You in Five Acts(40)

“Just going to chill with a few friends over on the east side,” he said.

“Can I come?” I asked. The question seemed to take him aback.

“Uh, you seem cool, but I don’t like to socialize with customers,” Dante said. He looked me up and down and smiled. “Besides, you’re a little stuck up for this crowd.”

“Besa mi culo,” I said sweetly. Kiss my ass. I knew it was a gamble, but I was betting he’d laugh, and he did.

“I don’t know,” he sighed, rubbing his chin, which was covered in a thick growth of black stubble. “I mean, not that rolling up with a beautiful girl wouldn’t make me look good, but . . .”

“I’m not really a customer, anyway,” I said. “I’m your cousin’s friend. I could just be your friend.” I was still smiling, but I said friend firmly. I needed Dante to know that I wasn’t interested in him that way. And besides, I was already sort of dating someone else I wasn’t interested in that way.

“That’s the thing, though,” Dante said, frowning. “Customers aren’t friends, and friends aren’t customers. You pay me, you’re a customer. So I don’t want you coming around next week trying to get me to front you because we’re buddies now.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

“Can you be cool?” he asked.

“I’m always cool,” I said. But the pulsing in my temples and the sour ache in my stomach told me otherwise. I hadn’t eaten anything all day, so on our walk east we stopped at a deli, where I got a granola bar and a Diet Coke. I had the pill in my mouth before we were out the door, the carbonated bubbles tickling my throat as a loud chime rang out over my head, making me feel like a boxer stepping back in the ring, getting ready to start a new round.

? ? ?


It turned out that Dante’s friend lived in the housing projects just off 105th Street near the river, which made me feel uneasy and then ashamed of feeling uneasy. After all, I wasn’t supposed to be some bougie bitch who couldn’t hang. I was the cool girl who was down for whatever, and who was about to get high. I already felt a flutter in my veins and a cottony feeling in my ears; I could feel it coming on, the first licks of a wave that would eventually crash over my head, dragging me under. Just wait for it, I told myself as we got buzzed in by a security guard behind scratched, bullet-proof glass. Any second now, it’ll kick in, and then nothing will matter.

Dante’s friend, who got introduced to me as Smoke Dog, was tall and skinny with a deep voice and a lazy smile. The living room was lined with couches, all angled toward a big TV where two other guys were playing some video game, the first-person kind where you’re just running around a gray wasteland, shooting at anything that moves. The air was thick with smoke; I saw a huge blunt propped against an ashtray on the coffee table. Adrenaline zipped through my body; my vision seemed to sharpen. I felt like a soda can that someone had shaken before popping the tab.

“This is Liv,” Dante said, guiding me in with his hand on my back.

“Welcome,” Smoke Dog said. “You can ditch coats anywhere, but it’s gonna get crazy soon, so keep whatever you need on you.” I clutched my bag to my chest, my pulse beating like a bass line through the thick leather. Suddenly it felt like I needed everything. But my skin was singing and I wanted to feel light and free and so I stuck my wallet in one back pocket of my jeans, my keys in the other, and another pill in the front right pocket—just in case. Then my coat and my purse disappeared, I didn’t know where, and someone was handing me a bottle and someone else was passing me the blunt and then I was gone. Just like I wanted.

Here’s what I remember, spots of static through the haze: Sitting on the couch, running my nails over my wrists; laughing so hard at something that I actually physically couldn’t stop; having an intense conversation with a girl wearing diamond hoop earrings that I couldn’t take my eyes off of, like a cat tracking a butterfly; leaving that pow-wow to stumble to the bathroom, where I threw up quickly while holding the door closed with my foot; walking up an endless stairwell clutching Dante’s arm; standing on the roof, smoking a cigarette, watching the city sparkle and sway until I got pulled back, hard, and someone yelled that I was standing too close to the edge.

Somehow it had gotten dark. Time slowed down and sped up but neither it nor I could seem to stand still.

I was coming down by that point, slowly but surely, the wave retreating as the shine wore off the world. I remember staring at my phone and seeing no little number where the new messages should have been and having the brief, sudden urge to hurl it off the building, and then bursting into tears instead. Next I was tripping down the stairs and following a thumping bass line to a door and stepping inside, where I saw Smoke Dog sitting on the couch with a girl on his lap. She was facing him, kissing him, running her hands up under his shirt, and it made me want to text you, but then I remembered that you hated me and so I decided to take the second pill instead.

I traced my way back to the bathroom by holding on to the walls, and when I got inside I looked in the mirror, my face not quite in focus, like someone had dragged their thumb across and smudged it. I dug the pill out of my pocket and then dropped it by accident into the sink, and there was a brief, awful pause when I thought it had gone down the drain, and the loathing I felt for myself in that moment was so deep and piercing that I felt like turning around and going back to the roof and taking a running leap, but then I spotted it, stuck to the porcelain, damp and bitter but still intact, and that was enough.