The Bitter End
Alice felt brackish being back in the city. She was seasick from the stinking, lumbering bus from Boston and standing in the throat of Port Authority. That and everything: the three hundred level philosophy and psychology classes; 2 a.m. wake-ups in the library; summiting 25-page papers; the long dirty winter of ramen noodles, and rounds of sweltering and freezing, inside, outside, all the time, took her down to the studs. Spring didn’t feel like release or renewal. It felt like a dated rerun. All she could think about was lying on the twin bed her mother surely put in her new bedroom in the latest apartment—Better views! Higher ceilings! More light!—two blocks from the last one. She drifted toward the usual meeting point, the ghostly sculpture installation of “The Commuters,” forever frozen while somberly waiting to board a bus. Supposedly a tribute to the commuting masses, Alice saw herself in the dull monotony of their slumped bodies and blank faces. People swerved around her, clicking their tongues. A man smacked into her. “Idiot,” he hissed, “this whole thing is about keeping moving.” Alice glared at the back of his head. “Idiot yourself,” she muttered, looking for a clock. This could not be the first time in eight years the meet up failed. She came through the heavy doors, flipping her dark, glossy hair back and mirrored Ray Bans up. Alice exhaled. No one felt more like home to her. Elena, solid ground and bright sky.
Their hug was long and hard. “To make up for the fact that you’re leaving for the summer again,” Elena pulled back and stared into Alice’s eyes, “we will jump into having fun.” She sighed. “Once we get you fixed up, of course.” She took a bulging bag from Alice’s shoulders. As they walked out onto the sidewalk, Elena chirped about people and things. It was a frizzy day, warm for early May. The city, too, was winter-worn, gray. As they walked, Elena’s warm, familiar warbling picked Alice up and carried her the rest of the way off the front lines and onto the life raft that was her best friend since kindergarten, driving her crazy, and loving her madly, since circa 1973.
“Obviously we’ll go to Joan’s new place first…” Since middle school, they’d been referring to Alice’s mother by her first name. “…then we’ll grab a bite, a nap and a shower, in that order,” Elena said. “Good plan?”
Alice nodded. “Thanks for coming to get me,” she said. “I’m fried.”
“No shit! You’re like one of those hot dogs we used to eat on Coney Island!” Elena laughed. “What are they called again?”
“Coneys, I think,” Alice said, prickling, while Elena shouted, “rippers!”
Had it been so long that Elena didn’t catch herself anymore, didn’t give Alice an apologetic glance, bringing up Coney Island?
After a class she took on spirituality in the modern world, Alice had been secretly working on “saying yes” to life. In her wallet, she kept a Rumi poem, “The Guest House,” about welcoming thoughts and feelings like visitors entering a guest house. She was a work in progress.
That night, after each of the promised steps and Q & A with Joan, her real estate broker mother, Elena insisted on going out for just a drink. “We are twenty-one,” she said.
Waving and smiling at strangers as they walked through the dark bar, Elena pulled Alice up a set of sticky stairs to a balcony with stools lined up at a counter on the banister, facing the stage. Through shafts of spotlight, they had a clear view of the blue-lit stage below.
“I see you’ve been here before,” Alice shouted to Elena over the house music, watching a group of fake ID holders with glowing white teeth spool out of one of the back corners, fiddling with each other’s miniskirts and poufy bangs.
Elena waved a peace-sign at a guy behind the long bar on the main floor. “The band is really hot. I mean the music. I wanted it to be a surprise!”
“Wanted what to be a surprise?” Alice said, but Elena’s attention pinballed. Her usual buoyant energy had been consistently escalating. By the time they walked into the Greenwich Village bar wedged between a window featuring a giant plastic pepperoni slice and another crammed with grimy bongs, she was babbling about the drummer and the bassist like they were her brothers.
Two glasses of electric blue liquid appeared on the table in front of them. Elena bent back, twirling the mini paper umbrella at the scruffy man whose bandana showcased a broad, shiny forehead.
“You’re always the best, Marty!” Elena cooed.
Marty winked. Alice sipped the fruity florescent drink. Elena leaned over the table, scooting Alice’s elbows into her palms. Her dark eyes sparkled with mischief.
“You love it, right? Marty calls it Sex on the Driveway, an urban twist on the usual Sex on the Beach,” she laughed, raising her cup. “Let’s toast! May we jam the whole summer into the next three weeks!”
Alice tilted her cup to Elena’s. “No one has a driveway in the city,” she said. Elena rolled her eyes and sipped through the tiny plastic straw.
Two hours, two drinks, and multiple assurances from Elena later, the house lights went down and a band appeared. Elena shot up, whistling through her fingers. During the first songs, top 40 covers, Alice watched her friend unfurl like a flag in the wind, arms waving, hips swaying. She herself still felt underwater, or maybe just dispassionate and detached, like an anthropologist or a surgeon. But no, something watery rinsed through her.
The fake IDs tossed their hips and projected their chests at the bassist, guitarist and singer, who played into their groping by toeing and backing away from the edge of the stage. The music was crisp and accurate, but the scene, including Elena, was teeny bopper.
“You Shook Me All Night Long” was a favorite. Alice closed her eyes and was suddenly watching herself run Smoots along the Charles River, Walkman cranked. When a crooning ballad rolled in, she opened her eyes to see if it was the same singer. It was. The guys romped around the stage like idiots, but their rawness morphed from dirty to glamorous, loose and easy to strutting and defiant. She felt the live music wanting to hook her, to pull her in, and was not about to be tied up and thrown over a shoulder. Not her, not here, not tonight.
She studied the guys with steely distrust. The drummer’s mouth contorted to the beat, his gaze a lightning bolt of concentration. The bassist’s long, sickle-shaped trunk curled over his instrument. The guitarist’s high cheekbones and spiky bleached hair. Were they ridiculous? Or so in thrall to the music that restraint and self-consciousness disappeared?
The front man’s chameleonic voice was Clapton, Jagger, Springsteen, Bono—a mixed tape in a boom box. What was that bit in the spirituality class? Something about “no equilibrium without facing the music.” She parsed his details: thin, blond hair; compact legs in tattered, acid-wash jeans; a long, hairless torso beneath a rumpled, mis-buttoned black shirt. Piece by piece, nothing remarkable. And yet, as he twirled toward the guitarist and lurched back to the microphone to belt out lyrics, her breath caught. When his fist shot up, she almost followed. He marched and leapt and skipped and dipped and shimmied and bent over the microphone like it was a child, or a lover. Loping across the stage, left to right, from the front edge to the back shadows, winking at the bassist, throwing a peace sign to the drummer, squatting and jumping up to taunt the fake IDs. She watched Elena responding effortlessly, gracefully to the band’s amplified, hyperbolic performance. But Alice only felt overheated and exposed, with something like Pop Rocks exploding in her chest.
Finally, the stage went dark and the band disappeared into the back. “That was fun!” Alice shouted in Elena’s ear, more volume than enthusiasm.
“Come meet them!” Elena squealed.
Alice stood up, light-headed, her legs as unsteady as a knock-kneed fawn. “What the hell is in that drink?”
“Alcohol!” Elena hooted.
According to Joan, this was the last real summer, meaning the only kind of summer Alice knew. After she graduates, there would be no more three month summer vacations or days off for “everything under the sun.” Her mother called herself a realist. Elena’s phrase was mano dura—a firm hand, which she said was in line with, but more respectful than, Type A or battle axe. Alice believed Joan’s screws tightened when she became the only parent. If her mother managed the family’s basic needs, her father was free to show Alice the firehouse where he was captain, the Tenement Museum, the Transit Museum, Ellis Island, Governors Island. He wanted to show her how culture, history, thought all pendulumed through time. Once Alice overheard her mother crap on the head of her father’s mission. “If you really want to support our daughter’s education, you would teach her a musical instrument, a second language or a practical skill.” Mano dura, indeed.
Maybe this dissatisfaction was why Joan decided they’d go Coney Island that Memorial Day weekend. Alice was eleven and unenthused. Her dad’s understanding smile persuaded her not to complain. That morning, a real estate deal blew up and her mother stayed home. Once out of the apartment, her father promised fried Oreos for lunch after riding the Cyclone as many times as they wanted. Five, it turned out. Alice would have gone again, but her father had a headache so they ate funnel cakes while he drew a roller coaster in the dust at their feet, explaining the effects of gravity, momentum, centripetal force, and friction. She asked her dad if he was sad that her mother didn’t come, but he laughed and said, “Your mother is a marvel.” Alice remembered little else until she found herself at the Rangeley Lake Camp for Girls the day after fifth grade ended, except that her father’s headache was caused by a fractured vertebrae in his neck, and two days later, he was “gone.”
Alice became a ward of her mother’s efficient, methodical planning. Watching the blurry river whirr by from the backseat of a rental car, she feebly tried to imagine herself as a camper. Her mother promised she’d start to feel better after a few days of fresh air. Being outside all day and evenings around the bonfire did help her sleep. But the counselors—younger, cooler, more attentive parents, especially the Director, Ben Waterman—made the real difference.
Alice had a twice weekly appointment in Mr. Waterman’s office. “It is very difficult for a girl to lose her father at a young age,” he told her. “It will take time to feel normal again.” Those first weeks, Alice clung to the soft, muffling shroud that had wrapped itself around her weeks before. When she complained that her mother was too busy to visit, Mr. Waterman said she was also grieving.
Thankfully, the band was in the mysterious off-limits “back” by the time Elena and Alice got down the stairs and up to the stage. The fake IDs, who had turned into a pack of jackals during the set, had returned to more docile pack activities.
Alice faked cramps to go home. But Elena heard none of it. The crowd started chanting for the band to return. “Free Bird!” they shouted. “Stairway to Heaven!” The band returned to the stage playing the first notes of “Livin’ on a Prayer.” The crowd roared. If it was pleasure that Alice felt, it had a thread of restless agony. She opened and closed her eyes, stood up and sat down, put her attention on the things nailed to the wall—a blue bucket, two fishing poles, a net of dozens of yellow rubber ducks. The house lights came on. Elena was drenched, pink cheeked, and grinning unbearably. Alice could not stand another second of near-rapture. It was time to go.
As they picked their way out, Elena gushed at Marty, back-slapped roadies, and nodded to the fake IDs. Finally, Alice pulled her the rest of the way out to the sidewalk.
“I told you, didn’t I?” Elena’s wide eyes were an inch away.
“Yeah,” Alice swallowed, unable to pour out her confusing feelings. “I’m starving.”
“Pizza!” Elena shouted.
They plopped down at a greasy table in the buzzing blue fluorescence of the giant pepperoni slice place. A waitress dropped the slices down between them. With pink grease dripping down her forearms, Elena cooed at her slice, praising the gods of cheese and bread and sauce. Alice, too, felt somewhat better. Her twin bed was howling for her. Holding open the door for Elena, Alice clucked, and the band walked in.
At Foxleigh, the boarding high school that was the next great idea after summer camp, Alice attended Hot Pot mac & cheese parties with so-called friends, but only on the hall phone with Elena did she share her actual life. She felt bad complaining about boarding school, and later about Northeastern, but Elena always swore she was thrilled to be getting an inexpensive associates degree before matriculating—with a full scholarship, mind you—to Barnard. Even if that was just a dream. “I’m a first generation college student,” she loved to say. “I’m already a colossal success!”
Joan shook her head about Elena—such a bright girl, if only her parents prioritized her education—which Alice learned from her college social worker was a subtle way to pat herself on the back. Psychology courses gave her terms to privately name the world she lived in since then: dyadic, merged identity, conflicted, enmeshed, disruptive attachment, trauma-bonded.
The singer was twinkly, shinier, up close. Elena joked and giggled with them, then with a yelp, remembered to introduce Alice to Joey, the drummer; Colton, the guitarist; Rex, the bassist; Billy, the singer. Billy with brilliant blues; Billy with blond hair under a backwards Mets hat; Billy with the soaked half-unbuttoned black shirt. He was shorter on the ground than on stage.
He said, “bring your friends to Kenny’s on Thursday. You might get to be there the night history is made!” The guys grabbed their slices, nodded and walked out. Elena and Alice followed less than a minute later, but the sidewalk had already swallowed them.
On Thursday afternoon, Alice picked out the slate blue sundress with spaghetti straps that left her shoulders and back exposed, put on mascara, tiny gold hoop earrings, and drew dark brown eyeliner into the lash line of her top lids. Her mother raised an eyebrow when she came out of her room, but only mentioned that Ben had called from Maine. Alice said she’d call him back tomorrow. She played it cool.
At the West 4th Street Station, Elena smiled in approval. In her jean miniskirt, pink ribbed tank top and shimmery pink lips, she got away with sweetness because she was witty and smart. She didn’t need Alice’s approval. Like gum-snapping agents, they walked south on Sixth Ave., cut in on West 3rd, right on Sullivan and left on Bleecker, passing tables of used books, leather wallets and silver rings. The bouncer nodded them in. In the dim, malodorous bar, a half block from the first, Alice let out a two-day-old breath. They were early, properly timed to get a table and start on their two-drink minimum. Elena gestured to the bartender, and two milky drinks arrived at the tiny wooden table. She had already laid tracks here, too.
Tomorrow, Alice promised herself, she’d focus on Maine. Ben Waterman called to confirm she was coming because at the end of last summer, she told him she wasn’t.
As the band warmed up, Billy pointed at people and palmed his heart, occasionally blowing kisses. The songs unspooled. Though this new universe was light, spongy, more effervescent than Alice enjoyed, she didn’t want to be anywhere else.
They started “Every Breath You Take.” An electrical storm flew into her chest, crackling and sparking. Billy locked eyes with a woman in front of the stage who held her tattooed forearms out, swaying and smiling like an idiot, belting out lyrics. “Oh, can’t you seeeee… you belong to meeeee?” It was like she was feasting on Billy from an arm’s length and five feet below him. Alice laughed. As if he belongs to you! As if!
Something clicked. She laughed again, at herself this time, realizing she was acting jealous! She glanced at Elena, who beamed back, oblivious to the exposing neon light of what Alice felt. On stage, the woman was gone, and Billy, singing, locked onto her for a little eternity. The electric light orchestra inside her body swelled to a juddering, breathless, suspended crescendo.
The house lights came on. Alice ran to the bathroom. Her pulse was racing. Her heart exploding, her head pounding. She splashed water on her face just like in the movies. This was all absurd. She went to find Elena. It took a second to register that Elena and Billy were talking, leaning close to each other’s ears. Elena arched an eyebrow at her. “After party?”
In what seemed like a few minutes, they were in a paneled basement studio three avenues east. Some of the fake IDs, Marty the bartender, and two bouncer-types came in. Billy handed out beers, Rex ordered pizza, and Joey went for beer. More people came, but not the tattooed arms woman. Alice settled herself on a sinking couch, next to a giggling Elena, as the parade of pheromones flowed inside her. She did not want to appear to be looking for Billy.
“Hey,” a gravelly voice whispered behind her ear. “Wanna see something? You’re gonna love this.”
He was so close. Close enough that if she turned her head, her lips would graze his cheek. He aimed a remote at the TV set on the wall. “Pizza!” yelled Joey from the hallway, and people got up. Elena pinched Alice’s thigh, hard, before leaving the room. Bouncy orchestral music and concentric red circles appeared on the screen, centered around a bullseye tunnel.
“Bugs Bunny is a genius,” Billy said.
They watched Elmer Fudd tiptoe through the woods with his shotgun, and Daffy Duck warn Bugs, only to get out-pranked. “Isn’t he great?”
Alice tried to watch with fresh, new, guest house eyes. After the first episode, when no one changed, no one succeeded, and no one died from the many bullets fired at close range, she turned to Billy.
“I loved cartoons when I was a kid.”
He laughed. “Bugs is just a regular dude trying to stay out of the way. He just does his own thing, then all of a sudden, someone throws an anvil at him.”
“Then he’s probably not innocent,” Alice said.
“Maybe.” Billy chuckled. “But he always comes out on top.”
He slid over the back of the couch, sinking down beside her where Elena had been. They were alone.
“I’ve been watching you,” Billy whispered. With the tip of his index finger, he slowly traced her lips, eyebrows, cheekbones. Her skin sparked where he touched. “This okay?”
Ribbons of color pulsed behind her eyelids. Vague, passing considerations sank into the quicksand of her eagerness. It was more than okay. It was astonishing. Why didn’t Rumi just come out with it straight? Say yes when opening the door because who would ever want to miss this? Her whole being subtly shifted, right there under his gentle touch, from aquatic to terrestrial. Her lungs filled with phosphorescence. She was becoming something new. In the complete dark of the basement, she was like a bird or a flower; weightless, oxygenated, bursting with life.
Alice woke in the gray dark and shot her legs over the side of the lumpy pull-out couch. She felt around for her clothes, a thread of panic coiling in her throat. What time was it? She gazed at him, soft, gentle boy. Their legs were entangled when she woke. His cheek on her chest.
Billy’s arm snaked out from under the afghan. “Don’tch,” he mumbled.
She kissed the side of his face. “See you tonight,” she whispered, the wheel of fortune and misfortune spinning in her chest: the hour, her mother, Elena, her vibrating body, his hands, her legs, his salty tongue, the lyrics of “Heaven,” he crooned after they finished making love.
Later that day, having successfully avoided her mother, taken a morning-long nap and a long shower, Alice played with the bowl of fake seashells on the eat-in-kitchen table. Her mother’s summery heels clicked up to the door, opened the locks, and clacked inside. Alice braced herself for her professional mother’s taut, poised, pre-closing energy. She wasn’t wrong. In a trim, taupe linen skirt and fitted white blouse, her mother stood on the other side of the table.
“Ah ha,” she said, “here’s the mystery party girl. Ben left another message. Haven’t you sent in your forms?”
“I meant to,” Alice said.
Her mother sighed. “It’s probably your last summer there,” she said, draining the last of the coffee pot into a lidded mug. “It was right for you back then, and I’m forever grateful to Ben Waterman for taking such good care of you, but you do have an adult life to get on with.”
“I’ll sort it out,” Alice said.
Her mother’s head tipped a little to the side. “You’re okay?”
“Just tired,” Alice said. And baby…so gently he sang last night, this morning… you’re all that I want / When you’re lying here in my arms / I’m finding it hard to believe / We’re in heaven. Elena would think it too high school prom, so that bit of ecstasy she would keep to herself.
“The re-do is nice,” Alice added, a little ego petting to steer away from questions about last night.
“I rushed to get it done for you,” her mother said. “You like the palette, then?”
“Sure.” Moving and redecorating, when she was making good money, was a way her mother showed love. Elena thought it sweet. Alice thought it a slightly softer more mano dura.
“But?”
“A little bland.”
Her mother smiled. “Pale Earth. That’s the scheme. Homier than all white, still good for resale.”
“Can we mix it up for my room? Something like aquamarine?”
Joan screwed up her mouth. “Predictable.”
Her mother’s gaze stretched out. “Let me see you,”she used to say, taking her in before they parted.
“Well, I’m off to meet with the Maiden Lane buyers,” she said, grabbing a striped purse on the way to the door.
“Dumb street name for one of the world’s major metropolises,” Alice called after her.
“But not a dumb paycheck!”
Night after night after night, the music sizzled. Alice, weightless and sure, slid in before dawn and out again after dark, crammed with adrenaline. Every night there was more energy, bigger audiences, more anticipation. Elena remarked on Alice’s enthusiasm, her stamina for the night life, and something about her new attachment. Alice smiled and laughed and clinked her beer against Elena’s. Maybe a touch of jealousy, maybe nothing at all.
The string of late nights loosened Alice’s grip on time and day. Life felt like a revelation—no structure, no responsibility, only anticipation and the dawning present. She and Elena had dinner with the band before gigs, hours in full and empty bars, and afterhours in the basement studio, his grandparents’ rent-controlled apartment he had for a year while trying to “make it.” Something was up with Elena, but Alice figure she would find out when it was time.
Maine was hanging over her. It would be bizarre to be a no-show after so long, even when, last August, she’d said she would not be returning. Ben had accepted her statement without question, and in the spring, longing for tiny wild blueberries and the private, salty refuge she found nowhere else, Alice called to change her mind. “Wonderful,” Ben said, and laughed his big hearted, welcoming laugh.
Next to the To Do list on the dresser, a note from her mother: IF YOU DO NOT CALL BEN WATERMAN TODAY, I WILL. Alice dialed.
“I did tell you I was coming up,” she said a tiny bit curtly.
“Yes,” he said.
“I had finals,” she said, remembering the messages he left on her machine at school. “And I’ve been busy since I got home.”
“Here too,” he said. “We just finished rebuilding the big dock.”
He had a way of changing her mood. “With a diving board, finally?”
“You’ll have to see for yourself. We look forward to seeing you, Alice.”
“Okay,” she sighed, and hung up.
Sprawled on her bed with the top half of the pineapple phone to her ear, Elena twirled a lock of light brown hair around a pencil. Alice gazed at the photo triptych museum of their growing up: in oversized mortar boards for kindergarten graduation, as a pair of dice for 5th grade Halloween, knobby kneed in white lace for 8th grade dance, as dates in matching chartreuse georgette for junior prom. With a gift certificate that Elena won at the science fair in 7th grade, they re-decorated her room in island paradise. Curling around a coconut pillow on the palm tree comforter, Alice whispered, “I’m considering not going to Maine this year.”
Elena’s eyes widened. She whispered into the pineapple and clapped down the phone. “Seriously?”
“Debating,” Alice spluttered.
Elena stared at her longer than necessary. “Tell!” she finally squealed.
“I just realized I’ve been stuffing myself into the kiddie swing for way too long.”
“Would it have anything to do with a guy who’s addicted to Bugs Bunny cartoons?”
“That, too.” Alice blushed.
“You know,” Elena said, “There’s something I wish I told you already.”
“Okay…” Alice tensed, hoping to hear why she left that first night at Billy’s with a big pinch and without a good bye, or what has been bothering her in general.
“The scene, the guys, the band, the music, the whole thing—it’s not exactly a gentle environment.” She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Maybe it’s too late, because you’re already in with Billy. I should have warned you. The scene can be kind of brutal.”
“Oh,” Alice said. “Well, I’m not that sad little girl anymore. I can take care of myself.”
“Okay then,” Elena said, smiling falsely. “I just worry. But if you’re good, then I’m good. So, what are we wearing?”
The cocktails tasted metallic. The music blasted through Alice, not filling her with bright color, but clawing and scratching. She sat in the back where Billy couldn’t see her and was not looking. In fact, he seemed drunk before the first song. They hadn’t done dinner before the gig, something about Billy seeing his grandmother.
An hour later, tiny knives pricked her throat. Alice told Elena she didn’t feel well and had to go home. Elena didn’t try to get her to stay, or insist she go too.
Twisted in the sheets, she dreamed: lying on the bottom bunk in the cool, humid cabin, Mr. Waterman’s face bent under the top bunk, turning a damp washcloth over on her forehead. He lifted her head to give her sips of water from a metal cup. He touched his cheek to her forehead. He smelled briny, like seaweed. Mr. Waterman stayed a long while. She might have been twelve.
Alice slept and woke, slept and woke. She was in swimming Maine and eating pizza in New York and having sex on a beach and on a driveway and in Billy’s basement, through tides of heaviness and lightness, until Elena jumped onto her bed, startling her awake.
“Joey said an agent is coming tonight! Can you imagine? They could get signed!”
Alice tried to swallow around the pebbly jumble in her throat, to make sense of the details. “Cover bands get signed?”
“I’m sure there’s a progression, but ultimately, they’d get paid, quit their day jobs and work on their own stuff.”
“They have day jobs?”
“You know what I mean,” Elena said. She held up a bottle of Tylenol Flu. “Take this and get better immediately!”
Alice sighed, dropping back on the pillows. “I’m stuck at the bottom of the deep end. Pressure,” she waved her arms, “everywhere.”
“Promise me you’ll try,” Elena sighed. “Joey said we need you there. Billy said you’re the Courtney to his Kurt.” Her face darkened. “But in a good way.”
“I’ll try. If not, tell him break a leg.” She tried to imagine the scene, but he was only a faraway spec in her mind. “In a good way.”
When she woke again, she’d dreamed of sitting on a barstool on stage in front of thousands, smiling at Billy as he crooned a soft, sweet ballad. Johnny and June. John and Yoko. She got up. Her body was weak, but her head was clear and vigorous, like the shaft of sun bolting through the window and splashing on the floor.
The kitchen phone rang. In between blasts of the blow dryer, Elena shouted about how the agent loved the band, promised them an opening gig for a big act at a big venue, and told Joey he saw a real future for them if their originals were half as authentic. “He’s coming again tonight,” she said excitedly. “But listen—Billy was MIA after last night. Joey just found him and said he’d be okay as long as you come and bring his stuff tonight.”
“MIA? What day is it?”
“Well, not missing, but you know, out of the loop. And, it’s tomorrow. I saw you yesterday and now it’s the next day. Joey said they’ll be at the bar in a couple of hours. And the agent is coming. And you’ll get his stuff, right?”
“I’m getting in the shower,” Alice said. She felt fresh and new and triumphant. Billy needed her. The refrigerator hummed. On it there was a magnet she gave her mother years ago, a watercolor Maine shoreline of pines and craggy rocks with tiny rope words: I ❤ MY MOM
She picked the beige phone receiver off the wall, steeled herself, and dialed.
“Mr. Waterman,” she said. “I am not coming. I know it’s late notice, and I’m sorry.”
“Alice? Are you okay?” his voice flowed softly over her.
She took a deep breath, then pushed words out around the spiky remnants in her throat. “Yes. I can’t … I’m not… I just …” Her throat closed around the rest.
“Okay,” he crooned. His inexhaustible calm irritated her.
“It’s not okay, Ben. I don’t know exactly why, but I do know it’s not.” Words sloshed around her head.
He was silent.
“Goodbye,” she said, conflicted, upset, and relieved.
At the bar, Elena jumped up to bear hug her, then pulled her down to sit at the table, where she and Joey filled her in on the agent.
“As long as Billy’s in decent shape,” Joey said. “We’re golden.”
In two bounding strides, Billy dropped into a chair next to Alice and planted a lippy kiss on her open mouth. He was showered. Shaved. Smiling.
“Cretin,” Elena whispered.
Joey looked at Alice: “He’ll be ready in fifteen?”
Alice nodded, confused by the tone, and by Elena and Joey slipping off.
Billy’s wide black pupils bored into her. “What happened?”
“I was sick. What about you? They said you were MIA?”
“Everything got screwed up,” he said. “I missed you like crazy.” He nuzzled in her neck. “You’re all better now?”
“All better,” Alice said, pulling back to look at him. He looked bright and clean, but there was something else. Leaning in to smell him, she imagined the worst—girly shampoo, flowered soap, fake ID stuff—but just smelled cigarettes. “You don’t look like you’ve been face-down in a ditch.”
“I’m good now,” Billy said. She hadn’t told him about Maine. “Did you stop by my place?”
She held out a cotton bag. “I brought you clothes, and,” she held up a paper sack, “coffee and a sandwich.”
“Alice my Palace,” Billy said. “Look at me.” She looked at him, his shining eyes. He smiled, held her gaze, stayed with her. “Thank you.”
As the night went on, the crowd grew and pressed in on the stage. Heat hung in the air. Elena kept a fretful eye on the young, smack-cheeked agent in tight black jeans and a rumpled black t-shirt. The songs were tight, the set list was tight, and for the first forty minutes, everything was seamless.
Between sets, the agent fed Billy shots. In the second set, he moonwalked across the stage. In trying to swivel the mic stand while jumping over it, he caught a foot, lurched, tucked, and rolled off the stage. The fake IDs pawed at him, stupidly excited by his sprawl, trying to help him gain control of his limbs and whereabouts. He was graceful in his fumbling, got back on stage, and carried on.
Elena looked at Alice, slightly accusatory. The band kept the music circling while Billy dropped back to all fours, crawled to the edge of the stage, stuck out his hand, and grabbed one of the fake IDs. While shouting garbled lyrics without a mic, Billy bent the girl backward, slipped, and dropped her on her mini-skirted ass.
Alice dropped her head into her hands. Elena shouted in her ear: “Billy’s fucking everybody over.”
A thin silence accompanied the two of them back to his basement. Billy was smashed. Alice pulled his arm to keep him from knocking people, but he kept tugging away. She was pissed.
He was snoring before Elmer Fudd tip toed across screen with a rifle. Alice wiggled out of the couch bed and went home. The note on the counter, held down by the Maine magnet, in caps: MUST SPEAK TO YOU BEFORE MY 9 A.M.
It felt like two minutes later that her mother knocked, entered and stood by her bed.
“I spoke to Ben Waterman.”
“I said I would handle it.”
Her mother scoffed. “Oh, sure. You waited until the last minute and then you flaked.”
“I did not flake,” Alice huffed. “And anyway, you yourself said it was time for me to get on with my life.”
“That’s misrepresentation. You were unprofessional, ill-mannered, inappropriate, and self-centered.”
A red rage tore into Alice’s tender throat. “Are you serious? It’s a summer camp, not a real-estate-agent-of-the-year contest.
“Incorrect. It’s Ben Waterman, who has been nothing but good to you. You ditched your commitment at the last minute for an…infatuation?”
“First, I’m not a child anymore. Furthermore, you are the ill-mannered, inappropriate and self-centered one who has no idea about enjoying life!” Alice had never talked to her mother like that.
“Oh, is that right? Since you’re such an adult, you should get your own place,” her mother snarled, stopping the door just short of a slam.
“If only I knew a good realtor!” Alice shouted. Fuming and throwing clothes in a bag, she waited until she heard her the front door close, and left.
Elena was in an electric mood. She had managed to talk the guys into an Italian dinner near Irving Plaza. Billy, holding the set list on his lap in the window seat while they waited for a table, looked like a little boy. Alice sat down, intending to be soft. Infatuation my ass.
“When are you going back to school?” Billy mumbled, looking at his hands.
“That’s what you’re thinking about right now?”
His stunning blue eyes flicked to her. “Something’s not right,” he said.
It could be drugs, Alice thought, or alcohol. She looked for something less serious to say.
“You’re under a lot of pressure,” she whispered. “But you have a gift, and it might just be that more people are going to have a chance to appreciate it.”
“You should be a therapist.”
“It’s just common sense.” Ben Waterman was why she had anything to say. Alice took the set list, and pulled his face toward her. “You got this,” she whispered in his ear after. “Trust me.”
Billy smiled and sighed. She knew so little about his life, family, and childhood. Bugs Bunny, he’d said, was the best thing about it. Their party was called. His face was lighter. “I’m starving,” he said.
At twelve-thirty, after six other acts—two great, two horrible, two meh—the spotlights went up again in the massive empty ballroom. Alice and Elena stood on the dance floor, their anticipation long drained. The band came out. Billy shaded his eyes and scanned the scene, found Alice, and pressed his palm to his lips blew her an exaggerated kiss. His vulnerability worried her.
In tightly wound unison, they rolled into the first songs of the set. Onlookers migrated to the stage. A groove began to take shape. Whether the audience was 200 or 500, by the third song, they were smashed up close to the stage as Billy paced back and forth, jabbing his fist into the smoky air. He moved seamlessly, jumping the mic-stand, crouching on the floor and bursting up to belt out the falsetto of “Sympathy for the Devil.” During a solo, the bassist played the strings with his teeth. The crowd went crazy. Alice followed Elena, letting her hips and torsos loose. The electric current left no one still, no one untouched.
When the set was over, they collapsed into each other, sweaty and elated. The band was going somewhere! With crisp clarity, the nights in skuzzy bars became the preamble for a bunch of early twenty-somethings who believed in a dream that was actually coming true.
House music came on as the ballroom went dark. Elena grabbed Alice’s hand. “I have to tell you something!” she shouted.
“I have to tell you something too!” Alice returned.
“Me first!” Elena insisted. Alice leaned into her friend, her solid, physical, present friend whose usual vanilla rose smell was cut with musky sweat and cigarette smoke. She draped her arms around Elena’s neck, feeling woozy.
“You know I love you, right?” Elena chuckled nervously. She spun Alice around and backed her to the side of the stage. “Can you just promise that you’ll forgive me eventually? Please?”
The spotlights popped up. The band was back on stage.
“Just tell me!” Alice shouted, her head full of scenarios and apprehensions.
“We were asked to run a few originals,” Billy rasped into the mic.
“Oh my God!” Elena screamed.
The crowd erupted. Billy was gleaming, smiling, no sign of the sad little boy she helped to his seat in the restaurant hours ago. Alice needed him to find her, to connect with her in that sweet space that filled and emptied and stabilized her all at once. But he did not.
Elena led her back to the dance floor. “After this,” she said. “I promise.”
The first was a jaunty, almost poppy song, less flush with texture and complexity, but a catchy chorus the crowd seized. By the second song, a rock/punk mix with a raw edge, Alice and Elena were dancing at the front of the stage, arms overhead. Alice didn’t care what she looked like. This is me letting go!
The next thing she saw was Ben Waterman’s face, lowered close to hers. What was this? She turned away but could not shake him, his rough thumb tracing her nose… no! she thought, no, no, no! Was this Rumi’s crowd of mutilated dark thoughts? She was dizzy, suddenly, the room spinning, like when her father took her upper arms and spun her in circles. Then she was at the campfire eating, shoving funnel cake and cotton candy in her mouth, then fried pickles, blueberries, and Cracker Jacks, everything falling back out of her mouth. She ate a carrot, shrieked on a roller coaster, jumped off a cliff into a freezing river. She gulped, coughed, choked, spat, vomited, shat her pants, squeezed the hand in hers, screamed and fell.
Though she seemed like a cartoon version, it was her mother at the eat-in-kitchen table, drinking a very full glass of red wine. “The Maiden Lane buyers pulled out,” she said. Elena mumbled condolences. Joan looked long at Alice, who had no fight, no words, and no way to hide the cracks in her universe. “We’re turning in,” she heard Elena say turning to steer her down the pale earth hall.
On her back in the dim yellow spray of nightlight, Alice searched for meaning, motive, understanding; something to make sense of why she had a big black smear where the last hours had been. Elena’s cheek pressed into the watermelon slice pillow as she slept. She’d said Alice had fainted. Alice had no memory of fainting, but also no memory of leaving the ballroom, taking a cab, sitting a long time in the lobby, or riding the elevator up to the 11th floor. She did remember Elena twisting the skin on her forearm in two directions as they stood in front of the apartment door and Alice jerking her arm away. “Be normal,” she whispered. “Joan.”
“Elena,” she said, nudging her. “Wake up.”
Elena sat up.
“You were going to tell me something,” Alice said.
“Oh,” Elena said softly. “Okay. Yeah. Are you ok though?”
“Ok enough,” Alice said.
“In the winter, when I first met the guys and saw the band play… there was one night, just one… when I made a mistake. I knew it immediately, or as soon as the alcohol wore off…”
“You slept with Billy,” Alice said.
Elena’s face fell. “You knew?”
“No, but you’re making such a big deal. What else could it be?”
“It is a big deal! And you’re really mad, aren’t you, I mean, I would probably be, I think, at least for a while—” Elena sucked in a breath.
“Is that why you pinched my leg instead of saying good bye and didn’t make sure I had a way home that first night at Billy’s? Is that what’s been bothering you all this time?”
“No,” Elena said, sighing.
“Well?”
“Alice, you’re my best friend forever. I love you just the way you are, but then you passed out tonight, and I got really scared…”
“Get to it,” Alice said.
“It’s about us.”
“Please be concise. I could have a concussion…”
“Stop it!”
Alice threw her arm around Elena. “Joking. Go on.”
“In a way, you have always been the center of our friendship. Like, my job is to make sure you are alright. Not only after your dad, but before.” She paused. “Do you know what I mean?”
“Maybe,” Alice said.
“After I saw the band, all I could think about was bringing you to see them. I was determined to have fun before you left. I didn’t anticipate that you would get so wrapped up in it all.”
Alice sighed. “I know what you’re saying. And I agree. So let me tell you this while we’re putting it all on the table. I think Ben Waterman might have been inappropriate with me.”
“What? Why do you think that?”
“This whole thing with Billy has given me a new idea of myself as someone who is free to enjoy and feel and be irresponsible and have desires and do things that aren’t about getting somewhere else. I can’t explain it exactly. I don’t know if I’m a breaching whale or a diving dolphin or a soaring bird, but I feel a ton, way more than before, all kinds of things like sadness and anger and even, I know how this sounds, ecstasy.”
“Either Billy slipped you some of his performance-enhancing drugs or you’re finally ready for that cracker jack therapist Joan has been threatening all these years!” Elena shouted.
“What drugs?”
“Yeah, that was the other thing I needed to tell you. Billy disappeared when you were sick because he was on a bender. Uppers and downers both, Joey thinks. He’s gets manic, and then he sleeps for 12 hours.”
“I see,” Alice said. “Thank you, now I’m clear. And now, it’s set.”
“What’s set?”
“Coney Island.”
Elena raised her eyebrows. “Huh?”
“It’s time for me to start facing the music. I’ve skipped over a lot. I think I’m ready to start, though. And if you are not tired of me, and I would absolutely respect your decision either way, I’d love for you to make sure I’m alright one more time, starting where my dad ended, and I began again.”
“Of course,” Elena said. “On one condition.”
Alice looked at her bestie in the dim yellow light.
“For our first, last summer, we find new fun.”
“On one condition,” Alice said. “You also come with me to the doctor. You know I hate doctors.”
“You don’t want Joan to go with you?” Elena offered.
“She can come too,” Alice said. “For Memorial Day.”