“Well, I’m glad you’re here. And I’m glad you’re taking good care of my sister,” he said, putting Tallie in a mild headlock, giving her a gentle noogie.
“Li, stop. You’re messing up my Scully-ness!” Lionel released her, and she punched his arm. “Are Dad and Glory here?” Tallie asked, refluffing her hair.
“Yeah, Dad texted me. They should be down there somewhere,” he said. “Hey, let me know if y’all need anything. Make yourself at home.”
Tallie finished the rest of her champagne, and Lionel took the bottle from her before reaching into the cooler and handing her a drippy pony of penny-colored beer.
“Oh, I love you,” she said to him.
“I love you, too, Sis.”
Tallie and Emmett walked down the long twinkling hallway, pulsing like a bloody vein leading away from her brother: the heart. She turned to see him pulling his Bigfoot mask onto his head, secreting himself again.
EMMETT
（There is a small art gallery on the first floor of Lionel’s house. Most people would probably call it a hallway, but it’s wildly spacious, lined with framed paintings. Two large Goldscheider vases frame the doorway like centurions. A golden Brancu?i-like sculpture on a table casts its shadow on the shiny hardwood. A Brancu?i recently bagged over fifty-seven million at auction. Everything in the house is moneyed, dripping with it like the waterfall splashing beneath the large living-room window.）
Since he’d left his phone at Tallie’s, Emmett had no access to his emails, but he was still thinking about them. It was all he could think about when he met Lionel for the first time upstairs. It was all he could think about when Zora welcomed them in. On sight, Emmett had decided that Lionel wasn’t a douchey finance bro or an asshole. He was generous and kind, not worried about his house and expensive art collection getting trashed by drunken people in elaborate costumes. Emmett had liked him immediately, and Lionel and Tallie really did seem to click on and glow around each other.
The party was catered, but partygoers had also brought a bounty of cakes, cookies, pies, fruit. It wasn’t quite bacchanalian, or at least not yet, but the atmosphere whished, as if anything could happen. Everything in excess—the wine, the food, the house that grew before Emmett’s eyes anytime he moved around inside the wide expanse of it.
（Costumed people fill the kitchen, milling in and out of the three pairs of tall glass doors leading to open air. Drinking. Dancing. Mingling. Eating. Revelers swig bubbly gin with tropical-green wedges of lime. Clink bourbon. Chug beers. Slush their glasses full of red or white from the wine spheres, bob for apples in the sink. A rotating cast of bodies octopussing—arms reaching out for marshmallow-chocolate squares, salted nuts, stinky cheese, and figs. Limp hands made alive and desirous over and over like The Creation of Adam.）
He and Tallie filled their plates with spicy chicken wings and steak kebabs with green peppers, tomatoes, and mushrooms. Fries, jalape?o poppers, and sweet piquant peppers. Olives stuffed with herbed goat cheese. A man in a yellow hat carrying a copper bucket of champagne bottles scooted past them with a white-faced capuchin monkey on his shoulder. The monkey squeaked, looked Emmett in the eyes, opened his little mouth wide; Emmett stared back at it, opened his mouth, too.
“Hey, man,” he said, smiling at the monkey before he disappeared.
“Dang it. I totally forgot to tell you about the Man with the Yellow Hat and his Curious George! He’s here every year,” Tallie said. She laughed and held her hand over her mouth, finished chewing before motioning across the room. “I want you to meet my dad and stepmom,” she said, lifting her hand at the couple walking toward them dressed as Shaft and Foxy Brown. “Hi, Daddy,” she said, hugging him. “Glory, you look so pretty.”
“Thank you, Tallie,” Glory said, stepping back to give her a spin.
“Y’all, this is my friend Emmett. Emmett, this is my dad, Gus, and my stepmom, Glory,” Tallie said, nudging him forward.
Emmett said hi to them, shaking their hands.
“You two really do look great. The Shaft theme song should’ve started playing when you walked over,” he said.
Gus nodded and laughed. “It was definitely playing in my mind, hence the swagger.”
“Who are y’all?” Glory asked, leaning forward to see Tallie’s FBI badge. “Oh, the alien show that scares me,” she said, recognizing it. “Even the theme song creeps me out.”
“I’m Scully; he’s Mulder.”