New York, New York #20
The blackout fell like an executioner’s axe.
As the audience erupted, AJ could hear Noah’s footfalls growing faint.
It was perfect—a perfect show, a perfect circle, a perfect end.
But AJ couldn’t let it stand. She didn’t want to be perfect; she wanted to be whole.
“Noah,” she called out.
The applause died immediately—Did she just use his name? Noah’s footsteps faltered. AJ heard the whir of the rig and the spotlights flared back on. She had caught him just before his foot entered the wing. He turned around slowly, the muscles working in his jaw.
“I have to go,” he said warningly.
AJ gulped. “Then take me with you,” she gasped. “Please.”
Noah’s eyes were brimming. He chewed the inside of his cheek. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” said AJ, stepping toward him.
“Stop,” Noah choked out. “This isn’t the plan,” he said through gritted teeth.
Your scene partner is your life. If this is to work, you must follow them wherever they go. You must follow them to the end, into death if necessary.
AJ could hardly speak. “I understand about the plan,” she said with difficulty. “And I will stay with you. No matter what.” Her eyes bore into his. “I will support you, no matter what.”
A tear escaped down Noah’s cheek. He wiped it away, drawing in a sharp breath. “That won’t work.”
“Why not?” said AJ.
“You are ruining this,” said Noah in a low voice.
“Tell me why not,” AJ demanded.
“Because I don’t want a reason to linger,” he erupted.
A ripple went through the theater. AJ opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off.
“Don’t you get it?” he said, incredulous.
“Without you, life is nice and easy and yes, maybe just a little empty, and if I have to go, so be it. But if you are there—” He had to pause.
“If you’re there, life is messy and unpredictable and beautiful.
And when it’s time to do this thing I have—I have to do it—I won’t. I won’t be able to.”
Tears were streaming down AJ’s face. “In that case, I would help you.”
Noah shook his head. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do,” she swore.
Noah inhaled sharply, his eyes spilling. “You,” he breathed, and for a moment it was all he could say. Then, “You will not want to do what needs to be done.”
AJ leveled her gaze at him. “Try me.”
In that instant, everything vanished but them. There were no clocks here. Just a girl and a boy suspended in pure, uncut love. AJ nodded once. I’m with you. For a second, Noah’s gaze shone back.
She saw it breach his eyes first, a ripple in the dark pools of his irises—a distortion.
He blinked.
Then he took a step back into the wings. “No.”
The worst pain AJ had ever experienced scraped down her spine, as if she were being torn from the inside out.
He was pulling away, casting her off.
“No,” he said. “This isn’t what we agreed.”
The Black Room was glitching now. The stage lights were burning through, the crowd’s noise ripping at AJ’s eardrums like scrap metal. The golden cord of their connection was cutting into her, straining sharp as a garroter’s wire. He’s going to break it, was AJ’s last thought before—
He ripped himself from her like a hook from a fish’s mouth.
Noah’s face was a white oval now, his eyes dead as coins. He was fading into the wing.
He was waning, he was waning.
Then he was gone.
The stage lights dropped again, and AJ was plunged into red-toned black.
The water in her body went flat, her mind quiet as a pine box.
The space around her was wrong now—the flight path was gone.
So was the audience’s energy. Without Noah, AJ’s signal could not reach the collective.
She swayed in the dark, half an antenna, a spare part.
Then the lights came back up, and the crowd’s cheers pinned her to the spot. They thought they had just seen the best performance of their lives. AJ bowed once, folding along her center like a dried moth, and then the curtain closed. It did not reopen.
The work lights sprang on. Around her, the crew hooted their congratulations from the wings, from the rafters. AJ waved an arm to disguise her shaking.
Time was skipping now. She found herself in the dressing room with no idea how she got there.
So quiet. Too quiet.
Where’s Bud?
AJ realized with a jolt that she hadn’t said goodbye to the dog she’d known from a pup, the dog who had been a living tether between them.
A shallow sob escaped her. She wanted to cry, she needed to cry, and yet all she could do was stare at the laundry bag in the corner, the one that still contained some of Noah’s clothes. Another shallow sob bubbled up like a hiccup.
She would change. That’s what she did every night. AJ took off her black T-shirt and sat down in front of her own reflection, staring at her face, streaked with mascara. She gazed at her body, at the skin and tendons and ligaments Noah had loved.
That’s fixable.
Of course it was. AJ would just get a new body, one that didn’t already belong to Noah.
She turned from the mirror and stared at her hands. They were her mother’s hands, capable hands, hands that had never failed her. Why the fuck hadn’t they been able to stop him?
Because he’d told her no.
AJ hadn’t thought it possible.
She wiped the mascara off her face using her T-shirt then threw it in the laundry bag, and now she couldn’t put the bag back down. Instead, she carried it over to the green leather couch and wrapped her body around their dirty clothes. AJ closed her eyes.
So quiet.
In the past, Noah’s absence had felt like a darkened portal, a silent phone. Now when she looked inside, it was as if he had never been there. She was beating her fists against a solid brick wall, asking it to open. There was no magic here, only mortar and clay.
Too, too quiet.
AJ is a tabula rasa.
She’s imprinted on him.
I fear this means a calamitous end to this experiment for all of us.
Time skipped again. Now AJ was back onstage. The crew had all gone home. They were used to AJ and Noah keeping odd hours. They trusted them to lock up.
AJ stood under the work lights and turned slowly on the spot, looking for her shadow.
But she had none.
That made sense. She was in a theater cut from time, a bodiless being with no future and no past.
I’ll wait here, she reasoned. I’ll wait here for my shadow.
Waiting. Godot. Godot is a classic.
AJ let her things fall to the floor.
It wasn’t over. As long as she stayed here, the scene was still in play.
As long as she stayed here, time would stand still.
We can’t all be touched by the hand of greatness.
We should talk.
No.
AJ had held back nothing, so she had nothing left to hold on to. Her breaths were shallow. She was slipping, sliding down a smooth, dark shaft.
She grasped for some brighter day in her future, but found that she no longer believed in such a time. The dream of that full life was already over—it had been Noah all along. He had been her normal. And now normal was gone.
She’d go back to her apartment. Clean the place up. Rearrange the furniture. Throw it all out and start new. But she’d still see him standing in the sunlight, still feel his echo opening the cabinets.
This is a bachelor pad.
She’d go to Gladstone. But there too, he’d woven into the fabric of her life like smoke.
I’m happy for you guys.
Before, there had been safe houses. Now he had been inside every space, every relationship. There was nowhere she could hide from the loss of him.
AJ was on her knees now, her breaths scattering dust across the floor.
She would see him again, of course. Once or twice a year, polished and distant and bright on the silver screen.
Until the year she didn’t. Then, there would be nothing to do but make guesses and keep her distant vigil. But that was no change, really. Part of AJ had never left that room in Santa Monica where Noah had told her of his fate. Part of her was forever sitting there, waiting.
I always know where you are.
AJ was tired. She had never been so tired, and her apartment was so far. So many streets to cross between here and there, so many bike lanes. The subways were still running, those screeching steel cages that blurred up to the platform fast enough to knock a person down.
I fucking love you more than life.
Noah had been her life. From this point forward, she would always be looking back. She might have many years of this. She did not want a single one.
It’s all part of the plan.
Perhaps it was time for AJ to make a plan of her own.
The thought filled her with immediate relief. Yes. Why had she fought so hard against this? It was too bad they were never going to speak again—she wouldn’t have the chance to tell Noah how wrong she’d been. So wrong to argue so hard against certainty. Against painlessness.
Noah had been totally and completely right.
We need to go our separate ways. Permanently.
AJ was on her feet now, full of purpose.
She slung her bag over her shoulder and felt for her keys. The exit sign glowed red through the wings. She started walking toward it.
It was time to end this scene.
Permanently.
Something buzzed inside AJ’s bag, but she kept walking.
Her phone. It rang once. Twice.
A foot from the wing, she answered it. “Hey, Emily.”
AJ’s voice sounded canned in the cavernousness of the theater. No mic, just her on this deserted stage. Hearing herself speak, she suddenly noticed how jittery she was, how fast her heart was beating.
“I couldn’t sleep,” said Emily. “Did you have your play tonight?”
Air. AJ needed air. “Yes,” she gasped, stumbling back onto the stage.
Emily paused. “Are you mad?” she asked. “Are you mad I didn’t come?”
AJ was now aware of her limbs. They felt as if they had been cattle prodded, twisting, throbbing, tingling. “No, I-I’m not mad,” she stammered.
“Age, are you okay?” asked Emily.
“I—” AJ’s vision sizzled. She felt as if she might pass out.
“Because I’ve been thinking about you a lot tonight.” Emily giggled. “Of course, I always think about you, Age. But a lot tonight.”
The theater spun. “How come?”
Emily sighed. “Don’t know. Oh. I was thinking about Winslow.”
It took AJ a minute to realize Emily meant Winslow Shoe, Ezell’s character on Astronauticals. “Look, Em—” She sucked in a breath. “It’s late and—”
“Why did he go back to the Gringotts Pond? That place sucks.”
“Green Gob Pond,” AJ pushed out. “Bleep-Bloop was in trouble. Remember?”
“No,” said Emily. “Oh. The robot. But how did Winslow know Bleeboop was in trouble?”
“He just…knew,” AJ managed.
“That’s what Mike said,” said Emily.
As she began to list her favorite parts of the episode, AJ grabbed on to the thread of her sister’s voice. She lay down onstage and thought of Emily’s soft body, of how it felt clasped with hers. She thought of her sister’s downy blond hair, of her Herbal Essences shampoo.
“Oh my God,” said Emily. “It’s so good.”
As her sister spoke, AJ felt a white calm glimmer near her diaphragm. It pulsed like a second heartbeat, growing stronger and stronger with Emily’s every word.
“Mike says we can watch more tomorrow,” Emily was saying. “He’s home, you know.”
AJ closed her eyes and took a breath, holding it in for as long as she could. She released it slowly and did it again. Maybe she could go home after all—be with Emily and Mike.
Her vision was coming back into focus. The screaming in her limbs had begun to ebb. Carefully, AJ sat up. She would stay on the phone with Emily until she got home.
Time would restart.
She just had to walk off the stage.
She could do this. She’d taken bigger leaps before.
Today something remarkable happened. A girl came to the house.
Slowly, AJ picked up her bag and got to her feet.
A noise in the rafters made her jump. AJ shook it off. Empty theaters were creepy as hell.
“Did you hear that Baskin-Robbins is closing?” asked Emily.
“No, I didn’t hear that,” said AJ, her voice still shaky.
She heard a second noise, a scratching, this time closer.
Fuck—was someone here?
“Yeah, they’re having a BOGO sale of all the ice cream, and guess what I’m going to do?”
AJ could distinctly hear footsteps now; they were heavy, stomping toward her. One of the velvet runners began to rustle. AJ’s adrenaline spiked.
Then Bud was sprinting toward her across the stage, tags jangling, tail wagging like mad.
As AJ stooped to pet the dog, Noah appeared in the wing. He took one step and then another until both his feet landed onstage. AJ felt an energetic swell, a cresting wave.
Air rushed back into her lungs.
His frame was in the light now, his shadow stretched across the floor. AJ could make out her own form now. She watched their shades collide.
Your scene partner is your life.
Noah’s cheeks were chapped from the cold, his eyes intent on her face. There was fear in them, but also resolve.
AJ held his gaze.
I know you.
In two more strides, he was there, and AJ felt time break wide open. For a moment, Noah just looked at her.
Then he offered her his hand.
“Age?” asked Emily in her ear.
Noah had walked through fire. AJ knew he would do it again.
She smiled at him. She couldn’t help it.
“I’m here,” she said.
Then she placed her hand in his, palm to palm. It felt like home.
Noah’s eyes crinkled and filled.
Then, he grinned.