You Can Say You Knew Me When (48 page)

My boot sent an empty plastic water bottle skittering to the left, toward a tangle of torsos on cushions. I followed it with my eyes.

It came to rest at Woody’s feet.

He was watching me from a loveseat, where he sprawled in every direction, a human crossroads: long arms on the cushions to either side, long legs protecting the space in front.

I stepped to him and said, “I’ve been looking for you all night.”

He showed no surprise. He raised his drinking cup, which held just a finger of liquid at the bottom. “I’m officially out of work, and officially getting drunk.”

I had no cup to toast with. I’d drunk nothing in the last hour and felt almost completely sober. I offered my sympathy, but he waved it away.

“I’m free,” he said.

“But your money?”

“The money! You were right, Jamie. The money was just…”—he held out a palm and blew—“…
Poof!
Nothing.”

“I should never have talked to you that way,” I said.

A burst of laughter shot in from behind, a trio of women bringing their conversation into the space. I stepped forward to make room as they passed, and Woody patted the empty half of his sofa, saying, “You’ve been looking for me all night.”

Intoxication gave him a sharper edge than usual, a butch hardiness that seemed almost invulnerable. His damp T-shirt, lavender under the black light, coated him like liquid. His nipples poked the fabric, a reminder of the flesh I knew so well. The new black sweater I wore was already dotted in lint, every speck of it bright as radioactive ash.

The couch was so soft that I sunk backwards, as if into water, though I felt stiff with fear. We had to twist inward to converse, a simple gesture that required great effort. Our knees bumped, and we both shifted away.

He said, “Thanks for sending the check.”

“Don’t mention it, it was nothing,” I said, instantly appalled at the tone of my voice. “What I mean is, it was a big deal for you to lend, and I’m sorry it took so long.”

“You surprised me. Your note.” He didn’t elaborate, instead upended his cup to lure the last drops into his mouth. The sight of his exposed neck made me nearly ravenous, an acute desire quickly mocked by the exaggerated jiggle he gave the container, as if the only thing on his mind was a refill.

The women I’d let pass were now sitting to our side on a futon mattress wedged against the wall of branches. One of them waved a cigarette towards us and asked did we mind, and when we said no, asked if we wanted one.

“Not me, but this guy might,” Woody said, slapping my thigh.

“I’m not smoking.”

“You’re quitting?”

“I’m not not-quitting.”

“You said you’d be smoking ’til you lost your first lung!”

“I’ve said a lot of stupid things.”

He patted my knee, this time almost consolingly. I grabbed his hand in mine and pulled it toward me. Our eyes met, and it could have been a moment of—well, it could have been
the
moment, the one that I so desperately wanted between us and had been preparing for since I’d learned he was here. The correct, restorative apology; the perfect summation of my remorse. The great eraser. His eyes were shot with pink spider webs, and through the boozy gloss I could see a flinch of terror. He had hoped to keep this congenial, and now he was trapped with me and my needs, my predictable cries for help and salvation. I fell into a silence that stretched beyond the point its solemnity could hold.

“Are you completely stoned?” he asked.

“Not even a little.”

“Then what is this?”

“This is me at a complete loss.” My throat was bark dry. Smoke prickled my nostrils. I unclasped my hands, slick with moisture, and released him.

“Is this about us?” His eyebrows lifted, a tiny hint of receptivity that gave me courage, and at last I found words.

“So much has happened, and you’re the person I most want to talk to about all of it. And I know this is the wrong place and time. You’re here with your friends. You just got fired. And no matter how much everyone is celebrating, you must be destroyed by this. You gave those people a lot of time.”

“Too much,” he said. He looked down and said, with irony this time, “I’m free.”

I reached out again, my fingers encircling his forearm as if taking his pulse. “Yes,” I said. “
Us
is on my mind.”

He inhaled and exhaled deeply. “Why don’t you write something down for me? Whatever you want to say. And then I can read it without reacting, and you won’t have to react to me reacting, and after that…”

“After that we’ll talk?”

“Yeah, sure. But no promises. This isn’t about—.”

I didn’t let him finish. “I’ll write you a letter. A long letter, on paper. I can’t do this by e-mail.”

“Okay, then,” he said.

“Okay, then.”

We had a plan, it seemed. I had a task. A letter. Where would I start? Newark Airport? The attic? Stepping off the bus in Greenlawn…

Our silence invited a sudden visitor, a harlequinned creature in a patchwork jumpsuit: glow sticks wreathed around its neck, androgynous face pancaked in white glitter, earlobes plugged with strobing red lights. The look was pure Scary Clown, the type that puts the dread in audience participation—but when it opened its mouth out came a feminine voice so lilting and blissful she might have been a children’s librarian. “Have you made your offerings?” she asked.

Woody and I looked at each other, both of us suppressing a startled grin.

She cocked her head, waiting. “This is the Altar of the New. Put something on the altar you want to leave behind.”

“Put something old on the Altar of the New?” Woody asked in a voice so sardonic it sounded more like mine than his.

“Uh-huh. We’re burning everything just before dawn.”

“Can I just throw myself onto the pyre?” I asked.

“No animal sacrifice,” she said, unblinking. She left us with a “Blessed be,” and floated like a giant neon smudge to the women on the futon. I heard her tell them, “No smoking in the temple.”

Woody slid forward, weight shifting to his feet. “I need another drink.”

“I’m gonna stay here a while. An altar is perfect for my penitent mood.”

He nodded and stepped away. I watched him move to the altar, reach into his wallet and withdraw a card. He scanned the other objects until he found a place for his. He didn’t linger. At the arched doorway, bending to fit through, he pivoted in midcrouch and waved to me. I waved back, feeling neither elated nor let down. Just relieved, from the burden that I might never speak to him again had I not gotten it right, right then.

Pillows were scattered in front of the altar, and I went to one, sitting cross-legged and searching for what Woody had left. There it was: his Digitent identification card. His face framed in curls. A mug shot from jail. A relic.

I had a credit card in my wallet I’d never use again. The slip of paper with directions to this party. A cigarette lighter.

From my thumb I slid my father’s wedding band. I turned it in my hand, gazed at the inscription. It should have been buried with him. It wasn’t meant to be kept as a souvenir. It wasn’t meant for me. I placed it on Woody’s badge. They would go into the fire together.

The band stage had been closed, the upper levels cleared. Anyone who was left was corralled and herded to the dance floor. There were hundreds of us in motion, compressed in this pounding, humid box. Sweaty faces, bug-eyed trippers, loose-limbed drunks. I’d long ago lost track of time, and Deirdre had made it clear this was her last night of freedom, brushing away any suggestion that she needed a good night’s sleep for Andy and AJ’s arrival. She’d undone a button on her blouse and was dancing with her hands in the air and her eyes closed while two guys, possibly sexier than any she’d ever danced with, cast all their attention on her. Colleen and Annie were all dopey smiles and dilated pupils, having each taken a hit of E. They’d offered one to me, and I almost said yes, remembering my dream of Jerusalem; then I decided the dream had not been a directive but some other wisdom requiring a clear head to decipher, and I passed. Brady was good and stoned, swaying to his own inner music. The Digitent castoffs had circled around Woody. A head above everyone else, his rhythmic stiffness transformed by hours of drinking, he looked like a counselor cutting loose on the last night of camp. Even Ian, who had returned, was doing his bearish shuffle, putting the moves on Rick, who had his shirt off, his sinewy traveler’s body a vision in bronze. And there I was, too, in the midst of this throbbing soundscape, in the midst of these people who were still my friends, my family, in a place where I belonged. The DJ was wrecking us, our bodies in her power as surely as those two turntables she controlled. She crafted us a journey that thickened and intensified one layered effect at a time, building to a euphoria so great you seemed not to need your body at all; you might just transcend the very vessel that carried you here. Then she’d bring us down slowly, the music stripped to a primal heartbeat, the resting point where we would find in one another’s eyes the confirmation that yes, I’m here and I feel it, too. Yes, we agree, this goes beyond individual will. Yes, we trust there will be another peak.

Yes, I surrender. To all of this, my life, I surrender.

The silvering darkness just before dawn. The air cold, colder still against bodies wet with sweat. The real club kids were ready for this, wrapped in ankle-length faux-fur and matching hats, their backpacks rigged with water bags accessed through tubes. The amateurs like me were shivering, dehydrated, in unlined jackets, heads bare, huddling together for scraps of warmth. Deirdre stood in front of me, enfolded in my arms, her head lazing back on my shoulder. Colleen, Annie, and Brady stood to our side, a blanket from Brady’s truck swaddling them like triplets. Ian had left with Rick, neither aware that I was the degree-of-separation between them. Woody was gone. He’d slipped off without good-bye. The chill in the air seemed to be smacking up against the very part of me that he’d taken away. A phantom limb.

With dozens of strangers, now familiar from the spell of our dancing, we circled around oil drums in the parking lot, watching fire dancers who had already juggled and twirled their flames for too long, the breathlessness of their spectacle evolving from hypnotic to simply numbing. To the sounds of drumming, the disassembled temple of branches was carried out. A pagan eeriness descended. Two voices, both female, began a wordless, chanting harmony. No speeches were made, no prayers recited, no gods invoked. The kindling was dispersed among the metal containers. Baskets of offerings were sifted atop the wood. The dancers approached with torches. The singers held a final chord. The fire licked the branches: the slow spread of flame, the crackle of ignition. A penance of waiting.

The first pyre erupted in violent orange.

I heard the breath of a hundred mourners release.