Everything Leads to You(74)

“Is it you?”

“Yeah, it’s us.”

“Take the elevator! Penthouse! Three-twenty-three!”

“Penthouse?” Charlotte says.

I widen my eyes like I know.

Then there’s a buzzing, which lets us into the lobby. In the elevator, we select P for you-know-what, and a screen asks us to enter a code, so we press 3-2-3 and the doors shut and we glide upward. When the elevator opens, we find ourselves on the roof, facing the ocean right in front of us, the Santa Monica pier to our right, its Ferris wheel lit up, silhouettes of palm trees against the dark sky.

We turn around to an apartment made of glass.

Ava stands in the doorway, dressed in high-waisted white jeans and a blue-and-white polka-dotted blouse. She has on bright red lipstick and a pair of shiny, bright red heels, a long string of pearls around her neck.

“Are those real?” I ask her.

“Of course they are. I had to look like a girl who belongs in a penthouse.”

Charlotte and I laugh, and Ava takes a seat on an outdoor sofa that must have come with the place. She rests her feet on an ottoman, crosses her ankles. I would hardly have recognized her.

“I went to Bloomingdale’s and told the woman to make me look rich.”

“It worked,” I tell her.

A moment later, Jamal appears next to her, in sagging khaki shorts and a gray ribbed tank top that shows off his muscular body. They couldn’t look more incongruous: She’s dressed for a lunch meeting at an upscale restaurant and he’s dressed for a day at the beach.

“Finally,” he says, holding a bottle of champagne by its neck. “We can pop this open.”

“We felt like celebrating,” Ava says.

“I can see why,” I say.

“We don’t have any cups, though,” Jamal says. “I had to go to five different liquor stores till I found one that didn’t card me, and all that time I didn’t think about cups.”

Charlotte and I both have water bottles, so after Jamal accidentally sends the cork ricocheting off the roof, he fills our tins and then he and Ava pass the rest back and forth between them.

“How did you get this place?” Charlotte asks. “Didn’t you need rental histories and references?”

Ava takes a swig out of the bottle.

“Clyde was right,” she says.

“How so?” Charlotte asks.

But I know what she means: “Money can open doors,” I say.

She nods.

“I told the manager I could write him a check for the full year right now, and then he went to the bank and deposited it and called me back and said the place was mine. It was good timing. Terrence and I just finished the bank paperwork this morning.”

“Bank account in the morning, Chateau Marmont in the afternoon, penthouse in the evening,” I say.

“Yeah, if Terrence is watching my money, he’ll be impressed,” she says. “But I didn’t have much of a choice.”

I don’t trust myself to say Why not? in a way that’s even remotely convincing.

Instead I say, “Show us the inside.”

She takes us on a tour of the penthouse. One by one, she flicks on the lights. I can imagine what it must look like from above: a glass house, lit up and glowing in the night. Inside, it looks like it’s sprung from the pages of Dwell or Architectural Digest. Pure white walls, high ceilings, thick-planked wood floors. A bedroom with a closet the size of Toby’s old dorm room. A bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub and a shower that takes up half the room and has no door. A modern, airy kitchen opens onto the living room.

“Isn’t this the best kitchen you’ve ever seen?”

I nod, but I actually like my kitchen at home better, and even Toby’s tiny kitchen. I understand that this is full of nicer, more expensive appliances, but without pots and pans, cutting boards and mismatched mugs, bowls of fruit, and magnets on the refrigerator it feels too sterile.

“If you need any more locations for filming,” Ava says, “you’re welcome to use any rooms you want.” She’s standing in the middle of the cavernous living room under light wood beams and the yellow glow of recessed lighting.

“That’s so nice of you,” I say, but the truth is that the place has no soul. I haven’t seen a single scratched floorboard.

“Don’t you think it’s great?” Ava asks me a little defensively, and I don’t want her to be defensive, because doesn’t she deserve this? After everything she’s been through, shouldn’t she end up with a dream house on the rooftop of one of the most exclusive buildings in Venice?