The conversation among the group lulled, and I could see Wexler’s head lurch up—he must’ve been standing on tiptoe—his eyebrows raised. I didn’t wait to check Junior’s reaction or to see if anyone else had heard exactly what she’d said. I dug my fingers tight into the flesh under her armpits and yanked her up, thrashing against me, then dragged her back to my car.

Chapter 12

I shoved Ellen into the passenger side of the car and slammed the door shut, guillotining a handful of pink feathers. I crawled into the driver’s side and locked the door, but I didn’t start the ignition. We weren’t going anywhere until we had a little chat, Ellen and me.

She was crying again, this time for real—her fake eyelashes were starting to wilt and slide toward her cheeks. With the light from the streetlamp overhead, I could see two pink poufy feathers clinging to her lip gloss. Nineteen grand. The plan I’d worked out with Jackal. Even whatever future life she’d planned for herself. She’d done so much to put all of that in danger, for nothing. For Hiram fucking Klein.

“So,” I said, conversationally, staring straight ahead out of my windshield. Counting to ten in my head, then twenty, the word motherfuckermotherfucker chasing its tail in my brain. “How long have you been fucking Joel, too?”

“How did you . . . How did you find me?” A feather quivered on her lip.

“We might make an actress of you yet,” I said. “That was quite the scene you made back there. Quite the scene.”

“Do you . . .” Ellen’s eyes darted out the window, and I think it occurred to her for the first time how pissed I was, how much trouble she might be in. She licked her lips. “Do you have a tracker on my phone?”

“Please. You didn’t make it difficult.”

Ellen squished herself into the corner of the car, pressing a small glittery clutch into her chest like it would be some protection against me. As if I’d come there to hurt her.

“This is all so easy for you,” she said. Her tears had slicked muddy glitter down her cheeks. “But for me, it’s like . . . it’s like . . .”

Outside, another whooping burst of laughter, the crystal clink of a bottle smashed on marble. I wondered if Junior had heard. I wondered if he would tell his father, what he would say.

I studied her face again. Beneath the tears and the emotions, she was clear, coherent. She wasn’t that drunk. There was something else bothering her. I tried to think of what Lou would do, or say, in the moment. A million years ago, she’d been kind to me in a diner. I tried to remember how to be kind. “What, Ellen? What’s it like?”