“So, did anybody else from the phone book call or stop by today?” she asks.
“Nope.” I wrap a chenille throw around my legs against the frost sneaking in through the drafty living room windows. “A few more people called but nobody came by since that woman, Theodora, late last week. I think that misadventure is over. I’m lucky Minerva didn’t get more pissed off about it.” It helped that Theodora was so effusive about the store’s “haunting charm” and bought a pricy vintage holy water bottle.
“And you haven’t remembered anything else?” Sally is cross-legged on the couch beside me. She hugs a pillow to her chest, squeezing it the way I imagine she’s trying to squeeze information out of me.
“No.” I hate lying to her.
Oliver was right: it’s getting crowded in my head with both him and Theo. I need to untangle these feelings and questions, but can’t verbalize them right now, not even to my best friend.
“Nothing at all?” Suspicion crinkles the corner of her eyes.
Enough of this withholding. I have to give her something. “Okay, I kind of remembered . . . I know Theo and I . . . We kissed,” I finally offer.
I fend off pillow swats from her as she makes a noise that’s between a gasp and a shriek. “You bitch, how could you not tell me sooner? Where did this magical memory come from?”
“I had a flashback, out of nowhere . . . a couple of days ago.” I try to duck, but this time the pillow gets me on the ear. “I didn’t tell you because . . . it felt like it just happened and . . . did you ever have an experience that you needed to keep private for a little bit, so it could be yours? Like, as soon as you start telling anyone, it doesn’t fully belong to you anymore?”
Sally’s face reads Does Not Compute. She’s of the shout-it-from-the-rooftops ilk, so this will take some finessing.
“I needed to sit with it for a while, Sal. I can’t explain it any better than that.”
Pseudo-betrayal gives way to curiosity. “You better tell me everything about this kiss right now.”
Here we go. “Um . . . it happened at night, outside FAO Schwarz.”
“You kissed outside a toy store?” she asks. “What were you doing there?”
“Good question. I don’t know.”
“And was he a good kisser?”
“There are no words.”
“There are always words.” Of course. With Sally, there’s an abundance of them, even if they’re the wrong ones. Even when silence is preferable. But in this case, my friend is right. Let’s find some words.
“Okay,” I relent. “It was . . . singularly the most breathtaking, heart-stopping, time-bending, universe-pausing kiss of my life. Is that better?” It’s not better for me, because I don’t know who that kiss truly belongs to. Is it Theo projected onto Oliver or vice-versa?
“So . . .?”
“So what?”
“So what happens next?” she asks. “Obviously, you’ve got to put all your energy into finding this guy. Especially now that you know there was a romantic connection.”
“If my Swiss cheese brain gave me something more to go on, that might be possible.”
Sally lets go of the pillow and takes both of her hands into mine. Oh boy. She gazes at me intensely, the way she did when we played The Psychic Hour as kids, as if she truly believes she has supernatural powers and can will recollection into my faulty mind. If Oliver could only see her.
“Listen to me, Astrid. If you recalled this much, you have to be able to remember the rest. Or something else. A place, a smell, a sentence, a word.”
This isn’t about me as much as it is enlivening her unencumbered days with something tantalizing. But if that’s what she needs, I’ll give a little more.
“Karaoke.”
“Karaoke?” She draws the word out, as if summoning a spirit.
“I don’t know how, but karaoke is somehow connected.” I retrieve my hands and pull the blanket higher around me.
“So that’s what we do next,” she says.
Daphne comes into the living room. “Did I leave my specs in here?”
“On top of the TV,” Sally says. “Hey, where’s a good place to go for karaoke around here?”
Daphne grimaces as she puts on her glasses. “There’s no good place for karaoke anywhere, because karaoke is horrible and the bars that host it tend to be dodgy. Why would you want to hear a bunch of drunk people singing bad songs badly?”
A quick shake of my head at Sally. Don’t tell her. “Eh, Astrid’s dad did some musical theater back in the day, so once in a while we like to go and sing some show tunes.”
“I’m not the right person to ask, but I think Zak had a crush on a waitress who worked in some Irish pub with a karaoke night.” She sticks her head into the hallway and calls out to him. He returns a muffled response. “Will you get in here for a second?” she hollers.
He leans his upper body into the doorway.
“Can you come into the room like a normal person?” Daphne shakes her head.
He does, and we get a good look at the Darth Vader pajama bottoms he was trying to conceal.
“First of all, how old are you?” Daphne asks.
“Did you need something, other than to mock me?” Zak’s neck turns pink, and I try not to make it worse for him by laughing. I better not look at Sally, either, who loves nothing more than to crack me up at inopportune times.
Hands on hips, Daphne asks, “Where did Belly Button Ring work when you were stalking her over the summer?”
“I wasn’t stalking, that place had the best Guinness—”
“Yeah,yeah. Whatever. What’s the name of the place?”
“Dark Heretic Taproom, near Kenmore.”
“Oh right, we thought it was going to be a goth bar, which is why we went there in the first place. Don’t they have a karaoke night?”
“Fridays. Anything else?” His glare is murderous.
“No, you can go back to destroying Jedis now.” Daphne waves him off.
He says good night through clenched teeth and leaves the room.
“There you go, we have a plan now.” Sally looks like she’s expecting heaps of praise.
“I don’t see that as much of a plan, but I don’t have anything better to do, so why the hell not. Let’s go get drunk with a bunch of tone-deaf BU kids.”
The Dark Heretic Taproom doesn’t look like any Irish pub I’ve ever been to, apart from the requisite wood paneling and mirrored bar signs. There are stone archways and sandy brick walls, with stained glass light fixtures spread across the high ceiling. The bar itself is covered entirely in bronze coins with a curved harp on them (Irish pennies?).
We get there as a short man with an ‘80s-era-Bono mullet is setting up in a far corner on a small platform. He adjusts the television that will serve as the lyric prompt and a microphone stand, then distributes stacks of song binders among the low round tables.
“You ladies singin’ tonight?” He asks in an Irish brogue. Even though his face is pockmarked with acne scars and one of his brown eyes veers off to the side when he looks at us, the accent makes him instantly more attractive.
“I don’t know if—” I start to say, but Sally cuts me off.
“Of course we will. Thank you.” She flashes a man-eater smile as she takes the binder from him. Seriously, Sally?
“Sign up sheet is on that wall there, and someone will be comin’ ‘round to take your drink order if you want to take a seat.” He winks with his wandering eye and leaves us to it.
There are fewer than twenty people here and most are clustered around the bar, so we have our choice of tables.
“Maybe eight is a little early for this crowd?” I speculate.
“Between midterms and the Sox game, I suppose it’ll be pretty dead tonight.” A waitress, who looks like someone plucked her from an Irish fairy garden and plunked her in the middle of Boston, hands us menus. I check to see if she has pointed ears while my friend hones in on her pierced navel.
&
nbsp; “Do you know Zak?” Sally, all tact all the time.
Her freckled, heart-shaped face registers recognition. “Red hair, right? He hasn’t come around in a while.”
“He’s busy saving the world from some massive computer meltdown that’s supposed to happen on New Year’s Day,” Sally says. “But he raved about this place and the excellent servers. And also the Guinness.”
“Ah, isn’t he the sweetheart. Will you be wantin’ a couple o’ pints then?”
We nod and she goes off to get them.
“Did you see her eyes light up when I mentioned Zak?” Sally gushes. “Remind me to write down his number on the check. I think she’s into him.”
Yeah, I will definitely not forget to remind her. I pretend to study the menu, even though we just came from dinner.
“So? Are you getting flashes of anything?” She flutters her fingers as if trying to procure something mystical from the air.
“Sal, I’ve never been here before in my life. Do you know how many karaoke nights there must be in Boston?”
“Fine. Let’s see if singing will bring on a flashback. What song, what song . . .” She thumbs through the binder pages, and I take a second book for myself from a nearby table.
The songs are alphabetized by artist, but somewhere around Aerosmith, I stop paying attention. Something about the crinkle of the pages . . . the way the plastic sleeves stick together and come apart with a faint noise like a tearing or Velcro being pulled apart. This urgent sense of—
“What, what is it? You’re remembering something, aren’t you?”
“Not anymore. Maybe a little less with the pouncing?”
“Sorry.” She stretches the word to four syllables. “So do you think that host guy is single?”
I slump back in my chair. A moment of silence with this one is futile. “Really?”
“You’re right, that lazy eye would probably get to me after a while. Eye contact is so important. But that accent . . .”
“Hey, it’s not like you’re looking for a new husband.” What is wrong with me?
The hopeful glimmer in her eyes dims, but fortunately our pints arrive at that moment. Thank you, Pixie Cocktail Waitress. At least one of us can brighten up Sally.
“Alrighty, folks, we’re going to get started in a moment.” The microphone screeches as the host speaks into it. “Let me make some final tweaks here. Not many sign-ups so far, so don’t be shy. We promise not to boo . . . unless you’re really terrible. Only kidding.”
Sally takes a long swig of Guinness and stands. “I’m going to put us down for a song.”
“Is it going to be a corny girl anthem like ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ or something by the Spice Girls?”
“You can be a real killjoy, you know that, O’Malley? It’s not like there are tons of karaoke songs by Tom Waits or Nick Cave or whatever other gloomy singer you’re depressing your ears with these days.”
“Sorry, I’m not in a rah-rah Girl Power mood.”
“Too bad. Maybe you’d be more fun if you were.” She heads to the sign-up sheet before I can say anything else. Whatever flashback I might’ve been on the cusp of earlier is gone. Serves me right for being a jerk to Sally.
“Okay, let’s get this party goin’. I’m gonna lean on you for a little help here.” The host launches into a rendition of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer” and holds out the mic during the chorus for the audience to fill in the “OHHH-ohs.”
Next is a fresh-faced coed duo who sing a song from Grease surprisingly on-key, followed by a middle-aged man in a rumpled suit who mumbles his way through Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.” Then our names are called and Sally pulls me toward the platform as if there’s no question that I’ll join her.
A brief guitar jangle opening and—Oh! It’s “California Dreamin’.” Not what I expected. When we were high school sophomores, Robin started auditioning again and was cast as John Phillips in an Off-Off-Broadway musical about The Mamas & The Papas. Sally would come over and we’d all make tuna melts, then Robin would take out his guitar, teach us the harmonies, and let us sing back-up on the songs as he practiced. He ended our sessions with “California Dreamin’,” which he let us sing on our own. Sally always took the male lead part, of course, relegating me as her backup. She and I fell in love with the music and plotted a cross-country trip after graduation; we’d rent a convertible and drive with the top down, blasting The Mamas & The Papas non-stop until we reached the Pacific Highway. We planned to visit Mt. Sinai Cemetery where Mama Cass was buried, put sunflowers on her grave, and sing her our version of “California Dreamin’.” It never happened, but the opening notes of that song always make me imagine riding in a convertible with Sally, on our way to somewhere sunny and warm.
I smile at her and her smile back says, apology accepted, and we do a pitch-perfect rendition. It gets applause and cheers from the small crowd that’s gathered since our arrival. As we leave the stage, my ears hum and my body feels like a helium balloon levitating up and up and up.
This is why Robin loves the stage. It’s only a tiny taste of what he must’ve experienced, but it’s a high better than alcohol, better than anything I took at the Lunar Haus party—
Tinsel curtain.
Purple and blue neon.
Bending backwards, backwards . . .
I make it to my chair before my legs give way. Take a big swig of Guinness (shudder at the creamy bitterness). What just happened? What did I see?
Sally is too busy basking in the remnants of applause to notice me.
“Let’s hear it for Sally and Astrid! Next up we have Aurora singing one of the classics.”
A pale plump woman in her forties makes her way forward. She’s dressed in what looks like a navy satin bed sheet, pinned at her shoulder. Her curly hair is pulled into a topknot, emphasizing the roundness of her face and her eyes, which roll around in her head like a porcelain doll’s.
“What the hell is going on with this one?” Sally mutters.
“Be nice,” I whisper.
“Yeah yeah yeah.”
The woman sings Jo Stafford’s “You Belong To Me.” Her voice is a record that’s been left out in the sun to warp: mostly on key but with a wobble.
“Isn’t this, like, the original stalking song?” Sally asks in a low voice. I flash a warning with my eyes. “Okay, okay.” She remains quiet for the rest of the song.
Why does this woman keep looking over at me as she sings? Not like she’s serenading or trying to recognize me, more like she’s urging me to listen, not to the song, but something beneath the song. I’m probably imagining it. When she’s finished, I’m one of a handful of people who clap.
Aurora approaches our table.
I swear, if she starts quoting my fortune cookie like that Musketeer guy in Chinatown, I’m gonna freak out.
She puts a hand on my shoulder. “Do what I do, my dear. Sing to bring him closer to you. Sing it by heart, with your eyes closed, and he will find his way back to you.”
I start to get up, but she puts weight into her palm to keep me in my seat. “No questions, dearie. Keep your bewilderment in its proper home, to its rightful owner.”
As she walks away, I reach out to touch her but only graze the cold satin of her dress.
Sally twirls her finger in circles. “What rabbit hole did we fall into?”
Good question. I open the songbook and turn the binder pages, strain to make out that faint tearing noise of plastic separating, but it’s no use. Someone is howling “Don’t Stop Believin’” a few feet away, which drowns everything out.
Sing to bring him closer.
Might as well try, right?
I add my name to the sign up list. When I’m called forward, I move as if walking through water and take hold of the microphone. I keep my eyes closed the entire time I sing the dark lullaby of Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You.” I sing of strangers and strangeness and shadows and smiles. It takes everything out of me but gives nothing back. The c
urtain behind my eyes remains black, the stage empty.
When the music ends, I step off the platform and some girl tries to grab my arm, but I walk past her, past our table, until I’m outside.
I put my face against the side of the building, feel the grit of the brick under my skin.
A couple of guys in Red Sox caps are smoking nearby and laugh at me. One says to the other, “Looks like someone should be cut off.”
“Don’t you have a frat party you’re late to, asshole?” Sally hisses at them. She shoos them away and pats my back with caution.
“You’re going to find him, Astrid. I know it. I promise. You’ll find him.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
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9/9/99
THEO AND ASTRID HELD HANDS the rest of the way down Boylston Street, the silence between them lush and charged. They passed the majestic red brick building of the Four Seasons hotel, a couple of piano showrooms, an antique bookstore, a luggage shop, and a college dormitory. The streets grew darker and more uneven as they entered the periphery of Chinatown.
“Welcome to the Combat Zone,” Theo announced.
“And me without my camo. Why Combat Zone?”
“That’s what they started calling this area in the ‘60s because of the crime and because it’s where soldiers on leave would go for . . . adult entertainment.”
“Nice to see some businesses carrying on the legacy.” Astrid gestured to a storefront advertising XXX videos and peep shows.
“Yeah, but it’s not as rough and tumble anymore, don’t worry. Have you been to the Eatery?”
Asleep From Day Page 20
