a-crackling-fire-on-the-TV-monitor pace. I’ll tell Sam when I’m ready, not when KK is ready.
But I do have an announcement. “Time to lock up the phones.” I should have done this as people arrived. The storm is getting bigger outside Czarina’s epic-view windows, and I can already see how the rest of the night will go. It will be lost to Instagram postings of lightning over Manhattan’s skyline and gales falling on the unlucky people in view down on the sidewalk. Or worse, snaps of Sam’s woeful lasagna. Better to remove the phones entirely. That might be the best we can salvage from this meal.
“Refuse,” says KK. “Absolutely not.”
I stand up and grab her phone out of her hand before she can move it from my reach. “I love you so much, KK.” I place a kiss on top of her head. I know I’m the only person who finds her adorable, but someone’s got to, dear neglected bankers’ daughter.
Czarina insists that no one have their phone at the table when she invites the family to dinner. I follow her lead and retrieve from the foyer the small lockbox she keeps for phones. I return to the dining table and circle around it with the open box for our guests to deposit their phones in. I place KK’s in there first.
“Could you give me a better one when we get these back?” Johan asks, dropping his in. “Mine’s about five years old.”
“Jason will volunteer to give you his, I’m sure,” I say.
I glare at Jason. He return-glares at me, but deposits the latest iPhone into the box. Jason is the kind of guy who lines up at the Apple store the night before the tech behemoth puts its latest phone on the market, and then posts about it all night and morning like he’s competing in a triathlon instead of slumping down on pavement literally doing nothing.
When I reach Caspian, he says, “I don’t have a phone.”
“Because you don’t have the finger dexterity to type texts?” Jason asks. Such a snob. As a child, Jason once won the Fastest Text Typer at a county fair. Because that’s the kind of county fair he asked to be taken to
