Chapter Four : Casper's friends
Dorian Walsh was on his third whiskey when he saw her.
He almost didn't recognize her.
That was the thing he kept getting stuck on as he leaned against the mezzanine railing, squinting down at the main floor through the shifting lights. The woman in the red dress, hair out and wild, laughing at something her friend said with her whole body, completely uninhibited, completely alive.
He turned to Felix. "Is that Kyara?"
Felix looked up from his phone.
Looked down at the floor.
Looked back at Dorian.
"No," Felix said.
"That's what I thought." Dorian looked again. "But it is though."
"It can't be."
"Felix. That's her face."
Felix stared for another long moment, tilting his head slightly like the angle might resolve the confusion. "Kyara doesn't go to clubs."
"Kyara apparently goes to clubs."
They both stood there watching in the specific silence of two men whose understanding of a person had just been quietly upended.
Then Felix pulled out his phone and called Casper.
Casper Hartwell answered on the second ring.
"Felix." His voice was flat and even, the way it always was. In the background, the quiet hum of the condo. "It's late."
"I know. Listen, I'm at Blaze with Dorian and we just —"
"Why are you at Blaze on a Wednesday."
"That's not the point. We just saw Kyara here."
A pause.
Short and unimpressed.
"No you didn't," Casper said.
Felix blinked. "Casper. We literally just saw your wife."
"Kyara is at home."
"She is not at home, she is on the main floor in a red dress and she looks —" Felix stopped, recalibrated. "She doesn't look like herself."
"Then it wasn't her." The sound of a page turning. He was reading. At this hour, the man was reading. "Kyara doesn't go to clubs."
Dorian grabbed the phone from Felix's hand. "Casper. It's Dorian. I looked right at her face, it's Kyara."
"Dorian." Casper's tone had the particular patience of someone explaining something to a person who should already understand it. "My wife does not go to clubs. She doesn't drink, she doesn't dance, she's probably been home since seven. You've had three whiskeys, I can hear it."
"I've had two."
"Goodnight."
The line went dead.
Dorian and Felix looked at each other.
Dorian handed the phone back.
They both looked down at the main floor again, where the woman in the red dress was currently pulling her friend onto the dance floor, laughing so hard she had to grab the other girl's arm for balance.
"That's her," Dorian said.
"I know that's her," Felix said.
"But he doesn't believe us."
"I know."
Twenty minutes later, the lights in the back section of the club shifted.
A staff member Dorian didn't recognize appeared and began redirecting floor guests away from the rear corridor, polite but firm. From the mezzanine, they had a clear sightline to the private lounge at the back, the one with the frosted glass partition that was now glowing gold from the inside.
"What's happening back there?" Dorian asked.
Felix leaned over the railing.
The frosted partition wasn't fully frosted. There was a strip of clear glass at the top, and through it, if you were at mezzanine level and looking at exactly the right angle, you could see inside.
They were at mezzanine level.
They were looking at exactly the right angle.
What they saw made Felix grab the railing with both hands.
Four women. A private lounge. A small stage area that had not been there earlier in the evening. And three men who were absolutely not serving drinks.
"Oh," Felix said.
"Is that," Dorian started.
"Yes," Felix said.
"And is she —"
"She is very much," Felix confirmed.
Kyara Hartwell, wife of The Casper Hartwell, daughter-in-law of the Hartwell Group, the quiet composed woman who sat perfectly still at charity galas and never spoke unless spoken to, was sitting in a private club lounge with a drink in her hand, her heels abandoned somewhere, laughing so hard at something one of her friends said that she had to cover her face with both hands.
The friend in gold, the loud one, was fully living her best life and making no apologies about it.
Dorian picked up his phone.
"We're calling him again," he said.
Casper answered on the fourth ring this time.
"I told you —"
"Private lounge," Dorian said. "Ellie Spore just booked out the private lounge at Blaze. There are performers, Casper. There is a whole situation happening."
Silence.
"Ellie Spore," Casper repeated.
"Yes."
"Kyara is with Ellie Spore."
"Kyara IS Ellie Spore right now, that is how good a time she is having."
Another silence. Longer.
"Dorian." The patience was back, measured and certain. "Think about what you're telling me. You are telling me that Kyara, my Kyara, is in a private lounge at a nightclub with performers."
"That is exactly what I am telling you."
"Kyara," he said again, as if repeating the name would make the sentence make more sense. "The woman who goes to bed at ten-thirty. Who reorganizes the kitchen cabinet when she's restless. Who turned down the Hendersons' New Year's party because she had a headache."
Dorian opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked at Felix, who was now looking decidedly less convinced than he had six minutes ago.
"I mean," Felix muttered, studying his own fingernails. "She is always in bed by nine."
"She alphabetized the spices, Felix. Alphabetized."
"She was reading when we came over for dinner," Felix continued, gaining steam. "Remember the Hendersons'? She practically sprinted for the door when she got that excuse to leave."
Dorian rubbed his face with one hand.
He looked back through the clear strip of glass at the private lounge.
The woman in the red dress was still there. Drink raised. Head thrown back laughing. Fully, completely, uncontainably present in a way that did not match a single memory he had of Casper's wife.
"Casper," he said one more time. "I'm looking right at her."
"Then you're looking at someone who looks like her," Casper said simply, "because what you're describing is not my wife. Go home, Dorian. You're drunk."
"I've had just two glasses of whiskey!"
But the line was already dead.
Dorian set the phone down on the mezzanine railing.
He and Felix stood side by side in silence for a moment.
"He's not wrong," Felix said carefully, "that she doesn't really... do this."
"I know."
"Like ever. In the years they've been together I don't think I've seen her laugh like that."
Dorian didn't say anything.
"She's always very," Felix searched for the word. "Contained. You know? Sits with good posture. Speaks when there's something to say. Casper makes a joke and she smiles at the right moment. Very," he tried again. "Appropriate."
"Appropriate," Dorian repeated.
"Yeah."
They both looked down at the private lounge again.
The woman in the red dress had gotten up from the table. She was standing now, and whatever the friend in gold had just said had apparently been the funniest thing spoken aloud in human history because Kyara was bent forward, hand on her knee, completely abandoned to it.
"To be fair," Felix said slowly. "I don't think I have ever actually seen her look like that."
"No," Dorian agreed.
"So maybe Casper's right. Maybe it's just someone who looks like her."
"Felix." Dorian turned to look at him directly. "That woman has the same nose, the same eyes, the same exact jawline. I sat next to her at a dinner table for three hours last month."
Felix looked uncomfortable. "So what are you saying."
"I'm saying I don't know what I'm saying." He picked his drink back up. "I'm saying that either that is not Kyara, or we have all been very badly wrong about who Kyara is."
Felix considered this for a moment.
Below them, the woman in the red dress said something to the friend in gold. The friend in gold shrieked and grabbed her arm. They both dissolved into laughter again.
"She always seemed happy," Felix said finally. "Whenever I saw her. Quiet, but happy."
Dorian took a sip of his drink.
"Did she though," he said.
Felix didn't answer.
They stood there in silence a little longer, watching a woman who may or may not have been Kyara Hartwell enjoy the best Wednesday night of her apparent life, while sixty floors up and three streets away, her husband turned a page in his book without a single moment of doubt about his wife's whereabouts.