Pretty Things

Another unnamed narrator introduces a Los Angeles nightclub full of young, rich, and attractive people, and they post pictures of themselves on social media—some of the nightclub attendees are influencers—boasting about all the “pretty things” in the world they get to have.

A woman intently watches Alexi Petrov, the son of a Russian potash oligarch. He does cocaine and puts his hand up the skirt of the waitress, who brings his party another $50,000 bottle of champagne. The woman dances to Petrov and falls in his lap, freeing the waitress from Petrov. The woman is not the most attractive person in the club, but she has good style, and her ambiguous ethnicity captivates people.

The woman flirts with Petrov. While he is distracted by a basketball star, she puts something in his drink. The woman and Petrov leave the club, and she drives his Bugatti to his mansion in the Hollywood Hills. She drops him on his bed, and he throws up. With Petrov passed out, the woman photographs his watches, paintings, furniture, and art objects. Many of the items appeared on his social media.

At around three o’ clock in the morning, she takes a cab to Echo Park and crawls into bed with a man, Lachlan. She tells him that she got inside Alexi’s home, and Lachlan praises her, then they kiss. Alexi will not know what happened. He will have no idea who the woman is, but the narrator knows the woman. The narrator is the woman—she is Nina.

Nina is a criminal, and she picks her targets through social media. She discovered Alexi Petrov’s Instagram and where he shopped, ate, and partied. She also learned about his sexual predation, racism, and massive ego. As his posts were geotagged and hashtagged, it was simple for her to track him. While Petrov is in Los Cabos, Lachlan will drive to his mansion in a van marked as a fake furniture restoration and art storage service and take the things that Nina singled out.

Whether it is Petrov or someone else, it is not hard for Nina to get to the people whom she follows online. The young and the affluent are not careful, and, as an attractive woman, people do not ask Nina many questions. Nina has some tips about her criminal activity: Do not take too much, only steal from the rich, do not steal art or jewels (too easy to trace), wait six months before hawking brand items, and keep an eye out for cash and antiques.

As Nina has a degree in art history, she has a keen eye for antiques. Efram, an antique dealer from Israel, will come to a storage locker and help Nina and Lachlan move the things to a free port in Switzerland. Between the two of them, they will make $145,000. Alexi will not report the theft—he does not want to endure the tedious process. Instead, he can buy new things.

Nina lives in Echo Park with her mom, Lily. Her neighbors grow weed and write poetry and political tracts. Nina tells them that she is an antique dealer, and, a month after the Alexi grift, she gives Lisa, a neighbor, a four-figure check for her kids. Lisa asks about Nina’s mom, who left for a computerized tomography (CT) scan in a taxi early in the morning. Nina says that things are looking hopeful and then Lachlan arrives.

Lachlan grew up in Ireland. His family was big, Catholic, and poor. He came to the United States and dreamed of becoming an actor. After a series of minor roles, he used his acting talents to become a con man. Lachlan is an adequate grifting partner but a lackluster boyfriend. After a job, he tends to disappear and not communicate with Nina. Presently, she complains to Lachlan that Efram still has to give them $47,000 from the Petrov heist. Lachlan reminds Nina that Efram has failed to pay before.

Nina leaves Lachlan to pick up her mom at the clinic. Lily had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that costs a lot of money to combat. At the clinic, Lily tells Nina that the cancer is back, and the new treatment, radioimmunotherapy, will bring the total amount spent on her cancer battle into the millions. To get the needed money, Nina reviews Instagram accounts in her head and contemplates new grifts.

Back home, Lachlan tells Nina that the cops were around. Lachlan hid, and Lisa pretended not to know her. Nina’s mom wants to know what she did. Lily knows about conning. She met Lachlan while working at a poker game before she became sick, before they could work together. Nina tells her mom that she has done nothing wrong, but Lily advises her to leave. Lily knows about leaving, too. Growing up, they moved around to avoid arrest. Lily reminds Nina that she cannot help her if she is in jail.

Nina has a confession: Like her mom, she is a grifter. But Nina was not supposed to be a scammer. After Lily found her reading Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice (1813) when she was little, Lily thought her daughter had a future beyond conning. For a while, Nina thought that she could be something different—she believed her mom, but then she realized that society was not fair.

Born Lilla Russo, Lily Ross came from an Italian family with links to the Mafia. She had a baby (Nina) with a Columbian poker player. Nina’s dad was abusive, and her mom often took his punches to spare Nina. After he managed to throw Nina against a wall, causing her to black out, Lily left him. She promised Nina that she would not let anyone harm her. When a boy stole Nina’s bike, Lily confronted him. When girls made fun of Nina’s weight, Lily screamed at their parents.

Lily was voluptuous and seductive. If she won a lot of money at cards or conned a rich man, Nina and she lived like royalty. Lily normalized grifting and gave Nina advice: Do not act carelessly and always think three steps ahead.

Near the end of her freshman year in high school, Lily came into Nina’s bedroom—she was reading Dickens’s Great Expectations—and told Nina that they were moving to Lake Tahoe so that she could attend a prep school that was giving her financial aid. The prep school would not turn Nina into a ballerina or the first woman president. She would go to college and get a degree that did not lead to high-paying jobs, but instead a six-figure student-loan debt.

Back in the present, Lachlan seconds Lily’s advice: They should leave. Efram is gone. Rumor has it that the police nabbed him. Maybe he ratted on them. Either way, they should find a new place to grift for a few months. Nina believes that her absence means more medical expenses. Lachlan suggests going to Tahoe, and Nina thinks of grifting Vanessa Liebling.

The Lieblings are from old money and made their riches from real estate. Over the past four years, Vanessa has become a social media star, documenting her posh lifestyle—a Tribeca loft, a Maltipoo named Mr. Buggles, fashion shows, and a handsome boyfriend—on Instagram using the handle V-Life.

Last February, V-Life changed. Vanessa posted a picture of her dying dad’s hand. Her outfits turned black, and she started sharing bland quotes. She also announced that she was moving back to Lake Tahoe and her family’s historic estate, Stonehaven. She was renting out the cottage to tenants.

In bed, Lachlan and Nina look at pictures of Stonehaven. They see a photo of a bed, and Nina says that it is the bed in which she first had sex. Memories upset Nina, and she tells Lachlan that she knew the Lieblings and was friends with their son. Nina assures Lachlan that Vanessa will not recognize her, but Lachlan does not understand why a rich woman would rent out a cottage. Nina thinks that Vanessa is lonely and tells Lachlan the goal of the con: to break into the safe inside Stonehaven that has $1 million in cash.

For the con, Nina becomes Ashley Smith, a yoga instructor, and Lachlan changes into Michael O’Brien, an English professor at a junior college and an aspiring writer. Their identities match Vanessa’s Instagram, where she poses with classic texts like Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and posts yogi quotes. To authenticate the fake personas, Nina and Lachlan make a Facebook page and a professional website for Ashley; for Michael, a LinkedIn bio and personal website.

By the time they arrive at Stonehaven, it is dark. Nina spots the unkept tennis court and shuttered butlers’ cabins and maids’ quarters. The house itself is three stories with 42 rooms. Built during the early 1900s, it’s been with the family for five generations. Nina’s knee shakes, and Lachlan tells her to get a grip. Nina knows that a person cannot let their emotions interfere with a con.

Nina goes back 13 years to when she arrived in Lake Tahoe as a teenager. It is summer: While her mom works in Nevada, waiting on poker players in revealing clothes, Nina reads books on the school’s reading listing: Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat (1935), and Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying (1993).

The year at the prestigious, outdoors-oriented school, North Lake Academy, starts, and Nina does not fit in. She does not play sports or wear Patagonia, and years of fast food and reading have made her body big. In first period, a girl, Hilary, says that Nina has to meet the other new student, Benjamin Liebling. He does not like sports and spends lunchtime in the library drawing in a notebook. Nina goes to the library to read.

One day in January, Nina runs into Benjamin on the bus into town. Benjamin tells Nina to call him Benny. After a frank conversation, they go to a cafe, where Benny pays for her coffee with a $100 bill—he stole it from his dad’s safe—and says he was on the bus because his mom is struggling with her mental health and he does not want his parents to send the driver.

The friendship blossoms. Nina and Benny meet at the bus shelter, and Benny details his mom’s behavior: screaming at valets, racking up speeding tickets, spending bonanzas, and staying in bed for weeks after his dad yells at her.

Benny was kicked out of his old school for giving Ritalin to the other students. His parents put him on the drug because he fell asleep during class. They also put him on antidepressants because he preferred to be in his room alone. Benny thinks that his parents want him to be like his social big sister Vanessa. Nina identifies with Benny, so she quips that she must have a mental health condition, too. She vents about her mom to Benny. She feels like her mom is putting too much pressure on her to compensate for her failings. Benny comforts her with something like a hug.

On a cold day in March, they go to Benny’s house, and the mazelike castle amazes Nina. Benny calls it a “shit heap” and tells her that his great-great-grandpa refused to pay the architect and builders because he was an “asshole.” After eating cheesecake, they go to the caretaker’s cottage and get stoned. Now, two or three times a week, Benny and Nina take the bus to his house, get high, and talk about teachers, the other students, UFOs, and corpses at the bottom of Lake Tahoe.

One time, Benny’s mom interrupts. She’s striking and informs Benny that his dad is coming back, so there will be a family dinner tonight. After she leaves, Benny tells Nina that the only reason why his mom made his dad come back is to assert her agency.

Returning home, Nina hugs her mom. She is grateful that she does not have Benny’s parents, and she tells her mom that her English teacher thinks she should apply to a Stanford University summer program.

Nina becomes more comfortable at Stonehaven, but she sees Benny’s mom wandering through the vacant rooms with a vase in each hand. She compares his mom to a ghost. Benny says that his mom is in a redecorating phase.

During spring break, Nina and her mom run into Benny and his older sister, Vanessa, at the coffee and bagel place. Nina feels insecure in the presence of Vanessa. She is certain that Vanessa is judging her unfavorably. Benny introduces himself to Lily and then pays for his and Vanessa’s coffee with another $100 bill. Vanessa scolds him for stealing money from the safe, but Benny says that there’s $1 million in the safe; he will not notice. Benny explains that his dad has the money for an emergency—in case they suddenly have to go.

Benny goes to Paris for the rest of spring break and returns with baguettes for Nina. Before Paris, his mom raided his room and found weed. His parents blamed Nina. Now, they have to hang out covertly in the caretaker’s cottage and drink. They kiss, have sex, and declare their love for each other, but they do not act like a normal boyfriend or girlfriend—no hand holding, no lovey-dovey dates. Lily realizes that Nina is sexually active and tells her that sex can be about love, but it can also be a tool to get something.

With Benny’s mom in San Francisco for medical reasons, his dad comes home to look after him. After Benny tells Nina that he has to spend his summer at a reform camp in the Italian Alps, they have sex, and Benny’s dad, William Liebling IV, storms in and yanks Nina off his son and orders her to leave and never come back. Nina resists: He cannot tell her what to do—she and his son are in love. His dad calls her a “nobody” and threatens to call the cops. He orders Benny to come to his study in five minutes. After his dad leaves, Benny apologizes but does not give her a goodbye hug or kiss.

Hilary asks about Nina’s boyfriend, and Nina says that they broke up. Lily then says that they have to leave. Nina realizes that they are fleeing because of Benny and cries. Lily comforts her and tells her they can only trust each other. Now in Las Vegas, Lily goes to jail for credit card fraud and identity theft. Nina writes letters to Benny, but he tells her to stop. Years later, Nina sees Hilary in New York and learns that doctors diagnosed Benny with schizophrenia. At Princeton, he attacked a girl and ran around naked.

Returning to the present, Nina wonders if Vanessa can sense the chaos that is about to happen. Nina doubts it. Vanessa probably has no idea that a storm—a forceful hurricane—has entered her life.