“What are you talking about?”
I laugh. I sound hysterical, even to my own ears. Ellie looks like he’s going to be sick.
“Your new boyfriend’s an asshole. But I hope he sees you as more than just a character in one of his self-indulgent stories.”
I don’t wait for a response before I turn and walk away.
I manage to make it out of the building before breaking down in tears.
19
After I text Alex that I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it over and assure him that I’m fine, I dial the number I told myself I would never need to dial.
Forty-five minutes later, I pull up to a large Mediterranean-style home in Larchmont, just a block away from the main street of shops and restaurants. The door swings open, and I’m greeted by Kimiko, dressed to the nines in a pale-pink maxi dress that matches her newly colored hair.
She doesn’t immediately invite me inside, just stares, frowning with concern.
“I know,” she says as if responding to something I said, even though I haven’t spoken. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”
Something about the way she says that and the expression on her face weirdly reminds me of my mother, and for the first time, I reallyfeelthat I’m speaking with a forty-two-year-old woman, not a twenty-year-old. During my limited interactions with her the night we met, she came across as so blasé and over-the-top that it was easy to forget.
I have to take a deep breath to keep from bursting into tears again. As I do, she steps back inside and gestures for me to follow.
“Your house is nice,” I say. And I mean it. Brown-tiled floors meet white walls that stretch up to a wood-beamed ceiling. I follow her down a hallway lined with landscape paintings.
“Oh,yay, small talk,” she says sardonically, then glances back at me with a knowing smirk. “Yeah, it’s not bad. Eight years of what is essentially insider trading goes a long way.”
“Eightyears? But—you were a kid back then.”
“I have an older cousin. He’s a real—how should I put it? A fuckup. Or hewas. A harmless fuckup. Aimless, didn’t have goals—every parent’s nightmare, but he’s a good guy.
“I convinced him I was psychic and used the 2004 Super Bowl to prove it—I mean, howelsewould a twelve-year-old predict that wardrobe malfunction? He was eighteen, and we struck a deal. He invested in what I told him—Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Google—and when I was eighteen, he transferred half to me. I sold some, kept most. Neither of us will ever have to work.”
As she speaks, we pass through a formal living room, continue to the back of the house, and stop in what appears to be a second, cozier living room.
“Have a seat. Red or white?”
“Red is…” I start, but I trail off as my attention is caught by the walls, every square inch of which is covered in art—art that is a far cry from the landscapes in the hallway.
Gruesome art.
Gruesome,specificart. My eyes land on an easel sitting in the corner that holds a canvas depicting the half-painted bloody body of a chopped-up ballerina.
Kimiko walks over, a bottle and two wineglasses in hand, and sees me staring.
“That one’s not done.”
She sets the bottle and glasses down, walks over to the easel, grabs the tarp next to it, and covers the canvas.
But that’s just one of many. Everywhere I look, I see the same two things: ballerinas and blood.
“You painted these?” I ask. She shrugs, not quite looking at me, sits down, and pours the wine.
The sight of the red liquid splashing into the glass immediately takes me back to Ellie’s party. The last time I drank red wine.
The memory freezes me in place. It takes me a moment to register that she’s speaking.
“I realize how it looks. You come visit a strange woman you met just once and find weird, violent imagery all over her walls. If you want to run, I won’t blame you.”
