Fear wends its way up my spine, wraps its bony fingers around the base of my neck, and squeezes hard until I’m choking. I can barely breathe. The air in the room feels heavy, the room feels smaller than before, and I need to leave. I have to. I run up onstage and grab Lena, hoisting her arms around my shoulders and prying her away from the leech who is trying to grab her back. The faces around me look sinister, and it occurs to me that I may be feeling that first shot and may be acting irrationally.
But maybes are enough to warrant action in this distorted world, where suddenly every minute and every person can attain heightened significance. Lena and I meet eyes at the end of a song, a Bruce Springsteen ode to Youngstown, “them smokestacks reaching like the arms of God?/?Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay,” and I’m so nostalgic for home, and so afraid of what’s about to happen, that I almost burst into tears. Seeing me, Lena has something register in her own mind, and her distant expression shifts into something more present. She yanks away from me and jumps off the stage rather than taking the stairs, a move that nearly results in her collapse. I hurry after her.
“I’m so sorry,” she says desperately, her eyes wild. “I’m sorry for dragging you out here. I’m sorry you’re stuck with me now. You’d be okay if it weren’t for me.”
“I still am okay,” I tell her. “Listen. None of this is your fault.” It’s not entirely true but it’s what she needs to hear, and I steer her toward the bathroom and past the stares of everyone around us, male and female alike. Once in the stall, she loses it. I follow her in. She cries hard, her face buried in a mound of toilet paper. She’s perched on the lid of a toilet, apparently unconcerned by the stains that mar it.
“I’m sorry it’s been so hard for you, Lena,” I say, crouching in front of her. Part of me feels like I’ve done a bad job of expressing just how much I’ll care if I lose her. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could make this different, you know that, right?”
“I know,” she says, sobbing. She leans her head on my shoulder, crying into it. “I know. I’m sorry. I wanted tonight to be great. I wanted it to be extraordinary. I wanted you to see things differently after tonight.”
“I see the entire world differently because of you,” I say, and I mean it. “Three weeks ago, I was just, what, a random girl in Illinois who’d seen nothing and done nothing and it didn’t matter, because I was just closed up inside my bubble. And now I want to see everything and experience everything. I know I can’t have it, but at least I want it. I’d rather want what I can’t have than never know any better. You’re the cause of that. I swear to God, Lena. No matter what happens, you opened my eyes.”
Lena laughs a little through her snot and tears, and I realize how ridiculously sentimental I sound. Then she looks down at her wrist, where the lamb tattoo is just poking out from under her bangles, a black scribble for all to see. She pulls off the bracelets and scratches at her skin, almost as if she wants to scrape off the tattoo itself. She scratches harder, and her skin turns red and raw. I grab her hand to stop her.
“Cut it out,” I tell her. “You’re hurting yourself.” But she jerks away, scraping furiously at her skin.
“Lena! Stop! You’re going to make yourself bleed.” I pull her hand away and this time she doesn’t resist.
“I want it gone,” she tells me. “I don’t want any sign of him left on me.”
“So we’ll fix it,” I tell her. “But you’re making it worse this way.”
“I want it gone now.”
I clutch her hands in mine, holding them steady so she can’t hurt herself again. “We’ll go tonight. We’ll go right now, if we have time. We’ll cover it up with something new.” Lena nods and grabs for some toilet paper. She blows her nose hard and presses at her forehead with her index fingers, steadying herself.
“Okay,” she says. She looks tired, like a balloon that’s been popped. All of her manic energy from earlier has drained out of her. “And then I’m ready to go home. I’m tired of this. I just want to go home.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” I’m overcome with relief. The thought of being in the airport is soothing.
“Just give me a second,” she says. “I need to pee and clean up a little.” She points at her soggy face. “I want to splash some water on my face. Wait outside?”
“I’ll go find us a cab. You meet me out front.” Lena gives me a shaky thumbs-up and I push out of the tiny stall and make my way through the congested bar. I don’t see Cha-cha anywhere. Somehow her absence feels reassuring.