“Which is awesome. Own it.”
* * *
By the time Cherry declares Angie “ready”—her lips painted a dark crimson, lashes blackened with mascara, curls piled on top of her head, gold earrings dangling, back muscles exposed, long legs accentuated by stilettos—she feels as if she’s stepped into another body. As she examines herself in Cherry’s mirror, she almost doesn’t recognize the woman looking back at her. Woman—that’s it, isn’t it? Dressed this way, she could be at least five years older, just like that. She allows a small smile to play across her lips.
“Sam’s gonna die when he sees you,” Cherry says as she grabs her leather purse.
Angie follows her out, typing quickly: I’m safe. Not waiting for her mom’s reply, she shuts off her phone and rushes into the night, out to the street where the boys are waiting in the car. I am going to meet my dad’s brother, she says to herself, willing it to be real.
I’m going to meet my dad’s brother, Angie thinks again as she steps out of Sam’s car, valet parked at a house in the hills above the city, and the thought is like a hot coal she can’t grip onto for too long, for fear of burning herself.
She waits beside Sam, Cherry, and Miguel for the man at the door to check their names off a list.
“Do you know if Justin Bell has arrived yet?” Cherry asks the bouncer.
“Hmm?”
“Justin Bell? He’s on the list, right?”
The man frowns and stares down at his paper. “Yeah. Not here yet.”
Cherry turns to Angie, leading her through the door. “So, let’s chill awhile. It’s early, he’ll hopefully show up in a bit,” she says.
Angie feels like a kid walking into a grown-up world for the first time. The living room is already filling with bodies, people collecting in the corners, women dressed in designer everything, men laughing.
“Look, there’s Malcolm!” Cherry says, pointing to a DJ in the corner of the room playing “Purple Rain.” “Let’s go say hi.”
Miguel shrugs to Sam as Cherry pulls him off.
“You wanna look around?” Sam asks Angie.
“Sure.”
They take mini quiches and skewers of shrimp off a passing tray and climb a set of stairs that leads to an indoor atrium–turned–dance floor, which is thick with the scent of jasmine and, more faintly, gin. A retractable roof leaves the night sky as their ceiling. An older woman with a platinum pixie cut rushes over and flings her arms around Angie, reeking of smoke and soapy perfume. She holds on for a moment before she drops her arms to her sides with a high-pitched giggle. “I thought you were—someone else.”
“I hope you find her.” Angie smiles at the woman and moves through the heavy backbeat of the party, Sam following. She scours the room, wondering at each turn if Justin has arrived.
“Maybe he’s not coming,” she says to Sam.
He puts a hand on her shoulder. “It’s still early, Ang. Let’s get a drink, relax. He’ll show up in a bit.”
“Okay.”
She follows Sam to the bar in the corner of the garden room, where he orders lemon drop shots. The bartender—a semi-skinny dude with a beard, bobbing his head to the music in a lazy-cool way—sets them down without actually making eye contact. Next to Angie a curvy girl in a little dress gets lifted up by a little guy and squeals. Angie takes the shot. It burns.
Cherry appears behind them, a hand on each of their shoulders.
She leans over the bar, making herself visible among the collecting crowd.
“Four French 75s, please!” she calls, and collects the drinks from the bartender, who’s still bobbing his head.
“Have you ever had one of these?” she asks Angie. “They’re my favorite.”
Angie shakes her head—in fact, she hardly ever drinks. When she went to the usual high school parties she’d sometimes have a beer or two to make the night go by, but Lana and Mia had always teased her for being a lightweight.
Cherry raises her champagne flute, clinks it against Angie’s.
“God, if you could see yourself right now!” Cherry says. “You look hot.”
“You do,” Sam says quietly.
“Thanks,” Angie manages, wishing the powerful feeling she’d had standing in front of Cherry’s mirror would return to her.
“Let’s dance!” Cherry declares.
Angie slips her hand into Sam’s, needing to hold on to something as they navigate through the crowd. She gulps her drink, eats the cherry, and abandons the flute. She begins to move, tying and untying the stem between her teeth until it’s shredded. She swallows it. As the booze starts to hit her blood, the air becomes thick, her body fluid. She slides into a slow dissolve. A dream. She’s the electric-blue sapphire of dusk. She circles her hips against Sam. Cherry puts another drink into her hand.
The music’s sweet and heavy. She’s the steam pressing itself to a mirror; she’s the heat of breath condensing in the air; she’s the red of the roses in her mother’s garden, collecting dew. She loses herself. When the thought surfaces—Where’s Justin?—she lets it linger for a moment, scanning the room, but when she does not see him, she sets down the hot coal of anticipation as she feels Sam pulling her back to him, sees the boyish need in his face.
“Stay with me,” he whispers.
* * *
How long has it been? An hour? Two? The room has continued to fill with bodies, crowded together, and Angie still feels liquid, but dizzy now. Where’s Justin? She has to find him.
“Let’s walk around!” she shouts to Sam over the music. Sam makes a pit stop at the bar, and hands Angie a new drink. The lights are dim everywhere. She tries to get closer to the faces they pass in the hall, people laughing, drinking, dancing, in a blur. Angie recognizes a famous-ten-years-ago actor with hair dyed the color of a wheat field. A tall dark-haired woman appears out of nowhere by his side, sipping from a martini and fixing her eyes on the point where the wall turns into ceiling. There are so many faces. Will she even know which one is his? Will she recognize him? Will she feel his presence, the blood they share? There are so many people now. She should have been more careful. She should not have lost track of herself. She should have stood by the bouncer at the door, waiting for him to walk in. It’s too dark. So many people. She’ll never find him. She’s breathing too fast. Too fast.
“Angie. Angie. Come on. Let’s get some air.”
Sam’s hand is on her shoulder, guiding her.
They step outside. The lights strung across the deck glint off highball glasses and dance over partygoers’ heads like fuzzy, uncommitted halos. An infinity pool spills its water onto bamboo slats. The city’s own lights spread below, persistent in the theory that they own the rights to the stars. People exhaling smoke gather around a fire pit, flames dancing over little pieces of broken glass. Angie looks up to see the wavering branches of the palms reaching for the crescent-shaped moon stamped into the sky.
“Sit down,” Sam says, and she allows herself to fall onto the wooden step. Cherry’s shoes have blistered her feet. She can’t catch her breath.
“Here,” Sam says, pulling a half-smoked joint out of the mint tin in his pocket. “Take a hit of this. It’ll calm you down.”
“Will I find him?” Angie asks, in the voice of a child.
“You’ll find him. We’ll find him,” Sam says as he lights the joint and inhales.
He passes it to Angie. She pulls the smoke into her lungs, coughs. Almost instantly, she feels her body relax, her limbs heavy. The music spilling from inside tells her to levitate, levitate, levitate …
She gets up, walks through the crowd of people gathered near the fire, trying to see their faces, trying to see Justin’s face. No matter how close she gets, none of them seem to notice her. She blends like clear liquid dropped into a puddle of blue water. Feeling herself disperse, she moves to peer into the pool, where a few people splash their feet. She remembers, for some reason, the day she learned to swim. Each time she’d launched from the steps into the water alone, ther
e was the feeling of exhilaration when she made it safely to her mother’s arms. Until the moment she swam out and found nobody there to catch her. Angie can still feel herself sinking, choking. It must have only been a split second—and then, there was her mom, pulling her out of the pool, wrapping her into a towel. Marilyn had been distracted by a conversation with another mother, she explained, apologizing. Angie’s anger was eclipsed by relief. She knew she was safe then; her mom had not let her go.
But now there are no mother’s arms to catch her, no song to soothe her, no hand to stroke her head. Angie realizes, for the first time, she really could drown.
“Hey. You alright?” Sam asks as he walks up behind her.
“It’s so funny, I mean, it seems like there are so many people here, but Sam, there are so many people in the world, I mean, seven billion five hundred and five million two hundred and one thousand nine hundred and fifty-four … except that was last week. By now, there are more and—god—I mean, every second I’m speaking there are more people … we don’t even matter. We do not even matter.” She laughs like it’s funny, but there’s an odd weight pressing itself onto her chest.
The effort of simply taking in oxygen is strange. She asks her heavy lungs to suck in air, which is then gone again. The breaths won’t come without being bidden. She’s scared she’ll stop breathing altogether, which is making her breathe too fast again, and the thought of the seven billion people is no longer soothing, it’s not helping, it’s terrifying. Somewhere, in the distance, she can hear Sam saying her name, but she can’t grasp it. Who is she? Who’s Angie? The sounds don’t compute, don’t add up to a person.
That’s when she sees him.
She knows. She knows, she knows. That’s him. That’s Justin Bell, maker of the “Some Dreamers” video. That’s her Justin Bell.
He’s real. He’s alive.
She’d expected him to look … different. Older—like a dad.
And yet, the resemblance to her father in the picture is uncanny.
He’s muscular and broad-shouldered. He wears ripped black jeans, suede boots, a T-shirt with a picture of an angry-looking dinosaur, black-rimmed glasses. His arm is covered in tattoos. There’s a woman with him, a woman with curly hair like hers, a woman who sparkles.
He’s walking away from Angie. Why is he walking away from her?
“Angie!” Sam calls.
“Sam, it’s him. It’s him,” she says in a whisper as he appears behind her.
“How do you know that?”
“I recognize him. He looks—he looks like my dad,” Angie says, her eyes filling with tears. She can’t think straight. Her head is too clouded. “Why did you make me smoke?”
“You were panicking. I thought it would help you chill out.”
“How can I talk to him now? I might never see him again! How will I ever find him again?”
She takes off around the side of the house, in the direction Justin went. She feels as if she’s spilling out of herself.
In the front yard, the valet attendant is holding open the door to a black Mustang. Justin is getting in the driver’s side, the girl already in the passenger seat. Angie wills herself to call his name, but she cannot. Why can’t she?
She turns to Sam. “Please. Get the car, quick!”
“This is crazy, Angie.”
“Please!”
“We can’t just leave Cherry and Miguel.”
“We can come back for them! Please!”
Sam walks up to the valet as Justin’s black Mustang pulls out of the driveway.
Angie and Sam speed through the hills, taking sharp turns, until they empty out onto Sunset, and there, at the stoplight, is the black Mustang. A hand, the woman’s, out the window, playing with the wind. His elbow, Justin’s, resting on the sill. As they pull up behind, Angie can hear the music drifting from his car, a voice singing—no, declaring, pleading—Someday the sky above will open …
The sky above is opening. Angie does not need to look up to know it.
He is here. He’s right here. Justin is in the car ahead of her.
The light turns green and the Mustang speeds off. Sam pushes on the gas, keeping up.
The night is dry, but in Angie’s eyes, the city lights swim like they do in rain. She stares at the black Mustang.
There’s a sudden turn that Sam follows, the sound of honking cars.
There’s a yellow light the Mustang speeds through.
“Sam!” Angie cries as Sam stops at the red.
“Angie, I’m not going to risk killing you.”
Angie does not answer. She stares at the red light, willing it to turn, willing it with all her might, feeling Justin drifting farther from her. What if he slips away?
But then they are moving forward, and at another light several blocks ahead, she sees the Mustang, just now moving through the intersection. Sam sees it too; he must, because he speeds to catch up. They’re still a couple blocks behind when the Mustang turns right onto a side street.
Sam follows and they drive down the street, which is full with parked cars, which is quiet and dark, which could be any street. How many of the seven billion people have clouds in their heads, have longing in their hearts? How many are chasing strangers? How many are searching for fathers?
As they arrive at the end of the block, they can see no sign of the Mustang.
And then, there he is. Walking up the sidewalk, his arm around the woman. She carries her shoes in the hand that’s not around his waist. They are speaking words to each other that Angie can’t hear.
Sam pulls over against a red-painted curb. “Angie,” he’s saying, “he’s right there. What do you want to do? What do you want me to do?”
Angie opens the car door and leans out.
She feels like she might be sick, but she doesn’t throw up. She takes deep breaths. She holds her head in her hands. She watches Justin and the woman as they turn up a brick pathway to an old Spanish-style, ivy-covered apartment building, as he unlocks a door.
As he disappears inside.
Angie steps out of the car, wavering unsteadily in her heels, and walks up to the building, close enough to see the address. Taking a pen from her purse, she writes it down on her hand: 179. She looks again, writes it again on her other hand this time, to make sure her brain is not playing tricks: 179.
As she gets back in the car she asks quietly, “Sam, what street are we on?”
“Sycamore.”
Sycamore. A street in LA, a street with leafy trees that are its namesake, a street with rosebushes, a street where specific people live, people whose lives Angie knows nothing about.
“Thank you,” she says to Sam. “For helping me.” She leans into him, resting her head on his shoulder, suddenly so tired.
“I love you,” she says.
But the next day, she will not remember saying it. She will not remember much.
MARILYN
Marilyn can hear Diana Ross blasting over the speakers from the next room, singing “I’m Coming Out.” Inspiration for the prospective belly buttons, she supposes. She sits in the waiting room, trying to focus on studying for the US history test she’ll have to make up early tomorrow morning, on the last day before Thanksgiving break. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice, she reads, practicing multiple-choice questions based on a passage from the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions from the Seneca Falls Convention.
At the sound of her stomach growling, Marilyn glances down at her too-pale exposed skin. Wanting her to look skinny in the crop top, Sylvie allowed her only a SlimFast shake for breakfast, and that was hours ago. As she easily marks off the answers about the first women’s rights convention, Marilyn smiles wryly at the irony. The private joke makes her feel a bit better, and the book becomes a kind of armor.
As her stomach growls again, more emphatically this time, her name is called. Marilyn’s led into another room, where she shakes the hand of the casting director, a woma
n in her forties who eats from a bag of fat-free Lays. Her bare feet rest on a chair, their abandoned stilettos on the floor below. Behind her a row of five men in suits sit on a leather couch, all of them looking bleary eyed. The casting director wipes her hands on her pants and instructs Marilyn to simply walk around the room, which is stark white—the walls, ceilings, and floors gleaming—while a dude behind a camera records audition tape. Marilyn wishes she herself were looking through a lens instead of parading around on display.
“A little more bounce, honey,” the casting director tells her. “Shake your hips—not too hard—not like you’re trying to be sexy, but like it just happens that way. You’re with your boy toy. Imagine he’s just behind you, staring. You’re showing off for him, but not letting on.”
Marilyn thinks of James’s voice—You have a choice. She tries the woman’s instruction, as absurd as it might be. She imagines she and James are at the beach. She hears the waves. She turns around and sees him lying in the sand behind her, propped up on his elbows. She imagines walking down to the water, how she moves when she knows his eyes are on her. It makes her stand up straighter, makes something under her skin light up with a heat, soft like the late-day sun.
She’s pulled out of her fantasy when the casting director tells her, “Thank you, lovey.”
And then it’s over.
* * *
Marilyn zips up her hoodie as she steps out through the revolving glass door. It’s a cold late-November day, cold for Los Angeles anyway. At only three thirty, the sun’s already dropping low and thinning out across the sky. Marilyn spots Sylvie parked at the curb in a yellow zone, flipping through US Weekly.
“How did it go?” Sylvie asks as Marilyn opens the passenger door.
“Okay, I think.”
“I have such a good feeling about this one!”
“I’m starving,” Marilyn replies.
They go to the drive-through at Wendy’s, where they each get chicken sandwiches (supposedly a healthy alternative to a hamburger, according to Sylvie). Marilyn’s sucking at the straw of her Diet Coke when Sylvie turns left out of the driveway onto Sunset; she should have made a right.