Welcome to the Slipstream

by Natalka Burian

  “Nice,” I said, a little envious, wondering what it would be like to have a friend who would throw a party for you.

  “No, I mean, do you want to come?”

  I knew that all I could handle was this small sliver of a friendship, this outer edge, all weird gifts and juvenile secret hiding places. Thinking about Alex’s smooth, normal, real life—away from the Silver Saddle—made me fully aware of the sickening jagged edges of my own. It was like I caved in on myself. I knew if I opened my mouth to talk, I would probably, accidentally, say something rude. So I bit the inside of my cheeks and waited for Alex to say something else.

  “Van? Hello?”

  “Yeah,” I managed, and cleared my throat.

  “Yeah, you can come?”

  “No, I mean, I don’t know,” I said, and dropped my books. Alex bent down to pick them up. I stood over him and looked at the curl of his back beneath a pale blue shirt. I wondered what it would feel like to touch the place where his spine cut across the fabric plane. He stood up and I quickly looked to the side.

  “Well, if you want to come, I can give you a ride.”

  I nodded and took my books, careful not to touch his hands.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m sure. I’ll meet you outside when I’m done,” I said as I walked backward into the Bill Pickett Room. I stood in the hallway a little longer than I should have, watching Alex shuffle off.

  Chapter Seven

  I was so nervous about the audition that I could barely hear Erica, let alone understand the chemistry problem she was breaking down in front of me. Eventually, she just sighed and circled a couple of proofs in my calculus book—proofs that I could have done in my sleep—and then opened her own textbook. I moved through the problems, getting that satisfied clicking feeling after solving each one. It felt good: balancing.

  I texted Alex to meet me outside and tried not to think about Mom’s dinner plans. You’ll make it back, I told myself. Maybe they’ll hate you and kick you out after five minutes.

  When Alex pulled up to the front door, I was sweating.

  “Nervous?”

  I tried to give Alex a look like, obviously, but could barely scrape it together around my humming circulatory system.

  “Just tell me if you’re going to throw up so I can pull over,” he said, smiling.

  “I’m not going to throw up!”

  Alex pulled into the parking lot of a squat, single-story brick building lit with an oversized rectangular sign that spelled RED’S.

  “This is where they practice?” I asked.

  “It’s Carol’s dad’s place,” Alex said with a shrug. “So it’s free.”

  “Who’s Carol?”

  “You’ll see.” He held the door and I stumbled into the empty club. It smelled musty, but it actually looked cleaner than the Bill Pickett Room. I saw Joanna immediately—she was sitting on some kind of case with her head in her hands. She didn’t see us.

  “Uh-oh,” Alex said. He strode ahead of me while I lagged, just staring. There was no stage, like I thought there would be—only an irregular section of floor cordoned off with blue painter’s tape. A drum set—with a girl behind it—and a mélange of equipment I’d never seen littered the space like pieces of an abandoned board game. There, in the middle, was a glossy, mahogany-colored electric guitar. I glanced at Alex talking quietly to Joanna. I wondered if they’d notice if I picked it up. I just wanted to see what it would feel like to hold. I’d only ever played Ida’s old acoustic.

  “Don’t touch that,” the girl behind the drums snapped.

  “What?”

  “Jesus,” she muttered and looked up at Red’s dusty ceiling. “Is that her?” She shouted over at the half-collapsed Joanna. “Jo-an-na,” she repeated, more loudly this time. “What is that?” She tossed her head in my direction. She was as full and plump as Joanna was wiry. She had a platinum blond pixie haircut, and her enormous boobs spilled so far out of her scoop-necked T-shirt, it was like she was shooing me away with them.

  “I’m Van,” I said.

  “And I don’t give a shit. Don’t touch anything.”

  “Carol, calm down,” Joanna said.

  “Oh, I’m plenty calm,” Carol said, glaring at everything in her line of vision. “Fucking Marcos,” she muttered to herself. “This is the best we can do?”

  “Who’s Marcos?”

  “Who was Marcos. And it’s none of your damn business,” she said. When I didn’t say anything, she kept talking—maybe to herself, maybe to Marcos, definitely not to me.

  “Fucking Marcos. The douchelord had to waltz in here and make a scene.”

  Alex pulled Joanna up and they shuffled over to the drum set.

  “Carol, did you meet Van?”

  “Yes, I did.” Carol looked down at me with disappointment.

  “Van’s great! She’s been playing forever,” Alex said.

  I was confused by Alex’s endorsement—he’d never heard me play. I cleared my throat. “Who’s Marcos?”

  “Fucking Marcos was our guitarist. Was Joanna’s boyfriend, too—brilliant choice, by the way, Joanna. Fucking Marcos just showed up—uninvited—but we’re over it now, right?”

  Joanna gave a subdued nod.

  “And I guess now fucking you,” she pointed an accusing drumstick at me, “whoever you are—is going to be the new Marcos. Just don’t fuck this one, J.”

  “Jesus, Carol,” Alex said, kind of getting between us.

  Joanna smiled and tamped down a giggle. I nearly laughed, too. Suddenly, I felt significantly less nervous. My palms tingled and sweated at the same time.

  “Calm down, Princess,” Carol said to Alex. “Let’s give this a shot.”

  “So, can I touch this now?” I asked, pointing to the guitar.

  “Well I guess you have to now, since you didn’t bring your own. Which is highly irregular, I hope you realize. Better not be bad luck.” Carol tapped one of the cymbals.

  “It’s not bad luck,” Joanna said. “Let’s walk Van through the first three songs in the set. We’re not doing more than that right now.”

  “This is great!” Alex beamed at the three of us like the photographer at a baptism. “This is going to be legendary.”

  “Oh Jesus, get him out of here,” Carol muttered to Joanna, before she snapped back to me. “Ready? I’m only going to tell you this once.”

  When I slung Marcos’s guitar across my body and felt the dense weight of it, I knew I was going to like it. I waited for Joanna to adjust the amp and then slid my fingers across the frets, running through the chords Carol barked out at me. If playing my acoustic guitar was like walking, this was like skating. It was so much easier and looser. It was like I’d been given superpowers—I was faster, spinning out into a glossy wildness. Even when I misheard Carol, the wrong chords I played still sounded right.

  Just the standing imbued me with unfamiliar power. I’d only ever played guitar sitting down, practicing in my room. Playing standing up made me feel like a lightning rod, and the chords that spilled out of the speakers and across the room just ran with heat.

  The songs were easy—the hardest one was a basic one-four-five chord progression, and the strumming patterns were nearly all the same. I fumbled a little at first, but the songs were basic and repetitive. I got the hang of the first one after about ten minutes, and the others were so similar, they took even less time to get. We played through them all so quickly, and then we played through them again. I had no idea what time it was or even where I was, only that I was following these girls and it felt amazing.

  Carol’s drumming was bored, but angry. It dripped through every measure with a balance of contempt and laziness. I followed it, skating over the structure. I’d never played with anyone before—not even Ida. In our lessons, we’d always passed her guitar back and forth. She’d show me something and I’d copy it. I never imagined what it would feel like to play with someone else. I could feel Carol’s eyes on me, on
the slump in my back as I worked through the songs.

  At first, when Joanna started to sing, I wasn’t sure what was happening. Her voice was feral and rangy: powerful and dark. It sounded lonely, too, like one of those craggy, rocky islands in the middle of the sea where no one can go—waves crashing and salt stinging into stone. I followed her voice, too. It was like following a monster. I chased it, ran after it, over Carol’s near-sleazy drumbeat. Joanna was good. I almost couldn’t breathe, she was so good. Her bass playing was less good, but you almost didn’t notice it beneath the wild stretch of her voice.

  As I ran after her, I understood something else—I was really good, too.

  I turned my back to Joanna and inched over to Carol—to that driving, sultry sound—and leaned into it. I closed my eyes, feeling all of the different waves come together. When I opened my eyes, I saw that Carol was still snarling, but not as much as before. Joanna thrashed her slimness against the sound we made, but I stood mostly still, wishing I could unlock my body like that.

  I looked out into the empty club, and saw Alex on my right, beaming. It felt amazing; this is what being high must be like, I thought. And then I thought that maybe, maybe in the tiniest, most incremental of ways, I understood what my addict-dad had sought. What he had found.

  When it was over, I realized I was even sweatier than before, but it was a good sweaty. Joanna looked as happy as I felt, and even Carol’s leer seemed more festive than pissed.

  “Not bad, Van,” Joanna said to me.

  “Not bad? That was amazing!” Alex shouted.

  “Quiet, you,” Carol shouted back.

  “What do you think?” Joanna asked Carol. “Is she in?”

  “I guess she’ll do.”

  “That was really surprising,” Joanna said, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand.

  “Do you think she can play that party with us?” Carol asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” Joanna said, lifting her shoulders.

  “What party?” I asked.

  “Alex’s birthday. Next Friday.” Joanna grinned out at Alex, and he returned the full wattage of her smile.

  “Sure,” I said, to all of them.

  “You hear that? She says sure.” Carol drummed a couple of measures and then threw her sticks to the floor. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. “I’m starving.”

  My guts lurched as I remembered my own dinner plans.

  Chapter Eight

  I was over an hour late. I expected Mom to be upset—maybe even to make a scene. But, when I walked through the door of our penthouse suite, Ida stood at the counter, calmly trimming a bouquet of multicolored roses down with a pair of nail scissors. She looked at me over the row of blossoms and nodded her head toward the sofa, where Mom and the mystery guest sat, giggling.

  The guest was female, pretty. Maybe Mom’s age, but probably a little younger. She and Mom laughed softly, their heads close. The woman’s eyes were wide and dark, lovely beneath pale, coppery eyebrows. Her metallic-red hair was cut in a bob, and the formal black dress she wore was nicer than anything I owned. When she stood up, I realized how tall she was. She walked over to me, and Mom followed, scurrying behind her. I felt a stab of envy at her coolness, at her ability to make Mom giggle.

  “You must be Van,” the woman said. “I’ve heard wonderful things about you.” She hugged me, hard, pulling me from where I stood almost three feet away with her long arms. I imagined being squeezed tight by an elephant at the zoo, its unwelcome trunk grasping my body in a hot, musky trap. It was her perfume, too, a dark tangy fragrance, that gave me that suffocating feeling. I froze, not sure if I should apologize for my lack of punctuality. It seemed a better bet not to bring it up—whoever this woman was, she sure made Mom cheerful. I wasn’t about to meddle with that.

  “What a lovely young lady you are,” she said as she released me a little.

  I turned my face away from her perfumed neck to take a breath of semi-fresh air.

  “Van, this is the friend from Cleveland I told you about, Marine,” Mom said.

  Marine? Cleveland? I thought. What?

  “You know, I’ve been working with your mother for some time,” Marine began. “Remotely, of course. But she has such wonderful, vital energy, I couldn’t resist coming for a visit to meet her in person.”

  Mom beamed at Marine, and then I realized who she was. The astrotherapist. I unthreaded myself from Marine’s arms by ducking a little and stepping back.

  “Oh sure, nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m just going to wash my hands.” I waved and retreated to the bathroom. Even when I closed the door, I could smell Marine’s perfume.

  Mom had ordered a special dinner—roasted chicken—and by the time I’d collected myself, she, Ida, and Marine were seated around the bird’s carcass in the middle of the table. A bottle of wine stood at Marine’s left. She lifted it and filled her glass, and Mom’s, which was really, really not a good idea. I looked at Ida.

  “Have a seat, honey,” Ida said, tapping the chair beside her. “Marine was just telling me that she’s from France.”

  “Oh really?” I said. I tried not to stare as Mom drank from her glass.

  “I was born there, but I’ve lived here a very long time,” Marine said.

  Mom served herself from the bowl of potatoes on the room-service cart. Marine looked from Mom to me and reached across the table to grab my hand.

  “You know, Van,” she said, “I sense that you and your mother have a similar, powerful energy.” Panic prickled at the back of my throat, the way it did whenever anyone compared me to Mom. Maybe that similar, powerful energy was exactly what I’d felt playing at Red’s.

  “Don’t they, though?” Ida said, taking my other hand and turning it over in her own.

  Marine nodded, her hair glinting under the track lighting.

  “I would love it if we could use this opportunity to discuss anything bothering you. Perhaps your plans for the future.” She gave Mom a quick but serious look. “I’d love to be able to help you, Van,” Marine said. “I know Mercury is in retrograde right now and it’s unwise to begin anything significant, but I feel I must offer.”

  I had no idea how to answer, but Ida quickly cut in. “That’s a very good point, honey. You don’t mess with Mercury in retrograde.”

  Mom gave Ida a look like a fly swatter. Mom was already protecting this woman. Already it was going to be something very difficult to undo.

  “Um, no, nothing’s really bothering me. At the moment,” I told Marine, trying—and failing—to look into her eyes as I said it.

  Marine took a deep breath, like she was inhaling the smell of the dinner.

  “Of course, I respect that,” she said. “But know that I’m here if you need me.”

  “That’s so kind, Marine,” Mom said. She smiled into Marine’s face, one of her best smiles.

  I went to bed early—Ida and I both did—to give Marine and Mom a chance to talk or astrotherapize or whatever. The next morning, though, it was clear Marine had not left. Her cheetah print purse still hung on the coat rack, and an unfamiliar cell phone was out on the counter, beeping erratically, advertising its languishing battery. The door to Mom’s room was closed. Great, I thought. Mom’s a lesbian now. Just when you think you understand all of the variables, you realize you know nothing at all.

  I felt queasy, thinking about Mom with someone new. It was different when she got with William. We needed him, and he loved Mom. Also, there was something harmless about him. He didn’t get in the way of what Mom and I were to each other. This woman, though. Mom already seemed too happy with her. Much happier than she’d been with William.

  Ida was already waiting for me in the living room, along with a freshly ordered breakfast. “Well, how did it go?” she asked.

  “How did what go?”

  “Band practice,” she stage-whispered.

  I grinned and uncovered a plate of eggs and bacon. “It was great,” I told her. I felt like I could have
started crying, that’s how good it felt to remember playing with Carol and Joanna.

  “Ah, honey, I’m glad,” she said.

  Marine’s phone beeped.

  “Meanwhile,” Ida said, giving the phone a grimace.

  “Yeah, meanwhile is right. How long is she staying? Did she say? Before I came home?”

  “Yes, about that—you owe me, young lady. I covered for your ass and I covered good.”

  “Do you want some bacon? Would that make us even?”

  “Yes, I would, and no, it would not. I’m talking multiple-foot-rubs owe me.”

  “Sick, Ida!”

  “I’m talking ointment-application owe me,” she said gleefully.

  “Eww!” I fixed Ida’s breakfast plate and handed it over.

  Marine’s phone beeped again, and Ida and I both fell silent and looked over at it.

  “She didn’t say exactly how long,” Ida began, “but she sure doesn’t have plans to leave any time soon.” Ida looked pale under the kitchenette light; the veins on her hands were raised and gruesomely blue. I felt a prickle of anxiety behind my ears, but I pushed it away. Ida was still in her prime.

  “Why do you say that?” I pressed the space behind my ears, pretending to smooth down my hair.

  “Did you see her suitcase? No, I guess you didn’t because you were late. But that monstrosity she brought was the size of Delaware. Also, she said she’s staying on as your mom’s assistant, whatever that means.”

  “Jesus. Can we do anything?”

  “Not yet, I don’t think. Honey,” Ida began, then paused, looking up at the ceiling. “Do you, I mean,” she stopped and shook her head. “Has Chantal tried to speak to you about your mother?”

  “What? No, why would she? Mom’s been doing fine. Right?”

  “Right. Well, for the most part,” Ida said.

  “Why? Has she talked to you?”

  “She has.” Ida paused again and squinted a little. Then her face relaxed, and she smiled. “She’s talked to me so much, I’m starting to think Chantal has a thing for me.” She smirked as she propped her bare feet on top of the coffee table. She wiggled her wrinkly toes. “Which one do you want to start with, left or right?”