The Lost Night (Page 42)
“I know.”
“Are you still talking to people about this? I worry about you. I was already worried about your emotional well-being—”
“You mean my mental health.”
“—but now I’m actually worried for your safety,” she finished. She didn’t correct me.
“I’ll stop,” I told her, wishing it were true, wishing I could. “Let me know about the header, though, okay? But I’ll delete all my files and everything. ’Cause you’re right. This is getting weird.”
“Do you want to stay here tonight?”
“No,” I said, because my next move was to keep searching.
* * *
Lying in bed that evening, I finally found a photo on the website of Nicky Digital, a then-ubiquitous party photographer: Lloyd onstage, adjusting his lens, a few feet behind Man Man’s bespectacled drummer. So his alibi did check out. Lloyd really was handsome, with his striking bone structure and tousled blond hair. We’d had sex in April, a month before he and Edie had begun hooking up. Of course he didn’t want to keep fucking me. Nobody ever does.
I set the computer on my nightstand and flicked off the light, exhausted but unable to sleep. For hours I lay in a fugue state, my body mostly asleep but my mind still meandering, curling like a mist over a landscape of thoughts of Michael or Alex or Josh, somewhere else, probably real but possibly my own invention. I feel lonely, my brain quietly announced, and hearing it so baldly, my eyes welled up. I fell asleep in a fuzzy sleeping bag of self-pity.
Rain pinged against my air conditioner. Morning. I padded across the room and pulled the curtain aside: a downpour, splattering against the window and turning Fulton Street into a smear of green and gray. A perfect day to feel sorry for myself, to believe and not-believe that Edie was murdered, that the world was stiff and cruel and somebody out there wanted me dead, too. A taxi almost hit a jaywalker, the driver leaning on the horn instead of the brakes, and beneath an umbrella I could just make out a lifted hand, the middle finger held high. I blinked away the tableau of what would’ve happened if the jaywalker hadn’t gotten out of the way in time. Supine on the ground, a limb crushed flat. Bystanders circling up stupidly. A scarlet pool rippling outward from his body, mingling with the rain and—
My watch and phone and laptop all vibrated at once from different parts of the apartment. I squinted at my computer, and it took me a minute to make sense of the incoming message. Three letters, all from Josh: Hey.
At seven forty-five on a Thursday morning. Was he still out partying or something? It’d been more than two weeks since I’d seen him, since we’d sat on a bench and said stoner-y things about moving around in time, in the fourth dimension. I knew I should make him wait a bit, punish him for the unanswered texts and the fortnight of silence, so I puttered around, cleaning up the living room and brewing coffee and putting away clean dishes and it’d still only been eight minutes and I’d run out of things to do, so fuck it: Hey!
“What’s up?” he typed back.
“Not too much,” I wrote. “You?”
“Same.”
“Big plans for tonight?” I said, because I was suddenly bored, because this was boring and some bizarre cocktail of boredom and fear was making me reckless.
“Still figuring it out. You?”
“Same.” Then: “Let me know if you want to meet up later.”
“Yeah, def!” he said, right away, and I glared at the phone for its succinctness, for being the conduit for an answer that could either mean yes, we’ll meet up, or yes, I’ll let you know if I feel like it.
* * *
Alex updated his Facebook photo that day, a beaming picture with his perfect wife, and I glared at them both. After work I showered and shaved my legs, just in case, and as the sun sank behind neighboring buildings and nobody contacted me to do anything, I slipped into a robe and reopened the old email archives. I poked around without a clear plan, knowing I should be more systematic about this, I should at least be recording my search terms. I cringed my way through a few email exchanges with Edie where I clearly wanted to ask about Lloyd; I hadn’t known they were sleeping together and still saw her as my connection to my crush. I brought him up with faux casualness, begging between the lines for an update. I’d finally broken down and sent him a text, laboriously composed to strike the proper breezy tone, and he hadn’t responded, which filled me with a wash of shame.
Dating sucks. Fuck Josh; I didn’t want to see him anyway.
But he did text, a little after ten, and I was immediately nervous, looking around like a trapped animal.
“Hey! You out?”
“Just finishing up dinner,” I lied, then instantly regretted it: He could ask where, he could fact-check me.
“Come hang out!” he replied. “I’m at Jimmy Rhoda’s.”
I looked it up: a dive bar in Bed-Stuy, a gritty, gentrifying neighborhood that reminded me of the Bushwick I’d known.
“Will you be there for a bit?”
“I’ll wait for you,” he said, and, unsure what else to do, I sent him a smiley face and ducked into the bathroom, heart pounding like the circa 2009 playlist I put on the speakers.
* * *
I was about to leave when I turned around, stepping back to the cabinet over my fridge. The scotch was still there, next to the fire extinguisher. In case of emergency. I thought of Josh’s gleaming smile, then of Alex’s soft lips, fringed by a five o’clock shadow. I froze like someone at the top of the high dive and then took a swig straight from the bottle, chasing it with water and then swishing some mouthwash so I wouldn’t smell like a damn alcoholic. I coughed at its golden burn, and as my cab coasted along Myrtle Avenue, I felt the forgotten, familiar sensation—booze prickling outward from my belly. I was going to meet Josh’s friends, which was strange but somehow casual, a hurdle I’d never crossed with Michael but that I’d sail past with Josh before we had any reason to think it mattered. I wondered how many of them would be sitting around with him. I wondered, too, if they’d think I looked nice, clad for more or less anything in tight jeans and a racerback top. Surely Josh would think I looked pretty. Surely that’s why he invited me.
I pushed open the bar’s door without noticing the bouncer murmuring at me from the side, and I had to back out to hand him my ID. Then back inside and the music crescendoed, something hip and bass-y, and I took a few steps in and scanned the crowd, sure I’d find him soon, sure I could do this without shrinking into myself and hunching over my phone.
I spotted someone from behind, talking animatedly, and it looked more or less like him, and anyway, how many men with thick wavy black hair could there be in this bar, and anyway, I looked hot, who wouldn’t want to talk to me? I tapped him on the shoulder and he stopped talking and turned around and it was him. We smiled at each other and he stood up to give me a hug with a kiss on the cheek, then kept his arm strung across my shoulders as he introduced his friends, a pretty black woman with a sculpted ’fro and a surprisingly tall Asian guy with a good handshake, what a hip and casually diverse crowd. I forgot their names right away but it didn’t matter because we were already hanging out anyway.
“You look like you need a drink,” Josh said, and he was right, I did, and he guided me over to the bar and asked what I was having and I said, “Jameson on the rocks,” knowing it was the cool thing to order, and he looked impressed and paid for it even though I must be the one who makes so much more money, although I don’t know, people with knowledge of 3-D technology are probably more in demand than anachronistic print staffers. We made small talk by the bar as we waited for my drink, my wit on full display this time, and he smiled and toasted my glass with his beer when it arrived.
We stayed for three rounds at Jimmy Rhoda’s, the crowd getting thicker and steamier around us, and then someone checked their watch and said we should probably go to Rocco’s. Josh asked if that was cool and I nodded, smiling, and we all squashed into a cab, me for some reason in the middle but it was fine. Now the cab was cruising to Ridgewood, and Queen came on the radio and I pointed out we were listening to Queen on the way to Queens, and no one else knew the words but at least they all laughed and let the song play out, sing it Mr. Mercury.
Rocco’s apartment was like a nice place with shitty furniture clustered here and there, a big black marble kitchen island piled high with beer and mixers, and we squished onto old couches drinking wet, cold cans of PBR while someone fiddled with the music on the wireless speakers that were scattered around so the music was coming from everywhere. Josh sat close and fetched me drinks whenever I wanted a new one and then I noticed a little white plastic bag, like the kind from a jewelry store, making its way around the circle and people were passing it with a teeny tiny spoon, dollhouse-size, and I squinted and focused even though I saw two spoons posing as one and realized it was cocaine, getting closer, and unlike Alex, unlike most of my friends in Calhoun, I’d never done it, so I probably shouldn’t start now.
“I’m fine,” I said, in what I hoped was a casual tone, waving my hand as it passed me by, and nobody said anything or seemed to mind, so it was fine.