Good Rich People(68)

“Okay.”

He grins. “I should warn you, they’re terrible people.”

“I know. I met their wives.” He bursts out laughing. It echoes through the courtyard.



* * *





GRAHAM’S FRIENDS ARE doing cocaine in a private room on the top floor of a strip club. Rich people never get points for creativity. There are about eighteen bottles of Dom scattered on the table. They’re mixing it with top-shelf whisky. Graham is drinking along with everyone else but he is sitting with me in the far corner, away from the action. He hasn’t left my side all night.

His crew bursts into riotous laughter and I lean closer so he can hear.

“You never told me your favorite book.”

“Bambi.”

“Really?” He nods, eyes glassy and sincere. I sit back a little. “I bet you every last man here would say something by Brett Easton Ellis.”

He shakes his head, tugs at his tie, which is like a nervous tic—he loosens it and tightens it once every ten minutes. “I can’t stand him. Patrick Bateman’s a pussy,” which wasn’t my exact criticism but I joke back anyway, “Yeah, Bambi was tough.”

He tugs the bottle of Dom out of the ice bucket and tops up his glass. I have been around a lot of drinkers but I don’t think I have ever seen someone drink so much so fast and stay so even. We’ve been here for hours and it’s only now starting to show in the loop of his movements, in his oversolicitousness, the way he bites his bottom lip. “You sure you don’t want a drink, darling?” He shuts one eye as he pours the dark whisky over the top. It weaves like blood through the crisp champagne.

“No, thank you.” I am afraid to drink. I have been trying to get my nerve up all evening to tell him who I am and how I got here, but the drunker he gets, the less that seems like a good idea.

“Hitler never drank,” he says. It’s unclear why he thought that would be relevant. He definitely has more edge under the influence, a tendency to say inappropriate things like he’s daring you to scold him. I should wait. I’ll tell him tomorrow. Or after his birthday. There’s no immediate threat. I can wait. Forever. He downs half his cocktail, then looks hard at me. “You might want a drink for what I’m about to tell you.” And something in his tone makes menace in his red-ringed eyes.

He moves closer to me. I want to move away but instead I freeze. My tongue starts to buzz, numbed by fear. He tightens his tie, loosens it. “I was throwing away my mother’s dog . . .” For a moment it’s like time stops, and I slip into a world between his words. Everything, everything, that’s happened comes racing to meet me and I see it: those tricky stairs, Demi’s dead body, the hands and the teeth, the fire and the evidence bobbing up from underwater. And then my eyes catch on her ring on my finger, and I feel anchored to that at least. “. . . when I found something. In the trash.” My bowels loosen. I almost piss myself. Instead, I grip the seat. His eyes drop. He notices it. He notices everything. He can smell fear. “It was a bag and inside it was two hands, two feet, a collection of teeth.”

My voice is so soft, I doubt he can hear it. “You said you would help me.”

“Darling, it seems like you helped yourself.”

Across the room, two new dancers arrive. They line themselves up. They drop their fur coats. Their dresses glitter. Their legs part at the same time. I wish I were them. I wish I were anyone else.

“What did you do with the bag?”

“I haven’t decided.” He sips his drink. “I wanted to ask you first.” What do I say? What do I do? There’s no escape. I scan the seedy club but my eyes stick on one woman’s undulating back. Graham sidles closer. “Would you like to join me at an alternate location?”

I swallow hard. My voice cracks. “Where?” I’m panicking. Is he going to take me to the police? Is it all over? Is this how it ends? In a seedy private room at a fancy strip club surrounded by champagne and cocaine?

His pretty eyes shine. “Wherever I say. Right?”



* * *





I GO WITH him to a hotel next door. I have to. He knows. He didn’t tell the police. I don’t have a choice.

He said he wanted to help me but of course that was a lie. I was right not to trust him. I was wrong to get close to him. When I could have been running, I was shopping. When I could have been free, I was buying.

We walk into the vaulted lobby. All the staff recognizes him, welcomes him.

“Mr. Herschel! Mr. Herschel!” they exclaim like they’ve been waiting for him, hoping for him, all this time. He makes small talk, watching me all the while. He is enjoying this. He has me pinned. I look at the Maxfield Parrish reproductions along the wall and wonder what Graham is going to do to me. Whatever he wants.

He gets the presidential suite. Of course he does. We walk through the door and through a circuit of rooms to the master suite. He doesn’t turn on any lights. The walls are golden. He is drinking whisky from the bottle now. He takes off his tie, removes his jacket, unbuttons his vest and climbs onto the bed.

“Darling.” He looks up at me with bedroom eyes. “Tell me, whose teeth are they?”

I look at the glass doors leading onto the balcony. I could run. I could jump. “They’re Demi’s,” I find myself saying. “They belong to Demi Golding.”