Loud Awake and Lost

I moved to the painting as if pulled in by a magnet.

It was a portrait in oil and gouache—okay, and how’d I know this word gouache anyway, but I did, both spelling and pronunciation (gwash)—of a young woman. Her fingers were splayed over her face, her skin was dappled in light, her eyes were outlined with feathery, exaggerated lashes. She was lush and unreal, but not artificial. She was like a dream girl, possibly hallucinatory.

But it was the signature that really startled me. The insecty lettering on the bottom right: A. Travolo.

No. Impossible. But yes, he’d painted this. I yearned to reach out my finger and touch the surface. To trace the shape of the mark. Had it been Anthony’s whisper in my ear, then? Had it been his kiss on the bridge? Was it at his invitation that I’d been at this apartment before?

Of course it was. We’d known each other, somehow. But I was too nervous, too uncollected in my head to point out the signature to Rachel. Not that she was particularly preoccupied with my mental state.

“No DJ, no music,” she murmured. “This is worse than my cousin Marva’s wedding reception in Palm Springs. What are we gonna do next?”

“I don’t know.” I couldn’t take my eyes off Anthony’s signature. I wished I could be here alone to stare at this painting in silence. But that wouldn’t work tonight. Rachel’s disappointment was making her clingy.

“And it looks like we lost Sadie and Perrin to a couple of weird Euro-yuppies.” Rachel frowned out into the living room, where I saw that Perrin and Sadie were drinking champagne and madly flirting with two past-college-age guys. “It’ll be hard to motivate them. Meantime, Tom’s going to eat oysters till he pukes if we don’t spring him. Don’t you think we should take off?”

“Um…” I did want to go, but I was reluctant to leave the memory. My mind reached back into this new, glowing warmth. The secret brush of an arm against mine. The hush of that whisper in my ear again. Had it been Anthony, or someone else?

“I could call some people,” Rachel continued. “Would it be too awkward to call Holden?” She was fiddling with her phone, dying to use it.

That luminous bath of light and color. Who was that girl in the painting? I had to look away and I couldn’t.

“Okay, fine, Holden’s a bad idea,” she answered into my silence. “But look over there. I bet Keiji won’t leave, either. Check him out, mingling, being charming. Traitor. What is wrong with us that we didn’t make a Halloween plan B?” Rachel was staring at her phone as if hoping it would beam her a new plan. She glanced up. “And why do you keep looking at that picture?”

“Don’t know.” I stepped away, physically removing myself from it. Suddenly the banquet table made me realize how hungry I was. “I think I need to eat.”

“Go nuts; you’re in the right place. But what I need is a bathroom. Don’t you dare sneak off anywhere. Be right back.” As Rachel slipped away, I reached for a bread wheel and spooned up some tapas. Tahini, black olive, plum tomato—was that fennel? There was a time when I could reel off every ingredient on a first taste. I’d been a champ at that. Had I lost it? Didn’t seem so. I could even taste pink peppercorn. I smiled quietly to myself. Cool.

Then I stole another look at the painting, scouring it for answers. It wasn’t unfamiliar. What else did I know about it? About Anthony?

“Ember!”

I turned. The girl was boyishly elfin, with pale, silky hair slip-tucked behind her ears. She was staring at me from the way other side of the room, wearing a latex yellow superhero mask that hid half her face. Her eyes were big as drain stoppers beneath it. Immediately I knew that like this apartment, she was someone from the then. The blackout pocket. I’d known her once, absolutely. Even if I didn’t quite exactly know her now.

“Hey!” I gave a weak wave as I swallowed my last bite of bread. Could she see through my smile, my cheerful “recognition”? Not a single name buzzed my brain.

The girl stared at me another second and then decided to approach, sidestepping bodies down the length of the table to come around and meet me.

“Did you know me?” The way she asked it assumed that I did. “With the costume, I mean?”

“I mean, I’m like ninety percent…” My laugh was an apology, that she wouldn’t take it too personally.

“Oh. It’s me. Maisie.” Her eyes drank me in. “Wow. I heard you were home. I guess I heard right. You don’t look—you don’t look as bad as how I’d heard.”

“You might not have said that six months ago.” My mind was flying through the mental filing cabinets. Who was she?

Luckily, Maisie didn’t appear to sense my confusion. “The whole thing. Oh my God, Ember. So horrible. And then to think how long you’ve been away. I’m just so sorry. I can’t really.” She paused. “But, just to say, you look great. From what I can tell. Under the zombie-costume situation.”

How do I know you? I couldn’t make myself ask her a single question. I just couldn’t. It shamed me. I didn’t want to admit that the accident had stolen every memory of the elf girl, too, when it had already taken so much.

“Look, I’m about to go,” she said. “This party’s a little bit, um.” We smiled. On that point, there was no need to elaborate. “But first I’m gonna go pick up Alice—she’s in the studio till last minute as usual. We’re heading over together. It’s supposed to be incredible tonight. Hey, idea.” Her smile was shy. “Wanna join up?”

She seemed to think I understood what she was talking about. I faltered, then confessed. “The thing is, I don’t know where you’re going.”

“Areacode.” But now something clicked in Maisie. She stared at me like I’d failed an easy quiz. “You can still get sweaty, look sexy, and dance freaky, right?”

I smiled in nonanswer. Areacode. Now the word just reminded me of Kai. Beautiful Kai. Stupid jerk who disappeared, who never called me—wrong number Kai.

But Areacode must have been a place I went to before, a routine from before Kai. And Maisie’s name was familiar—Facebook, right? I had over one thousand friends on Facebook, and most of them weren’t friends. And who was Alice?

“The other thing is,” I told her, “I’m here with other people.”

Maisie nodded, put her hands on her hips, and lifted one leg to stand like a sultry flamingo. She was a girl who wanted to be looked at. She was almost defiant about it. Now I saw her shoes— Doc Martens, covered with a rainbow of spray paint. She’d obviously done it herself. Now she was looking at the painting. Her gaze flicked back to me, as if she was deciding whether to ask me something. “Have you been in touch?” she asked. “With anyone else in his crew, anything like that?”