by Andrea Bartz
He was quiet for a second. “Well, I don’t think your brain’s fucked up.” He lifted my knuckles to his mouth and kissed them.
I laughed. “I mean, thanks. Obviously I’m…fine. But I miss it every now and then.”
“If it’s not an actual addiction, maybe you could just have one? I always figured you were in AA or something.”
And in all these months, he’d never asked. Which probably said something about the seriousness of our relationship. “No, it’s nothing like that. So maybe. I don’t know. I don’t really wanna keep talking about my…shriveled and blackened brain.” I added a little bravado to show I was joking, but it fell flat. After a moment, I slid my limbs back and got up to make us coffee.
* * *
At my desk, blinking at a story about radicalized Algerian immigrants, I fantasized about whether anyone would notice if I just stopped doing my job. I’d still show up, of course, moseying into meetings and making small talk in the break room; I just wouldn’t produce anything. The thought experiment left me feeling pretty unmotivated, so I convinced Damien to venture out for lunch with me. He gossiped about the junior editors as we walked; I think it bothers him that there’s a younger, hipper clique of gay men on staff now. I figured we’d bring our food back to the air-conditioning, but he insisted we eat outside even though it was 100 degrees, so we plodded to the Elevated Acre, a bizarre rectangle of Astroturf tucked between office buildings. Businessmen in suits were splayed on the fake grass like well-dressed starfish. We chose a spot along the edge and I fanned myself, wishing I had a sun hat.
“This is what…the sixth summer in a row that’s the hottest on record?” I eased the lid off my salad.
“I know. You feel especially bad when you’re here, surrounded by, like, hundreds of floors of energy consumption.”
“Oh, the buildings around here are probably mostly LEED-certified by now.” We looked around, chewing thoughtfully. “My dad’s a civil engineer and he says the reason he retired is that everyone was making him build, quote, buildings for fearmongering, tree-hugging hippies, unquote.”
“Yikes. I always forget you’re the product of gun-toting right-wingers.”
“That’s me.” Why had I brought them up? Picturing them, I felt an arrow of unease.
He leaned back against a step. “I love the idea of you as a teeny six-year-old pointing a loaded shotgun.”
“Rifle,” I corrected. “A twenty-two-caliber rimfire rifle. Single shot.”
“And you were actually six? I was being cute.”
“Sixth birthday present. Every little girl’s dream.” I’d wanted the Totally Hair Barbie, but eventually I came to like shooting with my dad. He was calm at the shooting range, predictable. Unlike at home.
“Remember when I met them and they kept asking me where my accent’s from?” Damien said. “Took me forever to realize they just couldn’t detect gayness.”
“Oh god, that was awful. And hopefully that was the only time they’ll ever come to New York.” Damien was likely one of the first black men they’d encountered socially, and they’d said plenty of unintentionally racist things—“That’s really great that you’re educated, that you got your degree!” I couldn’t imagine how awkward things would’ve gotten if they’d picked up on his sexual orientation as well.
He kept laughing. “They were sweet. You’re still not talking?”
“I mean, we get further and further apart on our political stances with each passing year. To the point where it’s hard to have a conversation. We’re basically down to obligatory phone calls on birthdays and major holidays.”
He shrugged and sucked on his straw. “It’s family. You only get the one.”
“Yeah, and my family voted directly against my well-being and safety. And yours.” It was a convenient excuse, though not the real reason. It’d been a little easier avoiding them the last few years—so many fellow New Yorkers were outraged with their own red-leaning folks and I could just follow suit.
“But they raised you!”
“And I didn’t…I didn’t have the greatest childhood with them. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Damien shrugged easily and I envied his mellowness, how he could always make me feel like the hysterical woman by contrast. We gazed out at the grass. A pigeon was plodding closer and closer to the head of one of the supine businessmen. He had his eyes closed, unaware.
I tried a joke. “My dad’s an amazing shooter,” I said. “When he’d go to retrieve his target, with all the holes in the bull’s-eye, he’d always say he was gonna put it on the front door for any guy taking me on a date to see.”
“Did you go on a lot of dates?”
“Ha! No.”
“No high school boyfriend?”
A ping of shame: Even after years of friendship, Damien didn’t know that the answer was no, not then, not ever. “Nah, definitely not cool enough for that. I was a weird kid. And I was chubby.”
He laughed delightedly. “Oh my god, you must have been adorable!”
“No, it was just bad-chubby.” Once or twice I’d awkwardly asked the nerd clique if I could be in their all-female dinner-and-photo-taking group for homecoming, but that was the extent of my social life. In college, too, I’d made mostly drinking buddies, other girls in my dorm who partook of the cheap whiskey I procured from a junior and stored under my bed. I’d availed myself of the university gym and Madison’s legendary party scene, discovering in alcohol and the occasional Klonopin all the mood-lifting effects I hadn’t in SSRIs. But close friends hadn’t come until I moved to New York, far away from my parents, the ones who only occasionally wanted to claim me. Far away from my whole sad youth, really.
“Hey, did you ever find anything in those emails?” he asked, as if hearing my thoughts.
“Not really. Just a reminder that I was twenty-three to the max.”
He laughed. “Weren’t we all?”
* * *
That night, I kneeled on the floor and pushed dusty boxes around under my bed until I’d found what I was looking for: old photo albums, anachronistic even then, cute ones with bikes and planets on their covers and endless permutations of the Calhoun gang inside. There were stacks of loose photos, too, and I carried everything into the living room, piling it on my lap.
Damn, had Edie ever taken a bad photo? She’d awed me even then, and sometimes, alone in my insecurity, I’d play out the impossible scenarios: Did Edie ever fart? Trip? Say the wrong thing and then blush bright red? For twenty-three years, she floated through life a few inches above us messy, gaffe-prone mortals. And then…
A photo of me pointing at my new cartilage piercing, coral pink and swollen. My fingers floated up and found it; ten years later, I still walk around with the piercing ring in. I remembered that day, early in the spring: I’d vaguely mentioned wanting a new piercing and Edie had jumped on it, declaring Saturday “bruncture day” because we were to get drunk at brunch and then make our way to a piercing place. I’d been distracted and nervous as we picked at our eggs, but I tried to hide it, to mirror Edie’s effortless cool. I lay on the piercing table, my head flopped to the side, while she flirted with the tattoo-covered piercer; he smirked at her as he snapped on his gloves. Later, she told me she could see my pulse pounding in my neck. With the steel hoop in place, Edie had hugged me and bought me iced coffee at the café across the street. As we’d browsed the racks of nearby vintage stores, I kept touching the earring, the flash of pain a permanent reminder of our “bruncture” bond.
I opened another photo album: Here were Sarah and Edie, monkeying around on the boys’ guitar and drum kit. Here were Kevin, Edie, and me, playing a drinking game while snow piled against the windows. I’d been so delighted to be part of a group, and a hip one at that, the kind of club that kids all over the nation would kill to be in. I turned the page: Here were Kevin and Edie, giving c
heesy smiles and middle fingers to a flyer posted on Calhoun’s front door.
I squinted at it and remembered: People were trying to make TV shows and movies about our kind, and someone had hung flyers around the building to cast for a reality show; from what the gossip blogs reported, the concept was “hipsters in incongruous situations,” kids dressed like us working on farms and struggling through military boot camp. Sarah and Alex had been so irritated by the whole thing, so scolding whenever anyone used the h-word around them, but Edie had remained amused, simultaneously above and inside of the whole amorphous mass.
The grin on Kevin’s face. Nothing seemed to get under his skin. Kevin, who’d snicker good-naturedly or crack an off-the-wall joke or make a farting sound with his mouth if the moment got too prickly, if you were feeling self-conscious or judged or small.
My feet moved before I knew exactly what I was doing. In the kitchen, I had his profile pulled up in seconds. He had his phone number listed. It’s a habit I picked up from being a fact-checker: Don’t think, just dial.
“Hullo?” It was him. Everything in me buzzed.
“Is this Kevin?”
“Yes, it i-is.” The suspicious singsong of anyone who suspects a telemarketer.
“Wow, hi! It’s Lindsay Bach. How are you?”
“Whoa, hey! I—I’m good, and yourself?”
“I’m good, thank you, I’m really good. So, I know this is so out of the blue—”
“Hey, I’d really love to catch up, but I’m actually waiting on another call? From one of Evelyn’s doctors.”
Evelyn? Was he straight now?
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“No, not at all, it’s just my daughter—you don’t even know who Evelyn is, do you?” He chuckled and for the second time that week, ten years dissolved; it was his same whispery titter, tssh-sh-sh-sh. “But listen, can I call you right back? Just at this number? It shouldn’t be long at all.”
I took that to mean I wouldn’t ever hear from him and so was elbow deep in soapy dishes when my phone rang a few minutes later.
“Hello!” I cried, after too many rings. “Everything work out okay with your daughter’s doctor?” I’d meant it politely, but it came off as invasive.
“She’s…Yeah, I heard back from him, so no worries. Thanks for waiting. What’s up?”
“Um, thanks for calling me back. I’m actually calling ’cause…well, I just had dinner with Sarah, if you can believe that.”
“Sarah! How is she?”
“She’s good, she just moved back to the city, so…it was nice to catch up. Her husband’s job transferred him here.”
“That’s good, that’s good. You tell her I said hi.”
“Yeah, definitely.” What would happen if I just blurted it out: So Sarah claimed that I wasn’t at the concert the night Edie died. Isn’t that insane?
I went with the smaller, sillier revelation instead. “We spent a lot of time reminiscing about the old days. I didn’t remember that she’d had that weird freak-out where she was insisting Edie hadn’t committed suicide.”
“Ah, that’s right.” He sang: “Paranoia, paranoia, everybody’s coming for Edie.”
“It was the least suspicious suicide of all time, right? Gun near her hand, suicide note on her computer.” I drummed my nails against the counter. “But I have to say, hearing it now, all these years later…I mean, maybe I’m just glorifying our youth, but it did kinda feel like, ‘Yeah, why would Edie kill herself?’ ”
“I mean, I always thought that was bullshit.” He said it quickly, casually, like he’d been waiting for the chance to tell someone.
I froze. “What do you mean?”
“The suicide thing. I told the cops that, too, that just a few days before her death she looked me in the eye and told me she wanted to live to be an old lady.”
I had to grab the edge of the counter to steady myself. “Wait, what?”
“I can’t—it’s a long story. But, dude, people don’t just up and kill themselves out of the blue. They think suicidal thoughts and they get their affairs in order and they tell people about their plan and then maybe, maybe, after one or two false starts, they do it. That wasn’t Edie.”
I was silent, my mouth hanging open, so he went on. “I don’t want to go into it, but she had, like, a health scare that I helped her through, and she came out of it basically determined to live forever. She talked about how there was still so much she wanted to do, it was like she was begging the universe to let her make it.” A thump, like he was doing something else as he soliloquized. “Not that Edie believed in that shit, at least as far as I know.”
“And you told the cops this?” I finally said.
“Hell, yeah, I did. But they didn’t listen. I think at first they thought if anything, I was somehow involved and trying to pass off the blame. It was scary enough getting arrested in the middle of all that. Possession of an unlicensed firearm, a Class A felony, punishable by up to a year in jail: I must’ve heard it a hundred times.”
“I forgot about that. You took a plea deal, right?”
“Yeah, pretty lucky to be a white kid with no priors. Fifty hours of community service and a thousand-dollar fine. I was such a dummy, keeping that thing there. But yeah, I think the detectives thought something was going on between Edie and me after I was the one she dragged to the ER with her.”
The ER? I started to interrupt, but he barreled over me.
“Which is a whole ’nother story. They tried to spin it into another reason she committed suicide, but believe me, they’re wrong, nothing about that whole shebang would make her kill herself.”
Another few clunks. What was he doing?
“What was the health scare?” I asked.
“Nah, it was embarrassing for her, I don’t wanna go into it.”
“Did anyone else know about it?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“What makes you so sure it wouldn’t have made her suicidal?”
“I don’t wanna play twenty questions, Lindsay. Suffice it to say that out of respect for the dead, I don’t want to talk about it, but if you’d like to trust me, I can say with one-hundred-percent certainty that she was not a suicidal girl.”
We both sat with that for a second.
“So you think someone killed her?”
“I mean, seems like the only other option.”
“Who, then?”
“Fuck if I know. She’d pissed off a lot of people in that building.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I have no idea who did it. But she was always shucking people off. I said shucking.” He chuckled to himself, tsh-sh-sh. “Didn’t y’all ever notice that about her? She spent her whole life in Manhattan, but it was like she didn’t exist—no friends from her past, no stories of crazy high school nights or friends from way back—and then, uh, she was the center of everything, and then she’d be gone again, leaving a bombed-out group in her wake. I don’t think she could help it.”
A chronic friend-defector. I’d noticed it as well but had thought—hoped—she was like me, floundering through her early social life until the right people, the right friendships, appeared.
“Well, if someone did it, I want to figure out who,” I said.
He tittered again. “Hey, be my guest. You know absolutely everything I know at this point, but maybe you’ll have more luck.” Clunk clunk click. “Or maybe we’re both wackos.”
“Why didn’t you back up Sarah? When she was saying she didn’t think it was suicide?”
“Yeah, that worked out really well for her. Total pariah, shipped off to the loony bin. But unlike me, she wasn’t under suspicion by the poh-lice.” He drew it out for effect. “I’m glad you saw her, healed some old wounds. She still nursing her suspicions?”
; “No, not at all. ‘I was young and stupid, I was grasping at straws,’ that kind of thing.” I chewed on my lip. “I never even knew she had this conspiracy theory. I kinda stopped talking to everyone right away.”
“Right, I think I knew that. The whole period is a blur for me, it’s kinda hard to remember who was around when.”
Did he know anything about my disputed whereabouts that night? It was as if he were addressing my unasked question.
“But I’ll tell ya, if you can somehow figure out what really went on that night—” He cut himself off suddenly. “Lindsay, I gotta run, my husband’s on the other line.”
“No worries, thanks for talking to me.”
“Y’all take care of yourself.”
You all? Me and whom?
“Thanks, Kevin. You, too.” I hung up and looked around the living room. Figure out what really went on that night. Clearly I didn’t remember as much as I thought I did. I’d been drunk, but it had just been a brown-out: I had strong snippets of each portion of the night, scene after scene after scene, like an intricately set-designed play. Up on the roof, sitting on the cement and chasing shots with beer. Then we’d all decided to head to the concert—no, Kevin had had a show in Greenpoint, it was just me and Alex and Sarah—and there was the flurry and racket and energy gust of a drunken location change. Then the show: Even Sarah’s photo hadn’t convinced me I was thinking of another night. I could see it, the guys in red zebra face paint rushing around the stage. Strobe lights and a ball spitting green dots over the crowd and what looked like hundreds of sweaty revelers dancing to the noise. The alcohol hitting me all at once and the sudden, billowing conviction that I needed to be in bed. Had I shouted goodbye to them or just left? Had Sarah somehow missed me?