81
Sasha
Cyprus and Quinn say they have to go find food, though after all the croissants, I’m surprised. Where did Cyprus even find a box of croissants? Did she bring them?
The room we’re in is one of the quieter ones, away from the dancing and general revelry. Denis produces a deck of cards. Once we get him to stop attempting magic tricks, we wind up playing hearts. Closer to midnight, we’ll rejoin the center of chaos. Recharge now and then cycle back in for countdown and liftoff.
Emelia’s friend Margot just arrived at the party. She took over Jemma’s hand so Jemma could go take a hit of something. Margot doesn’t drink. Consequently, she’s wrecking us all at cards and seems genuinely apologetic for it.
The combination of losing and losing to someone who doesn’t care if they win would usually make Lillian infuriated or hyper-focused, but she doesn’t seem to care.
Emelia gathers the cards and tallies the scores. There’s a peace here — maybe what Cyprus tried to explain. They’re each happy the other one is happy.
“Quinn said you could really use a bass player for the new single,”
says Emelia.
“For ‘Elevator.’ He played me the demo.”
We’ll need another singer too, once my voice is out of the recording, but I’ll deal with that in the new year.
Lillian picks up the ukulele and gives it a strum before answering.
“No one misses a real bass player more than a drummer.”
“It’s a good song,”
says Emelia.
“Is it about me?”
Jemma staggers back into the circle, partially sitting down on Denis’s lap before settling beside him.
“Oh damn, what’s happening?”
I say.
“We’re discussing how art is a reflection of aspects of broader human experience.”
I don’t know how to feel about this except that my first concern is for Lillian. And she seems more settled since she stopped avoiding Emelia all the time, like her world is safer. I want that for her. It’s a good thing. I’ll help resolve an awkward moment if I can.
Lillian says.
“Yeah, it’s a little about you.”
“The risk I took.”
Emelia deals out another hand, cards gathering in front of us. Margot’s picking hers up, but her eyes are on this.
“I could play on the recording,”
continues Emelia.
“If that would be alright?”
“It will be,”
says Lillian.
“It’ll be more than alright with you playing on it.”
“I came back for this?”
says Jemma.
“If anyone writes a song about me, it’s fight or fuck. Both. That’s the dream.”
She tousles Denis’s hair. Based on how he tenses up, it was previously tousled in a very specific way that’s been disrupted. I feel that.
Margot gives Jemma a cup of water.
“How about you keep that dream to yourself for tonight, okay, Jem?”
I foresee Margot driving a lot of people home later.
“I’d like to hear more, Jemma,”
says Lillian.
“Maybe I will write a song about you.”
Jemma starts saying something, but Margot makes her drink the water first. Jemma slams the cup upside down on the carpet when she’s done and raises both arms in the air.
“Let’s fight!”
I say.
“Of all days not to wear your spiked jacket.”
Lillian fakes bad old movie feminine distress with a swooning gesture.
“If only I had a man who could only express emotional connection with me by enacting violence on my behalf.”
She kisses me, then walks over to Jemma and gently tips her over.
“K-O!”
declares Denis.
“Has it been this weird all night?”
asks Margot.
“Earlier Cyprus said these earrings may or may not make birds attracted to me.”
I’ve swapped back to my silver hoops and hung the ones from Cyprus from the zipper of my jacket pocket.
“And something about a carousel.”
Margot sighs.
“So it’s going to get weirder?”
“Most definitely.”
When Denis reaches for the cards Margot’s dealing, he knocks Emelia’s cup of water over, leaving a dark spot where it soaks into the carpet. Emelia asks if anyone else has water because the kitchen is a whole maze of party across the house. Lillian cuts Margot off before she can offer to get some.
“There’s a bottle in my bag right there. You’re welcome to it.”
Emelia wanders off to grab it.
We’re chatting and sorting our next hands of cards, except for Lillian, who claims she plays better when hers aren’t sorted.
I push her cards back. It’s partly so I can’t see them all but mostly to touch her hand. Because I want to find someplace upstairs with her, and I want her to know it. To place it in her mind to flip around and around.
I envision my hand staying a moment, her glancing up. All things known in each other’s eyes. The same telepathy between us as between her and Emelia, where we know exactly what the other’s thinking.
Lillian pulls her cards farther back.
“Have you been cheating?”
she asks.
“I think we’ve got to restart the round.”
Denis says.
“Keep dreaming.”
I think Lillian didn’t notice how my hand stayed or what it meant. It was too small. Then she asks what’s upstairs. Jemma, still lying on the floor, says bedrooms upon bedrooms.
Lillian reaches over and pushes my cards back.
“Now I can see your cards,” she says.
There’s the look where we both understand. Twin minds turning things over, distracted from the game and from midnight.
I lead with the two of clubs.
Margot says.
“We’ve got to wait for Emelia.”
“I’m back, I’m back.”
She rejoins the circle holding a paperback book with a crumpled cover.
“I found this in your bag,”
she says to Lillian.
“I’ve been looking for it everywhere. I still don’t know how it ends.”
Lillian folds her cards into a tight little stack. For a moment, as the music changes in another room, we can hear everyone talking too loudly.
“Oh my god.”
Lillian’s talking quickly and brightly, some new way of being I’ve never seen before.
“It’d fallen down beside my bed and I just found it the other day. I totally meant to give that to you tonight. It’s the drinks. I forget everything.”
“Poor cover,”
says Margot, taking the book out of Emelia’s hands and folding the cover back and forth, trying to get it back into place.
Lillian reaches across the circle.
“Let me try to fix it. It’s my fault for stuffing it in my bag like that.”
Her hand’s there, waiting, but there’s no book being placed in it.
“Emelia?”
Margot asks.
She sounds anxious in the way you are when you’ve seen something that makes you afraid and unsure at once. You don’t want to ignore it or leave it. You need everyone else to see it and tell you it’s made up. You want them to arrive and explain the distress away.
You don’t want to see the same disturbance cross their face.
Margot hands the book to Emelia. She’s reading something off the inside cover. Her hands are tight, the whole book bending in them.
Lillian slowly pulls her hand back from the center of the circle. She’s clutching her cards the same way Emelia’s gripping the book.
Emelia reads one more time.
“You wrote this tonight?”
she says. Jemma’s sitting up again, because Emelia sounds dangerous in a way I didn’t know she could, a cutting windchill.
“If you wrote this tonight, I think Sasha needs to hear it.”
“I didn’t …”
starts Lillian. She’s looking around like there might be a fire alarm she can pull to drown this all out.
“Every time I hear your voice,”
reads Emelia.
“I’m bent around the sound / Time bends, for a second I’m fine / while I’m bent around the sound.”
“They’re just words,”
says Lillian.
“There’s just some lyrics and the book was there to write on. You know how I am when I’ve got an idea. I’ll buy you a new copy.”
She says it to Emelia, to me, to Margot, to herself and whoever’s listening. Which is no one beyond this circle, but still too many spectators. Jemma and Denis and Margot looking horrified and intrigued. I want to hush the whole thing away. I can’t stand for my private life to be on display anymore.
I can’t stand to hear what’s next. Our heartbreak shouldn’t be anyone’s reaction shots.
Emelia reads Lillian’s words.
“I kept this book because the ending isn’t for you, it isn’t for us. Because whenever you speak, I know I still love you, Emelia. Darling, I’m still bent around that sound / even now.”
I knew this. Somehow that makes hearing it out loud even more painful. Sometimes when no one knows how to solve a thing, we all pretend our hardest that it’s not there at all.
Emelia choked a bit on the last words, but she’s not crying. She looks far too angry to cry.
Lillian’s agitated, shifting, unsure of who to focus on when everyone’s either angry or doesn’t care. I want to tell her to look at me. I want to say I could tell she felt like that about Emelia and it hurts and we can solve this. I’m torn open, but I’d still put my fists up for us.
“I didn’t write that tonight,”
says Lillian.
“I wrote it to give you at Cyprus’s like a month ago.”
I can do the math on that. She wrote that note and Love, Lillian inside the mix CD at the same time, then she brought them both there and chose me last minute. Chose me because Emelia wasn’t there.
Emelia says.
“So you’ve been using Sasha to make me jealous? Huge improvement.”
Jemma says.
“Claaassic bi shit. Just insatiable little —”
Lillian stands up like she’s going to fight Jemma for real this time. Me and Jemma are on our feet too, because Lillian’s going to rip Jemma’s arms off unless Jemma runs or I hold Lillian back.
“Do not,”
says Lillian.
“pretend this is some simple thing you can pin on a lazy cliché.”
Emelia beats Lillian to it. She pushes Jemma awkwardly, like she’s never hit anyone before. But Jemma’s barely standing and she stumbles and goes down and her face hits an end table. Through all the yelling and the music from the other room, I think I hear the sound of her nose breaking.
Everything’s noise. Jemma screaming and the circle of attention exploding outward. There’s blood on the light carpet, on Jemma’s hand holding her face and on Margot as she tries to give her something to stem it. All while Margot tells Lillian that she doesn’t care when Lillian wrote it.
In the midst of it, Emelia picks up the book from the floor and flips to the last page.
“We should talk,”
I say to Lillian. It’s broken, not beyond fighting for.
“What’s there to say?”
asks Lillian. She’s watching Emelia reading.
“You’re gone. I know you’re gone.”
“No, I’m still here,”
I start. “We can …”
Emelia closes the book and throws it on the floor at Lillian’s feet.
“Lil, that, right there, that’s our ending. This is the ending for us.”
I don’t want to watch Lillian’s heart shatter. Nothing she could do to me would make me want to see it.
Emelia disappears toward the music. Margot leads Jemma away toward a bathroom and flips off Lillian as she goes by. Denis’s gathering his cards and getting out of here.
Quinn and Cyprus must have followed the commotion back into the room. They brush past Margot and Jemma going the other way and don’t seem to care. I’m certain Quinn’s going to say this is what happens when he leaves us unsupervised, but he’s frowning, troubled. One of the faces he usually keeps locked away.
Cyprus takes Lillian’s hand.
“We need to talk now.”
“Can it wait?” I ask.
Cyprus starts to pull Lillian away. She follows like it’s only her body they’re taking, like most of her is still standing in this room.
“It really can’t,”
says Quinn.
When I take a step after them, Cyprus says, “Not you.”
It’s decisive, not up for negotiation.
Quinn shrugs at me.
“Give us a minute. I’ll text you.”
In the other room, they’re counting down.
There’s the loneliness.