“Oh man,” Marie says. She’s over on the side of the living room that doesn’t face the river, and Alice belatedly tries to look less gobsmacked.
You’ve been here,she chants to herself.You’ve been here. You’ve had sex here! You’ve seen this!
“I forgot he has a whole-ass balcony,” Marie says, and Alice tries to pretend like she knew that. Of course he has a whole-ass balcony. Why wouldn’t he. Who doesn’t, really?
She looks around the room, taking in how angular and impersonal everything is. There’s abstract art on the walls but Alice doesn’t know shit about art so she’s not sure what it’s telling her about Nolan or his taste. There’s not a single photograph or keepsake or knickknack that looks like it wouldn’t have been put there by someone staging the apartment for selling it. Like, if this were a model apartment, would anything have to change?
Seems like maybe no.
Alice tries not to think about Van’s house, about how the worn, overstuffed sofa and the exercise ball and all of Frank’s toys made it feel so much more welcoming than this space. Alice would be afraid to touch anything here—and god forbid if she had to eat or drink on that very uncomfortable-looking white sofa—but at Van’s she felt immediately at home. At Van’s she wanted to help with the dishes, put her feet up and watch TV, coax Frank’s bony butt into her lap, and here she finds herself backing up until the kitchen counter is digging into her side, trying her best not to break or breathe on anything.
“Alice, why don’t you and Marie go into the bedroom and gather whatever you think he’d like to have when he wakes up,” Babs says. “His slippers, a book, whatever’s in his nightstand. I’m sure he wouldn’t want us old ladies rummaging through his things.”
Right, right. The bedroom. Where all of the sex happened. Alice wonders if he has bunches of condoms and lube in his bedside table, if that’s what his mom is afraid of finding.
Oh god. Or what if he has, like, a sex swing in there? Oh fucking fuck, what if everyone but Alice knows that he’s super into some very specific kink, and this whole time they’ve been like,Damn, Alice is really into eating spaghetti with her toes while being boned!
This lie was a bad idea when it was all PG and sad, but Alice absolutely one hundred percent will not be able to handle it if it gets R-rated. Certainly, positively, hard pass on that.
“Sure,” Alice says, her throat dry. “The bedroom. Let’s, uh. Yup. Let’s go. You and me, Marie. Na. Marina. Altman. Marina Altman.”
Marie looks at her like she’s having a stroke. “You good, Rue?”
“So good,” Alice says, too loudly. She realizes that Marie is waiting for her to lead the way, and Alice wishes that she’d been assigned this task with Aunt Sheila, because she’d already have blazed the trail. There are two possible ways to go, both back through the entranceway. There had been a split left or right, and they’d gone left to get to the living room. So probably right? Okay. Alice can go right. Righty-ho, then.
She walks back out of the open space, confidently doing what she hopes is sauntering but sounds more like stomping, off in the direction she hopes is correct. And lo and behold, a bedroom!
Fucking genius,Alice thinks.I’m a master of my environment. I’m a born liar. I should join the goddamned CIA.
Although…the room is kind of small. And sure, there are floor-to-ceiling windows but they’re pretty narrow. And there’s not a bathroom attached, which seems odd.
Marie makes a confused sound from behind her. “Uh, isn’t this the guest room?”
Shit. Alice mentally retracts her application to the CIA.She’s never been on an airplane and only speaks English, so honestly she’s probably not their top choice of recruit. That’s fine. Apparently being a receptionist has more subterfuge than she can handle anyway.
“Yes,” she says, laughing way too nervously. “Obviously.I just wanted to, um, make sure there wasn’t anything in here we wanted to grab. You know. On the way to the real bedroom. The one I’ve, um, you know. The big one.”
Marie gives her a strange look, and Alice needs to fucking get it together. Marie is really, really not stupid, and Alice is being really, really weird right now.
Alice turns on her heel, back into the hallway. She tries to use her peripheral vision to take in her options, and, aha! Bingo.
She strides forward through an open door, and almost trips over herself when the first thing she encounters is a closet literally bigger than her childhood bedroom. It doesn’t have doors or anything, it’s just there. This is clearly what people mean when they say “suite”; Alice had thought it meant a bathroom attached to the bedroom, but no. Apparently for rich people it means three entire huge rooms, one for sleeping, one for dressing, and one for pooping.
The closet is rows and rows of suits and dress shoes, shirts and pants hung crisply on fancy hangers, ties rolled up in little dividers like this is a fucking department store. It’s completely full, even though Alice knows her entire wardrobe, including winter coats, scarves, boots, and all, would take up maybe a fifth of it.
“Ugh,” Marie says from behind her. “I’d kill for this closet.”
Alice wonders if maybe Nolan did, in fact, kill for this closet. Like, how does a human even get this rich without making a bargain with the devil?
The bedroom is past the closet, and Alice tries not to look at the big bed with the unfriendly white duvet and white pillows propped up on the headboard. There are two nightstands, one on each side, and a TV mounted on the opposite wall.
Alice doesn’t know what side of the bed Nolan sleeps on. Ugh, crap. Which one will have the condoms? She needs to save Marie from seeing that, but also…who will saveherfrom seeing it?
Alice pokes her head into the bathroom—holy enormous shower, Batman—and conclusively decides that this is an absolutely terrible way to get to know someone. She wonders why there’s never been a dating show with this premise, where the two strangers explore each other’s bedrooms before going on a blind date. It would be a disaster, which probably means it would get seven or eight seasons at least.
“Why don’t you take the bathroom,” Alice suggests to Marie, mostly to get her out of eyesight, “and I’ll start in here.”
“Cool,” Marie says, and Alice takes in a deep breath, squaring her shoulders.
