Everything in the suite was white.

There was a nearly translucent carpet, white sculpture, furniture, and floor-to-ceiling windows that took up the entire far wall. The room was vast and ethereal. I felt removed from myself in a way that I’d read about in stories of the afterlife.

The bodyguard who’d let me in went out the same way. I smelt jasmine around me. A mirror a few dozen feet to the right showed me in the hotel penthouse, alone and dressed in a black suit, the only black thing in a milk-white dream. I cleared my throat and looked around but no one else appeared. Ten minutes went by. Feeling annoyed and uncomfortable, I walked over to a sitting area and plopped down on a couch. I tried to look around the corners of the room that must have lead into more rooms, and then glanced out the windows. I thought about leaving.

The rich—especially the Black rich, who are an anomaly—annoyed the shit out of me. Their cashmere arrogance—all subtle and beautiful, but fused with a heavy ego—inspired my broke-man’s pride. I had an allegiance with all the people like me, the broke and struggling, and I was happy not to be tempted by the height of a room like this one. But my desires would always slip in and fuck with my convictions: I had the notion to escape that room but I also had the need to lie down in it, to sleep there and never leave.

I got up and went to the windows along the wall. Past the edge of a stratus cloud I could see the lake, perfectly blue, supple. Down below was the hard earth; cars moving like lethargic insects on the Magnificent Mile. I looked through the clouds again.

“That’s my favorite part, too.”

The voice shook me. It was smooth, metallic and warm. I turned around and saw a woman I recognized from pictures in magazines and on television. She wore a short dress that was not too different a color than the sky outside and very high-heeled white shoes that, on their own, even without the legs they advertised, would have seemed sexual.

Her dress was exquisite enough that even I could see it was made from expensive material. If you could turn July into cloth then that’s what Kayla Forrest was wearing.

She was a soft bronze and her eyes were among the darkest I had ever seen. There was a heaviness to her face that gave it a little age, and in various ways all her features seemed extreme. Her jaw, her eyes, her mouth, everything was large and lustrous as if drawn abstractly by an artist. On someone who didn’t look as good as she did that would have been a bad quality. But on Kayla, whose exaggerated features heightened the appeal of them, the largeness of her eyes and the excessive nature of her lips and mouth made her sensual. I glanced at her lips and saw that they were in a natural pout. They gave her expression a sense of distaste and I guessed that even when she smiled she would seem unhappy, the sort of sadness that could turn seductive, like pain made into pleasure.

“It’s an expensive view,” I said, speaking of the outside but keeping my eyes on her.

She ignored the compliment and glanced out the window. I noticed for the first time that she was carrying a drink. Her glass was filled halfway with a blue liquid. When she was in front of me I could see the full maturity of her face; the skin was creamy and smooth but it held character you don’t see on women under thirty. Kayla Forrest was thirty-seven, making her eight years older than me and five years older than her husband. I looked at her hair and it was thick and shoulder length and so dark that a literary word about the blackest of black things that I thought I’d forgotten flew into my mind.

The rich woman’s hand was suspended in front of me. I took it and we shook. She smiled genuinely.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” she said. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Her voice was dark and wet; if it were put into a glass parts of it would stick to the sides.

“Kayla Forrest,” she said, still shaking.

“Ellison. Ellison Parker.”

“You’re a journalist?”

“Yes. A writer. I write fiction as well.”

She smiled at me again. It should have been a kind, generic smile, but again it was sincere. “That sounds exciting.”

I didn’t know how to handle her warmth. I felt like a kid blushing under the interest of my relatives. “I do my reporting mainly for a hip-hop culture magazine called Swish. It’s based in New York but I’m based here. We cover singers and rappers but we also cover athletes. I just finished a piece on a kid from the city who may be goin’ pro next year. I do some freelance for other magazines too, whatever pays the bills.” I’m not a big talker so I sounded like I was rambling.

I looked back out the window. I nodded toward a slope of descending towers. “Views like this are hard to come by.”

“No, they’re not.” She said this too in a warm voice. “Anyone could have this view.”

“Could they?”

“Of course.” She looked directly at me. “All that’s needed is grace, and good manners.”

“You’re an optimist,” I said.

“Are you a cynic?”

“Every time the rent’s due.”

That made her laugh. She was one of the few women I’d met who was attractive on different levels and you felt those levels before you had time to get to know what they were.

Kayla placed a hand on my arm. She was still smiling when she said: “Let’s sit down.”

I didn’t want to move. We’d been standing close together at the window and it was serene there, with the light from outside right next to her and us seeming like we were standing in the sky.

We went to the white couch. She offered me a drink but I asked for water; it was just past noon.

She disappeared to what must have been a wet-bar hidden behind a partition and came back with a cold bottle of spring water. I was sitting toward the center of the couch and she sat on the end. Huge pillows rested like stars along the space between us. Kayla sipped her drink. She crossed her long legs and leaned back with her elbow against the couch and her head lying against her hand. It was an incredibly casual pose; it could mean that she was at ease with me, or that she was assessing me.

“It must be interesting for you.”

My expression said I didn’t know what she meant.

“Your job. Interviewing all those entertainers. Rich and famous people. It must be interesting to always see that.”

“You mean, because my life is so different.”

She laughed. I felt for a second that she was laughing at me. “I guess it could be irritating too. To be so close, and so far away.”

“This is America,” I said, trying to sound dismissive. “The success of one man feeds the aspirations of another.”

She stopped trying to read me and went back to sipping her drink. After a moment she looked down nervously into it.

“I need your advice.”

“I’m listening,” I said patiently.

“Something was sent to me. A disc.”

Kayla breathed deeply. Her eyes closed and I watched the air blow past her thick lips. “I don’t know why anyone would send me something like that. I don’t know where they’d get it.”

She looked as if she might cry. I didn’t know how I’d play that if it happened.

“Maybe I should see it first,” I told her. “Before we go on.”

She looked at me with dark, searching eyes. “Do you think that’s necessary?”

“You want my advice, right? Let me see what we’re talking about.”

She was silent. I looked over the back of the couch; saw the sky turn indigo against the windows. Kayla sat back, some form of resolve coming across her face, and picked a piece of lint from the cloth of her skirt.

“It’s in the guest bedroom,” she said lazily. “In the drawer below the television. I didn’t want it in my room.”

I followed the direction she indicated and went down a short hall, found two doors, one closed and one not, and went in the open door. It was a guest room nearly as large as my apartment with a plasma television mounted against the wall. I found the disc inside, put it in the DVD player and sat down on the edge of a chair. I glanced out the windows and saw the tops of several smaller buildings receding into the gray expanse of city. Then I heard a sound come from the television. I turned, and saw something that will haunt me for the rest of my days.