“At the Le Beverly—it’s a hotel in Beverly Hills, small, from the outside you can’t tell, it looks like an apartment building. Dahlia had a pass to get into the private bar, it’s up at the third floor. I was supposed to go to a party but my date canceled and I was bummed and bored and I called Dahlia and she said, ‘Let’s go to B.H., we’ll have some fun.’ She’d been there before. I could tell ’cause the bartender knew her drink—Blue Lagoon, they mix it with a special orange liqueur that’s colored blue. Dahlia said she liked the taste but mostly used it like an accessory.”

“Fashion accessory?”

“She had these incredible blue eyes, liked to wear colors that brought them out, mostly red and yellow. But also a bit of blue, here and there. Like jewelry, you know? She said the Blue Lagoon worked like jewelry, helped bring people’s attention up to her eyes. She was like that. Artistic. Her house was full of her paintings. All blue, these wavy designs. Like the ocean, you know?”

“So,” said Milo, “you and Dahlia were in the private room of the Le Beverly.”

“I was drinking my Mojito and Dahlia was drinking her Blue Lagoon and the only other people were some Asian guys across the room, playing backgammon. Dahlia made a joke about their being Asian. ‘I take you to this great place to get away from work and it ends up looking just like work.’ I laughed and she laughed and then one of them came over and for a second I thought they heard us and were ticked off. But the guy was smiling, saying, ‘Women are beautiful when they’re happy. If you’d agree to join us, we’d be highly proud.’ Something like that, kind of lame. He had an accent but you could understand him. We figured he was the assistant because he was the smallest of them and not the most handsome and the worst dressed. The other two guys were younger, taller, real handsome, in Zegna suits. Later I found out they were the bodyguards and he had come over himself.”

“Prince Teddy.”

“He just called himself Ted. You’d never know he was anything important, he just had on a sweater and jeans. And he looked real young. Shorter than Dahlia, but she said, ‘Sure,’ and we got up and joined them. Without asking me, but that was okay, mostly I let Dahlia make the decisions. It was her got me in there in the first place.”

“So you joined Ted and his bodyguards.”

“We didn’t know they were bodyguards, we just thought they were three guys. They ordered some bar food and more drinks, put their backgammon away. No one was nasty or gross, it was nice and polite. The bodyguards, you’d never know they were bodyguards.”

“They didn’t act tough.”