They are nearly done with the walls when Maureen comes by around one in the morning. She’s way too bright and shiny. The glitter of social life clings to her. She’s wearing a dress that’s about seven leagues more fashionable than anything Cate has worn, or ever will wear.

“Wow,” she says, appreciating it. Maureen is not drunk, just tipsy enough that her general volume is way too high for the room. She doesn’t see this, of course.

“I know. It’s ridiculously expensive. Who would actually pay this much for a dress?”

Cate understands this to mean Maureen has “borrowed” the dress, probably from Saks, her favorite lending library, one aspect of her lightly comprised system of ethics. She rushes to cover this statement, although Neale has probably taken its meaning. “What’s that you’ve got? A goodie bag?”

“Excellent goodies.” She pulls from a tote covered in fake jewels an extra, extra-large Ziploc (brought from home) filled with crab Rangoons and bacon-wrapped breadsticks and tiny quiches. Chicken wings. She arranges these, crushed and bruised and stuck to each other, as decoratively as she can on a plate she grabs out of a cabinet. “Come on. Time for a break. Smashed appetizers from my mother’s purse when she came home from parties were some of the highlight treats of my Hollywood childhood.”

She sets the plate on the kitchen table next to a roller pan filled with tomato-red paint, then ushers Cate down from the ladder, says, “Pretend it’s midnight,” and gives her a way-too-lingering kiss. She hauls out and pops the cork on a bottle of sparkling something, then goes looking for glasses.

It occurs to Cate, not for the first time, that the planet Maureen lives on might be too many solar systems away. But while it’s okay for Cate to think this, it’s not okay for Neale to look in a slightly withering way at Maureen for trying, however ineptly, to blast a little cheer into this muted scene.

“Yes!” Cate pops a crab Rangoon into her mouth and holds up a juice glass of champagne. Sometimes, in a small way in a particular instant, you just have to take a side. And even Neale—ordinarily kind, currently wounded—can be a jerk.

moonachie