Chapter 40 1964
Once I’m in my pink wedding dress and Calliope’s gone to get ready, I leave my room.
I’ll go up to the turret, pull a book off the shelf and read, let the young Aria Jones whose pleasures were only to be found in that high tower above the world have one final moment before the new Aria Winchester takes her place.
Night has fallen. There’s a promise of full moon, but the clouds are coming in. The Chateau Marmont is lit only by the city and the showgirl, everything tinged with green and red as if this is an intersection and the traffic lights can’t agree whether I should stop or go.
I’m about to climb up the stairs from the seventh floor when I hear Flitter call, “Aria!”
I turn to my friend. She’s here!
Her dress is the same color as the showgirl’s and Flitter has the same coruscating brightness. “I have a wedding gift for you,” she says.
I take her hand. Smile. We descend the spine of the Marmont like we’ve done a thousand times before, then cross through the lobby and into the garden.
“Did you get me a statue of you and Calliope? What kind of present means we have to go outside?” I try to joke, but the vomity feeling I had when I first arrived here is back.
From the penthouse balcony I can hear Pilot barking so loud it’s like thunder. The showgirl’s lights flash: green red, green red. Go. Stop. Go.
Stop.
“Over here.” Flitter points to the path barricaded by the sign that reads: Keep Out!
I tug my hand but she’s holding on too tightly. “Flitter!” I dig my pink heels into the ground. “We can’t go down there.”
Flashes of memory: Theo slipping under the barrier; Flitter too. A woman who looked like Flitter on the back of Theo’s motorbike. Flitter saying, Can you imagine being the wife of the owner of the Chateau Marmont?
No. No, no, no.
But I know this story. The orphan Jane Eyre finds out on her wedding day that the rich and powerful man she’s about to marry is already married to someone else.
I try so hard to pull away.
“Flitter?” Calliope’s voice is behind us now.
Oh God. Is she in on it too? The fire and the laughter and the screams and the fortune-telling and the little dead bird weren’t enough to chase me away from having someone who really loved me? Now this?
“You got my message,” Flitter says grimly to Calliope. “Come on.”
The pills Calliope’s taken shine like cracked glass in her eyes. “You’ll get your shoes dirty,” she says to me.
“I’m not going down there,” I tell Flitter, panic in my voice.
“She can’t go down there,” Calliope reiterates.
But, somehow, we’re on the wrong side of the barrier, Flitter pressing us on.
The palm trees hiss. The showgirl’s lights are bright red now. Pilot barks louder. My eyes meet Calliope’s. Her soul is in hers and it’s as frightened as mine.
It’s not Calliope who’s in on this. It’s all Flitter.