“Looks like you been up all night conspirin' with the devil.”
“Nah—we’re old lovers.”
The devil knows my safeword.
"Try a heartbroken girl from the Bronx."
"Ah, Christ—tell Celie I said hang in there. Girl's got more heart than sense." He swings the door wider, shaking his head. “An' you. One day you’re gonna walk through this door with somebody’s hand holdin’ yours instead of ghosts followin’ you around. Be nice, y’know? You’re too young to be lonely.”
“Over my dead fuckin’ body, Mickey.
“If someone’s got my hand, call the cops.
“Means I’ve been kidnapped. Or drugged.”
The elevator scans my face,
registers my exhaustion,
opens anyway.
I ride up to the top floor.
The entire floor. My home.
And when the elevator doors slide open again,
I’m stepping right into the grand foyer,
the hush of the penthouse washing over me.
The hallway curves, lined with framed records stacked tight—top to bottom, end to end on bone-white walls.
Theonlyrecords pressed with both my name and song title.
But each one flipped so no one would know.
Only black vinyl ghosts on display.
I call it the
Museum of Shit I’ll Never Get Credit For.
A cemetery of storied pain,
empty graves that bought this place.
Skyline streams through the windows that stretch across the back, pouring platinum and gold into the penthouse.
The city doesn’t knock here. It calls ithome.
Walks across these marble floors barefoot.
I scatter myself on the way to the terrace.
Heels off first. One kicked, then the other,
both thudding behind me
