“Yes,” Aleksandr replies, adjusting Lili in his lap so she settles more comfortably into his arms.
“Well, how can you defend it, then?”
“ISIS?”
“No, no—the current liberal order,” Elijah says. “Democracies as fronts for Halliburton, the expansion of Gates’s neocolonialism?”
A shift in the couch, as Amina and James drop down beside them. “Elijah, we’ve received complaints, and I’m here to beg you: Can you just—not?” Amina asks. Bass pounds as the music switches tempo; a shriek in the crowd sounds like Jackie as the song changes.
“It’s a party!” James adds. “Celebrate me, laud me—hell, drag me, but don’t terrorize my guests.”
“It’s all capitalism!” Elijah exclaims. “All the way down! We need wholesale revolution, none of this democratic socialist bullshit—anything besides utter rejection of profits is murder!”
“How so?” Aleksandr asks, taking a drink of his whiskey. Lili catches the scent: smokiness, hint of peat.
“Profit and ethics are fundamentally opposing motives,” Elijah asserts. “An honest dollar has never been made without breaking someone’s back.”
“And here I thought prostitution was the world’s oldest profession,” Aleksandr says.
Beside them, James snorts so hard Lili startles, her drink sloshing in her Solo cup.
“To profit, you need to exploit,” Elijah continues. “That’s nonnegotiable, and people like you”—he points at Aleksandr—“you’re exploiting us all.”
“God, you’re so much fun,” James muses, leaning back against the couch.
“What? I’m right! You know, all our issues, these societal concerns, the plagues of our time, they’re planned by financiers and politicians, people like him—”
“Elijah, back off,” Lili snaps.
He holds both his hands up, as if in surrender. “Fine, fine! But sleeping with the enemy, Lili? Really? The communist cause deserves much better—”
“Elijah, you go to Equinox,” Amina interjects. “You’re not a communist.”
“Our bodies need to be primed—healthy!—for the class struggle—”
“You’re suspiciously quiet,” Lili murmurs to Aleksandr, as Amina and James start tag-teaming to attack the hypocrisy of Elijah’s sneaker collection: “StockX does not qualify as thrifting, Jesus,” she overhears James say.
“I don’t think I have much to gain from destroying some child’s worldview,” Aleksandr replies dryly.
“To be clear,” she says, “I can still criticize your free-market capitalism. It’s bullshit. Elijah’s views are just also bullshit.”
“Just as well. I’ve only really got tolerance for one feral socialist in my life.”
“He isn’t a socialist,” Lili asserts. “He’s a poser. When I told him Trotsky was murdered with an ice axe, he thought I was joking—ah, sorry—” Yawning, she tries to bury her face against his shirt, stifling it.
The corner of his mouth tugs into the hint of a smirk. At her waist, his fingers brush against her bare skin, exposed by her tiny black tube top.
“Tired?” he murmurs. Lili glances out the huge windows, foggy glass. It’s near midnight, and the party has grown darker and dirtier. The floors thrum with the amount of people dancing, faces she doesn’t recognize, sweat and cigarette smoke.
“Want to walk home?” she asks.
Aleksandr frowns. “Of course, I’ll walk you home—”
“No, not to my place. I meant, like, over the bridge, back to Tribeca.”
The smile that breaks over his face—surprise; then warmth, that relaxes in his gaze—she wants to make him look like that every day.
“Well, that went better than I thought,” she exhales, relieved, when they’re out on the street after saying goodbye to her friends. The rush of night air cools the sheen of sweat on her body. She feels residual excitement, unexpected contentment at the way the night had gone, the way it’d felt comfortable to have him at her side. “Thanks for coming.”
