Charlie looked at her with his funny half smile.
“Yeah, but how else would you know when to stop?”
Chapter Seven Lucky
Lucky had been hungover for two days, which was a new record for her. Saturday, she’d spent almost entirely in bed, waking up to find first tea and toast, then plain pasta and paracetamol, and finally soup and crackers placed on the nightstand by either Avery or Chiti. Sunday had brought the inevitable blowup with Avery, whose universe of anal domesticity was not built to withstand the cannonball intrusion of a freewheeling Lucky. Avery and Lucky had fought plenty in their lives, but neither ever held a grudge. Quick to anger, quick to forgive, that was their way. So Lucky had been surprised when Avery had not returned until late that evening, heading straight to her bedroom without a word while she and Chiti sat downstairs watching a movie. Lucky had turned to catch Avery’s retreating figure slipping silently up the stairs and felt, for the first time, that she did not know her sister as well as she thought.
On Monday morning, a still reticent Avery left for work and Chiti disappeared into her home office to see clients, so Lucky was left to herself. Her body no longer felt like a pillowcase that had been filled with rocks and broken glass, then put in the tumble dryer, but she didn’t feel great. It had been one of those contradictory comedowns that never let her settle in one place for long; she was lethargic and jumpy, chilled but sweaty, intermittently panicked by and numb to everything around her. She spent the morning watching cartoons on her laptop in bed and smoking the last of the weed she had managed to hide in her underwear on the Eurostar.
Around lunchtime, Lucky checked her phone for the first time in forty-eight hours. The screen, she saw, was cracked but still usable. She had been hoping for an apology text from Avery, but there was only a missed call and voicemail from Bonnie, a message in French from Sabina her brain could not bring itself to translate, and a flurry of texts from Troll Doll she didn’t bother to read. Avery had probably gotten to Bonnie first, Lucky realized, with a sinking feeling. At least Bonnie could be relied upon not to yell at her, though her fumbling concern was often more distressing. In her inbox was an email from her agent from two days ago. She saw the subject line “We need to talk” and deleted it unopened, then went back to Bonnie’s voicemail. She pressed the Play button and brought the phone to her ear.
Hey, Lucky, just, um, checking in on you. Avery said you had a bit of a rough night. I’m here if you want to talk about it…or not talk. Whichever. A pause, in which Lucky could feel her sister’s discomfort. She was not talkative at the best of times, but a voicemail, essentially an enforced monologue, was, for Bonnie, the human equivalent of putting a bear in a tutu and making it dance. Anyway…I’m in New York, which Avery probably told you. It’s weird to be here without you. It would be great to have you here, actually, but no pressure…Oh, and I’m training at Golden Ring again. I figure I’ll stay here ’til Mom and Dad sell the place, then decide what to do. I haven’t looked at Nicky’s stuff yet, but I’ll keep anything for you that you want. Unless you want to come get it yourself? Please? But, yeah, like I said, no pressure…That’s all, I guess. Call me back.
Lucky sat down on the unmade bed, then pressed Play again. So Bonnie was boxing again, and here in London, Avery was having a baby. Everyone was moving forward with their lives except her. But Bonnie wanted her there, that much was obvious. Her sister almost never asked her for anything, but she had asked her to come (no pressure!) twice in one message. And it wasn’t as if Avery wanted her here.
With the sudden surge of relief that always followed the possibility of escape, Lucky checked her airline app on her cracked phone. She had thousands of air miles saved up from her years of traveling, and there was a seat on a flight leaving tomorrow afternoon. She tapped quickly through the checkout process, then forwarded her flight details to Bonnie with simply a smiley face and “xx” in the body of the email. Better not to get into everything that had happened here until she was physically back with Bonnie, by far her more understanding sister. That gave her just over twenty-four hours left in London, a city that clearly did not have a great influence on her. It would be good to get out of here, she thought, and show Avery that she wasn’t going to hang around waiting for forgiveness like a kicked dog. That would wake her eldest sister up. If there was one thing Lucky was a master at, it was leaving.
Lucky wandered downstairs into the kitchen, but she was not hungry. She wished she’d brought her guitar, but she’d left it in Paris. For the first time, she worried vaguely about what was to come next. Sure, she would go to New York to help Bonnie with the apartment, but then what? She knew she didn’t want to model anymore, but at least it was something to do. That was the thing people didn’t talk about, how much of life was just filling time. Her years had been broken into a particular set of seasons for so long, the twice-yearly loop around New York, London, Milan, Paris, then Haute Couture Week every January and July, photo shoots in lofts in New York, in parks in Berlin, at the top of skyscrapers in Hong Kong, on the beaches of Bali. For so many years she had been too busy, too jet-lagged, or too high to feel much of anything. Now, just when she wanted to feel the least, she had nothing to distract her.
She opened the fridge door, then shut it again with a wave of nausea. The worst part was the flashes of memory from Friday night. Fragments of scenes illuminated like matches struck then snuffed back out. She was dancing in the twin headlights of a taxi—or was she falling? Hands were grabbing at her feathered chest. She was like a bird being plucked. She was pushing the driver off her, ignoring his shouts, oozing away from him to slide up the steps like a backward slinky, and crumpling at Avery’s door.
Lucky swung open the kitchen’s double French doors and stepped into the garden. It was a beautiful, bright day. She lit a cigarette and exhaled. Nicky’s baby. That was the part of the night that still lay just out of reach. Somebody had called her Nicky’s baby. A person at that party had known Nicky, and Lucky wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it until she found out who. She picked up her phone and called Troll Doll, who answered on the second ring.
“Oh my gawsh, I thought you were dead,” she said. “Look, sorry about those texts I sent you, yah? I was off my face.”
“No worries,” said Lucky.
“I was cringing the next day.”
“Seriously, you’re all good,” said Lucky. “I’ve forgotten them.”
This was sort of true since she had never bothered to read them. Troll Doll exhaled with relief.
“Legend. So, when do you leave? Can I see you again?”
“I’m gonna head to New York soon. Things are…weird with my sister.”
“The lawyer one?”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you come stay with me? I’d love that!”
Lucky inhaled and rolled her eyes. She tried her best to sound polite.
“I wouldn’t want to put you out.”
“You wouldn’t be putting me out! You’d be putting me in, like, heaven.”
Lucky chose to ignore this.
“Look, I wanted to ask you, that place we went the other night? Do you have the address?”
“Why? You’re not seriously thinking of going back there, are you? It’s, like, an actual sex club, you know.”
“I lost something and wanted to check if it’s there.”
“Your T-shirt? I have it! I actually slept in it last night, how sad is that?” She made a snorting sound of humiliation or, perhaps, hope. “Flopsy says you can keep her feather boa by the way.”
“I don’t care about the shirt. I’m looking for…something else.”
“The drugs? I’m pretty sure you did them all, babe.”
“Can you just tell me the address?”
Troll Doll hummed down the phone.
“If I give it to you, will you come see me after?”
Lucky stayed silent until she heard Troll Doll eject a little sigh of defeat.
“I’ll text it to you now.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it.”
“I swear,” Troll Doll said sadly. “You’re worse than any boy, Lucky.”
—
