Page 62 of Over Her Dead Body

And they are not boring.

That is new.

Most people bring me information like an apology with attachments.

This arrives dressed as entertainment.

I keep reading.

Still, parties serve a purpose.

They teach you what a room will protect.

Poor rooms panic. Middle-class rooms explain. Rich rooms edit.

By morning, there were already several versions of the girl upstairs.

Her name was Lila, a fact Emma Calloway felt was important to know.

Anyway, in one version, Lila had too much champagne.

In another, she had not eaten all day because the dress was unforgiving and vanity remains the most socially acceptable form of self-harm.

In a third, more useful version, she was tired. Overheated. Embarrassed, poor thing. Everyone had been young once. Everyone had misjudged an evening.

No one likes the fourth version.

The fourth version requires names. Who brought her. Who handed her the glass. Who watched her take whatever made her knees soften at the top of the stairs.

I stare at the page.

This is supposed to be surveillance. Not social criticism with timestamps.

Worse, it is beginning to make me look forward to the next paragraph.

In the version people liked best, she was reckless.

That one moved fastest.

Reckless is a generous word. It gives the room back its innocence.

No one forced her into the dress. No one forced her into the car. No one forced her to laugh beside a man whose hand kept returning to the small of her back.

That was true.

It was also not the whole truth.

The room offers the bargain, pours the drink, enjoys the shine, then acts offended when the bargain leaves a mark on the carpet.

She knew what she was selling.

Youth. Access. Skin. The illusion that a man with too much money had not already become boring to himself.

Call it company if manners are required.

Call it companionship if money changed hands quietly enough.

Call it what it was if you are not afraid of the invoice.