Infinite(65)

The synthesizer beat of techno music wailed like a siren. I felt it deep in my chest, making it hard to breathe. The house was packed, bodies crammed shoulder to shoulder, arms and hips writhing as people danced. I moved slowly through clouds of fog. Strobe lights blinked, twisting around the floor in cones of white, red, yellow, and green.

A girl in a black bra, see-through top, and pink skirt blocked my way and grabbed my face. She had dreamy dark eyes that were high on something. “Buy me a drink?” she shouted.

“Sorry.”

“Hey, come on. One martini.”

“I can’t.”

I tried to squeeze around her, but she pressed her body hard against me and stuck out her tongue between her teeth. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

I made up an excuse. “I’m with someone.”

“Yeah, so? She can join the party, too. I saw her. She’s hot.”

It took a second for my distracted mind to catch up to what she’d said. Then I took hold of her shoulders with both hands. “You saw me tonight? You saw a woman with me?”

“Sure. Blond, classy.”

“Where?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Where did you see her? Where in the club? Show me!”

She wriggled in my grasp. “Let go of me, you freak!”

“Tell me! Where did you see the woman I was with?”

“Get off!”

She twisted away from me and shoved a middle finger in my face. With an irritated toss of her hair, she swayed on high heels toward the bar. I saw others watching me curiously. Two men who were probably bouncers started my way. I melted into the crowd, losing myself among the seething bodies. I couldn’t afford to be tossed out, not when I knew Karly was here.

The relentless pulse of the music thudded in my brain. The swirling lights dizzied me. I pushed through the club, bouncing off people like a bumper car. No one knew what was happening; no one understood my panic. They laughed. They screamed. Drunk girls did shots and kissed each other on the lips. All I could see around me was a kaleidoscope of skin and sweat, in which faces appeared and disappeared in a fraction of a second.

Blink on. A face. Blink off. The face was gone.

Hundreds of them pressed in around me, constantly moving, constantly changing places. I tried to isolate them in my head one at a time. Men. Women. All strangers.

Then I saw him.

Blink, blink, blink, went the multicolored lights.

His face flashed on and off under the strobe, but it was him. My double, my alter ego, my doppelg?nger. He balanced a drink in one hand and danced with a slow, sinuous energy, as if riding some kind of adrenaline high. His head undulated like a snake while the beat taunted me: find her, find her, find her. But Karly wasn’t with him. I looked among the nearby faces and didn’t see her. I tried to shove my way toward him, so I could wrap my hands around his throat, but the dancers made an unbreakable chain. I was trapped where I was. The beat grew louder, like a boxer punching me in the chest.

Find her!

His head stopped moving. He felt my presence in his brain. His body ground to a halt, and his smoky gaze landed on me. There we were, the two of us, staring at each other across the frenzy of the dance floor. I shouted at him, but the music drowned out my voice. He raised his drink to me, a toast. His grim lips bent into a grin, and I knew in my heart what that awful smile meant.

I was too late.

I shouted again. No one paid any attention. No one heard me.

The lights went off and on. In that split second, Dylan disappeared. He vanished from where he was, and I didn’t see him again. But Karly was still here somewhere. Dying. I knew it. I fought my way through the crowd. When I got to the building’s brick wall, I headed for the back of the club, where people hid from the tumult and noise. I pushed past couples making love in the dark. I slipped on spilled drinks and God knows what else. As the strobes flashed—blink, blink, blink—I spotted someone on the floor. A woman. She sat in the corner with her knees against her chest and her arms wrapped around them.

“Karly!”

I scrambled to her and got down on my knees beside her. Blond hair covered her face. When I pushed it aside, her stare was empty, seeing nothing. Her head turned, but when she looked at me, I don’t think she saw me. I watched her lips move; she said something, but in the chaos of the club, I couldn’t hear what it was. I put my arms around her. As I did, my hand sank into a river of blood. When I pulled away, my fingers were covered in crimson red that blinked on and off in the lights.

“Help! We need help! Over here!”

No one heard me.

I put my lips to her ear and whispered. “Karly, hang on. Please hang on. Stay with me.”

Her head sank against my shoulder, the way it had a million times before. At the movie theater, in the car, in front of the fireplace, on the pillows in bed. It felt so warm, so good, so familiar, as if it should last forever. But she was leaving me again. She was getting farther away, dragged from me by a river of blood that pulsed between my fingers. I put my palm to her chest, feeling her ragged, rattling breath go in and out.

“Karly, I love you.”

In.

Out.

“You’re my wife. I love you.”

In.

Out.

“I should have saved you. I failed you. I’m sorry, God I’m so sorry.”