Dead to Her(35)
“Five years? I was kind of hoping he’d be buried by then.” They all laughed, Keisha the loudest. Maybe her mood was slightly manic, the excitement in danger of tipping her over the edge. Breathtaking highs, or terrible lows, those were the landscapes of her emotions. An inheritance from her dead mother. Cursed. She pushed the word away.
“And they say romance is dead.” Jade glanced at the time on her cell. “Anyway, great meeting you, but we’ve got to split.” She tugged Daria’s jacket. “Come on, I told Laz we’d be there by eleven thirty. He won’t wait and then we’ll never find him.”
“Hey, you two should come with us!” Daria said. “Gonna be wild! A kind of underground club night in the woods down by the Truman Parkway. Music, drink, food. All kinds of tents set up and stuff given away free. Happens every year. Goes on till dawn for those who have the energy.”
“What do you think?” Keisha asked Marcie after a pause. “Could be fun?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not really a staying-up-till-dawn-partying kind of girl,” Marcie said.
“We don’t have to. Just stay for an hour or so.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
“Wow, quick turnaround. I didn’t realize you were so easily led. That’s good to know . . .”
Marcie rolled her eyes at Keisha’s teasing, but a blush had crept across her cheeks and Keisha thought she looked beautiful.
“So, you guys coming?” Jade said, fingers flicking over her iPhone. “I’m getting an Uber.”
“Sure.” Keisha flicked the roach to the ground. “We love a party.”
“Oh, you’re going to really love this one.” Daria’s eyes gleamed. “Craziest night of the year for those in the know.”
24.
Marcie held her breath as they hurried past the pile of garbage sacks that acted as a border between normal life and the homeless town that existed under the parkway. The mountain of uncollected waste stank and she dreaded thinking how much vermin was probably living in it.
“Nearly there,” Daria said.
“We don’t have to go through that do we?” Keisha nodded toward the camp of battered tents and beaten people living under a concrete sky. Here and there, faces stared out at them, impassive. Not overly threatening but definitely unsettling, huddled by fires that crackled in oil drums under graffitti-daubed pillars. The underbelly of the city that no one wanted to see.
“Don’t worry,” Jade said. “We’re going into the woods. We’ll be fine.”
“Glad you sound so sure.”
“Like I said, it’s a special night.”
Marcie wasn’t convinced. What on earth was she doing out here following two women she’d only just met to some no doubt illegal party? For all she knew they were about to get robbed. Or worse. This was the sort of impulsive shit she’d done as a kid, but not now. She was here only because Keisha had obviously wanted to come. Keisha. As Jade led them up a narrow path into the woods, Marcie reached for the other woman’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. There was no going back now. She may as well try to relax and enjoy it. It was a few minutes’ walk in the dark, only cell-phone lights to guide them—thankfully also showing full signal—and then Marcie heard the first hints of sound, a thrum of life somewhere up ahead. The path reached a peak and then as they ducked under some branches, it dipped down sharply to a surprise large clearing, half the size of a football field.
“Wow,” Keisha said, as Marcie looked around, wide-eyed. Okay, so they weren’t going to get robbed. Lights were strung in trees at the edges, and there were tents and stalls set up here and there, a large unlit bonfire down at the other end, candles burning, food cooking, and a lot—maybe a hundred or so—of people dancing and laughing. Music hummed in the air, a sensual rhythm, heavy on the drums, as if it pulsed through the earth itself.
“St. John’s Eve, baby!” Jade leapt into the arms of the shaven-headed black man waiting for them, her legs wrapping tightly around his waist. He was so tall he made her look like a child.
“Hey, Laz. We brought a couple of friends,” Daria said. “And we all need a drink.”
The man, Laz, extracted himself from Jade, and then led them to a small table, where a middle-aged hippie woman was filling paper cups from a punch bowl.
“Welcome to the party,” he said as he handed them each a cup. “Drink, eat, dance, and be merry. Tonight our wishes come true.”
“What is it?” Marcie asked, peering inside.
“Tafia. Homemade rum.”
She watched as the others, including Laz, drank theirs, her instinctual paranoia about her drink being spiked causing a brief knot in her stomach, but the rum had to be safe, it had all come out of the same bowl. She glanced over at Keisha, who winked at her. “Bottoms up.” Marcie stared into the cup for a moment, took a deep breath, and then drank.
After that, the world swirled and time stretched like molasses as they moved through the thick hot mess of nature and people. They’d lost Daria and Jade to Laz, but Marcie wasn’t bothered. She didn’t feel drunk exactly, but somewhere close. The tafia burned her throat but relaxed her body and as she and Keisha wandered through the crowds it felt perfectly natural to have their hands linked and to feel Keisha rest her head on her shoulder when they paused at this stall or that to look at what was cooking or what was being sold.