The Lost Night (Page 31)

“Do you think that has, you know, ethical implications?” I dabbed my lips with a napkin.

“I don’t know. It’s just a tool. You know the phrase: Guns don’t kill people—people with guns kill people. So it’s kind of a stretch to say that people who design 3-D models for guns kill people. Right?”

I sighed. “I guess. I mean, I grew up in a gun family; I’m not anti-gun. It’s just…wild to think about.”

“What would you wanna print out?” he said.

“Ohhh, gosh. Well, definitely not a gun.” Two assholes careened by on blue and white Jet Skis. “When will we be able to 3-D print a time machine?”

He laughed. “Once we master quantum physics. We’re getting there.”

“You think?”

“Sure.”

I thought for a moment. “That would make it 4-D modeling!”

He chuckled. “When would you go back to?”

August 2009, obviously, so I could stay home that night. Maybe order sushi, walk over to Videology, and rent a DVD.

“It’s funny we always talk about time machines transporting us back in time, right?” I said after a moment. “You could jump ahead, too.”

“That’s true. And it’d be a lot easier to go that way, if we could just figure out how to move at the speed of light.”

“I guess that’s less appealing, since we eventually reach the future, anyway,” I said.

A ferry tooted its horn.

“A physicist would argue that we’re always in the now,” he replied.

“So would a philosopher.”

He laughed. “This is pretty heavy for a pizza lunch.”

He caught my eye and held his perfect smile, his thick hair rumpling in the wind, and for a moment, a small, embarrassing part of me wondered if he was my time machine, my wormhole back to when I was twenty-three and happy and free.

* * *

“So did you guys have sex on the dock?” Damien called as soon as I got back to my office, loud enough for others to hear.

“Damien!” I beckoned him in and closed the door. “I found out he’s twenty-four years old. And he brought me my own slice of pizza. I feel like the prettiest girl in all of high school.”

He laughed, his eyes glittering. “You said you were chubby in high school, right? Chubby High School Lindsay would be cheering this hot bitch on.” He leaned against the door. “Chubby Lindsay would have eaten a whole pie.”

“All right, all right.” I spun slowly in my chair. “I can’t even believe I went out with someone so young.”

“It was just pizza. Does he know your age?”

“No, and now that I haven’t mentioned it yet, I feel like it’s this dirty secret.” I laughed. “Do I have my graduation year on LinkedIn? He must never know.”

“He’s probably into the fact that you’re older and wiser.” Damien considered. “But he clearly isn’t just in it for the sex, because you hung out midday. This is fascinating. Maybe the youngs have, like, circled back to playing the long game.”

“I’ll take what I can get.”

“How did you meet this kid?”

“I just stopped into…my doctor switched floors and I accidentally wound up at the wrong suite number,” I said evenly. Was I getting good at this? “I asked for directions and we ended up chatting for a minute. So wild.”

He nodded approvingly. “Okay, so what would Fat High School Lindsay say?”

“Hey, wasn’t I Chubby Lindsay a minute ago?”

“Adorable either way. Oh, speaking of being fat kids together, are we getting dinner before the show tonight?”

“The show?”

“Alvin Ailey. Don’t tell me it’s not on your calendar.”

Oh, Christ. “I didn’t forget! Just…I mean I did right now, but I’m in. It’s at Lincoln Center, right?” Damien loves modern dance and always gets us pairs of plush seats at the major companies’ shows, Cedar Lake, Martha Graham, Paul Taylor. (Except for that brief period in 2016 after Damien dated a Paul Taylor dancer, then broke up with him on the basis of bad conversation and disappointingly uncalisthenic sex; Paul Taylor had been unmentionable for two whole seasons.) We get dressed up—nothing annoys Damien like attendees in jeans and sneakers—and sit together, enthralled, watching athletes spin their art.

“Yep, Lincoln Center.” Damien headed for the door. “I’ll get us dinner reservations in the neighborhood. I can tell you forgot, Linds. Put on some lipstick.”

* * *

As we walked to the 1 train, weaving around the after-work mobs, Damien chattered away about his Labor Day plans, the final Fire Island trip. A part of me was grateful that he was over the Edie drama—he was an unchanged figure in the murk of swirling unknowns. I didn’t want to tell another soul about Alex, about what he’d probably done, because saying it might make it true. The secret was like a storm cloud, growing larger under my skin.

At dinner, too, I tried to be upbeat, tried to keep up my end of the conversation and remark at appropriate times. Greg had been another dead end, but out of it had come a few feel-good minutes with Josh, time that reminded me that there’s a here and now. And if I was really going to close the book on Edie, I had to come back online, to an era when we weren’t guzzling shots and bumming cigarettes and dancing with strangers and always moving just a little faster than real life, jerky and frenetic like early motion pictures. Maybe Edie didn’t need me revisiting her final hours. Maybe I didn’t need to know whether I had made it to the concert or what’d happened after I’d opened her door and turned off my camera. Maybe the past really had passed.

But at the theater, the first act was lyrical and slow, not enough to keep my mind from wandering. The troupe spun and rolled in perfect, languid unison, and I found myself combing through the case files again, impressions rising like balloons: Kevin waiting at the ER, Sarah fumbling with her cell phone, Anthony reaching through the blood to feel for Edie’s pulse. Me, drunk and blank-faced, opening a window to let in the heat as my taxi wove its way through the night.

The second dance was more my speed, with a pulsing drumbeat and spastic motion. My eyes settled on a corps member shorter than the others, with red hair and pale creamy skin; from back here, she reminded me of Edie, graceful and quick. I let my eyes relax and watched the dancers braid themselves together, now sideways, then a small explosion and limbs sticking out at awkward angles. Suddenly all of the dancers but the doppelgänger bolted offstage, and the music switched to something mournful, deep, and soulful. The redhead slunk in and out of the spotlight, moving slowly and then crashing into odd contortions, hitting the stage so hard that we could hear the thud from our balcony seats. I glanced over at Damien and saw that he was riveted, too, then realized I was crying, unassuming tears leaking down my cheeks.

I cheered when it was over, hollering when the woman took her solo bow, letting the roar of applause cover up my sniffles as I pulled myself back together. At intermission, Damien and I stood among the throngs, sipping drinks.

“So that last one got to you, huh?”

I wasn’t sure he’d noticed. “Yeah, it was beautiful.”

“You seem quiet tonight.”

“Do I?”

“You can talk to me. You thinking about your friend?”

Goddammit, he’d invoked the secret code, the way to split me into a million sobbing pieces: He was nice to me.

“I—I’m sorry,” I said with a high-pitched laugh. The faucet of tears was on full blast.

“Whoa. Here, come here.” Damien led me away from the crowd, which had begun streaming back into the theater, and settled us on a sofa in a random recess.

“Babe, I didn’t realize this was bringing you down so much! You haven’t mentioned it in a while.”

I shook my head. “I can tell you and Tessa think I’m being compulsive or whatever. But…you know that feeling when a situation is just totally out of your control? It’s like that. Only it’s about this really horrible thing that already happened, and the reason I wasn’t in control was because I drank too much.” I groaned. “You saw the video—you heard how Alex and I were saying awful stuff about Edie that night, how we wanted her dead. And it’s just…it’s really upsetting to think that he or I could’ve…I don’t know. Said something awful. Or that he could have done something awful.” Or that I could have seen something awful, witnessed the two of them fighting, him posturing with Kevin’s gun. Or, or, or.

“Ohhh, girl.” He pulled me into a hug. “You know what they say about suicide: Nothing anyone says or does—”

“I know, I know.” I slid away from his arms. “But it’s still really disturbing that I went and talked to her. I’d always thought she was alone in her apartment the whole time. Nobody really saw her that night at all, after she parted with her dude of the moment.” Fucking Lloyd.

“So I have a confession,” he said. I raised my eyebrows. “I haven’t looked at your video. But I will! I’ll do it tonight. I’m a video editor, Linds. I can definitely find something you didn’t notice.”