Good Rich People(62)

I have to remind myself that he doesn’t mean it. That it’s bullshit, empty words. Like the pamphlets they give out at Helping Hands. It’s an image that promises you the world. Like Demi that night: You can work for my company. Ha-ha. He doesn’t really mean it.

And even if he did, I am not who he thinks I am.

“That’s so nice.” My jaw throbs, as if remembering pain. I want to be Demi so badly. I want him to save me. It’s so easy, standing here at the top of a beautiful garden, beneath a house shaped like a castle, to believe that he is divine, that he is God, reaching out, if only I would let him. Like it’s my choice.

I have to remind myself Demi is dead. She is not a person I want to be.

“We selected you.” He keeps his eyes trained on the view but he reaches out blindly, grabs my hand. “Because you’re special.” He squeezes my fingers with his money hands.

I take in the whole view, dare myself to remember it, remember this, forever: the lush gardens, the flowers that sway in the controlled breeze. It’s like the books I used to read, except it’s real.

I’m here. At a point past feeling.

I never want to leave.





DEMI



He has to go back to work, so he leaves me at the broken gate. He kisses my cheeks, European-style. His smell up close catches me off guard. It’s musky, like a firehouse, like something strong and feral. He smiles and his dimples show.

“I’m glad you’re here.” I watch him walk away from me, how still he seems even in motion. He presses a button. The garage beeps. He disappears inside it. I take a breath.

Then I swivel toward reality. My steps are hurried, tumbling over one another. I reach the top of the staircase, grip the rail. This afternoon has been so surreal that the realization hits me like a kick in the teeth: The bag is gone.

I tell myself, Maybe Michael. I try to force myself to walk down the stairs, but my knees are locked, my throat closing with panic. I want to run. I need to leave now. While I am still free. While I am still standing. I am getting too close to danger, too close to discovery.

Run.

But then I see the garden, already taking a quality of a dream although I was there minutes ago. The flowers on fire. The bunnies hopping. The sky drifting overhead. I see Graham’s lips breathe: To help people like you.

I need help.

“Everything okay?” I wheel around and see Lyla’s housekeeper standing beside the fountain. Mascara dust clogs the lines beneath her eyes. She is wearing four silver necklaces, all tangled up together. She looks like a psychic. My future is bleak.

“I—” My tongue is swollen. I can’t speak. I can’t not. I force words out. “I just left some trash—um!—at the bottom of the stairs.” I am so scared my words are slurring. I need to sit down. I am going to faint for one, two seconds. Then the world slides back into place with the pieces too tight. “Have you—”

“I took it out.”

“Oh, God.”

“Sorry. I thought— You could smell it upstairs.”

The fountain is warbling. The sky is still blue.

“It was an animal. I found outside. Dead. Thank you.”

“Sure.” I focus on her necklaces: a star, a heart, a moon and a cowboy boot.

“I’m—Demi, by the way.” I was thisclose to giving her my real name.

“Astrid.” How do I ask her where she took the trash? She must have put it in the cans on the street. Do I leave it there? Do I go get it? I can’t do it now. I’ll have to wait until tonight.

“Thank you. Astrid. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem.” She is looking at me like she pities me, but it can’t be because she knows what was inside. That wouldn’t inspire pity. That would inspire a phone call. Fear. She must think that I have gross trash, that I am some gross person, leaving things to rot.

“Thank you,” I say again and regret it. I don’t want to draw attention. It’s too late for that, I caution myself.

She turns back to the fountain, pierces the surface with her finger.

My knees stay buckled as I journey down the stairs. My mouth is coated in panic. When I step inside the apartment, when I shut the door behind me, my legs shake so badly that I have to sit down. I can barely see the apartment around me. I am having a panic attack, some blast of conscience. I want to cry but no tears come. I want to throw up but my stomach is empty.

It’s so unfair that I covered up a murder and might get discovered. While upstairs they have a hell-themed garden more beautiful than any heaven I can ever hope to get to.



* * *





THE GUESTHOUSE HAS shrunk in my absence. It has a sickly, close feeling: heroin and sweat and strife. I take a shower but even her toiletries have taken an ordinary caste. They smell the same as the last time I used them. There is nothing artful about them, nothing unexpected.

I sit in the living room and try to read a book, but what’s the point? Books don’t transport you. Money does.

Michael comes home with a bundle of flowers so decadent and disparate that I recognize them immediately. “Where did you get those?”

He plucks a vase from the end table and takes it into the kitchen to fill with water from the tap. At the kitchen counter, he arranges the bouquet, tugging a daisy, spreading a rose’s petals. “Found them.”