I smiled. “It’s 4:00p.m.”
“Shit,” she saidagain.
The outfit she’d worn last night was draped over the back of a lavender velvet couch. Her buffed, white stone floors were strewn with various other articles of clothing. She nodded for me to comein.
“For a girl who wanted a hundred bucks for headphones, you live in a mighty fancy place.” I studied the crystal chandelier that dangled over a leather coffee table. Each crystal was shaped like a raindrop and hung at different heights. “Are your parentsin?”
“No. Why would theybe?”
“Don’t you live withthem?”
“God, no. The second I turned eighteen I was out thedoor.”
“So this is allyours?”
“Yes,ma’am.”
“Do you have aroommate?”
She scrunched up her nose. “I don’t doroommates.”
“I wish I could live alonetoo.”
“You live at the inn,right?”
“Yeah,” I said with asigh.
“Sucks.”
“Tell me aboutit.”
Over her black sleep shorts and black tank, she wore a turquoise silk bathrobe with a heronprint.
“Want a glass of water? Or coffee?Or—”
I smiled at her attempt at playing hostess. “Just adress.”
“I need coffee first.” She padded away toward the open kitchen. The stainless-steel appliances shone as bright as the gray ceramic tiles around them. The place was seriously sick, straight out of a lifestyle magazine. As she filled a percolator with ground coffee, I put my bag down on one of the many stools propped under the marble kitchen island. She flicked the switch, then gestured me toward a doorway that was twice the size of a normaldoorway.
Like the rest of her apartment, her bedroom was monstrously oversized and covered inclothes.
“You can’t afford a housekeeper?” I asked before realizing how critical thatsounded.
Then again, she was a slob, and she didn’t strike me as ignorant of thefact.
“I don’t like people touching mystuff.”
“Yet you’re okay with letting me borrow adress?”
She cocked an eyebrow as though just grasping how egregious that was. Then again, everything about this girl was a contradiction. She drove a Mini yet lived in a marble palace; she DJed in a club yet obviously didn’t need themoney.
“Dry clean it before giving it back.” She flashed me a smile that pried her sleep-filled eyes wider. She slid a mirrored door open with great flourish. “I’m wearing the yellow one. Take your pick from theothers.”
I stared at the row of hangers dripping with silks and satins and tulle and sequins. “Are you a gown hoarder, or do you really attend that many fancyparties?”
“That many fancy parties. But I do like clothes. Alot.”
My gaze swept over the rest of her closet, over the teetering piles of sweaters and t-shirts, over the lineup of jeans in every wash imaginable, over the column of shoes that ranged the gamut of sneakers to crystallized heels to every style of boots on themarket.
