It wasn’t true anyway, not for me. It was like when she went away, something broke inside me. I saw other girls, girls who weren’t her, walking by, and I felt nothing. I only got hard if I was remembering her, and I felt that slipping away as well.
My fourth brother got me a job at his wife’s father’s office. The soles of my Docs had never healed after that last night, so I bought new shoes and threw the boots into the back of my closet. I cleaned myself up and, damn, if I didn’t look respectable. And older. I looked older.
My hands still shook, so I bought an electric razor.
My youngest brother approved. “Put it behind you,” he said. “Start over.”
But I remembered. I remembered nights when we danced on tongues of flame and angels, when the world opened up and was ours for the taking, when sparks shot through the air, when drumbeats were gasoline and I had a book of matches.
One night, Max was waiting for me at my sixth brother’s apartment when I came home from work, and the two of them were glowering at each other.
“Zach doesn’t think I should tell you,” said Max. “But fuck him. I found your girl.”
I went into the kitchen, took a beer out of the fridge, came back, and sat down between my brothers. “I don’t believe you, Max.”
He looked vaguely hurt. “It’s true.”
“How could you find her when I couldn’t?”
“Because you looked like a fucking nightmare when you were searching for her, pal. Seriously. Unshaven, you reeked of alcohol—you think any girl would tell you where her friend was? Now, me?” He gestured to himself. “I wear a suit. I’m well-spoken. Who wouldn’t talk to me?”
I glared at him.
“My girlfriend’s a senior at Barnard,” he said. “Her younger sister was at school with an Isabel, Isabel Goldman. Oldest of twelve, counting stepsisters and half-sisters. The rumor around school was that she tried to kill herself and her parents sent her to a mental hospital in Connecticut to get her away from her friends here—to get her away from you, I bet, even if they didn’t know who you were. They have a country house up there. So I looked into it for you. ‘Cause I’m a stand-up guy, no matter what you think of me. And it’s true. She’s there, no visitors, no correspondence except her parents. Pills and electroshock therapy.”
I didn’t feel anything I had expected to feel. I didn’t feel anything at all. “Tried to kill herself?” I repeated mechanically.
“Tried,” said Max, drinking my beer. I guessed Zach hadn’t offered him one. “One of her sisters called an ambulance; they pumped her stomach.”
“Look,” he continued. “You ask me, I think you should stay away from her and vice versa. I don’t think you’re good for each other. But do what you want. One piece of advice—if you go for her, get yourself together. Clean yourself the fuck up. Get your own place. Be a goddamn man already. She didn’t get you out so you could spend the rest of your life crashing on somebody’s couch.”
He tossed me a brochure, the kind of thing aimed at parents of troubled teens, soft focus and fake understanding, no edge to it. Not what someone like Isabel needed. Not what someone like me needed.
He finished my beer. “So don’t say I never did anything for you, Jake.” And then he left.
I thought about what someone like Isabel needed, what someone like me needed, and then I quit my job. I’d never liked it and I didn’t think I was any good at it; I was never entirely sure what it was. Max had said to get my own place. There was only one place I thought of as my own.
Cynthia didn’t look very surprised to see me. “What took you so long?” she asked.
I sat down and asked her for a shot of bourbon. When she brought it to me I sipped it. “I’m going to find her,” I said.
“She’s not here,” said Cynthia. “So you’re not off to a good start.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not good at starts.”
“This is not my problem,” she said.
“Come on,” I coaxed her. “Don’t you ever want to get out of here? Look at the sunlight? Go to the beach?”
“Are you asking me out?” she said. “Long walks on the beach?”
“I’m asking you for a job.”
She was silent for a full minute, and then she went down the bar to take care of other customers. When she came back, she drummed her fingers on the bar. “I miss going to the ballet.”
“Are you serious?”
She glared at me. She drummed her fingers on the bar again and then went away to wash some glasses. She came back and poured two more shots of bourbon. “You’ve got a decent ear. You can book the bands and take over a few nights.”
I gaped at her.
“What you want to say, Jake, is ‘thank you.’”
“Thank you.”
She rummaged behind the bar for a few minutes and came up with a set of keys. “You can start tomorrow night. I don’t need to train you, do I?”
“I think you’ve already done that.”
“Yes.” She slid the keys across the bar to me. “There’s an apartment above the bar. I don’t live there.”
For a minute I wondered where she lived—what that even meant to someone like her. Then I said “thank you” again, just to make sure.
She nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I got up to go. “Oh,” she said. “Jake? Don’t drink all my fucking profits.”
I took Max’s car to Connecticut.
“Don’t blow out my speakers. And don’t stain my seats when you fuck your girlfriend,” he said, before he tossed me the keys.
“She probably won’t want to come back with me anyway,” I said.
He grinned at me. “What’re you talking about? She’s never been able to keep her hands off you, man.”
I saw Isabel in the center’s common room, and realized it was the first time I’d seen her without any trace of makeup. She didn’t look older or younger, just different. Maybe more tired than before.
When I took her hand it felt like the future had finally started, like everything in my life had been stalled, just waiting for her.
“They’ve fucked up my memory,” she said, and laughed a little, but not in a good way.
“Memory’s overrated,” I told her. “I’ve come to get you out.”
She looked at me like I was an idiot. “I can get myself out. I’m over eighteen now. I can sign myself out any time I want.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
“Nowhere for me to go, really. Nowhere I want to go,” she said, and then paused. “Until now?”
I nodded. “I have a job,” I said. “I have a place. The apartment above the club.”
“That fucking club.” She laughed a little giddily, like she might cry. “You never really left, did you?”
I shook my head.
“Me neither.”
“I’ve got Max’s car parked outside,” I told her. “We could drive back to my place. We can stop partway and mess up Max’s seat cushions. If you want to, I mean.”
She grinned at me. “Then we should go, while I still remember who you are.”
“Who am I?” I asked her. I tried not to hold my breath waiting for her to tell me who I was, what I was to her.
“You’re an asshole, Jake,” she said, and stroked my face. “But I’ve missed you anyway.”
“I’m an asshole,” I agreed. “But I’m yours if you want me.”
“I want you,” she said. “I want you, but it’ll come back—you know that, right? You’ve got to understand that. It’ll take me again. I’ll never be cured. It’ll never be over. I’m not like you. You can go anywhere now. But it will always take me again.”
I wrapped my arms around her. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“You can’t,” she said. “Aren’t you listening? You can’t keep me safe.”
“Then let it take you,” I said. “And I’ll bring you back. As many times as you need, I’ll come and bring you back. I won’t let it keep you.”
“You won’t get bored?” she asked anxiously.
I shrugged. “Maybe I’ll get bored. Maybe I’ll get bored and cranky and obnoxious and drink too much and throw up in the bathroom. But I’ll still come for you. As many times as you need.”
She took my hand and interlaced our fingers.
I could see the afternoon sun through the glass door, and I still wasn’t used to being out in daylight, even to seeing daylight. I still tensed up every time I walked out a front door, hunching over in anticipation of unbearable pain. But I looked over at Isabel, and saw that the hand I wasn’t holding was clenched in a fist, that she was flinching away from the sunlight and her face was twisted in something like fear. So I loosened my shoulders and put my arm around her waist.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “We’re going home. I’ve got the Glos’ ‘Blowout’ in the car and you can turn the volume up as loud as you want.”
“Thank God.” She smiled up at me. “The music in this place is shit.”
And together we walked right the fuck out that door.
The author would like to thank The So So Glos for being a generally awesome band, but in particular for the use of the lyrics to “We Got the Days.” She swears she wrote the first draft of this story before she ever saw them play.
Ballroom Blitz: a Tor.com Original Page 3