The Lost Night (Page 25)
“Game room,” the man explained. “They’re probably playing cornhole.”
I nodded. “Anyway, thanks for your help. I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by and say hi.”
“Old friend?”
I smiled mysteriously. “Sort of.”
“Ex-girlfriend?”
“Interesting guess!” I laughed. “But wrong again. He used to date my best friend.”
“Oh. That had to be a while ago; he and his wife have been together for…I don’t know, this is their fourth kid.”
“It was a long time ago. Anyway, thanks for your help.”
“Do you have kids?” He leaned to his side. The ease of an attractive white man who, obviously, gets to decide when the conversation’s over.
“I don’t. Do you?”
He chuckled. “Nope, no kids. Are you married?”
“You’re sure full of questions.”
He laughed, gave that winning smile. “I’m trying to figure out if I can ask you out.”
My cheeks burned. “Oh, I thought you—oh. Well, sure. Let me give you my number.” I looked around for a pen, then realized his fingers were aloft over his keyboard because he was not, like me, old and analog. I recited it, then added, “…and I’m Lindsay.”
“Josh,” he replied, reaching out to shake my hand.
A classic Hot Man Born in the Nineties name. I forced myself to maintain eye contact. “Well, I better get back to work,” I said finally. “And no need to mention me to Greg, I’ll catch him some other time when he’s…back in action.” Then I spit out a goodbye and shot back into the building’s labyrinthine hallways.
* * *
No one at work had noticed my absence, of course. I returned to the architecture firm’s website, telling myself it was to learn more about Greg but knowing it was to research Josh. The babe wasn’t anywhere on the site, so I forced myself to at least reread Greg’s bio. He was an accomplished man, one who’d worked on several impressive-sounding buildings around Manhattan before cofounding this technology-driven firm, one of the first to employ 3-D printing.
Next I combed through my old emails, looking for signs of Greg. I found remarkably little, although I did figure out how they’d met: a motherfucking missed connection on Craigslist, which, Jesus Christ. It was the kind of ridiculous thing that would happen only to Edie, whose life played out like a single-shot mumblecore: hip parties. Fashion school. New boyfriend, probably dovetailing with the ones before and after, obtained in a cool, unique way that also underscored how desirable she was. Then I felt a rush of nausea, aware that I was once again envying a dead girl.
Why had we called each other best friends? We were young, after the period when you could declare someone your bestie but still young enough to crave it, the way a twelve-year-old lusts after a place at the lunch table. She was my girl crush, and my adoration fed her.
But that’s not it. She could be such a good friend, when she wasn’t obsessed with her own problems or mad at you about something. I thought back to my twenty-third birthday, when we’d gone to see an Australian band at Glasslands, a wood-paneled venue with terrible bathrooms and reliably cute bartenders. I’d deemed the keyboardist hot, and as soon as the show ended, Edie had dragged me to the lip of the stage and introduced me as the birthday girl as he helped break down gear. He’d invited us into the greenroom and we’d spent the evening drinking with the Aussies; twice, she’d pulled me into the bathroom to make sure I liked this guy, that I was still having a good time.
I’d missed her so badly in the weeks and months after her death, even though I’d been planning to split from her anyway, even though the departure was almost mine. Over and over, I’d think of something funny or ridiculous or sarcastic to share with Edie, and sometimes I’d have my phone out by the time I realized I couldn’t text her. Nor could I contact any of the other Calhounies, off grieving in their building’s rambling halls. Instead I’d worked hard to find new friends, ones to whom Edie meant nothing, and I’d watched with slight surprise as time rolled past.
* * *
That night I dreamed I was in Calhoun again, stumbling through the halls with something behind me, my legs clumsy and useless, bruises blooming on my shins and knees. The apartment numbers on the doors that lined the corridor kept changing, so that no matter which way I went, SAKE slipped farther and farther away, 3G, 4H, wrong wrong wrong. I turned around and suddenly knew, with certainty, it was Alex behind me, Alex coming for me. I started awake gasping for air, terrified, like I’d been a hairsbreadth away from dying.
I stared at the ceiling for a while, picking back through my phone call with Alex two nights earlier. Why hadn’t Edie moved into her parents’ apartment after the breakup, if only for a week or two? She had her own room there, and things with Alex must not have ended well if, two months later, he was standing on a rooftop, screaming “I want to slit her throat!” into the night.
Edie and I had bonded a bit by complaining about our insufferable parents, but I’d never met Mrs. Iredale. Everyone else had, which made me feel a little excluded; she’d helped Edie move in and the other roommates complained about her occasionally showing up at Calhoun, smelling of whiskey and banging on the door of 4G. She was like the kooky old woman in the crumbling house that the neighborhood kids call a witch, one-upping one another with mad tales. Who was this woman?
On the subway ride to work, I hatched a plan, a madcap scheme that shoved Alex further, further, further out of the frame. I’d talk to Edie’s mother—figure out if she had any suspicions or details she’d kept hidden. From my desk, I used an app to hide my number and called her landline, a rare 212 area code on an island of untethered communications. She picked up and I asked if José was home (Why José? I thought, even as I said it), then apologized, hung up, and began gathering my things. I wasn’t sure what I’d tell her at her front door, but I had a twenty-five-minute bus ride to figure it out.
As I rode north toward Morningside Heights—an odd neighborhood near Manhattan’s knobby tip, one where old row houses unfold down both sides of the street—my brain kept sifting; mentally I stepped over the people I’d talked to like bodies scattered across the ground: Sarah, Tessa, Kevin, Damien, Alex. I peered out the window, where rain coated the street, and my mind wandered over to last year’s horrific accident in the Bronx, the one where a bus collided with a big rig, veered into a pole, and had its top sliced off by a sign. Fourteen people dead after rolling around like popcorn inside. I imagined it for a moment, this bus suddenly airborne, screaming and limbs and the stiff punches of seats, windows, other bodies.
The bus was frigid and I wrapped my arms around me, feeling the staticky fluff of goose bumps—one of those silly leftovers from evolution, like the tailbone and appendix. But most of our adaptations are good ones. I remembered a story I’d fact-checked about a Japanese doctor who’d been arrested for surgically disconnecting young men’s fear circuits, plucking apart their brain fibers like a threadbare tapestry. It was a for-service hire, a dimming of the amygdala in a half-dozen humans, suddenly preternaturally brave. But also stupid, self-endangering. Fear is a survival mechanism, as any half-witted high school biology student can tell you. Darwin knew that dead men don’t reproduce.
But the impulse to rewire a brain, that I knew all too well. My own parents had worked hard at it, mucking around in my skull—chemically rather than surgically—from the time I was old enough to have a personality.
Middle school: me at my ugliest; Dad’s eyes as he turned to me, a mixture of fury and fear. The oval of blood growing syrupy on the floor. I read once that seventh grade is exactly when your brain undergoes its biggest changes since infancy, overproducing brain cells and then killing off most of them. Letting them duke it out for survival. Which is ironic, really, since seventh grade is a bunch of confused preteens doing the same thing.
* * *
I dashed outside at my stop and stepped through the rain toward Mrs. Iredale’s home. Her town house was orange brick and cute, with bay windows and navy trim and a small front yard in need of mowing. Next door some kids were playing in their own wet patch of lawn, stomping into puddles with their brows knitted in concentration. On the porch, my hand jumped out and rang the doorbell before I could stop to think about it.
No answer. Again, the relief/disappointment cocktail.
“What’s your name?” It was one of the girls next door, her wet hair matted to her face.
“I’m Lindsay.” I flashed them a smile. “What’s your name?”
“Sophie.” She picked a bathing suit wedgie unflinchingly. Kids can be so unflappable. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk to Mrs. Iredale. I was friends with her daughter.”
She cocked her head. “Mrs. Iredale?”
Shit, was this the wrong house?
“Can I help you?” It was an adult voice, a knowing voice, coming up the path behind me.
“Mrs. Iredale, I’m Lindsay. Edie’s friend. I’m—I’m sorry to bother you.” I was struck, frozen. She was beautiful, with silver-streaked hair and Edie’s freckles and a serious expression on an otherwise impish face.