And Again (22 page)

I’m not sure where to go at night anymore. I went out for a while when I first moved back to Chicago, before the exhaustion and the general emaciation took over in earnest, but I can’t really remember the exact names or locations of those dark, neon-lit enclaves where I would spend my nights. I don’t have much to wear either, I discover, when I step out of the shower, the cool air of my little apartment
making me shiver as I paw through my closet. The majority of my clothes were chosen for comfort and because they were cheap. But among the oversize sweatshirts and threadbare fleece pajama pants I find a slate-colored tank top with some beading around the neckline and a pair of black leggings. It’ll do, I think, as I admire myself in the mirror. I’m deliciously thin; even in such skin-tight clothing, nothing moves much as I twist and turn in front of the mirror. I pull my hair back and slather on thick eyeliner, and suddenly I wish Dr. Grath could see me, because I am Edie Sedgwick at the Chelsea Hotel. I am fit to be someone’s muse. But that’s the trouble when you’re beautiful and your best friend is blind: it doesn’t do either one of you much good.

I decide on Smart Bar and hail a cab, brimming with anticipation. It’s raining a bit, and as the cab rushes through the damp streets I imagine we’re under water, moving through a sunken city whose lights have not yet gone out. I tip the driver way too much when he pulls up in front of the lit sign for the Metro, and he grins at me with Cheshire teeth as I step out onto the damp curb and hurry inside. The beat of the music is there, even before I’ve been swallowed up by the darkness and the heat and the teeming movement of bodies. It’s that hard, thrumming beat that thumps within my chest like a surrogate heart. It’s a young crowd here, college students probably, but I’m pulled into the dance floor all the same, and I wonder how old I look to these bourgeoning adults.

I swim my way to the bar and I’m carded, which makes me grin, which makes the bartender prop his elbows on the bar and lean very close to me to take my order. He’s pretty enough, tan with dark hair, but I’m more interested in thrusting myself back into the mob of dancers than I am in making small talk with a man who is paid to be here. I order Malibu rum with pineapple juice, and it’s so sweet it nearly makes my teeth hurt, but the alcohol doesn’t burn as much going down. It’s what I drank as a kid, when my friend Tanya’s older sister would give us the leftovers from her parties. We’d jump the fence from the trailer park into the apartment complex next door
and sit in its empty pool among the dead leaves and condom wrappers and drink until we could barely climb our way out again. I think about it now, nearly twenty years later, what it was like to be fourteen and newly minted and so full of promise. It feels a little bit like how I feel tonight, though the drink doesn’t taste familiar at all when I sip it. That’s the one bit of disappointment, but it’s fleeting, and soon I’m worming my way back in between the clatter of bodies and bobbing to the music and the flash of colored lights.

I haven’t been dancing long when I spot him. Or rather, when I see him spot me. He’s young, fuck he’s young, maybe twenty-five, with stringy blond hair and arms that show veins and thin fibers of muscle beneath his skin. A sort of a punk kid, I think, catching the glint of a silver ring in his nose. I take a gulp of my drink and pause in my dancing as he makes his way toward me. He’s very pretty, almost feminine, the kind of pouty youth who is born to stare shirtless from Levi’s ads or lounge on rumpled beds for Calvin Klein. It’s a sort of comfort, his beauty. We’re of the same breed, he and I. He wears combat boots and a stocking cap. I lick my lips, making the red stain of my lipstick shine in the overhead lights.

“You all right?” he says, loudly, into my ear. He smells thickly of sweat. I smile, clearing my throat, which still burns hot and raw from the alcohol. The heat is starting to spread downward, though, curling its way out of my stomach, sinking heavily into my limbs, and settling low beneath my pelvis.

“Fine,” I say, baring my teeth at him. He’s matched his movements to mine, and while it’s not quite dancing as much as it is pulsing with the rhythm of the backbeat, it feels good to be in motion. When he smiles, his two front teeth angle slightly toward each other, and I think maybe this boy and I have more in common than even I imagine. I picture him growing up in the rural southern reaches of Illinois, a beautiful young redneck working in the sun. Maybe he picked me because he recognizes the girl I was, once, like a smell of motor oil and cheap wine that will never entirely wash off.

“What’s your name?”

“Edie.”

“I’m Colin.” He offers a hand and I take it, clasping it between us. “You roll?”

“Not lately.”

“Want to?”

I cock an eyebrow at him. I’d done my share of Ecstasy in my former life, though I cut out pretty much everything since I got sick. But it was fun, and I’m in the mood for some fun. I nod, and he leads me by the hand into the darkness that clings to the club’s walls, away from the brightness of the dance floor. He pulls something out of his pocket, and I catch a glimpse of clear plastic before it’s spirited back into the tight denim of his jeans.

“How much?” I ask, leaning in close, smelling the pungent tang of his skin. He shakes his head.

“For you? First one’s free.” He brushes his hand to his mouth and then leans toward me, closing his lips over mine, his tongue pressing something small and round into my mouth. I swallow the pill easily and then stand on my tiptoes to press my mouth back into his.

“How old are you?” I ask. He looks at me a little suspiciously then, so I smile, widening my eyes, trying to look a bit more like an ingénue.

“Twenty-four.” His mouth slides under my ear. One of his hands has attached itself to the crease between my ass and the back of my right thigh. “Why?”

“Just curious.” Christ he’s young. He was in kindergarten while I was drinking in that empty swimming pool. But he’s practically glowing with that golden youthful swagger, and kissing him is like drinking in my old life, waking up that side of myself that has been sick and dormant for the past five years, or has never been awake at all. Not in this body.

“You’ve got about a half hour before you’ll start to feel it,” he says, the hand on my leg hitching me up a bit onto his thigh, pulling me closer. “Want to go somewhere?”

I nod, and soon we’re out into the damp streets, and he’s
leading me by the hand, hailing a cab. The drugs kick in just as he’s tipping me back onto the musty futon in his tiny studio, with its dirty windows and scuffed wood floors. And just like that, everything is shining, shimmering like a mirage of water on a hot desert road. Everything seems to fit into place, with the satisfying soft click of puzzle pieces sliding together. I can see that every moment in my life has conspired to bring me here, and all of my selves—the gangly little brat of a girl, the blonde teenager in cutoffs and flip-flops drinking in the fallen leaves, the actress shooting up in the bathroom of a five-star restaurant, the invalid with the papery skin and the foam of yeast clotting in the corners of her mouth—all of them have folded themselves into me, like matryoshka dolls, each self hiding a smaller, former self. And I, at this moment, can feel them all held within me, all of those lost, beautiful girls, and everything we’ve ever wanted. I shut my eyes, reach out, but my hand collides with the skin of the boy’s chest before I can even realize what I was trying to grasp out of the empty air.

He’s pawing at me with one hand, undoing his jeans with the other, but I’m too awash in my own euphoria, I can’t differentiate one sensation from any other. I seem to slip easily out of the present moment and into some void within myself, where all of my history is held, and when I look up to the dirty windows I can see that something is painted there, some scene of lovers or animals, something difficult to discern when it changes shape in the darkness. It’s a long moment before I realize it’s a reflection, that I don’t recognize myself, with my hair splayed out on the pillow beneath me and my eyes heavy-lidded, and this boy shoving down his jeans. He’s tan down to his waistband, but his ass looks thin and soft and very white in the reflection, and it makes the whole image suddenly ugly and I have to close my eyes. He’s sliding my underwear down and flipping me onto my stomach when I decide I’ve had enough of this.

“Stop,” I say, as I shove his hands away.

“What’s wrong?” he mumbles, grabbing my bare hips and trying to pull me to him as I squirm away.

“I’m going,” I say shoving him back again and pulling my underwear back into place.

“Come on, baby,” the boy says, his hands encircling my forearms. His grip is strong; I can see the muscles tense in his biceps and shoulders, and I know his leanness is hiding the tensile strength of iron rebar. “You can’t just leave.”

This is the moment,
I think. The delineation. Things can go badly now, very badly for me, on the whims of this boy alone. I can feel my control slipping; I can feel danger pressing in, alarm bells going off too late. But I think he sees the sudden fear in me because he releases my arms then. He looks surprised, that I could be afraid of him. But I know more about the world than he does.

“All right,” he says, showing me his palms. “Whatever.”

I don’t intend to let this sort of luck run out, so I pull my clothes on and stumble out into the hallway, pausing at the top of the stairs to pull on my shoes as his door slams behind me. When I’m out on the street the night air seems to hum, full of the glistening dots of city lights and the smell of rain. And I want to reach into myself, into that place beneath my sternum and pluck out that pretty teenager with her Malibu and pineapple juice and tell her see, see, look at me, and how much I have seen, and I still am no wiser than you, little girl.

Sam has to fly to San Diego on a business trip, following down a lead for an important story.
Of course,
I think. The stories are always important, always a crusade. His leaving is a relief, after weeks of shuddering silences, of nights spent tossing and sleepless, avoiding even brushing an elbow against each other, avoiding all of the subjects we can’t talk about—my painting, our theoretical engagement, anything to do with Lucy, and, of course, his absence at the hospital—and finding we have nothing much left to say to each other. He leaves me alone, a stranger in my own body, without anyone to ground me in the subtle routines of my old life.

Sam’s absence make the presence of David in my life seem that much more potent. Memories of that day in his apartment swarm up like bees when I’m the least prepared for them, when I’m rinsing my hair in the shower or chopping cucumber in the kitchen—which nearly cost me the tip of my brand-new finger—or lying awake in bed, trying not to think of David. How marked this body must be by the one man who has possessed it, if David is right about storing memories beneath our skin. My body is as traitorous as my mind now, reacting as it does with toe-curling insistence every time I think of him.

I look out my kitchen window on to Printer’s Row, newly coated with a sheet of ice that makes everything glitter in the cold sunlight, and try to clear my mind of David. Watching the movement of the city in winter is always a comfort, the way Chicago seems relentlessly disinterested in its inhabitants. It makes my own difficulties feel like part of a greater pattern, a whole city of people who are
walking against the blinding cut of the icy wind swept in from Lake Michigan. As if we are all struggling to make it through in a place where, not so long ago, people fought simply to outlive this cold. The people who were foolish enough to make their homes on the edge of a fallen glacier. Pioneers, I think. People who are made to endure.

My doorbell rattles me from my wistfulness, and it’s Lucy calling from the street outside, begging entry. I buzz her up and pull on a sweater and jeans over the tank top I slept in. I glance at myself in the mirror on the way out of my bedroom and am met with the reflection of my own wan scowl. Lucy, on the other hand, appears at my door flushed and positively incandescent. Her coat hangs open around the tight fabric of her sweater, her stomach swollen and melon-ripe beneath it.

“God, Lucy, didn’t you notice it’s still winter out there?” I ask, ushering her inside.

“Please, I have my own internal heater these days,” she says, kissing me on the cheek and heading for my bedroom. She’s carrying shopping bags.

“What exactly . . .”

“Look, honey, Sam told me that you’re having some . . . wardrobe issues,” she says.

“Sam called you?”

“I called the other day. You weren’t up yet.” She stops in the doorway, surveying the rumpled bed and last night’s clothes still on the floor. I slink by her, picking up the few discarded garments and pulling the comforter over the twisted sheets. I’m pretty sure her three-year-old is already learning how to make his bed.

“Anyway,” she says. “I decided to pick you up a few things.” She presses the shopping bags into my hands. “Go and try some of them on. I had to guess your size, so I just took mine and subtracted ten.”