A LIVING ROOM again, but this time with a piano in one corner and a keyboard in another. There’s a handful of us in the audience—me, Lilia, two older women, and a couple of people I remember from the party. Mae dims the lights and then takes to the keyboard. Angela appears, still wearing the Wonder Woman T-shirt and gray shorts she came here in, and sits at the piano. The guys wander in from the hallway and grab their instruments. Brad nods to Nelson, and then all five of them share a look. And the music starts.
Angela is playing with Firing Squad.
It’s not a song I know—I guess it’s not a song at all. Brad thumbs the bass but doesn’t sing. If anything, it’s Angela on piano who seems to be leading the group, pulling a melody out of the sound and letting the other instruments press themselves against it, one by one. Her cheeks are pink with energy, and her hands dance up and down the keyboard. She’s fantastic. Who the hell needs sheet music when you can improvise like that? I sort of wish I could jump in front of the band and let everyone here know that she’s my sister—but no. This is her moment. I’m in the audience of yet another Firing Squad concert, and that’s perfectly fine with me.
Someone taps me on the shoulder from behind. I turn around. Edie.
“I heard you were here for a while,” she says.
“Just for the weekend,” I tell her. “I have something to finish.”
“I knew it. Well, if you want to grab a drink after the show, let me know.”
“You should stay and watch. That’s my sister up there on piano.”
“Oh yeah?” She nods her head to the music—well, a little out of rhythm.
They play for a long time. Maybe an hour, maybe less or more. Who knows? No one seems to have much use for time around here, and I’m slipping into the habit of only glancing at clocks when I’m confronted with them. Who cares if it’s two in the morning if I feel like I could stay awake and paint all night?
Not that I’m feeling like that right now. After I give Angela a hug, I let her hang out with the other band members. “I’ll meet you in the purple room later, okay?” I say, waving, leaving her there. She nods, and Mae gives me a salute, and I feel weird about walking away, but we’ve already escaped what we thought was going to be our biggest danger here. In my gut, I know this is a safe place. Still, I’ll be back to check on her after my drink with Edie.
She makes me the amplified orange juice.
“It’s delicious, yet again,” I tell her.
“Pouring is an art, like everything else,” Edie says. “I do it exceptionally well.”
She runs a towel over the bar and watches me have another sip. There’s one other person in the bar tonight—a guy about Tall Jon’s age, wearing a fedora—and he’s getting terrible service, but he’s off in his own world, meditating or something while he drinks a beer. Edie’s holding back questions, I can tell. She wants to ask me where I go to school, what I did for Christmas, do I even celebrate Christmas, how did my sister learn to play like that (never mind, she’s probably figured that out), what do I dream about, and do I ever date girls?
“Have you ever been to New York?” I ask her.
“Like, the city? Yeah, I’ve been once. A school trip, though. Nothing fun. It was cold and the only museum we went to was the natural history one.” She stops cleaning the counter. “Oh, let me guess. You’re thinking of going. You think you can’t be a real artist until you’ve roughed it up there. Lived in an apartment with four roommates and one bathroom. Look, it’s not true. Do you realize you’ve got everything you need right here?”
I stare down into my drink. “Hmm, I guess.”
“Hey. I can take a break in a minute. Let me show you what I’ve done since I’ve been here.”
Maybe Edie’s real art is evolution—her photos are arranged in matching black frames in a line marching around her place. The whole thing is hers, living room and kitchen and two bedrooms, all to herself. One bedroom is to sleep, and the other isn’t quite a studio, but more like a catch-all for everything related to her photography. Despite the fact that there’s no room for me to walk into it, the line of photos marches around all four walls and out again. The early photos are everyday things in everyday places: lonely umbrellas on the beach, a broken-down car on the street in front of the Estate, a cracked window.
The photos in the next room, Edie’s bedroom, are different—stranger, and more arranged, and sometimes involving people. This one wall in her bedroom is a series of portraits of people (some including Edie herself) wearing identical bright pink feathered masks, Lilia among them. I recognize her long hair.
“She agreed to this?” I ask Edie.
“She was really supportive of my project,” Edie says.
The ones on the wall by her closet are the hardest of all to look at. The same people from the mask pictures are now dressed as though dead and lying at a wake: mask off, eyes closed, face muscles relaxed and dark makeup filling in lips and eyelids and wrinkles. Edie looks the creepiest: white-faced and surrounded by flowers.
“So what inspired these?” I ask her, trying to keep my voice steady.
“My grandmother and my dad died,” she says, “like, within two weeks of each other. That’s too much for a girl to take at once. If I could have surgically removed the grief, I would have. This was my way of trying to let it out into the world.”
“To make those feelings beautiful?” I ask.
“Eh, maybe,” she says. “Or just, you know, to disperse them. To split my feelings among a hundred people who might see the photos.”
I take a few steps out of her bedroom and back into the hallway. Edie’s place is so strange—the pictures of death existing in these spaces where she lives her life. There’s a smell of garlicky pasta in the air, and she’s got old books and magazines on shelves in the hallway. It’s settled and unsettled, just like me.
“My abuela’s in the hospital.” The words fall out, but I’m okay with them. “We don’t know if she’s going to make it.”
“Ugh, I’m sorry,” Edie says. “I shouldn’t have shown you all this. We can head back to the bar.”
“No, it’s fine,” I say.
And Edie smiles. She gets me a glass of water from her tiny kitchen. I wander around her rooms, looking at all her art supplies and the few bits and pieces I can gather of her pre-Estate life: a worn paperback of Fun Home, a T-shirt from some summer camp in Kissimmee, a couple of family photos taped next to the window. Outside, the gulf is all kicked up, steady in its thrashing. I look away, only to find Edie watching me.
“Your place is great,” I tell her.
“Yup.” She stretches out her arms. “I love it here. And, you know, you could have a place like this too, but you’ve gotta go finish your project first.”
“Is that seriously it?”