Forever Right Now

by Emma Scott

  Max lifted his soda in mock toast. “Anyway, I was seventeen, and got busted one night. The cop was a good guy. Instead of taking me to the station, he took me home, let me crash on his couch. I thought he was a perv with ulterior motives but I was too high to care.”

  “But he wasn’t a perv,” I said.

  “No. He got me cleaned up, got me in the program, helped me get my GED, then nursing school after that. All of it. I’d be dead without him.” He shook his head, his blue eyes cloudy with heavy storms of memory. “It’s funny how someone can be a better dad to you than the one who shares your blood.”

  “Where is he now?” I asked.

  “He died a couple years back,” Max said. “Myocardial infarction.”

  “A what?”

  “Heart attack.” He smiled a little. “Sorry, I take refuge in medical terminology. Easier to take sometimes.”

  “I’m so sorry. But I’ll bet he was really proud of you,” I said with a gentle smile. “Is that why the shitty day? Were you missing him?”

  Max shrugged. “No, no reason. It just happens sometimes, doesn’t it? Like the weight of your personal pain is hiding in your psyche, and something will trigger it to jump with claws out.”

  “What triggered yours?”

  “A lamppost,” Max said with a rueful smile. “This morning on the way to work, my bus broke down. I got off to walk the rest of the way, and took a street I hadn’t been on in a long time. And there’s a lamppost there, papered up in flyers and graffiti. When I first came to SF, that was the street where I sold myself for the first time. That night was black, except for under that light, and I held on to that lamppost so tight. I can still feel the rough cement under my palm. The first car pulled up. The window rolled down, and I remembered thinking, Don’t let go of this lamppost. If you hold on, you’ll be safe.”

  I nodded, a lump thick in my throat. “I know how that feels.”

  “But I let go and I got in the car,” Max said. He twisted his soda around and around, leaving wet rings on the table. “This morning, I saw that lamppost and the rest of my day’s been half here, half in the past.” He smiled faintly. “Seeing you so happy did not suck.”

  I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “I planned it that way.”

  Max chuckled and the sadness hanging over him lifted. By the time we’d finished our food, it had dissipated completely, and he was laughing again.

  After dinner, we headed out to catch a cab for the Y, arm in arm. On Geary, near the diner, was an AMC movie theater. I sighed loudly.

  Max looked down at me, in full sponsor mode again. “What’s that for?”

  I nodded my chin at the theater. “Don’t you wish we could blow the meeting and go see a flick? Eat popcorn and forget everything for a little while?”

  “Of course,” Max said. “But forgetting is the first step down the road toward relapse. You lull yourself into thinking the pain of addiction is asleep forever, then something wakes it up and you’re fucked.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said as a cab pulled up. “Isn’t forgetting a good thing? Like, why do I want to relive the shitty past, instead of all the good stuff now?”

  “Forgetting is pretending it never happened,” Max said. “You need to remember and remember and remember, until it has no power over you anymore. Someday, I’m going to walk up to that lamppost and all of the memories will still be there, but they’ll be a part of who I am. Instead of having a shitty day, I’ll smile and think of how it was a piece of my past, but not the sum of it.”

  We climbed into the cab and on the entire ride to the YMCA, I tried to imagine my overdose at the New Year’s party as something I would ever smile about. Or how I’d tell someone—Sawyer, my heart whispered—what I was and it wouldn’t make me feel like curling up and dying inside for shame.

  Impossible.

  At the Y, we headed up the lamp-lit stairs with a thin crowd of people. I hunched deeper into my sweater and my hand curled around the dance troupe’s phone number in the pocket. Calling it sort of felt impossible, too.

  Inside, the meeting began and I chose not to share that night. My brain was too full of thoughts and words and feelings; Max’s story and Sawyer’s compliment for me, all tangled together.

  Afterward, Max and I walked out into a warmer-than-usual San Francisco night.

  “You didn’t talk tonight,” he said.

  I shrugged. “Didn’t feel like it.”

  Silence.

  I sighed. “I’m doing really good, Max. Working, paying rent…”

  “Are you dancing?

  “I’m still…limbering up.”

  Max glanced down at me. “Lonely?”

  I bit my lip. “Maybe. A little. But I sometimes wonder if that’s my default setting.”

  He nodded, a soft smile on his lips. “The loneliness of the recovering addict. I get it. I have it too.” He jerked his thumb to the Y behind us. “You should talk about it in group.”

  “I want to talk about it with you.”

  “I’m here.”

  I heaved a breath. “I used to think I was needy or clingy, the way I stuck like glue to the men in my life. But I just want to love someone. It’s so simple and yet feels so impossible at the same time. And yes, I know, I’m supposed to be focusing on me, but isn’t that the whole point of working on myself? To become worthy of love?”

  “Everyone is worthy of love,” Max said. “But it starts with loving yourself first. That sounds like cheesy, clichéd shit, but it’s true. You have to know you can be good for someone else. Not just to fill up that hole in yourself, but to give.”

  “I know, but it seems like, in the past, I’ve done all the giving. I’m the one who holds on and they don’t.”

  “Are you holding on because you love them, or holding on because the alternative is being alone?”

  I frowned, opened my mouth to speak, then shut it again. Finally, I huffed a sigh. “You’re wise in the way of life, O Max.”

  “I know,” he said, puffing his chest out. “That’s why I’m the sponsor.”

  I laughed and tucked my arm in his as he walked me to my bus stop.

  “Have you told him?” Max asked after a minute.

  “Told who, what?”

  Max gave me a look. “Have you told your neighbor where you are tonight? Where you’re court-ordered to go three times a week?”

  “No,” I said. “Why would I?”

  “Are you ashamed? I know it’s hard, but don’t be. Or don’t let it rule you, it’ll just cause more problems in the end.”

  But if I never tell, there will be no end. Only beginnings.

  Max gave my arm a squeeze.

  “We’re all made up of strengths and weaknesses, every one of us. You have strengths. Plenty. Getting clean is a strength. Picking yourself back up again after you fall, that’s a strength.”

  “I don’t feel strong. Not yet. I feel like…”

  “What?”

  I sniffed and wiped my eyes with my sleeve. For some stupid, unknowable reason I was on the verge of tears. “He’ll hate me, Max.”

  “I’m more concerned about you hating you.”

  “I don’t…”

  “Addicts lie, Dar,” Max said gently. “That’s one of our defining characteristics. You’ll always be an addict. You’ll always fight that battle. But fight it with your best, most honest self, if you want a chance to win.” His smile was sad and knowing at the same time. “It’s too easy to slip if you don’t.”

  At the Victorian, I crept up the stairs past Sawyer’s place like a burglar, sure that his door would swing open and he’d loudly demand where I’d been, or that he’d see right through me without having to ask. The evidence was all over me, inside me, and coming out through my pores—the scent of cheap YMCA coffee and shame.

  I flinched and hurried into my studio.

  Inside, I dumped my bag on the floor, and stretched out on my tiny couch under the window. It was a loveseat, hardly big enough for two;
beige with reddish swirls of flowers. Gerber daisies—my favorite—and roses.

  Outside the window, the night sky deepened. San Francisco was a quieter city than New York, and the silence felt thick and stifling, like a blanket on a hot night. I felt restless.

  I had to keep myself busy. I jumped off the couch to make chocolate chip cookies for Hector. While I stirred the batter, everything Max and I had talked about floated in and out of my thoughts. All of his warnings and advice sounded so wonderful and smart and helpful, but as if they were meant for someone else. Someone far worse off than me. Things were fine as they were without anyone here knowing, especially Sawyer. He might need me again, for Livvie, and hell would freeze up before I ever brought anything bad near that little angel, so why worry him?

  A twinge of something unpleasant settled in my stomach. The same uneasy feeling I’d had as a kid, where I’d done something wrong and it was only a matter of time until I got caught.

  I put the cookies in the oven and let the door slam shut.

  “It was too damn hot in here, that’s all,” I muttered. I started to take off my sweater and my hand found the phone number in my pocket again. I sat up and contemplated the ten digits.

  Actions, not words.

  I picked up my phone, then hesitated at the time. Ten-thirty on a weeknight. But I’d already wasted four days.

  “They probably already found someone,” I said as I punched in the numbers.

  “Hello?” a man’s voice answered.

  “Yeah, hi, sorry it’s so late. I’m calling about your dance troupe?” I twirled a lock of hair around my finger. “I was wondering if you still needed someone?”

  “Yes,” the guy said, then lowered his voice. “Yes, we are still auditioning dancers. Are you available tomorrow?”

  I pulled my sweater sleeve over my hand and bit the cuff.

  This is really happening, if you have the guts.

  I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Yeah, I am.”

  Darlene

  In the break room at Serenity Spa the next day, I changed out of my uniform and slipped a black leotard and spandex dance shorts on under my sundress. My stomach was twisted in knots and my arms felt heavy from the day’s massages.

  This is stupid, I thought for the hundredth time as I left the spa. I was ridiculously unprepared for this dance audition, and certain to fail.

  Is that why you agreed to audition in the first place? A voice in my head sounding suspiciously like Max wondered. So you can say you tried without really trying?

  “Oh, hush,” I murmured, and gnawed on the cuff of my sweater the entire bus ride to the studio.

  I arrived at the San Francisco Dance Academy with thirty minutes to spare. The woman at the front desk told me a space had been reserved for the audition but was open now if I wanted it. I paid $15 to jump in early and warm up.

  The dance room had a mirror covering one entire wall, with a barre running along its length. Golden sunlight streamed in from the high windows, and spilled across the wooden floors. A sound system with a tangle of cords sat against the wall under the windows beside a couple of simple wooden chairs and a few wooden rifles. I picked up a rifle and gave it a spin. Maybe someone was rehearsing the finale to Chicago, one of my favorite musicals.

  If I let myself envision my perfect show, it was Chicago. I wasn’t the strongest singer, but I could hold a key. I wanted to play Liz, the inmate who killed her husband because he wouldn’t stop popping his gum. “The Cell Block Tango” was my dream performance, but instead of preparing and training for a major role, I was winging an audition for a tiny, independent dance troupe that advertised on a lamppost.

  You aren’t even prepared to dance for a tiny, independent dance troupe that advertises on a lamppost.

  “Stupid.” I put the prop down and sat on the floor.

  My eyes kept glancing at the door as I stretched. Any second now, it would open. The director I’d spoken to on the phone would walk in and I’d make a ginormous fool of myself. But I kept stretching and breathing, waking my body from its hibernation. I wanted to get up and run, but at four-fifteen, the door opened and I was still there.

  Greg Spanos was a tall, dark-haired guy; early thirties, dressed all in black. He was followed by an artsy-looking gal in glasses and streaks of blue in her hair.

  “I’m the director and choreographer of Iris and Ivy,” he said, shaking my hand. “This is Paula Lee, the stage manager.”

  “Hi,” I said with breathy nervousness. “Hi. Nice to meet you. I’m Darlene.”

  I watched them size me up, certain that the fact I was utterly unprepared was written all over my face.

  “A moment, please,” Greg said.

  He and Paula carried two chairs from the side of the room, and set them up on one end, their backs to the wall mirror. With no table, they rested their folders on their laps and endeavored to look professional.

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  At the sound system against the wall, I plugged my phone in and hurried back to the middle of the room. I’d barely taken my position on the floor—lying on my back as I had in New York—when the music started.

  “The music is the language and your body speaks the words.”

  My first dance teacher told me that when I was eight years old, scowling in a pink tutu. I hated the tutu and the ballet flats on my feet. I wanted to be barefoot and raw. Even then, the something inside me that wanted to dance was a fierce energy that I loved to feed. I’d given it everything—my sweat and tears; aching muscles and sprained ligaments. It was there, that urge to sing for the world with my entire self.

  Until I’d ruined it with drugs. Dirtied it. Soiled myself so that dancing while the X or the coke surged through my veins felt like a violation of that pure energy.

  But I’m here now.

  I closed my eyes and let the first notes of the music seep into my bones and muscles and sinew; I listened with my body. When Marian Hill sang the first lines, my back arched up off the wooden floor, and then I was gone; lifted up by the soft words and gentle piano, then sparking to life when the techno beat dropped.

  I forgot everything else and lived between each note, moment to moment, feeling everything I wanted to feel without thinking or stopping myself. I let my body speak for the music and there was no shame, in these words. No loneliness.

  Only myself, and I was alive.

  I collapsed to my knees, arched back, and lifted one arm—grasping at air—as the last note on the last word faded away to silence.

  One heartbeat. Two.

  I looked through a few tendrils of hair that had come loose from my ponytail. Greg and Paula were staring at me, then bent their heads to confer. A bead of sweat slipped down my temple, and I realized the twisting feeling in my stomach was gone. My pulse pounded from the dance, not nerves, and I suddenly didn’t care if they wanted me or not.

  But they did.

  “You have…” Greg exchanged a look with Paula, “quite a lot of natural talent.”

  “Pure, raw talent,” Paula said, nodding.

  “Thank you,” I said, breathlessly. “Thanks so much for saying so.”

  Somehow, I wasn’t crying.

  “Have you, auditioned anywhere else?” Greg asked slowly.

  “I just moved here last week,” I said. “I saw your flyer and took a shot.”

  They exchanged knowing looks again, laced with relief.

  “Opening night is closing in,” Paula said “We’d prefer not to have to recast so late in the game. We need full commitment to rehearsal, which is every night, six to nine p.m. and some afternoons on the weekend.”

  I bobbed my head. “Of course, absolutely. But I’ll have to cut out early Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. There’s a place I have to be at nine. But it’s not far from here. Fifteen minutes?”

  “I suppose,” Greg said. “If it can’t be avoided.”

  “It can’t,” I said.

  “Fine,” he said. “There’s no pa
y,” he added stiffly. “This is a labor of love. An independent piece of art, not a commercialized package of glitz and sequins.”

  “It’s raw,” Paula said. I guessed she must like using that word. “Stripped down and real. No pretense.”

  “Sounds great, really,” I said. “Perfect.”

  “Good,” Greg said, offering his hand. “Welcome to the show, Darlene.”

  Outside on the street, I sucked in air. “Holy shit.”

  It had been almost four years since I’d danced in front of an audience. Four years. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t a big deal; Iris and Ivy was a far cry from a big dance company. But it was a huge fucking deal. I’d begun to wonder if the dancer version of myself was gone forever, still locked up behind bars even after the drug-addict had been released.

  But it’s still there. Me. I’m still here.

  I dug my phone out of my purse and stared at it, my thumb hovering over the contacts. I called up my parents at their house in Queens. The answering machine picked up but I didn’t leave a message. I needed voices. A live person. I scrolled down to my sister.

  She picked up on the sixth ring, sounding harried and distracted with just one, “Hello?”

  “Hey, Carla, it’s Dar.”

  “Oh hey, hon. How are you? How’s Frisco treating you?”

  “It’s going great here. In fact, I have the best news—”

  “Are you keeping your nose clean? Staying out of trouble?”

  I winced. “Yes. I’m doing really great, actually. I auditioned for a dance company—a little one—and you’ll never believe it, but they hired me. There’s going to be a show in a few weeks—”

  Carla’s voice became muffled. “Sammy! Sammy, get off the couch!” She turned her mouth back to the phone. “That dumb dog, I swear…” Her breath hissed a sigh. “Sorry, what? A show? Good for you. Are they paying you?”

  I hunched my shoulders, as if I could contain the excitement that was fast draining out of me. “I’m not doing it for the pay. It’s mostly for the experience. It’s been four years—”

  “Uh huh. Well, just don’t go and do something crazy and quit your spa job over it.”