With Annabelle gone, my two stepbrothers closed in on me immediately. Chase slipped under me, laid on his back, and pulled me on top of him for easy access. He pushed the head of his dick into my box, then slowly eased me upright. My nerves stood on end and I held my breath as I sank all the way down on Chase’s cock, feeling him pulse against the suction of my inner flesh. Foster was behind me, about to press the head of his dick back into my ass. The two of them were making a disgusting joke about going “family style” on me when shouts of chaos followed by a shrill scream rang out and echoed from the floor below.

Chase and Foster were off of me and down the stairs in seconds, fully naked. When I got to the railing overlooking the entry foyer, I saw one of the Mexicans from the motel room holding a naked Annabelle with both arms behind her back while she tried to jerk away, screaming. Further into the house, beyond where I could see into the first floor from above, I heard destructive chaos and could make out Pete’s and Foster’s voices among the confusion.

“Where’s she at?” shouted a man in a Spanglish accent, followed by animated cursing and the sound of glass shattering.

I ran back into my room to throw on at least a shirt and shorts, in the process, avoiding the melee that erupted in the great room. Unfortunately, the post-scuffle scene I encountered when I finally got there wasn’t much better.

“You Nikki?” asked a heavy-set man in a wife-beater and track pants, looking like he was prepared to lurch and grab me, even with Pete already hanging from his other side in a headlock.

“I’m Nikki,” I answered, darting my eyes around the room to survey the situation.

“We know this piece of shit has no money, but you do,” he said.

“So we’re here to collect it, and that’s all” said another.

Foster was dazed and bloodied on one cheek, laying among the crushed remains of the wood and glass coffee table, and two other men stood amidst the shattered urn and ashes of my father on the floor, one of them keeping Chase at bay with balled fists nearby. The fishnet-stockinged girl was standing apart from the others, squirming guiltily; and at the door to the kitchen, Carlos and Maria were frozen in fear, desperately trying to go undetected.

“How much,” I asked, slumping my shoulders and weary of Pete-related crises that ended with me coming out of pocket.

“Fifteen hundred!” the man answered, immediately less hostile at the prospect that I was willing to pay him.

“This fucker took it right off the table in the middle of the night, like we wouldn’t notice!”

Pete squirmed, prompting the man to flex the grip around his neck again. I looked outside, noticing that they’d rammed their van straight through the rolling driveway gate, mangling it and bending it back into the lawn. I nearly asked why all this was necessary for less than two large, but thought better of it.

Besides, one of them was forcibly holding Annabelle- laughing and taking gropes of her freely swinging tits while keeping her arms locked with one big hand - and without guns or a history of violence, we were at a disadvantage.

“Okay,” I said, raising my hands to signal surrender. “I’m going downstairs to get the money. I’m taking Chase with me.”

I gestured toward Chase, who quickly scurried past the menacing glares of the three intruders and down the stairs behind me. I signaled for him to stay out in the hallway just in case they tried to follow and get wise to where we kept our money.

“Have I mentioned lately that your fucking cousin is a problem around here?” he said, voice quivering with anxiety.

I ignored him and quickly counted money from the jewelry box, then ran out of the cellar and back up the stairs. All parties were frozen in place, aside from Annabelle, still trying in vain to squirm free.

“I’ve got your money,” I said, voice shaking uncontrollably and holding the cash up for them to see. “Now let her go.”

The man by the door released Annabelle, who ran over to where Chase and I stood.

“There’s an extra five hundred there,” I said, handing it to the man, who dropped Pete the moment it hit his right hand. “You leave now, you never come back, or else I call the cops and email the security footage, and maybe your life gets a little more complicated.”

They nodded dismissively and started to leave.

“One more thing,” I said, to which they wearily turned around.

“Never talk to Pete again. Don’t give him work, don’t let him hang around. Nothing. He’s just a kid.”

With this, I started to tear up.

“Yeah, yeah, white bitch,” he said. “You think we’d give that little fucker anything now? For real? Shit...”

And with that they left the house, and I left the room in order to fall apart privately.

Annabelle came into the sunroom where I laid on the daybed, putting her arms around me silently while I cried. She felt strangely distant, telling me she was a little freaked out and needed to take something; I simply nodded and watched her disappear.

Chase came in to tell me that Maria had asked to go home after cleaning up the mess, and that Carlos and the gardeners were clearing the mangled gate from the property. My only response to anyone for the next hour was for somebody to save a few of the spilled ashes for me to keep.

-

“Nikki,” she cooed softly, standing in the doorway.

I was halfway through a movie I wasn’t even watching, too jittery to get up off the daybed, and hadn’t noticed Annabelle’s presence until she spoke. She’d showered and gotten dressed, and was letting me know that Maria had saved the ashes in a jar that was placed in my room. I noticed that everything she had on - other than a necklace that I’d loaned her the day before - was purchased since her arrival just a few days earlier. Her allure needed no help from her clothes, but I especially admired her matching pink sleeveless blouse and Steve Madden wedges, both of which we’d bought together.

“I’ve gotta go to my orientation at the college now. I’ll be back later; maybe we can forget about all this and pick up where we started this morning.”

She smiled devilishly and her eyes glinted, but were glassy and hollow behind their shine. I could spot it from ten feet away: she was on something- and it was a lot of something from what I could tell. I didn’t think much of it, especially after what we’d been through earlier, but I did ask if she was okay to drive.

“Girl, pssht,” she said, frowning at my apparently needless worry. “I’m fine.”

“That sounded familiar,” I thought, catching the hint of a stumble as she twirled around to leave.

“I’ll catch up with you here in a bit. And don’t worry about those guys...they’re gone. Everything’s gonna be okay,” she said. “You know I love you, right?”

I nodded, trying to smile while she walked away.

I called Omar to tell him what all had happened, and being able to actually share what needed venting right now made all the difference. Talking to him managed to bring my bearings back to me, especially when he promised he’d come by later to check in. But even then, I was unsettled beyond calm and really needed to take something; my voice was rising and speeding up every two sentences, it seemed, and there was a sense of doom welling up inside of me that I couldn’t shake.

I called DeDe to distract myself, giving her the unfortunate update that all stemmed from her discovery in my wine cellar the morning before.

“Oh my god, what the fuck? I’m so sorry girl! Did you call the cops?”

“No. I mean, he did owe the money. Besides, I just wanted them gone.”

“Still though, that shit is crazy! You want me to stop by tonight?” she asked, though she wasn’t really asking. “You need to get your mind off of this, we’ll take a few peeps together and chill by the pool. Ain’t nobody gonna mess with your place if we’re all there protecting it!”

I told her I’d call her back, but appreciated the support.

-

When I walked back into the great room, everything was eerily back in perfect order, minus the large blank space on the floor and the empty pedestal on the mantle - where the coffee table and the urn had been. Foster had gone to the beach, claiming the understandable need to “get the fuck out of here.”

He had taken Pete and the fishnet girl with him, in addition to a sizable fold of twenties, in hopes that they would use those means to end up somewhere other than back at the Chateau Glissant later on. Pete couldn’t even bring himself to look me in the eye after this last episode, so I doubted I’d see him again for several days. I just hoped that when I did it wasn’t because he was in more trouble, or dead.

I contemplated the odds of both as I climbed the stairs, unsure of how I’d handle either scenario.

“Hey, druggie,” he called from inside his room as I walked by.

I was going to take a shower, ready to finally wash all the grime off my body from whatever it was that happened out on the beach the night before. I’d lost track of Chase, thinking he must have left, too; but there he was, sitting on his sumolounge in a pair of jeans with a glass of whiskey in his hand. The Black Keys were playing, the lights were off, and his bong plus a bottle of Crown Royal were sitting nearby on the desk.

“I thought I was alone here.”

“Yeah, same.” I said, standing in the doorway. “Little early for the heavy shit?”

“That’s hilarious coming from you,” he said in a low-key sneer. “And no, not after the Latin Kings fucking broke the door down looking for your idiot cousin.”

He was right; maybe I needed a drink, too.

“Which reminds me,” he said. “New rule: that kid never sets foot here ever again.”

He took another sip of his drink, but otherwise hadn’t moved a muscle since I appeared, and his voice barely registered above the music.

“Chase, you can’t make that rule. He’s not your family, he’s mine,” I said, softly.

“What more do you need to see, dumb ass?” he asked. “You either need to be more high or less, ‘cause you aren’t thinking straight, I know that much.”

I didn’t care to argue with him about Pete; I knew he was right. That drink was looking better and better.

“I’m betting on ‘more high’,” he said, reaching over for the bong and a lighter. “So, don’t make me do this by myself.”

We sat snugly side-by-side on the red sumolounge, passing the bong between us. I savored the sweet smoke as it seeped in, slowly hitting my bloodstream at first, then gathering intensity like a spring creek tumbling down a canyon.

We talked about nothing, neither of us willing to wade back into the very thing we were trying to escape, passing the bong back and forth, and re-packing it periodically with no regard to how much we were going through. I never got to the whiskey, and didn’t want it anymore. This was what I needed: to lay back and bathe in the stone-thick but crystal-clear high of high quality cannabis.

It was during “Everlasting Light” that he began to tease me in his trademark stoned drawl, reprising the “family-style” joke that he cracked just as the thugs were bounding into our foyer a few hours earlier.

That memory, with the aid of organic drugs, had detached itself completely from our minds, leaving only the tension behind, hanging in the air along with the residual scent of the weed and the thundering bass from “Howlin’ For You.” Once I allowed my eyes to hesitate on his lean bare chest, there was no stopping my hands from wandering, then gripping; the rest of my body followed shortly after. By the opening strains of “Gold on the Ceiling”, all our clothes were off, aside from his jeans hanging around his ankles. He pulled me on top of him, the base of his cock pressing lengthwise against my slit, and we locked eyes.

“I guess I’ll finish what I started earlier,” he said, reaching between us. I lifted up on my knees, sucking in a breath at the friction of his cock pushing past my skin and into my cunt. “Fuck, Nikki...” he said, eyes bloodshot and dead-focused on my body.

His hands gripped my hips, urging me to fuck him. I held him balls deep within me, slowly grinding back and forth. “Let’s do this, come on,” he said through a chuckle.

I rubbed my hands across his tanned washboard stomach and began a slow bounce on his cock. My high was focused, clear: I felt the ridge of his cock head parting my insides, the surfaces of his rod sliding past my folds. I wanted more.

My nails raked across his chest, curling at the sensations of his cock pistoning deeply inside of me. I was slapping his body with mine, making him moan, feeling each and every one of my erogenous zones buzz and tingle to the rhythm of my body swallowing his cock. My mind went back to that hotel room: stroking him, feeling his spongy rigidness against my fingers as I squeezed and rubbed it for the first time. I leaned back, supporting my hands on his legs, bouncing hard, wishing only that he had more hands to caress me with. I remembered what it felt like right before he came that night: how it grew and stiffened even harder than before. I leaned upright again, slamming my pussy down on his cock, urging him on. I imagined him cumming right then the same exact way, tightening up, swelling, pulsing, then spurting his cum everywhere.

Chase arched his back and moaned loudly, gripping my hips, channelling my cum-lust.

I felt him swell up and stiffen against my convulsing pussy; I felt his cum shoot up inside me like a geyser, sending his body into convulsions; and I felt the wetness hitting the air and my surrounding skin as he continued to fuck me, forcing it out of my pussy.

He never went completely soft, stroking his chubby cock inside of me until he came around to full hardness again, loudly slurping the air and frothy cum out of my body with each thrust. He was on top of me with my head hanging off the edge of the sumolounge; that’s where I saw Annabelle watching from just outside the door. I didn’t invite her to join us, or even acknowledge her presence. Maybe I was too high to react, or maybe I saw that she wasn’t feeling it at all.

“So, honestly, do you like doing it with Chase?” she’d asked me at lunch the day before. ‘No’ was my answer, but I knew this didn’t look much like a ‘no’.

Chase hammered me, making me scream, smacking against the back of my thighs and sucking my toes. I might have made fun of him for that if it all didn’t feel so fucking good. I stroked my clit, trying to bring myself off as he shot another load inside of me. When he finally pulled out and released my legs, allowing me to sit up for the blood to drain from my head, Annabelle was gone, just like that very first night with Omar.

Once again, I knew I’d knew I’d better follow up with her before it all got away from me; assuming it hadn’t already.

“Lonely Boy” reached it’s charging chorus as Chase retired to his bathroom, leaving me weak-kneed with a soaked, sticky mess between my legs. I needed to rinse off, and I needed to go find her; but right then, the only coherent thought I had was, “goddamn, that was a good fuck, just like I knew it would be.”

-

I found Annabelle outside on the front porch, shaking slightly, and sitting with her legs drawn up and her arms resting on her knees. She told me she’d wrecked her car on the way back from her orientation. She had the tow truck driver bring her here so she could ask me or Chase what to do with the car, but when she saw that we were a bit preoccupied, she came back down and just let the driver take the car to the shop he recommended, and she could worry about repair plans later. I recognized the sickly tremble in her skin, and knew that she could either take something else now, or feel like shit for the rest of the day.

“So how messed up is it?” I asked, sitting down beside her. She chuckled disaffectedly.

“I think I need something to help me forget how bad it is,” she said. I reached in for a hug which wasn’t reciprocated, then the two of us walked into the kitchen where the stash from Jimmy’s was sitting open, having already been pilfered for the quarter of weed I’d purchased the day before.

“So I guess you couldn’t wait until I got back, huh?” she asked coldly. “Whatever, it’s no big deal.”

“Annabelle, that just - " I started to respond, then stopped just as Chase walked in. We shared a pained glance, followed by Chase asking where her car was and getting the brief update. His attention span for that story lasted exactly as long as it took for him to assess the dearth of party favors available on site.

“Looks like we need some more shit up in here, I’ll call Jimmy,” he said, unable to focus on Anna’s car problems for even as long as the story lasted.

“I’m heading out to the beach. Foster said the M83’s are playing a surprise show down there in about a half hour, but you’ll be here, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But it’s just us. Do we really need more of anything?”

“It won’t just be us later,” he said with a wink. “I think the band’s gonna rehearse tonight, too. But we’ll all be here anyway.”

I suddenly and strongly opposed a new influx of drugs, but I kept quiet about it, knowing I’d make no sense if I opened my mouth.

“Looks like I better call my dad before our insurance agency does,” she said glumly, trudging into the great room.

I stood alone, gazing blankly at the small spread of narcotics next to a bowl of half-eaten grapes. I pondered the possibility of trying to cheer Annabelle up despite what she’d walked in on, but went back upstairs instead; maybe we’d both feel better about things after a little bit of time had passed.

I’d meant to shower, but as soon as I laid down on my bed to check my messages - having missed three from Annabelle while I was getting stoned and fucking Chase - I was out cold.

-

My most vivid dreams always occurred during the daytime, and this one was no exception. Like a transmission from some sentient being, it somehow felt like a warning, trying in vain to steer me away from the otherwise inevitable. I saw the Chateau Glissant from far away, maybe from the air, and watched it fade. The blonde guy from the beach was with me, and so was the Louis Vuitton girl; otherwise I was alone.

Who were these people? Were either of them real? Did I even really go down to Rodeo Drive that morning, or have the events of the last few days completely scrambled my ability to read the real from the unreal? What did the blonde guy mean when he talked about the end? Maybe he would keep appearing until I figured it out.

Then again, maybe it was just the weed.

I woke up and texted back and forth with DeDe, who was still insistent on showing up that night with several others to cheer me up, then browsed on my iPhone while I slowly roused myself out of bed. I recognized the golden light of early evening through the window and realized I must have slept for four or five hours straight.

Parched and craving water, I put on a new shirt and shorts, then started toward the stairs when I heard a strange noise from the other end of the hall. Walking slowly, with the bare pads of my feet silently gliding across the stone flooring, I first recognized the sounds of sex, and not just any sex:; this was an aggressive lust-fuck.

Getting closer to the door, I realized that it was Annabelle, but almost as quickly, I knew that it wasn’t Chase that she was screwing. The proof hung in the air, before I even saw them.

-

The party that I didn’t really want was already starting by the time I came downstairs again, rattled not only by what I just walked in on, but by their acknowledgment of me. Jimmy had sent over a staggering quantity of party favors along with a few guys and girls, including Jordan, who proceeded to follow me and make suggestive banter for the next fifteen minutes. Chase and Foster were both back from the beach and were in the pool with the other members of their band plus a handful of girls in tow.

The big commercial-style refrigerator was now fully stocked with beer instead of food, and at least a dozen brand new bottles of liquor stood on the kitchen island counter top next to the commercial-grade ice machine. Jimmy’s delivery was spread out on the dining room table in a decadent buffet, with vials and bags of every variety, all in obscene quantities: weed, coke, adderall, Xanax, GHB, MDMA, crystal...

Crystal. Fuck.

I’d taken a lot of different drugs in my short life, including everything else currently on display, at least once.

I’m pretty sure I once took ecstasy laced with heroin in a club, and I even took a single hit off a crack pipe when I was seventeen, though I was too drunk to remember the high or keep from throwing up a few moments later. But I’d never taken crystal in any form, and I vowed never to.

Maybe it was a rare streak of common sense; or, maybe I feared doing anything that high-desert hicks normally do, even if the homemade cold-medicine meth that they made was nothing like the stuff we had. This stuff was pure: clean as a whistle and potent as a bomb. I’d been to one party where a similar supply of crystal made the rounds; it didn’t stop for days.

“Oooh, you got the good shit!” he said, walking parallel to the table, sizing up the selection before picking up the large glass container of crystal admiringly.

It was a guy that I’d seen before in a couple of the clubs that Omar helps to promote; I recognized him from the distinctive continuous tattoos that snaked down both arms, hiding every visible inch of his skin all the way to his hands. I couldn’t remember if he was a bouncer or just another guy in a bar; I think he was both, depending on when I saw him. He was tall and naturally strong, the kind of guy that gets his bulk from genetics instead of the GNC supplement store.

The two he was with looked like they might go to the same tattoo parlor, one an older, taller, leaner man, and one a short, bossy girl that reminded me of a harder-edged Zooey Deschanel. All of them knew Jordan, but I knew none of them.

“What’s up, girl, you wanna get high with us, or something? You look all nervous and shit. What’s up?” Jordan said.

My only reply was to down the remaining half of my drink and hand him the empty glass as I walked away and back upstairs. Unless I was just paranoid- which was definitely possible- something sinister was afoot.

“I’ve got major drama today,” I said to Marcus with a sigh, playing it up for an extra touch of sympathy. “It would be good hang out, you know? Bring a few friends and chill the fuck out, like we used to.”

I wasn’t sure why I called Marcus, other than the fact that he’d never let me down, and I knew, at the very worst, he could help regulate if things went sour.

Chase and Foster were already fucked up. If the house needed protecting, nobody was going to be able to do it, and this party was going to careen down whatever path it took with no captain at the helm. My irrational panic was bubbling deep inside, threatening to surface. Seeing an opportunity to escape that situation for a while, I offered to come pick him up.

“The royal treatment, huh” he said, laughing.

I smiled and took his address, letting him know that I’d be on my way as soon as I could get ready. After a long-overdue shower and makeup, Carlos and I made our way across town through the heavy evening traffic.

Never saw a woman so alone, so alone , Jim Morrison sang towards the end of “L.A. Woman”, while I mouthed the words under my breath, watching from the back seat as the last of the pink sunset disappear off to the west.

-

Marcus’ apartment was about a mile from the University of Southern California campus, right on the edge of where the white, moneyed student housing butted up against the northern edge of the poor and working-class expanse known as South Central. He lived with a teammate, and there was no way that either one of them had the kind of money that would pay for that apartment plus the cars they drove. He and a friend were sitting on the porch when we arrived, both wearing shorts and polo-style shirts emblazoned with a “USC” logo - just two of the likely three dozen that they were given as football players. His friend’s name was close to “Tyrone” but wasn’t that exactly, and I instantly and completely forgot the names of the two guys inside playing a video game version of NFL football.

My phone buzzed incessantly at the influx of text messages, none of which I wanted to look at, much less answer.

I settled into the well-worn but soft couch cushions with a Bud Light and chatted with Marcus. Two other guys came over, one had a beer, the other a bottle of water; nobody was taking drugs, and their absence - combined with the friendly company - was calming. Even Carlos, normally a wallflower when I cajoled him into getting out of the car and accompanying me into the places he took me, relaxed with a beer and chatted with the two players who otherwise were busy re-enacting the last Super Bowl on XBox.

I could’ve stayed there all night, never leaving my unexpected comfort zone, listening to Marcus’ Frank Ocean Pandora mix and keeping it low-key, but when two of his buddies left, he turned to me and asked if we could go back to the Chateau.

“It’s probably going to be crazy,” I said.

He laughed.

“Your brand of crazy is just fine,” he said. “Mind if my boys come along?”

“Definitely,” I said. “I invited your friends to begin with, babe.”

He pulled me in for a shoulder-squeeze when we all stood up, then made our way back into the warm night. All the while, my phone never stopped vibrating; I finally turned it off.

-

“I need everybody out of the car,” he said, while studying all of our driver’s licenses.

The five of us lined up and leaned against the Town Car while he made a show of calling our names into the station to check for warrants, pacing like a drill sergeant in front of his disposable soldiers.

“Now,” he said, addressing Carlos. “You want to tell me what you’re doing in South Central this time of day?”

He reflexively looked over to me, but was corrected sharply by the police officer and reminded that he was to answer for himself. He told the officer that he worked for me, and that we were picking up my friends.

“He works for you, huh?” he said, leveling his blinding flashlight into my eyes. “Just another rich white girl slumming it with some black boys, huh? You buying drugs, or what? Cuz’ I don’t know a lot of Jew teenagers hanging out on 54th Street.”

I wanted to correct him on the Jewish part, but it wasn’t worth it. Met with silence, he asked to search the car. I briefly panicked, unsure if I’d brought or left anything in the car by accident, and considered refusing his request.

“Unless you’re hiding something,” he said with an evil smile. “Because if you are, you might as well tell me. Or, we can hang out here until I get a warrant. It’s a nice night, I don’t mind.”

Marcus’ eyes simmered with resentment as the police officer stood an inch from my face, badgering me to give him access to the car.

“All you spoiled kids are the same: driving around like you own everything. You might own your Mexican driver, but you don’t own L.A. And we’re happy to make you a custody of the county if you think the law is beneath you.”

My former classmate, Jenny Greenbaum, came to mind.

Last year, she got stopped in Santa Monica on her way home from a party in the Fairfax district. I think I was there. Anyway, she was clean as a whistle; didn’t ever do any drugs, much less cart them around, but when a police officer asked to search her car, she cited her rights and refused. Four hours later, she was sitting in the county lockup, charged with possession of a bag of weed that she’d never seen. Last I heard, she was still trying to out-lawyer the D.A.’s office and clear up her record. So, I didn’t think anything was in the car, but if I stonewalled the cop, who knows? Something might magically appear, and then we’d all be fucked.

“Sure, officer,” I said. “Go ahead and look.”

-

Ten minutes later, were were on our way again, and none of us had any idea why we were stopped in the first place. Marcus and his buddies were mad that we got harassed, Carlos was deadly silent, eyes on the road, and I was so shaken that I asked Carlos to stop at a convenience store and go get me something I could drink fast. The beer I gulped down on the way home did me no good though; I needed something stronger to dull the edges, and hopefully erase the officer’s parting words to me: “You kids don’t give a shit about anything but a good time. Look around you. This is what’s real, not your gated houses in the canyons. Get out of here. Don’t come back.”

As we turned into the driveway, past dozens of parked cars and through the opening where the gate used to be, I felt as if I was returning to the belly of the beast. Marcus and the footballers were excited by the energy that was emanating even before we walked inside. The sounds of music, laughter, shouts, and distant splashes from the pool beyond spilled out invitingly from the wide open front door.

I sucked in a deep breath and steeled myself. A pill, a line, a drop of something nice, whatever- I just needed something to get my head right. Once I settled down, I could handle whatever the night threw at me; or so I thought at the time. I knew it was going to be a long one, and I had an awful feeling about how it all would end. But as I nudged past the anonymous and oblivious revelers, the heat seekers of the Hollywood Hills, I was tragically unaware of why; at least for a few more hours.

-

“You can’t swim in a town this shallow;
You will most assuredly drown tomorrow.”

-Ben Gibbard