by Roxie Noir
Trent and Darcy haven’t. Billy hasn’t, and neither have any of the other several people I ask.
Until it’s Eddie to the rescue. He’s waving his arms about, a beer in one hand looking precarious, talking to a few other blokes dressed almost exactly as he is.
“That’s your girlfriend, right?” he asks, practically winking at the world girlfriend.
“Yes,” I say, holding up one hand, palm down. “About this high, black hair, black dress?”
“Oh, I think she went upstairs,” one of Eddie’s mates says.
I frown.
“Upstairs?” I ask.
He shrugs.
“Yeah, some girl went up there. I figured the bathrooms down here were full or something?”
“Has she come back?”
He scrunches his eyebrows together as if remembering is quite a task.
“I don’t think so,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say, and make for the stairs myself.
The grand staircase leads around a landing and then into a dark hallway, and I walk into it slowly, heart pumping.
“Marisol?” I call softly.
Maybe she got too drunk, I think. Maybe she’s upset about something — about me — and wants to be alone. Maybe she just wants to be alone.
No answer. I walk into the dark, and as my eyes adjust, I realize there’s a sliver of light near the end of the hall, a door partly open.
I head for it and call her name again.
There’s a slight rustle inside, then Marisol’s voice.
“Shit,” she says.
I push the door open. It’s a palatial bathroom with a huge glassed-in shower, two sinks, marble floors, a walk-in closet, and a jacuzzi tub in the corner.
Marisol’s curled up at one end of the empty tub, perfectly dry, head against the lip, eyes closed. I’ve no idea what’s going on.
“Is everything all right?” I say.
It’s a stupid question — she’s in a tub in a dark bathroom at a party, obviously something’s awry — but I don’t know what else to ask.
Marisol clears her throat without opening her eyes.
“Yeah,” she says, her voice a little too high-pitched, the tiniest bit shaky. “Everything’s fine. I’m fine. Totally fine.”
I don’t believe her. Alarm bells are going off in my head, big screeching sirens, so I walk over to her and kneel.
“You’re curled in a bathtub at a party,” I say, trying to sound as calm as possible.
“I’m really stoned and I think I might be dissolving,” she says. “And on one hand, I know that sounds a little insane but I also can’t prove that I’m not dissolving and I would really prefer to stay in this tub so that if I am dissolving, I can just plug the drain and collect myself later.”
“You’re not dissolving,” I assure her.
“I have to stay here, though,” she says. “I don’t want to dissolve everywhere, it would be a huge mess, and if I move I’m just going to dissolve faster.”
I’ve got no idea what’s happened. A few minutes ago she was fine and now she’s completely toasted.
“Did you smoke?” I ask. “Did someone give you something?”
Not that I think Marisol would just smoke something that was handed to her.
Even so, anger starts a slow simmer somewhere beneath my sternum that someone, somehow did this to my Marisol.
She just shakes her head.
“I hate this,” she says, her eyes still closed. “I’m dissolving and I broke my brain. I’m never going to be able to think again, but I’m also not even going to have a body unless I stay here and all my atoms get collected in the tub...”
I take her hand in mine and kiss the back of it. She doesn’t respond.
“Is this my brain forever?” she whispers.
I swallow hard, flexing my other hand into a fist, because even though I’ve got no idea how she got this high, I’m fairly sure it wasn’t her idea and I’d like to hit whoever’s made her this miserable.
I swing my legs over the side of the enormous tub and sit with her. She doesn’t move.
“I’ll tell you if you open your eyes,” I say.
“You’re getting my molecules all over you,” she says.
I don’t think she’s on anything besides enough pot to get a horse stoned, but you never know.
“Come on,” I say, putting one arm around her.
She looks at me without moving anything but her eyelids. Even in the near-dark I can see that her eyes are bloodshot red but her pupils are fine.
“Your brain’s not broken,” I tell her. “It’s going to be a little while but you’ll get back to normal.”
Marisol just shakes her head and closes her eyes again.
I’m going to kill whoever did this, I think, even as I put one arm around her. Did they think it was fucking funny?
“Did you smoke?” I ask, even though she doesn’t smell as if she did.
Marisol just shakes her head.
“I had champagne,” she says, her voice slow and dreamy.
Everyone had champagne, so I doubt it was that.
“Anything else?”
“I can’t...” she says, her voice trailing off. She swallows again, her mouth probably dry. “My brain is dissolving kind of fast right now but maybe that piece will go by.”
“You don’t look as if you’re dissolving,” I say. “You seem in one piece.”
She shakes her head, but I don’t argue with her. I’ve been here before, so high I was utterly convinced that my teeth were melting out of my mouth, and someone trying to argue with me didn’t help in the least. The best I can do is stay calm and tell her, every few minutes, that she’s still intact.
But it doesn’t mean I’m not angry. Fuck yes I’m angry. I want to hit whatever utter imbecile did this to her, stuff pot down their throats until they’re too high to move and in a bathtub, see how they fucking like it.
“There were those mini tacos,” she murmurs.
Then she sighs.
“What if the tub dissolves too?” she asks. “I think maybe everything is dissolving.”
“Porcelain can’t dissolve, everyone knows that,” I say, thinking furiously about what she might have had. Couldn’t have been the mini tacos, I had them as well. Couldn’t hardly be any of the hors d’oeuvres here.
“Did you eat anything backstage at the concert?” I ask, keeping my voice light and casual.
“Hold on,” she says.
She’s quiet a long moment.
“The concert,” I remind her quietly.
“Sorry, I forgot, because I can stop myself from leaking out of my skin if I concentrate on it really really hard, and what did you say? Concert?”
“That’s right.”
“There was candy. No brown M&Ms, but I ate a bunch of the—”
Her head snaps up and she looks at me with bloodshot eyes, her face alarmed.
“There were gummi bears,” she says, her voice dropping to a whisper. “They were weird.”
I’ve never heard anyone sound sadder about candy.
“Are gummi bears poison now?” she asks, sounding completely baffled, as if the fabric of the universe has changed and no one warned her.
Which is sort of true.
“Just those,” I reassure her. “But you’re fine. Still don’t look dissolved yet.”
Marisol closes her eyes and drops her head onto my shoulder, and my anger flares white-hot again because someone did this to her. Intentionally or not, and I’m going to fucking find out who.
She sighs into my shoulder and my insides twist because I can barely stand to see her like this. I kiss her hair, but I don’t think she notices, and then I take a deep breath.
I need to get her out of this bathtub and home. That takes priority over finding someone to blame.
“Marisol,” I say gently. “I need to leave for five minutes, but I’ll be right back. You should stay here.”
“Go to your party and don’t for
get me when you leave?”
“Five minutes,” I say again.
“I’m going to be mostly puddle so please don’t step in me,” she says.
“You still seem quite whole,” I say, but she doesn’t respond, so I leave the tub, close the bathroom door behind me, and head downstairs.
Yeah, I’m a fucking hypocrite. For years I did anything and everything I could find, but I never got someone else high without their permission. Now I want to kill whoever’s made Marisol think she’s dissolving and can’t leave a bathtub.
Past the bathroom there’s a second staircase, a smaller one, and I take that one down into the bustling kitchen where all the servers and cooks ignore me. I call the limo driver and ask him to come around to the side driveway, quietly.
He says he’ll be there in a few minutes. I hang up, and before I go get Marisol, I head back into the party to see if I can’t find my bandmates because we need to have a fucking word.
Darcy’s the first one I spot, in a corner, looking at her phone and drinking a tumbler of whiskey like she’d rather be anywhere else. She looks up as she sees me coming, taking in the look on my face.
“What happened?” she asks.
“Pot-laced candy in the dressing room,” I say, crossing my arms in front of me and glaring, willing myself not to make a scene. At least not yet. “Marisol’s in the bathtub upstairs, stoned out of her mind.”
Darcy blinks, taken aback.
“Her?” she asks. “She didn’t seem like the—”
“On accident, you dumb bint,” I snarl. “Someone left their edibles around.”
“Chill the fuck out,” Darcy says, standing up straighter, her voice rising. “I’m not enough of an asshole to bring pot goodies to a show I’m playing with a goddamn junkie.”
The people around us get a little quieter, and I realize we’re being watched. I take a deep breath and flex both hands. I’m angry, but I know Darcy’s not lying. Fuck, she’s as interested as anyone in Marisol being a good influence.
“Sorry,” I say, forcing my voice calm. “Have you seen Eddie or—”
Darcy points, and Trent steps up beside me, a beer in his hand.
“Gavin’s fa... Gavin’s girlfriend is super high, and he thinks it was pot candy backstage at the show,” Darcy says, her words still clipped. “You leave anything lying around?”
Trent frowns.
“No,” he says, like it’s the world’s most obvious thing. “You’re in recovery. Is she okay?”
“She’ll be fine, I’m taking her home,” I growl, glancing around. People have gone back to their conversations and stopped watching us, but there’s no sign of Eddie anywhere.
As much as I want to give him a piece of my goddamn mind, getting Marisol home is more important. I turn away without saying goodbye, head up the back stairs again, into the dark hallway, and open the door to the bathroom.
She hasn’t moved. My heart lurches just looking at her, curled in the tub.
“Splish splash,” she says.
20
Marisol
I only have two thoughts right now: my body is slowly breaking into a billion pieces and leaking through my skin, atom by atom, and I hate this.
“You’re still not dissolved,” Gavin’s voice says as he walks toward me.
“It’s a process,” I point out.
“All right, love,” he says, his voice much closer, like he’s kneeling by the tub. “There’s a car downstairs to take you home if you can just get up.”
Obviously, that’s not going to work. I can’t leave this bathtub, but saying all that seems much too hard, so I just shake my head. My atoms fly everywhere.
“There’s a back way out. Super secret. You’ve just got to get up,” he goes on.
“I have to stay here.”
“It’s fifty meters away.”
I don’t respond. Something takes my hand.
Oh, it’s his hand.
“Marisol, I promise you aren’t dissolving but you are disastrously stoned and in a bathtub and if you want to feel any better, I very much need you to stand up and come with me, all right?”
Gavin stands. I open my eyes. I don’t know why I believe him, but I do.
I take a deep breath, exhale, and then slowly push myself up until I’m standing in this huge jacuzzi tub, straightening my dress and remembering to breathe, even though I can feel every molecule of oxygen enter my lungs and then my bloodstream and then zoom around my body.
I can feel everything, even if it feels like I’m in stop-motion.
Gavin holds out a hand, palm up. I take it and step from the bathtub carefully, still in my heels. My balance is fine — I’m not drunk — it’s just everything else. I walk because my body remembers how, not because I do, and he leads me down the stairs.
At the bottom is the kitchen, but Gavin keeps me moving and before I know it we’re exiting through a door to the outside, the cool night air settling over my face like a thousand feathers falling softly onto my skin.
“It’s different air,” I say out loud.
There’s a car. Gavin opens a door and guides me inside and then I’m sitting on the plush back seat of a limo, and it’s warm and kind of nice.
I remind myself that he’s sober and swore I’m not dissolving. I remind myself again. And again.
Gavin’s about to get in, but someone calls his name, and he steps back away from the car.
Close the door, I think, though I don’t move too close. Close it. No one can see me. Close it. Close it.
“Hey, man, I’m really sorry,” says voice I recognize, and I flip through faces in my mind like a rolodex. Flip flip flip.
“You fucking idiot,” says Gavin. “Did you really just leave those things out and not tell a single fucking soul what they were?”
There’s a dangerous, wild, feral note in his voice that I’ve never heard before, and it’s a little scary but also strangely thrilling, like a low flame held just off my skin. Like I’m seeing Gavin’s animal nature.
A thrill runs through my entire body and I think of his fingers on me, my shoulders, my neck, his lips on mine, him pulling me onto his lap in the back of this car—
“I meant to leave a note, but I had to go find paper and then they called me for a sound check, and I... sort of forgot?” the voice says, distracting me.
My rolodex lands on Eddie, the drummer.
“You fucking forgot,” Gavin says. “I found Marisol upstairs curled into a bathtub, miserable and stoned out of her fucking gourd because you forgot.”
“It was a mistake, man,” Eddie says. “It was just pot, she’ll live.”
“That’s not the question,” Gavin says, his voice rising quickly. “She’s got real fucking responsibilities. She could have a drug test and you’d have fucked her over.”
That sounds terrible, I think.
“But she doesn’t, right?” Eddie says, his voice pitching higher. “Look, I’m sorry, but just chill, okay? It’s not the end of the world if your pretend girlfriend—”
“You stupid cunt,” growls Gavin.
There’s a thump.
“Motherfucker!” shouts Eddie.
Alarm works its way into my brain for a moment and I lurch across the seat, flat on my stomach, looking out the open car door. Gavin’s flexing his right hand and Eddie’s holding his face, mouth gaping open.
“Goddamn it, what the fuck, dude?” shouts Eddie.
“Don’t fucking leave your shit around!” says Gavin.
“You punched me!”
“I’ll do it again if you’ve not fucking learned!”
Eddie stares at Gavin, one hand on his face. Gavin stares back, shoulders squared, all the veins in his tattooed forearms standing out.
“Goddamn maniac,” Eddie mutters.
Then he walks away.
“Bloody right I am,” Gavin says, then turns and gets into the limo. I sit up and scoot over, and he closes the door. The limo starts driving but I’m just staring at G
avin, eyes wide, mind going a thousand miles a minute.
Did that just happen? I think that just happened, right? Do I really remember that? Am I still dissolving? A thump plus Eddie saying ‘you punched me’ equals punch, right? But just because I remember it did it happen?
Is memory even real? I guess reality is just this very instant and everything else is a construct, right?
“Did you...” I start, staring at Gavin’s knuckles. They’re bright red, already starting to bruise, and I force myself to collect the rest of that thought. “...just punch Eddie?”
“I did,” Gavin says, sounding resigned. “And I definitely shouldn’t have done.”
“No,” I say.
Then I remember he’s in the limo with me.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Your flat.”
“You don’t have to,” I say, leaning my head back against the head rest and closing my eyes. “I stopped dissolving. I think I’m a little less high. Go party. I’m sorry I was in the bathtub. It was just really nice in there.”
Something soft touches the top of my head lightly. I think Gavin just kissed me. I think he also did it before, but again, I’m not quite sure if the concept of memory is real or an elaborate ruse at the moment, so I don’t spend much time on it.
“Parties are less fun sober,” he says. “And I just clocked Eddie in the face, so I may not exactly be welcome back.”
I think about this for a long moment, which turns into thinking about fingers, faces, parties, champagne glasses, the way bubbles rise, and the way my brain feels like saltwater taffy, being stretched and pulled and squished and stretched again.
Then Gavin’s hand is on my shoulder, and he’s saying my name.
“I’m awake,” I say, opening my eyes.
“Come on,” he says, opening the door. “We’re here.”
He opens the door, gets out, and offers me his hand. We seem to be on my street, in front of my apartment building, and he shuts the back door of the car.
“I’m okay from here,” I say. “Really.”
“You’ve got your keys, then?”
I exhale, closing my eyes, because I have no memory whatsoever of what happened to the clutch I was carrying. Was I carrying it? Do I have hands? Have I always had hands?
