of her bandage dress. By the time she reached the top, people were wedging themselves between her and Orla, screaming at them, trying to push Floss. Together, they ran—to the door, to the corner, to the cab they flagged down frantically. They did not see the other cab, the one the hysterical girls piled into, could not hear one of them saying to the driver, “Follow that car!” They did not see the driver, besotted with the girls’ young cleavage, nodding at a command he usually would have laughed at.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Orla said in their cab.
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Floss covered her face. “She might have been trying to hit me, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t.” Orla bent at the waist. She was nauseous. “And neither do you.”
They did not pay any attention when both cabs came to a stop in front of their building, the teens waiting in theirs as Orla and Floss got out and hurried inside. And they were already in their respective bedrooms, somber and pale, as the girls snapped pictures of their front door and blasted the photos out on their networks with vicious captions.
Home of the EVIL worthless whore.
Aston + Paulina forever payback’s a bitch, bitch.
This is where that skank who hurt Paulina lives, if anyone wants to drop by and beat the shit out of her. C’mon world. Don’t hold back.
* * *
The next morning, Orla awoke to her phone’s persistent symphony. She rolled onto her stomach and felt beneath her pillow for it, swiping her thumb across its screen in an attempt to silence her alarm. It was only when she heard a tiny, tinny version of her mother’s voice—“Orla? Orla, are you there? Orla Jane!”—that she realized the phone had been ringing.
She slid it between her cheek and the pillow. “Mom.”
“Look out your window, Orla.” Gayle’s voice quivered on the other end. “Your building is on the news. Your front door.”
“What do you mean, my front door?” Orla couldn’t see the black-gridded double doors at the building’s entrance. They opened onto Twenty-First Street; her window faced the avenue. “Is it terrorists?” Orla said. “Mom!”
“Tell her it’s on channel ten!” Jerry shouted, as if such things were the same the world over. She felt around in bed for the remote to her bedroom TV, the glass-domed box that had followed her since her freshman year of college.
“Orla,” Gayle said, “I need you to go lock your door. You know my friend Adele, from the scrapbooking place? Her son has a Twitter—”
Orla went to lock the dead bolt. When she got close to the door, she heard the rising voices of people near the elevator.
“Tweeted,” Jerry said to Gayle in the background. “They call it tweeting.”
“Some person in your building,” Gayle wailed, “hurt a young woman, a model, Paulina Kratz? I know her from Dancing with the Stars. She survived the tsunami, and this is what she gets? She danced with Maks. She danced beautifully.”
“Val,” Jerry corrected her. “She danced with Val.”
“This woman in your building pushed her down the stairs,” Gayle said. “Can you imagine? It’s all over the news. People are furious. Someone tweeted your address. They’re outside your door. With signs. One paintballed your super.”
Orla closed her eyes. Poor Manny. She hoped his son, Linus, who trailed him everywhere, hadn’t seen that.
“Tell her the police just got there,” Jerry called out in the background. “They’re setting up a barricade.”
As if on cue, there was a slap on the door. “Ms. Natuzzi?” came the voice from the other side, deep and urgent. “Open up, please. NYPD.”
“Who is that?” Gayle demanded. “You’re old enough to have gentleman callers, but—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” muttered Jerry.
Orla watched the door shake in its frame from the second knock.
“It’s not a guy, Mom,” Orla said. “It’s the police. They’re looking for my roommate. She’s the one who pushed the model. I have to go.” She thumbed the red circle on the screen.
Floss, in a periwinkle satin camisole and briefs, ambled to the door. “Are you gonna get that?” she said, rubbing her palms over her eyes.
Orla stared at her. The door went on shuddering. Would the police believe Orla if she denied everything? If she let her jaw go slack like a frightened kid, and said that Floss was just her subletter? There wasn’t a soul on earth who could corroborate their friendship. “I really don’t know anything about her,” Orla imagined herself saying. She froze in the middle of