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I incessantly Friends or reporters? he wondered He didn’t answer either line His apartment buzzer went off five or six tiet in hadat his door that eventually went away Billy took refuge in his bathroom It was only a matter of time before they came for him He, too, would be all over the newspapers and the Internet, and there would be clips of hirace His behavior was justifiable, perhaps, because he needed money, but no one would see it that way Why hadn’t he immediately turned the cross over to the Met? Because it would have beshton’s name But she was dead, and now her na to jail In despair, he even wondered why he had ever moved to New York in the first place Why couldn’t he have stayed in the Berkshires and been happy hat life had handed hi?

He opened his medicine cabinet and took out all his pills He had several kinds noo types of sleeping pills, Xanax, Prozac, and the Vicodin for his tooth pain If he took all the pills and drank a bottle of vodka, heat the pills, he realized he didn’t even have the courage to kill himself

He could at least knock himself out He took two Vicodins, two Xanaxes, and one of each kind of sleeping pill Within minutes, he was asleep in a vibrant, o on forever

Enid Merle was one of the first people to hear about Sandy Brewer’s arrest A reporter from the paper as on the scene called her immediately As yet, all the facts weren’t in, and the conclusion was that Sandy had sohton, who had stolen it froation, Enid kneas false While it was true that Louise had possessed the cross, Enid guessed that she hadn’t taken it from the Met but from Flossie Davis Flossie had always been the obvious culprit, but what had never made sense to Enid hy Louise hadn’t returned the cross to the Met in the first place Instead, she’d kept both the cross and the secret, protecting Flossie fro punished for her criminal act Louise was a devout Catholic; perhaps aFlossie’s crime

Or perhaps, Enid thought, there was another reason Maybe Flossie had sootten to the bottoo, but she’d never considered it ih At the moment, there wasn’t tihton, she would have to write it herself

Enid looked through several printed pages of research on Sandy and Connie Brewer The story wasn’t of er world—certainly nowhere near the impact of a presidential election, or the innocent ht in a war, or all and any of the insults and indignities suffered by the common man It was only about New York “society” And yet, she reminded herself, the desire for some kind of society was an innate human trait, for without it, there could be no hope of civilizedout a clip of an article from Vanity Fair written about Connie Brewer and her fabulous country house in the Hamptons, Enid wondered if it was possible to have a desire for tooin life—four children, a private plane, no worries But it wasn’t enough, and now the children’s daddyto jail It was ironic that Sandy Brewer and Mrs Enid Houghton should end up in the sahton had been alive, she never would have acknowledged an arriviste like Sandy Enid sat back in her chair There was a big chunk of the storyher hands above the keyboard, she wrote, “Louise Houghton was a good friend of mine”

Eight hours later, Billy Litchfield woke up in his claw-footed bathtub Checking his ars, he was surprised to find himself still very much alive—and inexplicably exultant It was thedesire to hear David Bowie Sliding a CD into the ht, Why not? and decided to play the entire four hours of a two-CD set spanning Bowie’s career from 1967 to 1993 As Billy listened, he walked around his apart occasionally on the ooden floors in his bare feet, and flinging his paisley robe around his body like a cape Then he started looking at photographs He had hundreds of fra on the walls, lined up on the mantelpiece, piled on top of books, and packed into drawers While he was looking at his photographs, he thought hethe next twenty hours, he sensed that either his cell phone or land line was ringing again, but he didn’t answer either one He took more pills and at some point discovered that he’d

consumed nearly a whole bottle of vodka Then he found an old bottle of gin and, singing loudly along with thetothat had happened in the past seemed to matter, he took two more Vicodins He felt a little better, and with his —it was now Janet Eno—he passed out on top of his bed

At one point, like a sleepwalker, he did get up and go to his closet But then he collapsed again, and soave out, followed by his heart Billy didn’t feel a thing

Act Four

18

That evening, Schiffer Diamond ran into Paul and Annalisa Rice on the sidewalk in front of One Fifth Schiffer was co, while Paul and Annalisa were dressed for dinner Schiffer nodded at the, then she paused “Excuse me,” she said to Annalisa “Aren’t you a friend of Billy Litchfield’s?”

Paul and Annalisa exchanged glances “Yes,” Annalisa said

“Have you seen hi to call him for two days”

“He doesn’t see his phone I went by his apartment, but he wasn’t home”