After that, Penelope, who hardly remembers the layout of her own condo, heads to the main bedroom, the one we use for cryotherapy and aerial yoga. “This could actually be a sales point,” Tina says, peeking back in with her iPad. Penelope shoots her dagger eyes.
They reach the last room, a cleared-out guest bedroom, where a visiting instructor from Santa Fe teaches the women how to orgasm with breath work alone. “We’re going to use the breath like a siphon so you start to feel stimulation in each of your seven chakras, and you start to feel alive in every single cell…”
Finally, when Penelope has seen enough, she walks back to the airy sunken living room. That is when she sees me. Standing at the top of the stairs, like a warlord anticipating battle. She squints. Is that…? “Emily Joan?”
I smile, lifting an arm to wave in my fifteen-hundred-dollar Pippa Holt caftan. Or is it her caftan? “Welcome.”
Penelope is disoriented at first, repeating my name as a question. “Emily Joan?” And then she is shaking with rage. “What the fuck is going on? What did you do?”
She climbs the stairs toward the woman she thinks is Emily. She’s defiant, then terrified, processing that there is something different about Emily. Something sexy, something hungry and desperate and scrappy and full of guile. She sees the girl on the stage with the rabbit stuffie. The girl who clawed her way out of a cloud of Aqua Net and lube all the way to the skies above Park Avenue. The girl with the knife in the furniture. She sees Daisy.
I don’t move. I just keep smiling—that smile—as if I’d been waiting for her all this time. “Penelope, dear. Do you like what we’ve done with the place?”
She grips her fists, ready to punch me, a furious little girl. “Um. I know my family has been generous, but maybe you forgot that I own this apartment?”
“Hmm. You sure about that? Because last time I checked, it’s registered to an LLC called Saturn Bluescape. I know you bought it to hide your money, avoid paying taxes. The rich really are free while the rest of us are in cages.”
“It was you? You’re the one who used my family’s credit card—”
“Your turn to pick up the check.”
“You’re a fucking leech and I am shutting whatever this is down.” She takes out her cell and calls 911. “…Break-in. The Rafael Viñoly building. 527 Park—”
I walk down a couple of stairs so that I hover over her, close enough to push her down, and with a look that says I just might. In that moment, I feel such a rush of hate for Penelope. I hate that she bosses Emily around. I hate that she always gets her way. I hate that she never has any real money worries. I hate that she’d never be desperate enough to have to do what I had to do. I take the phone out of her hand and hang it up.
“I am going to end you, Emily Joan. My dad ends people for sport. You think I can’t destroy you?”
“Play nice, Peepers.”
The condo is suddenly quiet. The women downstairs, white noise. It is only the two of us. “That’s right. I know you’re fucking your lawyer. August. I even know his pet name for you. Your fuckboi in Armani. Does he give it to you in the ass? I bet he creams all over that Protestant face of yours. Does things your half-gay husband would never.”
“After all I did for you.”
“I bet you don’t just suck his dick. I bet he shoves it in until you can’t breathe, until you puke all over the satin sheets in his cheesy bachelor pad.”
“My mom warned me that you were beneath me, that you were trash.”
“Oh shit. Did you let him invite his friends over?”
“But I didn’t listen. I took you in. It’s my weakness. I’m always adopting strays.”
“I bet they gave it to you in every hole.”
“You’re a psycho bitch.”
“Thank you.”
Penelope’s bright blue eyes stare into mine. She realizes then that something has switched inside Emily. She can’t treat her like she used to. She needs to proceed with caution. “You and your friends need to vacate the premises immediately.”
“Let me think about it…No.”
“I’ll get a restraining order. I’ll sue your whole family. I’ll sue your kid and his kids and everyone you care about. Generations of your spawn will be scrubbing my fucking toilets in indentured servitude.”
I am an inch from her perfect face. “I’ll tell Beau.”
“Emily Joan, people like you don’t get to blackmail people like me. You don’t even know the hell I can rain down.”
“I know a lot. For instance, I know that your prenup has an infidelity clause. I know that a divorce would cost you a lot more than letting me and some friends use one of your investment properties.”
