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“Lila,” her father said, interrupting a game. His black silk suit looked perfectly pressed, red diamond tie pin stabbing through his ivory tie, keeping even that in place. “Do me a favor.” He’d been drinking steadily since they arrived, but he didn’t slur his words.
“Sure,” she said.
He reached into his inside breast pocket and took out an envelope. “Hand this to the new Mrs. Consenza. Tell her it’s from the family.” Ice cubes clinked as he swished them around his highball glass. He took a swallow of amber liquor.
“Okay,” she said.
His gloved hand patted her shoulder. “There’s my good girl.”
She rolled her eyes as he walked off.
“Give me that,” Anton said, reaching for the envelope. “I’ll do it.”
She pulled her hand off the table, shifting the envelope to her lap. “No.”
“How about I play you for it? We finish out the hand.” He was smiling, but it looked forced.
She stood up. “What’s wrong with you?”
His eyes flashed with the promise of violence. “You’re too young to represent the family. That’s all. Look, in a couple of years, things will be different.”
“You don’t get to decide that,” she said. It was a little thing, an errand. She wouldn’t have thought twice about it if Anton hadn’t been so weird. But now, stubbornly, she stood up and walked to the head table.
The couple was still spinning around the dance floor. They looked happy, entirely focused on each other, eyes bright with joy.
Lila waited until the bride came back from dancing, flushed and giddy.
“From the family,” Lila told her, putting the envelope into her hand.
The bride’s hand trembled as she took it. She gave a quick, nervous grin. “Thank you. Tell your father thank you.”
“We both wish you the best,” Lila improvised.
The bride and groom thanked her again, sincerely. They seemed to accept without question that she spoke for her father.
And if she told them something else some other time—even gave them an order—she bet they’d accept that without question too.
She could see why Anton wanted people to believe that he spoke for her father. Why he wanted her to get used to letting him boss her around. Why she couldn’t let him.
Instead, she walked over to the bar, grinning in Anton’s direction as she did. There, she ordered the only drink she could think of, one from an old movie, The Thin Man, she’d seen the summer before—a martini.
The bartender gave it to her.
She took a sip and nearly spat it out. It smelled like rubbing alcohol and burnt the inside of her mouth.
Determined, she went to the bathroom and dumped it in the sink, refilling the glass with water. No one questioned her as she sipped it. The bartender even gave her a toothpick with extra olives.
Lila wondered how many other things she could make people give her.
If she wanted to be more than the girl on her father’s arm, his good little girl, she’d better start making an impression.
* * *
When Lila was twelve, she flew to Paris with her father. They sat in first class, which meant big seats, comfortable headphones, and a little television with dozens and dozens of movies her mother would have said she was too young for. The flight attendants brought out dinner with three separate courses plus a dessert of cookies before they folded the seats into beds.
Lying in her seat-bed, though, she couldn’t sleep. She was too excited to be on the plane. Too excited about Paris.
So she’d watched a movie—the one about cheerleaders who are murdered one by one by the nerdy boy whose feelings they hurt. Then, because she still wasn’t tired, she’d watched another movie—the one where three teenage werewolves make a pact to lose their virginity on the same night. And after that, they were so close to landing that there was no reason not to watch the period drama about a lady in fancy dresses who went to masked balls but was really in love with a highwayman.
