I stayed there until Ellen undressed for a final time, exchanging feathers for ratty gray sweatpants. The apartment went black except for the glow of Ellen’s television. I could see her silhouette lean forward every now and then to grab the wineglass, her naked arm long and thin and white in the dark. I waited until I was sure she wasn’t going anywhere that night, and then I crept back to my car.

As I drove away, I could still see the impression of Ellen’s ghost-pale, near-naked body flickering behind my eyes every time I blinked. Somebody should tell her those pink feathers made her skin look sallow. But the smile on her face in that dress—it’d be like snapping a puppy’s neck.

Every time I blinked, the feathers swished, like a curtain dropping on Ellen’s old life. At the first red light, I picked up my phone and made a call. “Come over. I need to see you. I need you. Now.”

He made a show of arguing with me—told me he had better things to do, he wasn’t exactly sitting at home waiting for my call, didn’t I think he had plans?—but I knew Robert Jackal would make it back to my apartment before I did. Some things never changed.

Chapter 10

So: the dirty stinking truth.

Like Ellen, I used to be a little piggy, oinking for love. There was a man, the usual kind: tall, handsome, terrible. We’d worked together; he wasn’t my boss, but his pay grade was higher. I’d found something sexy even then in the art of the conquest. I’d wanted him so long, been waiting so long for him to notice me—trotting out all the obvious tricks, flouncing past his desk in my highest heels, the ones I could barely walk in, wiggling into tighter and shorter skirts every day—that when he did, I made it my mission to become exactly what he wanted me to be.

One word of criticism, one night begged off from my company, even one lukewarm look, and I pretzeled myself to become better. I could laugh harder; I could crack dirtier jokes; I could play the lady, be meeker, sweeter, sexier; I could change and change and change and change. I could do it, I could be the dream girl. And I was proud of it, how good a chameleon I had learned to be. You could keep anyone if you tried, I thought. Most women just didn’t try hard enough.

Did I love him?

Oink.

The day that Lou found me, after it had all gone bad, I was a different woman, one on intimate terms with tears. She found me sobbing inside an unlocked car. Later, I’d find out she’d been with a mark on that street: serendipity for us both. But I didn’t know any of that then.