She was in a bar on the Strip or a club in West Hollywood, or the back porch of some sprawling Beverley Hills mansion. She wasn't sure. It had all started blending together many many hours ago. Maybe even days. Time was becoming confusing as well. She was fairly sure she'd seen daylight twice with some darkness in between, but whether any of that was real, she couldn't say.
And there had been a lot of drinking and laughing, a lot of celebrating and backslapping and "Where's the blow, Joe?"
A lot of bathroom breaks and muddled conversations with girls she didn't know and wasn't sure she should get to know.
One of them had helped her out of the stall when she'd somehow lost her balance from three feet over the toilet bowl.
She was sweet, so Cheryl had kissed her lips and told her so.
"You're a doll," she had replied, before wiping her nose and rocking slightly against the cubicle door.
Cheryl had turned to the mirror then, and reapplied her lipstick with a trembling hand that didn't seem entirely attached to her body.
There had been a boy there, at that club, or bar, or house, or whatever. She'd noticed him because he was wearing an Oxford shirt and brogues without a hint of irony. Also, she'd seen him palming wraps to eager takers earlier and was now sitting alone with his phone and his drink.
She wobbled precariously over to the spare seat and offered what might have been an approximation of an enticing smile as she took her place next to him.
The music and the party seemed to swell in that instant as screeching girls spilled outside onto the decking and somebody not so far away let out a scream.
It was dark, late evening or early morning, and he kept his aviators on as he silently carved up some lines and bent his head forward.
And he didn't seem so young in that moment, with his long fingers and rolled up fifty, maybe nineteen, maybe twenty-five.
She took the bill from the boy-man and leant forward, wondering why it was suddenly okay to be doing this in public, if it really was, or if they were now all just so fucked that they'd given up caring.
"You're Cheryl, aren't you?"
And she couldn't remember if she'd been introduced to him at this party, if he was a friend of a friend of an acquaintance of a studio engineer. Or if he was some record exec she'd met back at the studio, had talked to before.
"I am," she replied, sniffing and leaning back, closing her eyes against the rush that was rolling over her, nerve endings jumping against heavy limbs.
He dabbed his finger against the stray powder, rubbing it against his gums. Then, without hesitation, began carving out another line, chopping and twitching and shaping it for half a minute.
She watched abstractedly, mild disgust clawing away at the back of her consciousness, at how easily disposable all these people seemed, with their clothes and their careers and their business cards, chopping up hundreds and thousands of dollars worth of grade A cocaine.
"We're so glamorous," she muttered to herself.
"What?" he yelled, turning back to her as the heavy beat from a neighbouring speaker dropped in.
"I said 'We're so fucking glamorous'," she yelled above the sudden volume, and she wasn't even sure if she was being sarcastic anymore.
But he smiled and laughed a bit and leaned towards her with impossibly fresh breath.
"You're hot," he laughed into her ear and she let him nuzzle her neck a bit, because he smelled good and she wasn't up for a fight.
She found herself kissing his lips, his impossibly smooth chin gliding across her cheek. When he tried to return it more forcefully she swatted him away.
