Good Rich People(27)

I thought she was trying to trick me. Graham had warned me his mother liked to play games. She was ruthless in getting what she wanted. She would say anything, do anything, pay anything.

I didn’t understand then. I don’t know if I understand now. But sometimes I wonder. Maybe she was telling the truth. Maybe honesty was a tactic, the last card she had to play. I think of Graham’s expression as he watched Elvira float.

But I never could have seen it then, never could have understood. It’s the things you want that kill you. The things you want but never get. Back then I still believed I could have everything, have anything. Maybe my parents wouldn’t come to my wedding, but they would come around eventually. I would earn Margo’s respect. I would earn Graham’s love. They and the world would relent.

I was young, and I was dumb, and I was sure I would get everything I ever wanted.

“I don’t want the money,” I told her. “I want the life.”

“Stupid girl, you’ll lose them both.” She turned her back on me, faced her own reflection in the mirror. I could still see her, but as far as she was concerned, I had disappeared.

I knew I shouldn’t tell Graham what she had said but I did, on the third night of our honeymoon, when he still couldn’t get it up to sleep with me. I told him the whole story, my valiant parts, Margo’s wicked insistence.

Once I had finished, he said flatly, “Margo knows everything.” Then he walked out onto our deck and jumped into the ocean. He didn’t come up for so long, I thought he might have drowned.

When he finally surfaced, he looked hypnotized. He padded into our luxury hut dripping wet. “I need to call her,” he said.

“I don’t care.” I jumped up and embraced him, let him soak me. “Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter. I love you anyway.”

He pushed me off. “How can you love me anyway?”

He called Margo, and he shut the door on me. He spoke to her for over an hour. I would have given anything to know what she said to him, what he said to her, what they decided. When he came to bed, I thought something would change. But he slipped in beside me; he put his arms around me. He held me like a husband does. We never spoke of it again.

I tried to put it out of my mind, but every so often it bubbled to the surface, throwing me off-balance, catching me off guard. I told myself it was a trick, a lie Margo made up to scare me, until the night Elvira died. I saw the look on Graham’s face: not a smile, not a smirk, but his dimples were showing. And I wondered for the first time if it wasn’t a lie; if it was a mercy. He will destroy you and everything you love. It’s in our blood.

There my mind stops before it goes too far. It doubles back on itself. It promises me I’m fine. He married me. He must have had a reason. He must know, deep down, I’m good enough. He must love me, in some way.

He won’t destroy me, not by accident, not by design. I’m smart. I can keep up with him. I can’t give up. I need to stop thinking about it. All of it. It won’t get me anywhere. Elvira is dead. I need to stop dreaming about her. I need to focus on the game. It’s my turn. Once it’s over, things will go back to normal. Tragedy will take its place at a distance. I need to be the destroyer. I need to destroy Demi’s life fast so we can all move on.

I know I can win. I have it in me. I can prove to Margo and Graham that I belong with them. I’m out of practice, but I’m a goddamn killer. That’s how I got Graham. That’s how I got the house. That’s how I got everything that everyone wants.

I have a plan.

I’m going to do the most heartless thing a woman can do to another woman.

I’m going to make her my best friend.





LYLA



I am awake before Graham the next morning. I make him coffee, cut his grapefruit.

“I’m going to do it today,” I tell him. “I have a plan.”

Graham just nods sleepily. He is not a morning person. His eyes are dull. His skin is plump with sleep.

I wait until he leaves, until a sociable hour; then I get dressed. I select my grayest outfit, my most expensive understated shoes. A bottle of Mo?t for a housewarming present.

I step out the front door. A man is standing in our courtyard.

There is a homelessness epidemic in Los Angeles. They rent vans out in Venice for people to live in. Charities and churches offer swaths of lawn for people to camp. Downtown there are tent cities with shopping cart traffic.

It’s easy not to see it up here in the hills, in a city where no one walks. It’s easy to drive from one place to another and barely even glimpse it. To avoid it. Even so, there are times when I pass over a body on my walk to the reservoir, times when my car brakes suddenly as someone barges across the street, always bleeding from somewhere: a nose, an ankle, bloody fingers. Times when you notice a pile of trash and realize people have been discarded there, too.

This man is tall, over six feet. He stoops but it only makes him seem taller. He has dark dreaded hair and a hooked, crooked nose. He has a fancy woman’s jacket but no shirt. His chest is speckled with mud or blood. I look at him. He gazes back at me, over his shoulder with a grim expression, like we are locked in some endless loop, prisoners in twin purgatories.

I have this funny impulse to invite him inside. He could be my Rasputin. I could be his Alexandra.

“What—,” I start.