“I’m not in danger.”
“Yeah, but you keep trying to break into an abandoned building,” Vic says. “Something tells me that’s not going to work for very long, not in the land of fancy condos over there.”
“My project is there. And Lilia is too. And a bunch of other artists and musicians.” We are almost to Vic’s studio. One more block down the street, past a funeral home and a plastic surgery place. Both too much and too little time and space to bring that weekend crashing back into this car. “And so were you.”
“Oh, here we go. I told you what happened.” She stares out the window. The plastic surgery place is busy, the funeral home isn’t. “I don’t understand why you thought it was something different.”
“Look, I know that night was weird. There was definitely something in the building, about the building, that changed us. And that’s what’s terrifying about that place, and what’s amazing, too. That’s why I keep going back, I guess. Because I never know what’s going to happen, but usually, it’s something perfect. And beautiful.”
I pull up in front of the Sarasota Dance Academy, Vic’s poor, imperfect company, these people who are doing the Gershwin show again. She reaches down for her bag, then lets go of the handles and looks at me. Several hairs didn’t make it into her bun this time. “So why didn’t I get to see it?”
“Vic.” I tug at my neck. I wish I could pick up my cigarettes right now and see how much smoke and ash I’d fidget away before I felt comfortable telling her the whole story. “Okay, tell me this. Think of a moment you’d want to live in for longer than a moment.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Or think of a feeling you had once that you’d like to have again.”
She’s ready to go to dance, ready to move through that wordless world where she reigns. I wonder if anything has come back to her about that Saturday night at the Estate—a flash of a red-and-white wall, a tug on her hand that reminds her of me, a feeling that washes over her of trembling and comfort.
“Wait, so you’re saying that your favorite abandoned building can give you those feelings?”
“That’s not what I—”
“And wouldn’t it feel weird and fake if you were only experiencing that because the building gave it to you?” Vic puts her dance bag on her lap.
“It’s still you, though. It has to be.”
“Okay.” She turns to the side window and waves at a girl heading into the studio. The girl waves back and offers a big, openmouthed smile. I bet it is a lot easier to be best friends with that girl than with me. “Okay. I thought of something that happened during the Gershwin show two years ago. We were about to go out and do Rhapsody in Blue for the first time, and I was waiting a few steps offstage. I wanted to bust out of there before the music started and do a series of turns and leaps across the stage. Just me. The stage was so inviting—like, clean and black and shiny—and I wanted to jump in and experience it for myself before everyone else got there.”
Every part of me aches when she looks at me again, and it cannot be Lilia and the Estate’s powers prodding at me this time. It is Victoria. It is her near infallibility with the creation of her ballet hairstyle. It’s the way she can let her perfectionism sag and sigh when she’s with me. It’s her playlists and her dresses and the way she says dearie and how she comes to Tall Jon parties with me and is, despite the abundance of cheerful dance girls in every corner of her life, the most loyal best friend I’ve ever had. It’s the way she puts the right angle and weight and feeling into every step she takes, except perhaps for the ones she needs to take most.
“And I couldn’t do it,” she says. “I couldn’t move forward at all. Not before the dance started.”
“Vic, I kissed you. That Saturday night, in the studio. I know you don’t remember. But you kissed me back.”
The world gets louder in this second, I swear—the rain hastens from a steady shower to a pour, and the cars passing on Honore Avenue behind us seem to rev their engines at once, and all of it becomes a churn of sound in my ears.
The crack, the canyon, between our realities is filling up now. Victoria’s cheeks flush. Mine probably do, too.
“I kissed you back?” she says. “What—what was it like?”
“It was perfect.”
Vic sinks back against the seat, puts her hands on her face as though she’s comforting herself, and I wish I could reach across and make the same gesture. “What else happened there?” she asks.
“I told you about it the next morning. I painted, there was some music, and we danced.”
“Okay, okay. Enough about this for now.” And she opens the door. It’s the ultimate commitment to leaving, as the rain immediately dumps on her hair and her dance bag and everything. “I can’t talk about this. I have to go.”
It’s the worst sort of Victoria exit—slow and graceless. Unbalanced and unshowy. And it’s my fault. I’ve given her the information and left her to slink away with it—rather, to stumble away with it, as she’s doing now, angling around puddles in her bright yellow sandals. The moment is gone. She has slammed the door behind her and I can’t even smell her makeup or her dance clothes or whatever it is that makes her smell like her. Instead, the rain hangs heavy in the air, its weight and scent clinging to me, and to this car whose windows are fogging again, obscuring my view of Victoria walking away.
She has to go, yes, but so do I.
twenty-three
WHEN I’M BACK in the Estate, standing in the center of the dusty lobby, the music from upstairs is going at full blast, with the sound of the piano front and center. I consider going up to the eighth floor to talk to Angela, or possibly to collapse into the piano, to wonder why it came clanging into our lives. I don’t even know what I would say to Angela—I just want to see someone familiar, someone who might not run away into the rain.
But, ugh, the music is so joyful that I don’t dare go upstairs and douse it with my sadness. Up the stairs I go, stopping at the second-floor landing. I sit on the top step and lay my head against my knees. It’s something I’ve done enough times in my life to know how it feels, but this time I want it to feel different. My knees should be knobbier, my hair should be coarser . . . something to reflect this version of me who has tried to jump the Mercedes-Victoria Memorial Canyon of Awkwardness and missed the other side.
In our unending game of “How Many People?,” now playing out quietly in my head instead of cheerfully at the Dead Guy, I’m asking her, Hey, Vic, how many people who you’ve kissed before would you want to kiss again?
And she would not even respond. She would put on her modern dance shoes, these strange half shoes that look like unfinished ballet slippers, and twirl herself back into the rhythm of the Gershwin show practice.