Chapter 32. Alice, the Bottle Girl
Alice, the Bottle Girl
TWELVE YEARS EARLIER, THE SERPENT ROOM
Alice Holloway soared through the Serpent Room, reveling in the darkness and heartbeat-setting pulse of the music and strobe lights.
She paused to kiss the cheeks of one of her favorite patrons, a French financier, and take a drink order from his companion, one of the escorts he kept on rotation.
John, the club’s burly manager, even twirled her as she passed through the velvet ropes, singing along as she crooned “Lucid Supérieure.” Alice set the tall green bottles of absinthe on one of Carlie’s VIP tables with a flourish, igniting a roar of approval from her bachelor party.
“Angel of the club.” Carlie swept over and kissed Alice squarely on the forehead. “You’re saving my ass.”
“Anytime.” Alice laughed, swatting the ass in question.
She and Carlie wore matching green velvet tops and black hot pants, the Serpent Room uniform for bottle girls, and Alice loved the ’70s look of it, the way it highlighted everyone’s unique beauty by making them all the same. “Be back in two with your garnishes.”
“I don’t deserve you,” Carlie shouted at her back.
The opening notes of one of Alice’s favorite songs pounded over the dance floor, and a grin split her face.
There was nothing better than the club on a Friday night.
The energy was electric. It felt like all of Los Angeles was here, eager to dissolve the memories of their workweeks like cubes of sugar in one of the Serpent’s signature absinthe cocktails.
As a bottle girl, Alice got to be in the thick of it, the life of the party.
There was no better place in the world for—as her friends liked to tease her—the Valley’s Number One Party Girl.
Alice pushed through the low double doors guarding the entrance to the bar, which had always reminded her of an old-timey saloon.
“Don’t mind me,” she yelled to Nico, who was moving at lightning speed, shaking drinks in frosted mixers.
“Just grabbing some citrus and herbs for Carlie’s bachelor party. ”
“Better you than me,” he called, sliding drinks to a line of waiting servers.
Alice grinned again. She loved the family feel of the club’s staff, the way they helped each other when it got slammed, joked and smoked cigs after shifts to decompress.
In fact, people like Nico and Carlie were a better fit for Alice than her real family, at least better than her dad.
Detective Holloway—and he insisted Alice’s friends call him that—was stiff and traditional, the kind of dad who’d warned her prom date he was armed and in possession of a license to kill, who used to make her change when she tried to leave the house in a short skirt.
He would be livid once he found out Alice’s big news, that she’d dropped out of Cal State to focus on the club, which was why she was taking every shift possible to avoid going home.
Even her college roommates had understood she didn’t belong there.
They’d held an honest-to-god intervention, informing her she was failing her classes and doing nothing but chasing parties—facts she knew, for the record.
She would always remember the awkwardness of their worried faces early that morning, Amira’s smudged eyeglasses, Carmen’s pajamas.
They’d begged her to change. A few days later, Alice’s party-hopping had brought her to the Serpent Room, where, like a sign from God, they were searching for bottle girls.
She’d made a change, all right. One year short of graduating, she could almost hear her dad yell.
You were one year away, and you threw it in the trash.
“Alice, you won’t believe it.” Daisy rushed up, out of breath, and Alice stifled a laugh.
If there was one person on staff who was a bigger party girl than her, it had to be Daisy.
Daisy was the first person to try the ketamine one of the line cooks had brought in, the first to beg everyone to keep partying if they got off early on a shift.
She was a wild one, moving through life like one of those desert tumbleweeds Alice had seen on her drive back from Coachella.
“What won’t I believe?” Alice teased, as she shredded the last of the mint.
“Those guys are back.” Daisy wiped her sweaty bangs. “The high rollers.”
“Be more specific.” The Serpent Room was crawling with the rich and famous. Celebrities had never been Alice’s fetish, but she appreciated anyone who racked up a hefty bill and left a good tip.
Unexpectedly, Daisy reached out and put her hand on Alice’s to still her. Alice met her eyes.
“The really high rollers.” Daisy’s pupils were so large, like two dark planets, that Alice wondered for a moment if she was on something. “The ones who tipped Tatiana two thousand dollars. They sat them in my section. Help me. We can split it fifty-fifty.”
At the mention of Tatiana, Alice knew exactly who Daisy meant. “Tati quit after that night, remember? She said those guys are bad news.”
“Tati is a drama queen.” Daisy rolled her eyes. “A lot of guys are handsy. But these guys pay.”
The men Daisy was talking about were regulars, though Alice had never waited on them.
She didn’t know their names or what they did for a living, which was unusual, since the club was gossipy and things got around.
All she knew was they were friends with the Serpent Room’s owner, a Dubai-based real estate magnate turned Hollywood investor Alice had never met.
Their manager, John, had been given orders to treat them well.
Sometimes the guys rolled in with a big raucous party, a full cast of men and women who ordered tens of thousands in booze and took up nearly the entire VIP section, and other times it was a small group.
Either way, they usually closed down the club.
“I don’t know.” Alice bit her lip. “I’m supposed to deliver this to Carlie’s table.”
“Nico!” Daisy yelled. “Can you take these garnishes to Carlie?”
“And cross swords with the bachelors?” Nico complained, but he winked at Alice and whisked away her plate.
“Come on.” Daisy tugged her hand. “This will be easy money.”
Alice didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved that Daisy’s table was just three men. They sat in the Serpent Room’s best spot, raised on a platform to give guests a view of the dance floor from behind the shroud of VIP curtains.
The youngest man was dark-haired and handsome in a clean-cut, board chairman way, and the other two looked like your classic middle-aged men, battling the first signs of receding hairlines and bodies starting to go to seed around the middle.
They introduced themselves as Gabriel, Reese, and Easton, and both their smiles and their eyes were too wide right off the bat, pupils as large as Daisy’s.
Alice went hot with the idea that they’d all snorted something together before she’d gotten there, and Daisy was keeping it a secret.
“I don’t think they need more alcohol,” Alice whispered through her smile.
“Don’t be a wet blanket,” Daisy whispered back, then asked what the men would like in a loud, bright voice.
Alice took a deep breath. She was being a wet blanket, and it was out of character. Normally Alice would’ve asked for a bump of whatever they were doing, would’ve been nonjudgmental, happy they were having fun.
One of the middle-aged guys—Reese—slid a hand over her hip, coming daringly close to the bottom seam of her hot pants.
“We’re mostly interested in what’s off-menu,” he said, and he and the other middle-aged guy laughed.
It was the kind of self-aware laughter that said they knew Reese’s joke was stupid, but it didn’t matter, because Alice was just a waitress and therefore not worth the effort. A sure thing.
Alice stopped herself from recoiling. It’s not that serious, she admonished herself.
They’re joking. This is a party. In the greatest of ironies, she was reacting like her father would, all stiff upper lip.
And acting like their dad was Grey’s territory.
Alice’s younger sister was the spitting image of their father personality-wise, grave and pensive even in high school, always coming to her with earnest questions.
Inwardly, Alice smiled at the thought of Grey.
When it came to her little sister, it didn’t matter that they were opposites, that Alice probably took after their wildcard mom, who’d abandoned them after Grey was born.
Alice loved Grey more than anything. One day she would finish growing up and Alice would have a forever best friend.
“I’m going to get these gentlemen their bottles,” Daisy said loudly, performatively. “Why don’t you keep them company?”
Alice met the handsome man’s eyes for a charged moment, then looked away. He’d said his name was Gabriel. Well, there was something about Gabriel that unsettled her. “Sure,” Alice said, spilling like liquid into the empty seat beside Easton. She reminded herself: Two thousand dollars.
“No offense.” Reese leaned over the table once Daisy left. “But before you get any ideas”—he jerked a thumb at Easton—“you’re not his type. A little old.”
“Fuck off.” Easton shoved Reese with a flat palm to his chest. They were frat boys. Worse, actually—Carlie’s table of literal frat boy bachelors was more polite. Not for the first time since starting at the Serpent Room, Alice wondered if being privileged meant never having to learn to behave.
Gabriel’s eyes skimmed her, head to foot. “How old are you?”
She sat straighter; crossed her legs. “Twenty-one.”
“In college?”
“Not anymore. I dropped out this semester, actually. It’s a funny—”
“Told you,” crowed Reese. “They’re never in college.”
Alice didn’t know why, exactly, but that rubbed her the wrong way.
Easton gave her an appraising look. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a dead ringer for Sharon Tate?”
“I have no idea who that is,” she admitted, then braced herself. Rich older men hated to be reminded of their age.
But Easton only laughed. “Amazing.” He shook his head. “How fast history just … disappears.”
Gabriel edged in closer, like he wanted to wrest back Alice’s attention. “You said you have your own apartment?”
Alice stared at him. That was when she realized what was wrong: It was his eyes. They were empty of anything she could use to get a read on him. Human eyes were supposed to be windows into the soul, but his were inscrutable, and it left her chilled.
“No, I’ve been couch surfing,” she said, before realizing she’d never mentioned anything about where she lived. She tried to laugh. “I bet you’ve never couch surfed a day in your life.” One thing rich older men did like was remembering they had more money than you.
Before Gabriel could answer, Daisy sailed back to the table with a platter of dusty green bottles—the old, expensive brands of absinthe. “All right, boys. Green fairy’s here.”
Relief washed through Alice at Daisy’s reappearance. It soothed the primal part of her that had been taking stock, counting three against one.
Tati’s words must’ve really gotten in her head.
“Le fée vert,” Alice said, springing to her feet, forcing a smile. “That’s what one of my regulars calls me.” It was the French financier’s pet name for her: the green fairy.
“To our fairies, then,” Reese laughed, raising a glass. The absinthe glimmered like a jewel in glass against the strobe lights. “And to our Wild Hunt. Into the underworld we go.”
All five of them raised their glasses—though Alice, the college dropout, was too embarrassed to admit she didn’t know what they were toasting.
Hours later, Alice stumbled past the velvet ropes, headed for the bathroom.
She’d far surpassed the number of drinks she usually allowed herself on company time, but no one had stopped by their table to reprimand her, not even John.
As she slid into a bathroom stall, taking an embarrassingly long time to secure the lock, she wondered if that was what it was like being rich, if people left you the fuck alone.
No restraints, no admonishments, only freedom.
And here Alice was, her life one long trek across eggshells, having to apologize for everything, for simply wanting out of her cage.
When she finally came back, Daisy yanked her aside. “They’re leaving,” she whispered. “And they want us to go with them.”
Daisy’s breath tickled her ear, so she wiggled away. “Why?” Alice pitched her voice low. “They know we’re not hookers, right?”
“Of course. They just want company.” Daisy had glued little rhinestones into the corners of her dark eyes, dressing up her uniform, and in the flashing strobes, she really did look like a fairy, here and then gone, here and gone.
“The Serpent’s about to close and they want to keep partying.
Gabriel has a place outside the city—they were talking about it, said it’s fancy.
He’s a billionaire, Alice, with a b. Like a tech mogul or something. Somebody to know.”
There was a currency more valuable than money, and that was stature, being the kind of person who appeared on blogs and TV news and red carpets. The kind that could impart favors, jump-start the careers of hungry aspiring artists like the kind on staff at the Serpent Room.
Alice’s brows shot up at billionaire. Daisy took it as encouragement. “Let’s just go and drink their fancy booze, see their fancy shit, maybe take some pictures that make us look hot.” She laughed. “Come on.”
Alice bit her lip. It was hard making decisions after so many drinks. “I don’t know—”
“They promised to make it worth our while.” Daisy’s grip on her arm tightened. “They gave Tati thousands.”
Alice stared, torn.
“Think about what you could do with that money.”
Alice was always thinking about what she could do with more money. If she had a couple extra thousand, god—she could put down a deposit on an apartment and stop sleeping on her friends’ couches. Then, when she told her dad she’d dropped out of college, she’d look like she had her life together.
Maybe once the dust settled, Grey could even come over.
They could have sleepovers. She pictured the two of them camped out in front of a scary movie, Alice braiding Grey’s long blond hair, saying, How gorgeous, my darling girl, vamping like she always did, anything to crack her little sister’s serious expression, make her smile.
A frisson of excitement traveled up Alice’s spine.
“Okay,” she said, laughing when Daisy twirled in victory. “But you better not run off on me. We stick together.”
“Me?” Daisy teased. “You’re the one the billionaire likes. He hasn’t stopped watching you all night.”
Alice looked up. Sure enough, Gabriel was watching them. They locked eyes. Is that what Daisy thought—that he liked Alice? Goose bumps lifted over her arms. There was something in his eyes when he looked at her, but it didn’t feel like a crush.
“Don’t worry.” Daisy slid her arm around Alice’s waist. “I won’t leave your side, I promise.”