Welcome to the Slipstream

by Natalka Burian

  I let her wait. The breaths in our lungs whispered back and forth in the chill, still air of the office. Chantal wasn’t going to squeeze anything out of me, I thought.

  “Not really,” I finally said.

  “I see.” Chantal wrung the softness out of her face. “Well, I’d like to share my thoughts on this matter, if you don’t mind.”

  I was pretty sure Chantal would be sharing her thoughts no matter what.

  “I am becoming concerned. I didn’t approve Marine’s hire, and I certainly can’t condone the kind of . . . fraternization that’s been going on. And frankly, Sofia seems to have lost quite a bit of focus since her arrival.”

  This, I’d heard before: loss of focus, general concern.

  “I’m attributing this to Marine’s entrance into the company,” Chantal continued. “Let me be clear about that, Van. I hate to send you into any kind of awkward way, but I’m sure you appreciate that this situation is—well, it’s unique.”

  I’d heard that before, too. Mom was a mystery to everyone. Chantal wasn’t the first to try to use me to decode Mom.

  “I’ve suggested to your mother that Marine isn’t a good fit here, but I think the issue is complicated for her. Her personal feelings are in the way of what’s best for the company. Do you see?”

  I kept my face neutral, but all of the muscles in my body were tensed, even the smallest ones behind each toe. I just wanted it to be over; I wanted Chantal to kick us out of the Silver Saddle or just to send me off to class.

  “I’ve discussed my concerns with Ida as well, but we seem to be getting nowhere.” She shrugged. “I’m not entirely comfortable asking you this, but I don’t know where else to turn in this delicate matter. And you, such a bright young woman, I thought you might have some unique insight for me.”

  I shook my head and looked at my hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can help you.”

  “Very well. But Van,” Chantal said, while I was still moving. “If you ever do want to discuss this business with Marine, please know that I’m here for you.” That artificial softness played through her voice again.

  “Okay, thanks.” I stood up and nearly ran out of her office. I had a feeling that this was only the first of my interrogations with Chantal. When I replayed what she said about Alex being my “tour guide,” well, I was disappointed, angry even.

  Alex waited in the lobby by the door to Chantal’s office. “Hey,” he said. He started to walk next to me when it was clear that I meant to keep going. I wanted to move away from Chantal, but I wanted to move away from Alex, too. I felt a metallic sweep of anger behind my eyes and in my throat. The heat that gathered there wasn’t all Alex’s fault. It was Marine’s, and Mom’s, too. I had to calm down. I stopped walking, and so did Alex. He just looked at me with that stupid, symmetrical face.

  It was my fault that Alex’s part in this upset me so much. I had known better. Why hadn’t I kept myself safe and detached like always? Those presents, I thought. I blame those presents.

  “Was it really that bad?” Alex asked.

  An overwhelming feeling of being watched, of every corner of the Silver Saddle being bugged, propelled me toward the revolving doors. I had to get outside. The doors slung us out into the windy desert—me and Alex both. He’d scuttled into the compartment beside me before I could stop him.

  I walked down the strip of sidewalk, doubled over a little, still holding my stomach. I felt Alex’s hand on my back between my shoulder blades and wanted to shake it off. But I couldn’t, for some reason. Even the illusion of another person giving a shit made me lose my head.

  “Seriously, you need to get off,” I said, and shivered away. I stepped onto the gravel of the drive and started walking. Alex followed, matching his steps to my steps, like we were doing a military drill. The bellmen, all smoking, watched us from where they lounged in a cluster on a bench.

  The gravel crunched beneath our four feet and the desert air dried the tears in my eyes to a salty crust. I looked out at the fawn-colored flatness, at the huge, clear sky. I breathed in the dry morning air and turned toward Alex. All of his tallness leaned against the wind, leaned toward me.

  “Chantal told me it was your job to keep an eye on me.”

  “What?” Alex squinted against the breeze.

  “She was very frank. So you don’t have to invite me to go anywhere or to do anything. And you don’t have to leave me any more weird shit in the surveillance room. My mom found out about it anyway, so that’s already over.”

  “What?” His voice was grainy, breaking up in the wind’s shriek. “She said I’ve been spying on you? Van, she asked me to help you out, show you around. I was happy to do it at first, and then, I don’t know, I thought we were friends.”

  I just shook my head. My hair whipped around my face. I felt the strands wind up in the air and plummet back down against my cheeks and forehead. Stay out of my way, is how I imagined I looked. Menacing.

  Alex shoved his hands into his pockets and looked down, as though I’d pushed his head toward the sand with the power of my glare. It felt great. I mean, it felt terrible, too, but I felt a twinge of great. There was something about the set of his shoulders and the indent between his eyebrows that made him look really hurt. Good, I thought.

  “Van, I’m a little confused, here,” he said, muttering down to the earth. “I like you. I really believed that we were friends. None of this was about Chantal. You think Chantal made me ask you out? You think Chantal paid me to invite you to my birthday tonight?”

  “Please stop it. Just stop. You’re embarrassing us both for no reason. Just admit that the situation is what it actually is. You’re a relatively nice person, and I’m not going to be rude if I don’t have to be. Let’s just be honest, here.”

  “A relatively nice person?” Alex nearly shouted. He turned and started pacing in a circle around where I stood. The air between us filled with dust, and I coughed into the sleeve of my sweater.

  “I don’t even know what to say.” Alex paused to speak. “I guess you are just really young. Or really dim. If you didn’t see what I saw, then I guess that’s what’s going on.”

  “What did you see?” I hated that I wanted to know.

  Alex walked right up to me, as close as if we were facing off at a square dance. I saw, under the bright sunlight, that his eyes were more hazel, and not brown like I’d thought. I felt the heat of his body, and the strands of my hair caught up in the breeze whipped against the front of his shirt. That’s how close we stood.

  Alex took my hand, not like a hand-hold, hand-hold, with ten fingers all spliced together. He took it like you take the hand of a person getting off of a boat and onto a dock—a surrounding, reassuring grip.

  “When I said I liked you, it was true. I like you. Do you know what I mean?”

  I nodded, but really I didn’t. Was it another trick, or something else? I wasn’t sure which would be worse.

  “I was never spying.”

  He didn’t let go of my hand. I looked over his shoulder at the smudged pencil line of the horizon. I couldn’t look at him, even though I wanted to try, to test myself, to make sure it didn’t bother me to look him in the eye.

  “It’s fine,” I told him, still looking out at the desert. “I get it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means it’s fine. Friends, okay?” I wasn’t completely sure if I meant it, but I just wanted this awkward standoff to be over, to look at it later, under the microscope of my own mind. When Alex wasn’t touching me.

  He gave my hand a quick little shake, like we had concluded a pretend interview.

  “Friends,” he said.

  Then he hugged me, a big, tight, uninitiated-by-me hug. I couldn’t remember the last time someone other than Ida or Mom—or Marine, that once against my will—had hugged me. I didn’t think anyone ever had. I leaned into it for just a second and breathed in the smell of another person’s closeness—all foreign-scented shampoo and rumpled,
unwashed clothes. Before I could really sink into it, I pulled back and kept my head down.

  “Let’s go. I don’t want to leave Erica just sitting there,” I said.

  “Hey,” Alex said, suddenly.

  “What?”

  “You’re coming tonight, right? To the party?”

  I couldn’t resist the rush of happiness that burbled up. It was my first time performing, and I was going to kill it. Chantal definitely wasn’t paying Joanna and Carol to be my friends.

  “Yeah, I can’t miss our first show,” I told Alex.

  We walked back up the gravel path side by side, less than thirty-six inches between us.

  Chapter Ten

  I considered that terrible talk with Chantal. I replayed her voice in my mind, trying to get to the bottom of what she meant. To get to the bottom of her timeline, I guess. I’d been through enough jobs of Mom’s to know the end was near. Thinking out of the box was right. Mom thought so far out of the box, she’d pack up the box and mail it to the International Space Station.

  In similar situations—at other jobs—as Mom thought further and further outside of the box, the signals came, as clear as flares shot into the sky. Almost always there was a timeline. Sometimes they spelled it out: “You have three weeks to pull it together, Sofia.” Sometimes, you had to read between the lines of their concern.

  How much time was Chantal giving us? I wasn’t ready to go. It had seemed urgent—bringing in a seventeen-year-old as a potential ally seemed especially last-resort. I went looking for Ida when Erica left for the day. She needed to know what Chantal was saying, I decided. If I passed the problem off to Ida, I could focus on the show.

  Since it was Friday, the casino rang with thousands of slot machine plays and the energy of hundreds of bodies bussed in for the weekend. To compete with these new frequencies, everything was louder—the music, the voices from the throats of the waitresses and dealers, even the air conditioning whirred at its highest capacity.

  “Hey, Van.” A mellifluous voice interrupted my thoughts.

  “Yeah?” I turned around to Joanna, stopped in the hallway with a stack of folded sheets in her arms. She smoldered at me over the pile of linen.

  “Are you ready for tonight?”

  “Yeah, I think. Probably.”

  “Don’t sound so excited.”

  “No! I’m totally excited!” I winced when I heard how childish I sounded.

  “Good. You’re getting a ride with Alex, right?”

  “Yeah, I am. Do you want us to stop at Red’s to pick anything up?”

  Joanna shook her head. “Nope, Carol’s brother is bringing everything. Don’t be late, okay? Get there at eight at least, so we can sound check.”

  “Yeah, okay, great,” I said. “See you later.”

  She gave me the world’s coolest-looking salute and sauntered off.

  Eight—I had plenty of time to hunt down Ida and let her know about the Chantal shakedown. I walked into the heart of the casino, not wanting to risk wasting time waiting around in the suite for Ida to come back for one of her costume changes.

  I could feel the swell of sound even in the relatively muted back hallways of the complex of conference rooms. Every atom that buzzed my body into being wanted to be away from the growling pit that I headed toward. Pushing myself into the thronged central room of the casino was like defying a law of physics. It hurt to be in there, somehow, like being burnt under the sun.

  There were so many people, more young people than usual at the Silver Saddle. The cascades of laughter were raw and open. It was an inviting sound; let in whatever wants to get in, it seemed to say. Drinks slogged over the edges of their plastic cups and dribbled onto my arms. I knew I shouldn’t be there. A few designated common paths cut through the center, and anyone could walk on those. Even me. On a Friday evening a minor on the floor was definitely not okay. I had to find Ida and I had to get out of there.

  I scanned the room and spotted Ovid in the corner closest to me, a looming dark shadow over his green felt domain. I threaded through the stumbling bodies, careful to move my feet around the wobbling spikes of violently colored high-heeled shoes that shifted and stamped into the already beaten, stained carpet. As I inched closer to Ovid’s table, I heard Ida’s laugh, that familiar smoky chuckle, and my whole body slumped forward in relief. I practically dove forward into the flat of Ida’s back, like I was a little kid again.

  “Hey!” she shouted, turning around, brandishing her angriest face. When she saw that it was me, she pulled me under her arm. “Honey, what are you doing in here?” Ida had to practically shout in my ear.

  I just turned into her and hugged her hard. Ida pulled me back by my shoulders a little, her forehead furrowed into a stack of creases.

  “Are you okay? Van? What is it?”

  I couldn’t figure out where it came from, maybe the crowd, maybe Chantal, maybe Alex, maybe I was getting nervous about the show, but my vision went all funny, and the back of my throat felt hot. Ida knew my about-to-cry face better than anyone. Her hands gripped into the tops of my shoulders and she shook me a little.

  “What is it? Is your mom okay?”

  “She’s fine,” I smiled. “I just need to talk to you.”

  “Sure thing, honey.” Ida pulled me close. “Let’s go get some dinner.”

  The packs of bodies thinned when we got to the lobby hallway, and Ida wrapped an arm around my waist as we moved. We hadn’t walked that way in a long time, and I was surprised by how different Ida’s body felt next to mine since I had grown. She was much smaller, much thinner.

  “Ida,” I began, “Chantal talked to me today. About Mom.”

  “Ugh.” Ida’s voice snapped between us. “She threatened to bring it up to you, but I didn’t think she’d actually go through with it. Boy, that’s low.” Ida tapped a finger against her exposed collar bone.

  “She asked about Marine. She asked me what I know about Marine, I guess.”

  Ida snorted. “Marine. I don’t know what your mom is thinking, bringing her in so close. Wouldn’t we all like a little more information about Marine?”

  “What are we supposed to do? Chantal’s getting nervous. And I can’t really tell what’s going on with Mom since she’s always with Marine. You know?”

  “Oh I know, honey,” Ida said. “Let’s see if we can get your mom at least five feet away from that woman and get the lay of the land, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s going to be fine.”

  Except that it wasn’t. Ida and I shambled through the lobby. I was surprised by how much she was leaning on me. I wanted to ask if I should be worried about her, but I couldn’t even open that possibility in my mind. I just wanted things to be regular: Ida-steps-up-and-Van-steps-down.

  I pushed the elevator call button. Everything’s fine, I told myself. Tonight’s going to be great. When the dented brass doors split in front of us, Mom and Marine barreled out. Mom had that look where she didn’t see anything—she just blew forward and away.

  • • •

  I ran after them; I had no choice. I just hoped whatever was brewing would settle back down before eight o’clock. Ida couldn’t keep up, and I left her behind. Because I knew that look on Mom’s face, and I knew someone had to stop her, to slow her down at least. I had to do something while there was still a chance to prevent a full meltdown. Clots of guests in the lobby blocked my way, but I pushed into and against them, shoving their ridiculous beribboned rolling suitcases aside as I made a path to the revolving doors. I could see them, Mom and Marine, illuminated under the harsh brightness of the lights lining the carport.

  The guests who waited outside clustered away from the two women. Marine’s reedy tallness curled over my near-vibrating mother. I spun through the revolving doors and burst out into the chill night air. I hung back by a group of young women, and the smoke from their cigarettes poured across the line of my vision.

  I could hear them, not the words, but the melody of
their voices. Marine’s voice was low and lilting, dipping and swaying in gentle, soothing waves. Mom’s voice was rough, half screaming, half whispering. Her arms were moving and she was trying to pace, but Marine wouldn’t let her; she kept skipping in front of Mom like a basketball player on the other team. At least Marine has the right idea, I thought. Containment.

  The guests knew something was going on, even though the valets and bellmen were trying to smooth it over, making jokes and lighting cigarettes. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ida’s face through the large plate glass lobby window.

  I had to step in. Just do this one thing, and then Ida can take over. Then you can leave. I jumped forward, ready for the hit that was this blizzard of Mom. I ran up close, just short of touching her.

  “Mom!” I shouted, trying to get her attention.

  Marine turned to me, startled, like I had just woken her up. Mom shivered and chattered in the night air. It was like she was breaking up into little pieces, shaking all over the sidewalk. When she got like this, I imagined being trapped in a snowstorm, the wind and ice in my ears and eyes. Mom was all I could see or hear.

  Marine grabbed my forearm.

  “Van, my dear, you should go back inside. This isn’t for you to see.”

  I looked at Marine, a you-have-no-idea-lady kind of look, but of course, she didn’t get it. She put her body between my mother and me as Mom shuddered under the stars.

  “All right, all right,” Ida said, pushing her way through the groups of onlookers on the sidewalk. “Break it up, come on, come on,” she said, her arms stretched out like a crossing guard.

  “Let’s go, ladies,” Ida said, sweeping our group back into the pool of darkness behind a crescent of parked cars.

  The three of us made a kind of wall behind Mom. Our feet scuffed through the gravel and I thought about the kind of tracks we must have made. Mom bounced along in front of us; if she tried to veer off, we’d reconfigure our human wall around her, like a cupped palm. It took a long time, but we finally made it to the employee parking lot out back, the place Alex had led me on what apparently had been a date. I still wasn’t sure. And I felt like a real jackass thinking of it right in that moment. I shook myself, a faraway echo of Mom’s shakes.