“I get it,” snapped Avery. “I’m sorry I was late. I didn’t realize you had made plans.”
The warmth that had encircled them just a moment ago was gone. It was as though they had stepped from sunshine into shade.
“We can talk tomorrow,” said Lucky.
Somewhere buried within, Lucky would have welcomed her sister stopping her. She wanted Avery to take her in her arms and tell her she knew why she wanted to leave, the thirst that drove her, but she would sit with her until it passed, because it would pass, it had to. But Avery only gave a tired smile of acquiescence.
“You got the key?” she asked.
Lucky nodded.
“And you have money? You have pounds?”
“I’ll get some on the way.”
“Here—”
Avery reached into her bag and extracted an expensive-looking quilted wallet. She opened it and pushed three twenty-pound notes into Lucky’s hands. Lucky looked down at the purple face of the young queen with her mysterious smirk.
“You really don’t need to,” she said, immediately crunching the bills into her back pocket.
“Be safe,” Avery said. “Take a taxi home.”
Lucky was already disappearing out the gate when she remembered.
“Oh hey,” she said, turning suddenly. “Don’t be mad, but Chiti told me about the baby plans. Congrats, by the way.”
Lucky saw a look of panic flash across Avery’s face before rearranging it into a taut smile.
“She shouldn’t have…” she said, then stopped herself. “It’s still early days. But thank you.”
Was Avery upset that she knew? Why didn’t she want to let her into her life? Lucky pushed the thought away and continued trotting backward down the street away from the house.
“You’re going to be a sick-ass mom!” she called before disappearing ’round the corner.
Avery only ducked her head, as if avoiding a blow.
—
An hour later and Lucky was rolling one of the twenty-pound notes into a tight cylinder. She was in the living room of the stylist, whose name she’d never quite caught. She was small and pink-haired with big eyes and a scrunchy, curious face redolent of the plastic troll dolls Lucky used to play with as kid, which is how she came to be saved in Lucky’s phone under the moniker Troll Doll. It felt rude to ask her name now, so Troll Doll she remained in Lucky’s phone and in her mind.
It had taken her the length of three back-to-back albums—Nick Cave, Cocteau Twins, and Kate Bush—to get to the stylist’s place from Hampstead. Lucky was always amazed by the sheer size of London in comparison to New York or Paris, its seemingly endless capacity to be inconvenient. What other city would require you to take the overground to the tube to the bus just to get to a friend’s house on a Friday night? No wonder Hampstead was so sleepy, everyone ostensibly already in bed as she’d walked the dark residential streets to the overground station; it was too much effort to go out. That must be why the impregnably mature and sober Avery loved it, Lucky thought with a hint of bitterness.
London frustrated Lucky, but she loved the English, the way they were always down to get royally and truly fucked-up. They weren’t tasteful like the French or puritanical like the Americans; if you suggested going for a drink in London, odds were you were going to get drunk. The desire for inebriation was tacit, no one needed to make a thing of it. Brits wanted oblivion and they wanted it now. Lucky’s kind of people. And Troll Doll had proven to be a true patriot by immediately producing two plastic baggies as Lucky walked through the door. But should they start with the ketamine or the cocaine? An age-old conundrum. Lucky picked coke and poured half the bag onto a large coffee table book emblazoned with a glossy picture of a naked Kate Moss. Her hands shook as she tried to get the lines thick and even.
“It’s so cool you texted, yah,” said Troll Doll. “Since I gave you my number like six years ago.” It had been six months. “Good thing I wasn’t waiting.”
“Yeah, sorry about that.” Lucky glanced up at her with a sharp-toothed grin. “I’m not great with texting. Or phones.”
“So mysterious,” purred Troll Doll’s flatmate, who appeared from his room wearing a leather holster over his taut bare chest.
“You look brilliant!” Troll Doll let out a little shriek of delight. “So on theme.”
“What’s the theme?” asked Lucky.
“Oh my gosh, you didn’t know?”
Troll Doll shrieked again, then proceeded to breathlessly explain. They were going to the birthday party of a pair of socialite twin sisters who were notorious in London but, like most minor British celebrities, basically unknown anywhere else. Their father, an old Etonian and investment banker, was frequently in the news for his relationships with various actresses and models, most of whom were around his daughters’ age. This year, the twins had decided to scandalize the British tabloids by hosting a joint bacchanal at an exclusive London sex club whose parties had been shrouded in mystery for years. The theme was Pure Smut and all of London’s wealthy and beautiful elite would be attending in their smuttiest best.
“So everyone’s dressing as, like, a prozzie or a stripper. Isn’t it perfectly scandalous?”
Troll Doll hoovered up a line from Kate Moss’s hip with practiced efficiency.
“I’m pretty sure we’re meant to say sex workers now,” said Lucky.
“Anyway, I thought you knew that’s where we’re going!” exclaimed Troll Doll, ignoring her. “Isn’t that why you’re dressed like that?”
Lucky looked down at her threadbare cropped T-shirt, leather pants, and platform boots. She looked back up at Troll Doll.
“This is just how I dress.”
“Oops,” stage-whispered the flatmate, hiding a giggle behind his hand.
Lucky flushed ever so slightly. She reached for her drink.
“Love that,” said Troll Doll quickly, motioning for him to stop. “So how come you’re back in London anyway?”
“Um, visiting my sister,” said Lucky, downing her glass in one gulp.
