“Brunch,” Padgett counters. It’s ten A.M. and Sunday, and Kitsune has been up since four. Sundays here are particularly domestic, almost marital, the invisible housekeeper and personal assistant and both nannies gone, actually vacated and not just rustles in Padgett’s peripheral vision. Kitsune wakes early—if a dainty phrase like that can be applied to a howling banshee in the middle of the goddamn night—and the Vic sits and feeds her on the balcony, usually, lit by one of his little screens and the dawning sky. Then they’re both in bed with her, this tiny baby and this very wealthy man, both their scents and gurgly breaths passing over Padgett like shifting currents. It gets too light in the room too quickly—the Vic will soon redo the blackout curtains as a gift for her—so they rise, Kitsune’s eyes everywhere wondering where the party is. They put her in a—it’s made in Sweden, but it’s a cage, is what it is—and have a quiet breakfast, the Vic with two or sometimes three devices accepting, like horsebacked servants, his marching orders and changes of plans. Padgett fingers her own screen. She doesn’t have much, but it won’t do to stare out the window, and now she has more than she used to. A few friends of friends ask her if she wants to consult for their companies, none in Padgett’s area of expertise since she has none, the asks so blatantly tilted toward the Vic she can hardly look at them. This morning she wants to finish reading the book everyone is reading, so as to have read it, and then later, a drinks date with another girlfriend of another man rich in tech, or whatever it is Padgett has become. Kitsune closes her eyes and basks in the pleasure of the bottle. Padgett’s a wet nurse without milk, an executive assistant with live-in privileges, something that feels virtual, so often does it show up onscreen, that’s nevertheless based on something that is, she’s pretty sure, real.