How Far We Go and How Fast

by Nora Decter

  “Maybe a little too interesting?” She laughs, but I could stand here studying them forever.

  Abruptly it gets loud. The crowd swells behind me, and I go flying forward. Ivy catches my arm and steadies me, but it comes again, and I dig my heels into the ground to keep from crashing into the band. The crowd isn’t just close—it’s closing in. I’m sandwiched between bodies on all sides, bodies that are jumping and shoving violently, like they’ve been waiting all night for the cue to go apeshit and the band’s just given it.

  The bottle of beer, barely drunk, is ripped out of my hand. My hat is yanked off and tossed into the air. I try to escape, but it’s impossible to do anything because staying on my feet and not getting flattened now requires all my attention. I feel hands on my back and a hard shove, and anger flares in me. I ram a shoulder into the nearest chest, but there’s no way to tell if I nailed the asshole because everyone is pummeling everyone else indifferently.

  That’s when it hits me. It’s not personal. In fact, I think it’s impersonal.

  I stop resisting the push and the shove, and in seconds I’m bashing into bodies with the best of them. Beer sprays into the air and lands on me like cool carbonated rain. Sweat drips down and soon I’m soaked, but so is everyone. My foot finds the fallen beer bottle. I lose my grip on the floor and go down, but right away strong hands grab me underneath the arms and yank me back up. I know without needing to be told that there’s a code to this, an expectation that if you’re knocked down, someone will pick you up again. A moment later a girl falls to her knees in front of me and I don’t hesitate, hauling her up and shoving her back into the roiling mob.

  In between jumps I catch flashes of Ivy. She’s standing on a speaker, looking out. Then she’s turning around and launching herself backward out over the crowd. Hands reach up and hold her, and she’s passed around over our heads. As she floats my way, she starts sinking fast. I try to get close enough to catch her but only manage to put my face in the path of her falling shoulder. Tears flood the eye that took the hit, but I can’t wipe them away because Ivy gets up, grabs my arms, and we jump up and down more savagely than before. They try to tear us apart, but Ivy’s hold on me is tight. Hair sticks to my face, but I don’t brush it away. My calves clench and cramp, but I carry on. I take an elbow to the head and feel my brain bang into the side of my skull, but still we jump.

  The crowd is an organism unto itself, and I couldn’t leave it now if I tried. And why would I want to? So I can go stand by the wall? I don’t want walls tonight. Tonight I’m in the thick of it. I let a smile unfurl on my face, close my eyes, and throw my weight around.

  “Thanks,” the front man mumbles into the microphone before lifting his guitar over his head. In the audience we fall still, look around, dazed, like we can’t remember what we were doing before we lost our collective shit. The last strands of feedback die out, and there’s some applause, but it seems beside the point. Hip-hop comes over the sound system and chatter rises. People move toward the bar. I’ve lost Ivy but spot her in the lineup for drinks. I wander around looking for my hat. My legs are shaky and I move slow, letting the sweat dry on my skin. I’m not alone—around me there are others picking up shoes and items of clothing that were wrenched off them in battle.

  I find my hat as Ivy comes back, all aglow. She hands me another beer. “I wasn’t expecting that,” she says. “These gallery shows are usually so tame.”

  “That was amazing,” I say.

  “You liked it? I wasn’t sure. Mosh pits are an acquired taste.”

  “So that was a mosh pit?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never been in a mosh pit before!” She shoves my shoulder in disbelief. “Jesus, Jolene. What have you been doing with your life?”

  I shrug. “Wasting it?”

  “Well,” she says, “not on my watch.” She starts toward the door. “Always leave the party while you’re still having fun. That’s a rule of mine.”

  “What about our drinks?” I ask as she tilts her head back and drains hers.

  “Bring it,” she says, and I follow her out onto the street, pulling my hat on even though it’s soggy from the mosh pit. Without a word we begin to run, hurtling away from the party, racing each other for old times’ sake. Beer foam overflows the bottle in my hand, so I throw it at a wall, where it shatters. We laugh so much it hurts.

  “Where are we going?” I huff a few minutes later when we slow to a giddy walk on a deserted street near the river.

  “Remember I said I’d show you my art?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s some up there.” She points, and I look up at the sky. The stars are dizzying. She laughs. “No. Over there.”

  I follow her gaze to the building next to us. Painted on the wall about twenty feet up, a sharp-beaked bird is frozen in midflight, its wings blurred around their edges to suggest a weightless hovering.

  “Oh,” I say.

  “I was into hummingbirds for a while,” she says, unable to conceal her pride. “I’m on to peacocks now. Still working on getting the lines right.”

  I’ve got my head craned back to take it in. “How did you get up there?”

  “Easy,” she says, pointing to a series of rusted ladders that climbs the side of the building, which looks to be abandoned. “It’s just a hop, skip and a jump up to the fire escape. Then it’s just your basic don’t-look-down situation. The long swimmer’s reach comes in handy.” She hooks her thumbs through the straps of her backpack and motions down the street. “Come on. I’ve got something in mind.”

  She produces a can of beer from her bag, and we pass it back and forth as we walk. The only sound apart from what we’re making is the ice on the river breaking up a block over, creaking like footsteps on old floorboards. We cross the street and go down another alley, where Ivy slows in front of a building. This one is definitely abandoned—the windows are bombed out, and scattershot graffiti decorates the exterior. We walk up to where the metal rungs of a ladder end in midair a few feet above our heads. Ivy hands me the beer, slips off her backpack and takes out a can of spray paint. She gives it a shake. “You coming?”

  I stand in panicked silence, but Ivy doesn’t press, just asks, “Can you whistle?”

  “What?”

  She pats me on the arm. “Just keep an eye out, hey?”

  I still don’t understand as she scrambles on top of the Dumpster and reaches for the lowest ladder rung, grabs hold and pulls herself up easily. Her muscles haven’t melted like mine. I watch her climbing up and up, but then my stomach pitches to the left and the rest of my organs go right, and I have to put out a hand to keep from falling. Luckily, the wall’s right there. I hold on to the brick of it and count sounds to calm myself. Ivy’s feet on the metal ladder, then the hiss of spray paint. A heart beating, mine maybe. The river groans, mutters to itself. I open my eyes but keep my hand on the wall. The nausea has gone, and a fury fills me instead. The mosh pit was one thing, but this is another. This is not what I signed up for. Not at all. Not even a little bit. I’m still fuming when I realize two dark figures have rounded the corner and are coming down the alley toward us.

  I try to whistle, but nothing comes out. Shit. I try again and this time it works. A clear note leaves my lips and cuts through the night. Above me the hissing stops as two men step out of the shadows and into the glow of a streetlight. It’s the boys from the band. “Hey, Ivy,” calls the guitarist. “What’s up?”

  She leans out, looks down. “Drew? That you?”

  They come to a halt in front of me, their arms full of gear. Drew is looking up, but the drummer watches me emerge from behind the Dumpster, where I’ve been cowering.

  “Hi,” he says, amused.

  “Hey,” I mumble as Ivy drops to the ground beside me. Together we back away and look up. A white bird floats on the wall two stories up where there wasn’t one before.

  “Swan?” asks Drew.

  “Albino peacock,” says Ivy. “I saw one at th
e zoo.” She elbows me—too hard. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Uh-huh,” I say, and try to tell her with my eyes that I want to go. But she’s in no rush.

  “Jo, this is Drew and Graham. Drew and Graham, this is Jo. You guys need a hand?”

  And then we’re continuing down the alley, around the corner and up the street to their rehearsal space, where Drew fumbles for his keys before letting us in. Graham holds the door so I can go in first, and in the elevator he stares at me, and not in the way guys stare when they think you’re pretty but in the way they stare when they think you’re going to drop their expensive musical shit and break it. I hoist the amp a little higher in my arms. Maybe my muscles haven’t completely melted yet. The elevator is too well lit and the walls are mirrors, and there’s nowhere to look that doesn’t make me more uncomfortable than I already am—and I am, and how. Ivy is explaining how we met, making it more than it actually was. Making me more than I actually am. I have to learn how to do that.

  “Jo and I used to be rivals in another life. She’s also in a band.”

  I shake my head. “I’m not in a band.”

  “So you’re a singer-songwriter then?” Graham says, and it’s clear that’s an insult.

  Douche, I think, but out loud I just say, “Gross” and feel a pang of relief when everyone laughs.

  The doors slide open and we go down a long hall to another door, where Drew can’t find the key but then does, and inside I put the amp down as super-extra gingerly as I can. When I straighten up, Graham’s watching again, but I’m relieved, because now we can leave. Except no. Drew is grabbing beers from a little fridge, and Ivy is saying, “Of course we want to drink on the roof—are you kidding?” And then we’re back in the elevator, going up to the roof. I hold my beer too tightly and the can crackles, and I keep opening my mouth to say I don’t do rooftops and no I’m not kidding, but every time I open it nothing comes out, so I take a drink of beer instead. By the time the elevator doors open, the can is empty.

  We’re not there yet though. Now it’s into the stairwell and up a flight to a maintenance room where pulleys and other elevator entrails hang out in the dark. In one corner a wooden ladder leads up to a trapdoor in the ceiling.

  Ivy goes first, pushing the door open and disappearing out onto the roof. Drew follows and then Graham. I hang back, looking up at the square of empty sky. There’s no way I can’t, and there’s no way I can. Graham’s face appears in the opening. “You coming?”

  I would give anything to be cool right now and follow him up that ladder, douche or no douche, but my head shakes of its own accord because my body doesn’t listen to anything I tell it anymore. I’m headed for the exit when there’s a thud behind me. “That’s cool. I’ll stay down here with you.”

  I turn around, and he’s settled on the floor near the base of the ladder. He nods at the space beside him and I sit, careful I’m not too close, not too far away.

  “My mom is super afraid of heights too,” he says, and I feel blessed that it could be that easy. I’m afraid of heights. That’s all.

  “Hey!” Ivy peers down through the hole in the ceiling. “Come on, you guys! The view up here is crazy.”

  “Jo and I are going to hang down here,” he says.

  “Oh,” says Ivy. She looks at me, an eyebrow raised, and I look away. I look at Graham. He hands me his beer, and I drink it. Usually people only call me Jo when they know me. But he doesn’t know me, not at all. Not even a little bit. And suddenly that’s appealing.

  He’s pulled out a joint and put it between his lips. He flicks a lighter alive and holds the flame to it until it’s burning. While I watch him inhale I plan out how I’ll decline when and if he offers, but then he holds it out and my hand reaches for it. Bad hand, I think, as the joint transfers between our fingers expertly. I put it between my lips, breathe in, and then I am warm when I didn’t even realize I was cold. Relaxed when I didn’t realize I was holding all kinds of parts of me tightly. “So what do you do?” he asks.

  “I walk a lot,” I say, breathing out smoke, and through the smoke I know I’ve said something strange, but I’m feeling beer brave, I’m feeling weed wise, and I don’t care. I don’t know if I’ve ever not cared this much in my life.

  “You don’t drive either?” he says, and I shake my head. “It’s a fucked-up place to live without a car.”

  “I don’t like cars.”

  “Same.” He smiles and passes the joint back to me, and again I plan on declining and again I accept it instead.

  “The thing about them is they go so far so fast. Too far and too fast. You can’t take things in.”

  He nods. “I like to move more slowly,” he says, stretching his legs out languidly in front of him. They are long, and thinner than mine by far. He looks up through the trapdoor to the sky and I follow.

  “But you’re a drummer,” I say. “You’re like, speedy and…” I lose what I was trying to say, cast around for the right words. “Like, always in motion.”

  “But I’m also staying still. Think about it—I move, but I don’t go anywhere.” He smiles. “Anyway, I try not to be one of those drummers that’s always tapping things and keeping time,” he says and demonstrates, beating his knee, the ground, my arm.

  I find that curious. Not his hand on my arm. Well, that, but the other thing too. “Do you though? Keep time?”

  “Yeah, I do. I hope I do. I try to keep it to myself though. Does that make sense?”

  “It does,” I say, and he looks at me, and just like that, I feel too far gone. Too in deep. I sit on my hands to keep them from doing anything else I haven’t sanctioned, and Ivy’s head appears in the trapdoor again.

  “You kids behaving?” she says, and when we assure her we are, she disappears, and then Graham asks me what I listen to. Here is something I know—when talking to boys about music, prepare to be talked at. But it’s not like that now. I don’t know why I can talk to him, but I can. I do. I wonder if I could learn to keep time too.

  FOURTEEN

  Pavement streams by beneath my feet. There’s nothing I love more than this, motoring along with my head full of music, the beat of my boots on the ground the only sound that infiltrates the private world I’ve encased myself in. At first I take Main, but I hang a left on Selkirk when I spot thuggish outlines up ahead. At Salter I cut north again. That’s when I see him, coming toward me on the far side of the street. The Viking. I swear it’s not the beers talking. It really is him—there’s no mistaking that silhouette. He’s walking alone, his full-length parka flapping open in the wind, the horned helmet perched as ever atop his head.

  I smile at him, though I doubt he can see me, seeing as I’m a shadow in the night. Jolene, queen of the prairie sky.

  I’m not sure exactly when I notice I can’t walk in a straight line, but it’s true. My legs seem determined to zig and zag down the sidewalk. And then I’m home! I must have made amazing time. I should always be drunk when I travel on foot.

  I only realize after the fact that I’ve slammed the door behind me and am making way too much noise as I try to kick my boots off. When I bend down to loosen the laces, the room spins, and I reach for the wall, but whoa, is it ever not where I expect it to be.

  No one is passed out on the floor or the couch or sitting half-awake, tipped forward at the kitchen table, and the basement is even more empty than last time I checked. I pick up the guitar and sit down on the unmade bed. There are faint rectangular outlines on the walls where the posters were.

  I play the song that arrived in my head on the walk home. My fingers aren’t as drunk as my feet, and they know all the right moves. It sounds like it might fall apart at any moment and almost does but never quite completely. I almost wish someone were around to hear how well I can play right now. I’ve never wanted that before.

  FIFTEEN

  In the morning Maggie wakes me up. I am lying on the bare mattress in the basement. She hands me a piece of mail and leaves. We do not speak,
and I like it that way.

  I stare at the envelope for a long time. I curl up around it, staring. Something settles over my chest and puts down roots. I try to get up, try to shake it off, but this thing won’t let me.

  Maggie’s left the door open, and Howl slips down the stairs, puts her nose in my face.

  Open it, she says.

  I don’t want to.

  But why?

  Because I don’t want to.

  We go back and forth about it for a while before I roll over and test myself on a vertical plane. I stuff the envelope underneath the mattress, because whatever’s inside it, now is not the time, and I hobble upstairs. Mercifully, no one seems to be home. I wash my face and brush my hair, then dig through my hamper, smelling T-shirts. No luck—they all stink like work. I consider borrowing something from Maggie’s closet, but I’m not really the type to wear clothing that involves rhinestones. Instead I go back to the basement and root around in Matt’s stuff until I find a box of clothes and pull out a suitable T-shirt. I smell it too, but there’s nothing of him left on it.

  The coffee maker sighs, watery, and I remember last night. With a fresh morning mind, I’m burning with embarrassment for every dumb thing I said. Other people have the privilege of drinking their faces off and forgetting all the stupid shit they get up to, but not me, oh no. I can hear myself asking Drew who he thought would win in a fight, James Brown or Joey Ramone. The Boss or the King? I remember getting angry, inexplicably, when Graham said he doesn’t really get the blues and then writing down a list of artists and telling him to do his homework. Not to mention letting Ivy dance me around like we were stupid little good-time girls.

  Oh jeez, the mosh pit. I even wish I could take back the mosh pit. Okay, so maybe that was kind of fun, but my leg muscles have been destroyed, and I probably looked terrible and sweaty, and who do I even think I am, carrying on like that? Maggie? I should know better. I’m supposed to be different. I’m not supposed to be like them.