Kathryn:

Limelight.

There's always something to be said for dancing and scoring drugs and having sex in the bathrooms in a place that used to be a church.

Faithless's "Addictive" on the speakers. Nobody here I recognize. I'm E-ed up, coked up, electric with the music and the club's general aura of sex. A dark-haired boy stares at me from across the dance floor, I tell him "yes" with my eyes. He doesn't look a thing like you, but he's smooth like you, seductive like you, speaks in my ear of the dirty things he's going to do to me. I pull him into a cab, tell the driver to circle around a few times via the West Side Highway and F.D.R. at top speed.

"Are you crazy?"

"I'm paying for this ride, so you can just shut up and enjoy it. I like fucking in taxis."

The driver makes no comment, he's used to it. We start driving. It's cold out but I open the window anyway, needing to feel the fresh air on my face. My boy doesn't object, he's too busy playing with my tits by now to notice anything else. His hands on me are the hands of someone experienced with women.

I close my eyes.

Time warps around me, faces and places undergo alchemical transformation, the Ecstasy does its work. City lights zoom by behind my eyelids, I can still hear the words of the song from the club in my head. And the boy beside me is no stranger. We're not in NYC anymore, we're not on this planet anymore, only we two left on the planet we're two orphans hurtling through space. I tell him he belongs to me. I know about the other women you're fucking, I tell him, and I don't care, because you belong to me... And I need this, oh fuck I do need this. I have a demon for a wife just for tonight...coming off his tongue furious with hit after hit of pure uncut happiness, he wants to exchange names I tell him be quiet I don't want to hear a word out of his mouth unless it's a lie

Daylight. I'm showered dressed up hair and nails perfect. In this dead house (Aunt Helen's, but it could be anywhere) I socialize with the guests while sipping tea and nibbling on canapes. There's a real art to eating canapes: too few and you're unsociable, too many and you're a greedy fat pig. I do it perfectly. Just like I did before, but now my habitual poise is seen as something new, as a sign of my recovery. I'm dressed more conservatively than usual, in a preppy navy blue sweater and knee length skirt that actually covers the knees, and this too is seen as a sign. I talk about how horribly enslaved I was to cocaine. It's not even half of what Seb's journal made public, but it's enough to satisfy their middle-aged voyeur ears. That was the deal, you see: pretend that the scandal was all about drugs. I feed myself occasional sustenance hits in the bathroom, not enough to give me any kind of pleasure, just enough to stave off withdrawal symptoms.

In the night you feel free. And then you come back to this.

Didn't sleep at all last night after coming home from what's-his-name's place, looked over the video footage instead. Nothing and again nothing. Fast-forwarded through most of it, which felt in a way like a desecration, but I have a life. Boring phone conversations with Annette. Boring sex with same. Come on little girl, at least act like you like it. I can see why you stayed a virgin for so long.

I don't trust myself around this footage. But I watch, gather the information, then go to Mother's little party and do what I have to do. Iron self-control is what allows me to do this. Could you do what I do, Sebastian, even for one second? You ask me why I'm cruel.

If you stay with her you'll start to drink. You'll choose alcohol at first rather than cocaine because you've seen what cocaine's done to me, and because alcohol suits your personality better, rain over sunshine, depressants over stimulants. It won't save you, not when you're shot through with delirium tremens or yellow with hepatitis, or more immediately, when Annette and her friends and parents start to notice your symptoms of being drunk, and you have to lie to them about the symptoms, then drink more to be able to stand the constant lying.

I know this, Sebastian.

Coming back to the house, I pass him coming out. He passes me by without looking at me, not like he didn't notice me, like he's afraid to look at me. Bastard, you should be afraid.

Annette's visiting Kansas for about a week, and he's going to the airport, to see her off. I know this from the video footage. I wish I did not know this.

A/N: Endless regret that I never went to Limelight/Avalon while they existed...now they've turned the place into a damn mall :-(