Asleep From Day

by Margarita Montimore

  “I mean the Andy Warhol situation. I saw another one just now, and he wouldn’t even tell me his name.”

  Her playful smile fades and she nods. “I saw another Andy in here, too, playing pool. Said his name was John. Wouldn’t tell me anything else and played dumb when I asked about Theo. What does that make now, five? What are the odds?”

  “Is that the one you talked to?” I point to a wannabe Warhol in the phone booth, this one wearing a leather jacket.

  Sally’s eyes and mouth make big O’s. “That makes six. This is so crazy.”

  My skin, which was pleasantly numb from alcohol, now burns, like it’s been rubbed raw with sandpaper. “I’ll go talk to this one.”

  Before I can, Daphne and Zak appear before us, foreheads shiny, sweat mingling with rivulets of fake blood running down their faces. They smile crooked, boozy smiles.

  “Sorry we left for a while,” Zak says, not looking at all sorry.

  “Come to the other room, we want you to meet some of our friends,” Daphne urges.

  Sally goes to follow, but I hold back. “I’ll join you in a few minutes. Need to run to the ladies’ first.”

  “Down those stairs.” Daphne points the way. “We’ll be in the main room.”

  I take a few slow steps in the direction of the staircase until they’re out of sight, then circle back. The sixth Warhol is stepping out of the phone booth.

  “Hi there.” I try to keep my voice and smile friendly, but both feel tight, brittle.

  “Hello,” His deep baritone draws out the word, slowly, with uncertainty.

  “You’re not Theo by any chance, are you?”

  “I am not.”

  “Are you Mike?”

  “Nope.”

  “Are you friends with Mike?”

  “Doesn’t everyone have a friend named Mike?” I can just make out his eyes behind his sunglasses; he’s looking at me dubiously, he wants to get away from me.

  “Look, there are a lot of guys here tonight dressed as Andy Warhol,” I say.

  “So? I saw at least two guys dressed like The Crow. Excuse me.” He turns away.

  This is ridiculous. I grab one of his leather sleeves.

  “Wait. Just hang on.” He turns back. “Is this some big joke? Did Mike put you all up to this? Or Theo? I have to know.” My eyes get wet with big, baffled tears. I will not lose it in the middle of this club, so I blink them away.

  The man sighs and takes off his sunglasses. His eyes are brown. He’s nobody I recognize. “I don’t know why you’re getting so fired up about this. Mike thought it would be cool for a bunch of us to dress up as Andy Warhol, that’s all. I don’t know this Theo guy or what he has to do with anything. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I nod.

  He walks off and I blink and breathe rapidly. Hold steady. I step into the phone booth, rest my head on the glass door, and pick up the receiver.

  Before I can dial, a male voice on the other end answers.

  “How can I help you?” He’s hard to hear over the cheery, booming OMD song in the background on his end.

  “Who is this?” I ask.

  “Evan, the DJ. You have a request?”

  “Oh. No. Sorry.” I hang up and notice the phone has no dial pad.

  I have to get out of here.

  “Astrid? Hey, Astrid,” a voice calls out from across the room.

  It’s Nadia, who comes barreling toward me before I can escape.

  “You look great,” she says. “Amelia Earhart, right?”

  I can’t do this right now. But I also can’t be rude. “Yeah. And you . . .” I survey her prim puffy-sleeved dress and old-timey updo.

  “Lizzie Borden.” She holds up a bloody plastic ax. “Wait until you hear the new dirt I got on Simon.”

  “Listen, I’d love to get all the gossip but—hold on, I ran into you last month. At Deli Haus.” With Theo. “Do you remember?”

  She tilts her head and squints. “Last month . . .”

  If she can place me with Theo, it means I have a witness. It means Theo is real.

  “You told me all about Simon getting fired from that movie poster store,” I prompt.

  “Right! And check this out, he’s so broke he had to move back in with his mother. At thirty-two!”

  I grasp the ends of my scarf in tight fists and shake my head. “I can’t believe it. That’s . . .”

  “Karma in action is what it is.” She holds up the ax in triumph.

  “So when you saw me at Deli Haus last month, I was there with someone, right?”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you remember the guy I was with?” That last flame of maybe flickers. Come on, Nadia.

  “I remember talking to you . . .” She lowers the ax and gives me an apologetic face. “But I thought you were there alone. Why?”

  And just like that, it’s extinguished. The edges of the room grow dim, the air seeps out of it.

  “I could be remembering wrong,” she says. “Hey, are you alright? They’re mixing the drinks strong tonight, huh? Do you need—”

  “I’m fine. I’m just—I’ll be . . .” My voice so high and pinched, my smile hard and tight as everything behind it collapses. “I gotta go.”

  That’s it. I’m done. I’ve already been here too long.

  Outside, I pass a couple of goths in velvet capes smoking cloves, and the spicy, earthy scent follows me up the block. Across the street a cluster of people gathers outside TT’s and their shrill laughs pierce through me like spikes. I head toward Mass Ave, arms wrapped around my middle as if I’m a ragdoll and my stitching is coming loose. One misstep and my guts will spill to the ground. This headache is late to the party but makes up for lost time with precise bludgeons to the base of my skull. I take off the aviator hat, toss it into the nearest trashcan, and push the pain back with clueless determination.

  I did my best, Amelia, but my plane is going down.

  I can’t go back, and I can’t go home.

  Why did I waste my time with this search? I became so fixated; I took the tangible for granted, fenced off the people around me who actually gave a shit. How much of my waking life did I nearly sabotage by pursuing this figment? How much did I fuck things up with Oliver?

  I thought I was being intrepid. What a joke. After all these years, I still can’t tell the difference between brave and foolish.

  Ahead of me is a pay phone. The same one Oliver called on that rainy night when things were scary and strange but not slipping away from me at such an alarming rate. I pick up the receiver and . . . There’s only a dial tone. My laugh tastes as bitter as it sounds. Did I really think he’d be on the other end, that it would be so easy? At least I have a quarter, so small mercies and all that.

  Oliver picks up on the third ring.

  This blockade that tames the mess of me is ready to crash forward; it’s at the back of my throat and it’s tight and it’s cracking. The invaders are at the door with their battering rams and there is so little defense and so very much splintering.

  “It’s . . . me.” I have no right to identify myself this way, but two syllables is all I can manage. I swallow. I hold it all back. It’s not going to last.

  “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Where are you?” His voice has no trace of the detachment from our last conversation. It’s softer, concerned. The goddamn civility of it is enough to release my tears.

  Fuck.

  “I’m fine.” And then it’s a race to beat the sobbing, which is coming up fast. “I’m at the payphone you called me on before, outside Hi-Fi Pizza. Can you please come get me?” If he asks me to explain, my insides will avalanche and I’ll be on my knees and he won’t be able to hear through my whimpers and I don’t have enough quarters for that.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Where do you want me to meet you?”

  He’s coming. Breathe.

  The fact of his imminent arrival clears enough space in my airway to answer. “Here.”

  “It’s going to rain and I
don’t want you on the street. At least wait in the pizza place. Can you do that?”

  I nod, take in gulps of air.

  “Astrid?”

  That’s right, the rules of radio also apply to the rules of the telephone. No nonverbal answers.

  “Yes. I’ll wait inside.”

  The dam is fortified, my lungs resume their job, and I wipe my face free of tears. I fish out another quarter and call The Lab. Keep my voice steady as I leave a message saying I had a headache, ran into Minerva, and am crashing at her place again. Only partly a lie, because the throbbing at the apex of my neck is still there. One novel thing about it, I never know what part of my head the pain will invade, like a nasty intruder that sometimes comes in through the front door, sometimes through the back, and sometimes through a window.

  Inside Hi-Fi, the light is too bright; it bounces off the pale floor tiles and anemic walls. I buy a soda and don’t drink it, instead let the condensation drip down the waxy side of the cup as I sit hunched over at a table by the door. Hopefully, my friends are sufficiently distracted that they don’t come looking for me.

  It begins to drizzle while I wait, and the passersby quicken their pace and tuck their heads into their shoulders like turtles, most unprepared for the weather. The drizzle turns to rain, and I watch the droplets on the glass storefront racing down in wavy patterns.

  Time passes; I don’t know how much before Oliver’s face finally appears in the window, slightly distorted by the rain-patterned glass, eyes searching until they find me.

  Thank you.

  I stand as he crosses the threshold.

  “Flat soda?” I offer the damp cup.

  He looks thrown, doesn’t answer for a second. “No thanks. Now what’s going on?”

  “Let’s walk.” I throw away the paper cup and put a hand on the door to leave. He puts his hand over mine to slow me down.

  “Where are we going? It’s raining. And it’s nearly midnight.”

  “I know.” The performance at ManRay should begin soon, and a sick part of me wonders if maybe . . . Maybe what? Maybe more vague but ever-present humiliation awaits me? Maybe more Andy Warhols to smirk, shrug, deny? Maybe more fucking with my head, which is already fucked to the limit? No, thank you. I’m done.

  I tug on the door handle. “Let’s just walk. Please.”

  He acquiesces, and we step out into the rain, which adds a layer of noise to the evening air, a static blurred by the shush and surge of passing cars.

  This rain is . . . These cars are . . . Oliver is . . . I don’t even know anymore.

  I lead us toward the Mass Ave Bridge, always that damn bridge, though I know we won’t make it that far. Oliver gives me a single block of quiet. He’s silent as we pass the hardware store, the coffee shop. At the next crosswalk, he takes my elbow and pivots in front of me.

  His glasses are streaked with rain, but the eyes behind them are severely blue. Not the lazy-hazy shade of Theo’s, but a crisper opaque hue.

  What do you want? Oliver asks without asking. He’ll give, within reason, but he needs to know what he’s giving and why.

  “I want to go somewhere quiet and private that’s not my place and not your place.” I have to raise my voice a notch over the storm, which strips the sweetness out of it, hardens my plaintive tone.

  “Where then?”

  “It’s not far.”

  I reach for his hand and he lets me take it. Hand in damp hand, we go to the Hotel @MIT, and I check us in for one night.

  Oliver says nothing in the elevator and is so still he could out-statue that living statue in Central Square. Would giving him a quarter get him to move? A flash of queasiness punishes the thought. He could’ve chosen not to be here right now. He could’ve left me alone with my drama and whims and confusion (is that what we’re calling it now? Confusion?). But he didn’t. He’s here and he’s real and if he can’t do more than tolerate me on a basic level, that’s still a lot.

  The room could be the same one I stayed in last month, with the same view of the third floor garden. But it’s a hotel, its rooms identical decorated boxes, there to evoke a generic comfort for all who enter. I don’t feel it yet.

  “I never noticed these curtains had mathematical formulas stitched into them.” I say this pointless thing to Oliver, who is across the room, who is maybe deciding if he’ll stay, maybe calibrating how much more crazy he can deal with tonight.

  “Do you want a drink? I’m going to make myself one,” he says.

  “Sure. I can go get us some ice,” I offer.

  “No need.”

  He pulls two small bottles of whiskey out of the mini-bar, which glow like amber jewels, flips the glasses, pours from the bottles like a storybook giant, Gulliver as bartender, pops open a can of Coke, adds a splash here, a splash there. He holds out my drink.

  I take it and sit on the edge of the bed. He sits in the desk chair. Our knees are inches apart, but it could be feet, miles.

  “First of all, thank you.” I knock back my drink and shudder.

  “For what?” A wry twitch from the corner of his mouth.

  I can turn this around. Rebuild. Fortify.

  “I’ve been an idiot,” I begin, but he won’t let me unfurl any precious monologue.

  “Let me guess why I’m here. You want to apologize. And then seduce me.”

  I’m like a fish pulled out of the water, dangling on a line, mouth opening and closing.

  “Astrid, I’m sorry for whatever emotional breakdown you had or are having or are about to have. But you’ve been so absorbed in this one lost day that you’ve . . .”

  “Gotten lost myself?”

  “I would have put it in a less melodramatic way, but yes.”

  “You’re the one who told me I was going to go on a quest. Isn’t that pretty melodramatic, too? What did you expect? You indulged me in it, gave me just enough support to keep me going, to keep me intrigued, but at the same time . . .”

  “At the same time what?” His eyes don’t challenge or mock, not yet.

  “It’s like you’ve been waiting for me to snap out of my post-traumatic whatever-the-hell-this-is, drop the search, and choose you instead.”

  “Me? You mean a real life person instead of one you may or may not actually remember? Who may or may not even exist? Who, even if he weren’t a figment, would’ve probably found a way to track you down by now if he was interested? Imagine that.” He drains his glass, and I expect him to slam it onto the desk but it goes down softly.

  Some people intimidate through strength and noise, inflict their tremors using fast fists and loud words. Oliver is the opposite. He maintains a near-violence in his stillness, conjures a silence that makes me want to fold in on myself. His wordless gaze runs an icy finger through me, leaves me in two pieces.

  “I don’t understand. If you think I might be so crazy”—I wave my hands around—“why are you even interested in me?”

  “Oh no, no, no. We are not going to turn this into the Astrid Appreciation Hour where I list your fine attributes again. Though I will say this, your tenuous grip on reality is not one of them.”

  What can I say to that?

  Nothing, so we’re back in an arctic pit of silence. What I imagined could be a cozy indulgent pity party for me has instead added a new layer of shame to my evening. And it’s exactly what I deserve: a nice big slice of reality cake.

  “You’re right,” I say. “I don’t know what memories of that lost day I can trust, and Theo . . . I don’t know about him, either. But after tonight, it doesn’t matter.”

  He doesn’t ask, but arches an eyebrow that says, I did tell you not to go.

  My own eyebrows twist in contrition. I should have listened.

  He stands up. “Well, I wanted to make sure you were . . . not in any real danger . . . and you seem . . . reasonably okay.”

  But I’m not.

  There’s a movie where the guy is trying to keep the girl from leaving, and he says, let’s pretend whatev
er it is I could tell you that would make you stay, that I just said it. I’m messing up the lines and I don’t remember if she stays, but it was a beautiful copout. And even as I try to string together the right words, I know that’s not what’ll matter to Oliver here. No grandiose speech will sway him. There is no correct password. I only know this: if anything I say next rings false, he’ll lock himself up for good, and he will leave.

  “I was embarrassed,” I begin. “Am embarrassed. And delusional. It’s kind of hard to admit that you’re not sure of . . . what’s real. It’s been easier focusing on this search . . .” Already so exposed, I don’t know how to continue.

  “I didn’t think you’d pursue it this long.”

  What am I even pursuing at this point? It’s not sustainable, chasing a ghost. Either he’ll materialize or remain in smoke and flashbacks. And if he does appear, how could he ever match my expectations? A physical form says the wrong things, tarnishes, disappoints. Oliver and I both know this. I’ve been holding onto the idea of Theo like a new penny in my fist, shiny and worth little.

  “Oliver,” I say his name, roll it around in my mouth like the fine wines I was never able to appreciate. “There have been moments when I put all my bullshit to the side . . . moments between you and me that have been kind of great, even when they were complicated.”

  “They didn’t have to be that complicated.” He takes a step away from me.

  “You’re right. I want to un-complicate.”

  “Until the next clue, the next flashback, the next ‘memory’ that sets your inner Don Quixote in motion again.”

  “No. I’m finished with all that.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Another step away from me. This is unbearable.

  The idea of any more space between us is unthinkable, and if the price of proximity is burying one blurry gone day of my life, I’ll pay it.

  But is it too late?

  I block his way to the door. “You have to believe me. You have your special powers, right? So if I’m full of shit, you’d know.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, hardly ever. I’m perceptive, but I’m not a human lie detector.”

  The gates are closing, and I have to get inside. If he leaves now, that’s it.