I see her move down the stairs. First, her shoes, curled black and witchy, as she swivels on the step and locks the gate behind her. “Fucking shit,” she mutters. It sears through Graham. He yanks the comforter over his head.
She wears a big black coat, as if she’s just come in from some terrible ice storm in the middle of Los Angeles. Her face is a smear beneath wild hair and then she’s gone, down below to her guesthouse.
I lie back in bed with my heart pounding as she moves down below. I can’t hear her footsteps or her words if she says any, but I catch the flush of the toilet, the bang of a closet door. We are so close. Her place is actually part of ours, the same house, on another floor.
Graham moans and punches an opening in his cave of covers. “I hate when they wake me up.” Then he moves to my side of the bed and buries his head in my chest.
* * *
GRAHAM IS SUCH a snob; it turns him on to think there is someone literally below him. If I kiss him when she’s downstairs, he groans like he wants her to hear.
All week long, I get glimpses, but they are quick. She leaves early. She comes home late. She never sleeps, and neither do we. I know I will have only a minute to catch her as she passes to make it seem natural and spontaneous. I wait on the patio for hours, and she arrives the moment I leave, like her watch is set to avoid me.
Graham checks in every day.
“Have you met her yet?” and “Have you talked to her?”
I run into Margo and Bean out on the street. “Where is your mystery tenant?” Like all of this is my idea.
By Thursday Graham is actually angry. The housekeeper has cooked another amazing dinner. No stars are out tonight. It’s too cloudy. There is only a fog that smells like ashes.
“You haven’t even met her. You’re not even trying.” Graham pouts, then licks his fork.
“I am trying. She’s never here. That’s what happens when you choose someone with a high-powered job. They work.”
Graham frowns and puts down his fork. “It’s no fun when it’s your turn.”
“I never wanted a turn.”
“Margo was right.” It’s my least favorite set of words, and he knows it.
I put my hands on the table. “What do you want me to do, Graham? Set a booby trap? Move in downstairs?” My neck is hot, like he’s onto me. The truth is, I have questioned my intentions. Maybe I really am not trying. Maybe her watch isn’t set to avoid me; maybe mine is set to avoid her. Way deep down, I don’t want to do this. My heart is treacherous.
“I want you to get her to like you. You can do that, can’t you?”
It burns and he knows it. “You want me to seduce a stranger.”
“You’re seducing me.” He strings his fingers together, sets his chin on top. “Let’s make things more interesting. Get it done and I’ll fuck you.”
The word pops a bubble in my brain. So much of our relationship is a tacit agreement never to mention that fact that Graham can fuck me only under certain circumstances, ideal conditions. Not temperature, a different kind of heat. His heel scrapes the floor as his legs shift under the table. “Seduce her, promise her the world and ruin her.”
That is the game Margo and Graham like to play. They invite a bootstrapper to live in their guesthouse. Someone who has climbed the ranks, someone self-made, woman or man. Then they conspire to make them lose everything, but spectacularly: a sex scandal, criminal charges, fraud.
But first, the player befriends them. They get to know them. “Poetic justice,” Margo once said, “is so much more satisfying.”
“Annihilate her,” Graham continues. “Her job. Her money. I want her to lose everything,” he says, beautifully transfixed.
I have often wondered what it is about the game that draws them. Is it because they fear losing their place to upstarts, ordinary people whose history is not riddled with wealth? Do they think there’s not enough room at the table? Do they want to keep the head count small? But I think their reasons are different.
Margo invented the game and she does it to prove her power, her control over everything: the light, the mood, the weather but especially people. It took me longer to work out what was in it for Graham. He’s too perverse to be political, too muddled and uneasy with himself to be so specific. I think he plays the game because he can, because he is bored, because he has appetites and wants for nothing.
He likes the pageantry of struggle. He’s only ever suffered psychic pain. Pain you can see sometimes feels like relief.