The Lost Night (Page 52)

Wait, what were we talking about?

“The really funny thing is that I never thought to just introduce her to someone new. And then we met that idiot Alex at a stupid Calhoun party and she couldn’t stop gushing about him. She’d barely even talked to him; I went up to him, let him know I could get him Molly if he was interested, and I had no idea that that asshat would be the thing that finally broke up her and Greg, months after she’d stopped talking to me.”

Why am I on the ground again? Am I dreaming?

“She’d suspected I didn’t like Greg, so she put on a whole I’m-not-sure-if-he’s-right-for-me dog and pony show, all leading up to her getting me alone and asking me point-blank: What do you think of Greg? And I told her in the kindest way possible, I—I thought she wanted to hear this and was thinking it herself, like, if someone just put it into words for her, it’d be crystal clear what she had to do next.”

Her sentences are bouncing around like balls in a bingo cage.

“I told her, ‘Honestly, I think you’re too good for him. It seems like Greg puts a damper on all of your best qualities.’ And her eyes went red. I’d never seen her look that way; the scary, quiet kind of furious, you know?”

She’s speaking slowly, like this is the billionth time she’s gone over it in her mind.

“And of course I immediately backpedaled, I didn’t mean it, what do I know about their relationship, and I’m sure I’m reading everything so wrong, but she’s not hearing it. She got up—god, I can picture it so clearly—she stood up from the couch, picked up both of our mugs of tea, walked into the kitchen and dumped them both into the sink, then walked into her room and closed the door, not slamming it, just, done. And that was it. She was done with me.” She pauses to blow her nose as the tears drip on. “After that, it was like I didn’t exist. We’d literally be sitting around in a group and I’d count how many times she acknowledged me, and it was always zero. I’d say something and it was like I hadn’t opened my mouth; when she talked she’d bounce her eyes around between the other people there…and it caught on, she was so, like, alpha that everyone picked up the habit and would just cut me out of conversations. She unfriended me on Facebook and detagged every photo of us together. And all her little minions did the same. I felt like a ghost.”

Her voice grows wavery and my gut contracts like a fist; I know how this feels, the full-body burn of trying to pierce yourself into a conversation and failing, nearby but separate, as if you’re behind a sheet of glass.

“This went on for months. She even broke up with Greg and started sleeping with that loser Alex and it didn’t even matter, I was still dead to her. I remember that winter, I got sick—like really sick,” she says. “I was throwing up and couldn’t get any food down for an entire week. Edie was barely even around—she was staying at Alex’s apartment most nights, I overheard her saying something to Kylie or Sarah about me making the place a cesspool of germs. I was so weak that I fell once trying to climb back into my loft and just, like, lay on the floor, half in my room and half out, until Kylie found me and took me to the hospital.”

I wish suddenly that Edie were here to defend herself, to tell her side of the story, one where Tessa was less of a beatific victim and more of an instigator.

“Then what?” I say.

Tessa wipes her tears angrily. “So she moved out,” she continues, “she moved out and she had you as a best friend and she never looked back. It was awful.” I realize I’m pushing my back against the bottom of the couch to disappear, to see if it’ll swallow me whole. It scoots back six inches, all at once, making a weird monkey sound.

Tessa doesn’t notice. “And I moved in with some other people in the building and tried…tried to move on. And I actually bumped into Edie at Hope Lounge shortly after she’d moved in with Alex. We literally ran into each other, so she couldn’t ignore me. So I acted friendly, and then as we were talking, she grabbed this lanky guy who was walking by and asked if she knew him from somewhere. At first I was annoyed—she was obviously just trying to get away from me again—but he said he knew Alex, and the way she was nodding and smiling at him, it was too easy. ‘Oh my god, Edie, did you see the way he was looking at you?’ ” she mocks in a falsetto. “ ‘He is so into you. Yes, really. You should go over and talk to him some more, he’s basically starry-eyed.’ ” She looks at me, puffed-up. “Moth to the flame.”

I realize she means Lloyd, that she was the friend Lloyd had been describing when I spoke to him, that she’d manipulated Edie into pursuing him, and it’s like a pinhole in the darkness, a little slit in a sheet of black construction paper. What’s going on?

“I was glad to not be living with her,” she continues. “That’s also when I started selling.”

My hands are batting around in the dust-bunny-infested earth I’ve uncovered by pushing the couch and they hit something, something I immediately recognize without even looking because of the thousands of times I’ve dug around in my purse for it, seeing with my fingertips. It’s not in an alley behind a club in Ridgewood. It made it home.

“You started selling?” I say without comprehending it, because I need to keep her talking, because the easiest way is to be Pete the Repeat Parrot.

She nods, wipes her tears. “I always knew who to get stuff from, I had my guy in Calhoun, and I was always sending people his way. I’m not much of a drinker, as you know, but pot…relaxed me, I guess? Made me feel a little less anxious about living with strangers and having to still occasionally see all these people who’d betrayed me. Edie and Sarah and all their new friends. Like you.”

I’ve lost what I’m supposed to say next; I’m onstage and there’s a new line, but it’s gone from me, flew out of my brain like a bird. A parrot.

“But then you started selling?” I repeat, and almost melt with relief when she nods like it’s a good question. I’ve got my fingers around the case now and I’m inching it toward my lap, easy, easy.

“Yeah. My guy left New York and I figured out that stuff was coming from Anthony. I guess he figured either he could deal to his building or someone else would. So he needed a new middleman. That was also when we started hooking up.” She pauses to glare at me. “And yes, I’m aware of the irony of hating Greg but being fine with fucking Anthony.”

I don’t follow. I feel two names rising out of the water like icon paintings, but I can’t make them come into focus at the same time.

“Anyway, I started taking Molly regularly, which I liked a lot. It really…This sounds weird, but it really helped with the loneliness element. Like when I took it, that emotion just disappeared. Anthony asked if I’d be interested in selling for him, since he had to keep a low profile and only deal with a few people, you know, directly. It was pretty stupid. We all do stupid things when we’re younger, I suppose. We feel so invincible.”

An idea like a lightning bolt. “Edie used Molly that night.”

She stops crying long enough to laugh. “Did she?”

I nod. The phone is close to my butt now and the thought comes into focus that she should not be staring at me, not good at all, nope. I speak before I lose it: “So you started selling for him?”

She doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve said the same thing three times like a goddamn wind-up doll. Maybe she’s on drugs now. Why am I on drugs again?

“I did. Free drugs for me. God, he was such a loser. I wasn’t sad to see him go.”

I don’t understand. “I don’t understand,” I say.

“Oh, never mind,” she says, “not important.”

But I think that means it is important. I look back over my thoughts, like they’re behind me.

“Tessa,” I say. “You’re my closest friend. I care about you.” Have I ever said those words aloud? To anybody? I see another tactic: “I love you.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” She sniffs and shakes her head like she’s done crying, then stands and looks toward the kitchen. “This is taking so fucking long. Do you have anything to drink?”

I almost protest and then realize she’s moving away and this is my chance. I slide the phone out from under my butt, to the far side so it should be hidden from her, I think, and I hold down the button, but nothing happens, and I try to think what to do because it’s dead, it’s dead like Edie, it’s dead like I’m supposed to be. It’s dead like Anthony.

Holy shit. Anthony the landlord. Killed in a fire. Is that what she meant?

“What’ve you got there?” Tessa’s amused, patronizing, and she crosses over to me with an ease I can only dream of and pushes me to the side so that I collapse into the fetal position. The phone is hers, it’s in her hands, dead dead dead.

“Where did you even find this?” She’s half laughing. “Lindsay, you said you lost your phone. Was it actually in your apartment the entire time? Don’t you know how to geolocate it? God, Lindsay, how have you even made it this far in life?”