MONDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2012

Liv Rockwell was living in an apartment on the nineteenth floor of the Caledonia in West Chelsea.

Actually, she was a squatter.

She’d once shared the place, now almost completely empty, with her ex-husband—her third and most recent husband, Owen—before his second wife got pregnant and they moved to Chappaqua.

The Caledonia offered bamboo trees in the common open-air garden, a Boffi stainless-steel chef’s kitchen with a Wolf stove, and a view of the High Line park. These things were important to her because she wasn’t going out much. She ordered delivery from Bombay Talkie and Bottino—except for flan, which she made herself. She found the egginess a comfort. Her mother never cooked but flan was the specialty of their long-standing housekeeper, Jessamine.

She’d only replaced one of her favorite items—a Gaggia espresso maker that ran her almost two thousand dollars. She had money—that wasn’t the problem. She was simply losing faith in it.

She could have easily bought fluffy linens, even a luxury bed, but she refused to indulge herself. She slept on spare pillows topped with down outerwear she’d found in a box in a spare closet, plumping them in the middle of the floor in her old bedroom. She took down a white sheer from the living room and used it as a sheet, and her full-length fur coat—inherited from an elderly Rockwell auntie (her sisters had refused to wear it on moral grounds)—as a blanket.

She was well aware that any day now a real estate agent was going to show up with movers delivering high-end rental furniture to stage the place for sale. She had other places to go, of course, including rehab, but she was feeling weirdly homesick—maybe because she was between husbands—and so she went to the place that felt at least a little like home, albeit a broken one.

(And she had to believe that the head doorman had alerted Owen that she was back, and Owen had been kind enough not to make a stink about it. He didn’t like stinks. The real estate agent would be stinky enough. If Owen didn’t want her to still have access to the place, he should have changed the locks.)

The storm had started to rattle windows, and the toilet had stopped flushing though the electricity was working. (It had crossed her mind that her toilet issue was a problem with her specific toilet, not the building, but she couldn’t call maintenance. It would draw attention.)

Liv sat in an Adirondack chair in the living room. She had a flashlight nearby, bottled water and salami in the fridge. That was the extent of her preparation.

She was drinking a Scotch and water, surrounded by newspapers—the London Observer, The New York Times, the L.A. Times, The Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune. This was her work. She was researching a potential fourth husband.

In childhood, her mother had told her many times that she and her sisters were profiteers of various kinds. She didn’t understand what this meant because, honestly, she’d learned to tune out her mother early on. But then one of the more subversive teachers at her boarding school explained the seedier side of the school’s wealth—munitions. (Liv was the only daughter in the family sent to boarding school. It was during a particularly defiant stage.) She’d squirmed in her seat during the mini lecture—it rang a bell—and found herself awash in shame. Her mother didn’t believe in shame—in addition to The Personal Honesty Movement, Augusta had founded many short-lived movements, one of which was The Anti-Shame Movement; Augusta had taught them to recognize shame and to mentally wash it off. So she replaced her shame quickly with a sense of fiery pride. I’m a profiteer who hails from a long line of profiteers, and there’s nothing wrong with profit. It was the foundational idea for her college entrance essay, which she’d later blamed for her rejections from her top-choice colleges.

And she clung to the pride. In fact, she embraced it as one of her defining traits, and she picked up profiteering as an art form. For the past twelve years, she’d been a marriage profiteer.

Her strategy was cherry-picking engagement pages. Her first husband was Icho Hi, an international businessman. He died of heart failure. Her second husband was a patent holder, Sven Golbin. They’d divorced amicably. Owen was an art dealer who came from Old World family money. He wanted children. Liv didn’t. (A marriage profiteer should be smart enough to know that this would only divide profits.) He left her for a younger woman.

Sometimes, though—like tonight—she wondered if she should have had a child, not to appease Owen, but to have someone to impart knowledge to and raise with a philosophy of Liv’s own design. This didn’t strike her as a good reason to have a baby, however.

That afternoon she clipped certain engagement announcements from the newspaper with nail scissors, and, with duct tape found in a kitchen drawer, she lined them up on the living room wall.

On her second Scotch and water, she popped an Adderall to balance things out. She found a Sharpie in the drawer of a small built-in and started writing notes under each clipping directly onto the wall. The key for the notes only existed in Liv’s head. It went like this:

A. Estimated Assets and Income.

B. Family Money, a ten-point scale.

C. Apparent Attraction in Type of Woman.

D. Accessibility Rating.

E. Desperation Quotient.

F. Intangibles.

On her third Scotch, her sister Esme called. Usually she’d let it go to voice mail, but she wanted the company.

“Have you heard from Mom?” Esme asked.

“No, why?”

“They’ve evacuated Ocean City.”

“She won’t leave.”

“I know, but I wish she’d tell us she’s not leaving.” Esme gave this little tsk noise at the end of her statement, a habit she’d had as a teenager, one that Liv hated.

“Why should she tell us?” Liv said flatly.

“So we’d know she’s okay. That’s why.”

“You know our mother,” Liv said. “She won’t tell you anything that she thinks you already know. She’s not redundant.”

“Are you calling me redundant?”

“No, but you seek reassurance, and by nature those kinds of people are usually redundant.”

“Fine,” Esme said, taking the criticism. She’d told herself long ago that she no longer cared what her sisters—especially Liv—thought of her. (Ru was the baby. No one ever really cares much what a baby thinks of you.) “I don’t even know if Jessamine is with her. I just wish she had friends who’d look in on her.”

“She’s never wanted friends, only followers. And she’s never been successful at getting either.”

This was true. None of Augusta’s movements had gathered steam. Mothers United for Peace ended in petty squabbles over the logo. Raise Your Voices and The Movement’s Movement were two groups dedicated to empowering people to start movements; both died for lack of momentum. The Self-Actualization Cause, The Individuality Movement, The Deeper Self-Reflection Cause, and The Anti-Shame Movement all failed in less than a year.

“This is serious,” Esme said. “There’s a reason why the governor has asked people to evacuate!”

“He’s just covering his ass,” Liv said.

“Aren’t you watching the news?”

“No.”

“Well, DC got hit hard. There’s a full moon. It’s going to hit New Jersey at high tide and New York too. You should be prepared.”

“New York City is a fortress built of fortresses.” Then Liv thought, I’m a fortress built of fortresses.

“I don’t think you’re taking this seriously.”

“New Yorkers are immune to natural disasters. We’re too callused from shoving into the subway at rush hour.” It had been many many years since Liv took the subway, but the memories were vivid.

Esme sighed. “Are you going to ask how I’m doing?”

“Yes,” Liv said. “How are you doing?”

“I’m doing very badly.”

“I’m doing very badly too,” Liv said.

“You’re so competitive.”

“Yes,” Liv said. “In fact, I’m more competitive than you are.”

Esme hung up.

Evening settled in and things became a blur of rain, wind, lightning, then a buzz from the doorman punctuated the air. Despite the inclemency, Mrs. Kwok, Liv’s acupuncturist, had shown up in the lobby, waiting to be let up. “Sure! Of course!” Liv told the doorman. Liv had forgotten she’d called Mrs. Kwok.

When Mrs. Kwok arrived, she said, “I am here for your session, right?”

“My liver is going to hell, Mrs. Kwok. Why wouldn’t I call you?”

Mrs. Kwok shuffled in with her collapsible massage table and her box of equipment—needles, glass cupping jars, some with the rubber bulbs to create a seal, and smokeless moxa sticks. She was wearing a flower-printed smock dress like a pediatric nurse, but her short haircut and jewelry were high-end boutique. Mrs. Kwok owned the business and had exquisite taste. She might have even had some work done, a little Botox, perhaps? Liv herself had recently turned forty, but she passed for thirty-two. “What happened to this place?” Mrs. Kwok asked.

Liv looked around at the walls covered with clippings and Sharpie and realized that it must look like the plans of an ambitious serial killer. She managed to say, “What happened? Well, the toilets. They stopped working.” And she wanted to add: How long can we go without toilets before we turn into savages, Mrs. Kwok? How long? But she stopped herself.

“No, what happened to the stuff in the apartment, Mrs. P. It’s almost empty.”

“I’m Ex Mrs. P. now, Mrs. Kwok. Ex.”

“He took all of your pretty things?”

“He bum-rushed me.” Liv meant on an emotional level and she wanted to cry. She felt suddenly drunk in a heavy way, as if gravity were pulling her down more than normal.

Mrs. Kwok looked at Liv. “You drink too much tonight?”

“I drink too much.”

Then Mrs. Kwok got worried. “This is a hurricane. I came here in a hurricane. You are going to pay me, right? You still have money, right?”

Liv had always taken Mrs. Kwok’s verbal tic of ending sentences with a questioning “right?” as a lack of self-confidence. Now, suddenly, it seemed that Mrs. Kwok didn’t lack confidence in herself but in Liv. Granted, Liv wasn’t terribly trustworthy. She didn’t answer the question. “What do you think of marriage?” she asked instead then quickly added, “But without, you know, the communist lens, the husband-as-hardworking-Chinese-industrious thing—no offense—and more about the soul. I mean, do you believe that two souls can be one? Are you a romantic, deep down?” Liv wondered momentarily if this sounded racist, but she quickly decided it was okay. She’d said “no offense,” and her excellent liberal education had to earn her some political capital, right? The question echoed in her head, but not for very long.

“Two souls as one? No.” Mrs. Kwok scratched her forehead, the bit hidden up under her bangs.

No, no. Mrs. Kwok was practical about all things, including marriage. This was what the two women had in common. Liv loved Mrs. Kwok in that moment, a big sweeping love. All of her friends bought into the idea of soul mates. But not Liv and Mrs. Kwok. Not them. Feeling suddenly close to Mrs. Kwok, Liv reached out and hugged her. Liv was aware enough to know that hugging Mrs. Kwok was a very drunken thing to do, but she couldn’t help herself. Scotch sometimes made her especially sentimental. “I’m going to tell you something,” she whispered. “Something I’ve only told one other person in the whole world and that other person was unconscious at the time, due to a bad batch of Ecstasy.”

Liv walked Mrs. Kwok to the row of clippings. “These are the men who have publicly acknowledged that they are (A) capable of asking a woman to marry them. It’s how they’ve gotten into the engagement pages. So the commitment-avoidant man-child types have been screened automatically.”

Mrs. Kwok examined the photographs, bewildered but not exactly awed, as Liv thought she should be.

“This is genius, Mrs. Kwok. Do you understand how many years a woman can waste trying to wade through all the commitment-avoidant mama’s boys of New York City—while sitting down week after week, flipping through the engagement announcements and never really seeing them for what they are? Gold!” Liv gestured like she was panning for gold. “See?”

Mrs. Kwok stared at Liv. “What?”

Liv felt the Adderall propelling her forward, her mind whirring decisively now, flitting above the Scotch like a clipper ship. “This is a directory of men who are capable of asking a woman to marry them. Period. A directory, Mrs. Kwok.”

“But they are getting married to someone already, right?”

Liv shook her heard. “This brings me to (B).” She walked Mrs. Kwok down the row. “These men are in a vulnerable position—dibs have been called but they aren’t yet off the market.”

“Dibs?”

“Don’t ask questions right now. Okay?” Liv paused and stared at one couple, the man’s arms wrapped protectively around his fiancée’s shoulders. “And (C). Look closely.”

Mrs. Kwok squinted at the photograph.

Liv pointed to the man’s bright and yet terrified smile. “These are the faces of men under the most stress of their lives. They want out. Look at them.”

“He looks happy to me,” Mrs. Kwok said, pointing to the man’s teeth.

“He isn’t. None of them are. Their fiancées have changed on them almost overnight. Before the engagement, they were happy and content. These men are being forced to make decisions and no one cares about their opinions. They’re being railroaded into buying things they don’t want to buy, arrange people’s seating in ways they don’t want to arrange, pick from samples of food they don’t want to eat, list their friends in a hierarchy, cut cousins off lists. They’re spending more time with their in-laws. Look, Mrs. Kwok. They’re dying inside. These are photographs of desperation.”

Mrs. Kwok shook her head.

“What? You don’t believe in the quiet desperation of weddings?” Liv picked up The New York Times. It usually contained the best contenders, and she’d been saving it for last. She spread one of the pages open on the floor. “Do you see all of those eyes staring up at you? Might as well be looking at dogs in the animal shelter. They want to be saved, Mrs. Kwok. We all just want to be saved.” She thought of the conversation with Esme and felt guilty. Esme wanted to be saved too. From what? Who knew? She had a perfectly good life, constructed in a very purposeful way.

Liv stared down at the faces. She was dizzy—drunker than she’d thought. The faces swam around like fish trapped in an indoor pond. She put her bare toes on the edge of the newspaper, hoping to pin it down.

And there she saw a face she recognized—a woman with wide eyes, curly hair, a crooked smile.

Liv knelt down, spread her hands on the floor, and read the names aloud: “Clifford Wells and Ruby Rockwell.” She hadn’t thought about her sister Ru in a long time. She was a novelist who also adapted her own work into screenplays, a hit cult-fave whimsical romantic comedy—and totally ripped from Liv’s own life. Liv had never forgiven Ru for using Liv’s life as material—thievery—a point Ru seemed oblivious about.

Liv and Ru hadn’t seen each other in years. Ru had surrounded herself with creatives, and Liv didn’t care for artsy types. They didn’t appreciate the things that Liv appreciated. The last time she’d been at a party with Ru’s friends, a German woman had gotten naked and let people write on her body—for free. Liv didn’t understand it. Why not at least charge a nominal fee? That didn’t make it stripping. And even stripping could be deemed art. Moreover Ru ignored the whole scene and was talking about an old children’s book about a duck named Ping or some shit.

“You okay?” Mrs. Kwok asked.

Baby Ru was getting married? How was that possible?

The notice referred to her as the acclaimed novelist and screenwriter whose hit film—Trust Teddy Wilmer—garnered comparisons to Charlie Kaufman and Nora Ephron.

“Fuck her,” Liv whispered. “Trust Teddy Wilmer was based on my life,” she said loudly. “Not Ru’s!” The comparisons to Kaufman and Ephron were partially Liv’s comparisons. But did anyone ever point that out? No.

Liv didn’t read novels on the grounds that they weren’t true. She made no exception for her sister’s novel, even the thievery of Liv’s own teen romance. Teddy Wilmer was an obvious knockoff of Teddy Whistler, Liv’s first love—the rebellious (and possibly crazy) young man who ended up in a juvenile detention center and, later, a private mental institution, and a relationship that led directly to Liv’s own stint in boarding school, a sentence of its own.

After she’d read the review of the novel in The New York Times Book Review three years earlier, Liv had left a message on Ru’s voice mail. “Why don’t you write about your own life, Ru? Or is that you’ve never really lived one? You’ve never grown up, Ru. You never will.”

Ru never responded. They never spoke of it.

Liv had watched Trust Teddy Wilmer while drunk, on the grounds that she didn’t want to see something indecently private about herself while vulnerably sober.

She once confided to Esme that it was an awful thing to have a writer for a sister.

Esme said, “Oh, no. I wish she were a memoirist! Rip away the bullshit of fiction and really tell it. Memoirists are the only writers with any real guts.” Liv was relieved. At least Ru wasn’t a memoirist! That was something to be happy about.

Liv quickly scanned Ru’s fiancé’s short biography. She sifted through her mental list. Check, check, check…She looked Clifford Wells in the eyes, and for a split second she thought, He’s ripe for the picking.

She stiffened. She was a monster. She’d actually considered stealing her sister’s fiancé.

And then, worse, she rationalized it. Again, the processing was so fast she had no control over it. If the marriage is going to work, he won’t be so easily lured away. If he is, I’m doing Ru a favor. Some marriages are defunct on the molecular level.

And then she rationalized it personally. Ru stole from me to turn a profit. I can steal from her.

“I don’t know,” Liv said, in response to no specific question.

“You’re worrying me, Ex Mrs. P.”

“I just don’t know,” Liv said again.

She stood up and walked to the bank of windows. It was pouring outside. She thought for a second of the windows in her childhood home on Asbury Avenue, the third floor. Esme and Ru probably ignored what their mother had taught them during that one weird summer storm, but not Liv. In moments when she was completely alone, she’d spent hours at those windows, classical music in the background, conducting spinning seagulls, cars trolling for parking spaces, dogs bouncing on leashes, quick clouds against blue sky.

And when she got the chance to run her own life? She could make choices, set goals, and attain them. And now? What about now?

She opened one of the windows and stuck her upper body into the wind and rain. She then lifted one hand, as if holding one of the conductor’s batons her mother had given them.

“Don’t do this!” Mrs. Kwok shouted.

“What’s the name of a Chinese monster?” she shouted over the storm, waving her imaginary baton. “Tell me the Chinese monster that scared the crap out of you as a child!” Liv was screaming. She could hear the shrill noise of her own voice in her ears but it seemed disconnected. It belonged to someone else who was screaming the things that Liv wanted her to scream.

Mrs. Kwok pulled on her arm. “Come back in!”

“A Chinese monster!” Liv shouted again, still trying to conduct. “Which one really scared you, Mrs. Kwok?”

Lightning streaked across the sky. Liv froze, and then her body shuddered.

“Don’t jump!” Mrs. Kwok shouted.

Liv hadn’t been planning on jumping, but then she looked down. A person would hit hard, die instantaneously. They’d likely feel the cold air rippling, mouth forcibly filled with wind, and then nothing. Not fear, not regret. No Owen, living with some woman he loved more than Liv, a woman whose belly was swelling with a baby who’d be born pink and fat and happy and grow up in Chappaqua where the public schools are fantastic and the children aren’t afraid of monsters at all.

Nothing.

Mrs. Kwok didn’t know what Liv knew. She wasn’t the dying type. She was lucky. She’d once choked on a menthol drop on a subway platform and an old man, perfectly practiced in Heimlich—like he was on his way home from a CPR certification course—walked up, grabbed her around the ribs, and with a sharp tug saved her life. But her life had already been so charmed that she’d half expected the old man. She remembered that he asked if she was okay. She nodded and he left before she even thought to thank him. “I’m not going to die! Just tell me! Okay? Is that so hard?”

“I will tell you a Chinese monster if you come inside!” Mrs. Kwok said.

“Tell me first!” Liv said, gripping the window ledge.

Mrs. Kwok spoke quickly, like the confession was being ripped from her. “As a young child, I was afraid of Gong Gong!”

“What did Gong Gong do?”

Mrs. Kwok lowered her voice. “Gong Gong was a monster of the sea. I grew up along the Yangzte River.”

For one split second, Liv felt like she was a maiden carved onto the prow of an old ship, but then the image flipped and she was the Gong Gong looking up at the maiden carved into the ship, wanting to destroy her. “I’m a monster,” she whispered, her lips wet with rain. She blinked up at the sky. “I am Gong Gong.”

“You promised to come inside!” Mrs. Kwok shouted, and then she pulled on Liv’s shirt so hard that it ripped.

Liv fell back into the room and looked at the rip and then at Mrs. Kwok.

“Remember,” Mrs. Kwok said. “I came here in a hurricane for your session! In a hurricane!”

“I’m sorry I scared you,” Liv said, and she sat down on the floor.

Mrs. Kwok walked to her collapsible massage table and started to put her supplies back in her satchel. Liv watched as she folded the table and walked to the front door. “You need help, Ex Mrs. P. Your liver and your spleen. We can try next week, right?”

“Right, right,” Liv said. How long before she got kicked out? Would she be here next week? What would become of her? “But we could all be savages in a week’s time. Savages and monsters.”

Mrs. Kwok left.

The lights flickered and died.

“Right,” Liv said.