Sam and Ilsa's Last Hurrah Read online

  There’s another pause around the room as we digest this unexpected compassion from KK. “You’ve been to Bhutan?” Sam asks her.

  “Yes,” says KK. “I told my parents to tell people I was in rehab, but really I was on a spiritual quest. And getting killer calf strength from all the mountain climbing.”

  “Sometimes I think there’s hope for you,” Sam tells KK.

  “Fuck you,” she tells him.

  Sam dips into the magic hat. “I think I’ll go to…Prague! With a…bowling ball? I love that. Wandering around the city in search of a bowling alley in Prague, and finding a bowling partner—”

  “Let Caspian be your bowling partner,” says KK. “He’ll crush it.”

  “Or be crushed by it,” adds Johan.

  “That’s the hope,” says KK.

  “The monstrosity to my right is no longer a sentient being to me,” says Caspian about KK.

  “The monstrosity to my left should remember he’s a fucking sock puppet who can’t actually feel, much less perceive, sentience.”

  “More champagne,” says Parker, holding up his glass. “Soon enough, none of us will be able to feel anything, either.”

  Sam refills his glass as I step over to Li, who pulls out her cards. “San Juan Bautista, California, and a unicycle. Where’s San Juan Bautista?”

  Sam says, “Central California. KK. It was a mission town where one of the crucial scenes in the Hitchcock movie Vertigo took place.”

  “More important,” says Parker, “it’s also a quick distance from Gilroy, California, the garlic capital of the world, and the sweetest-smelling place you’d ever want to visit.”

  “Better than Hershey, Pennsylvania?” Johan asks.

  “Better!” says Parker. “It smells like every pasta dish you’ve ever loved.”

  “STOP TALKING ABOUT CARBS!” yells KK. Everyone ignores her.

  “I’d ride the unicycle from San Juan Bautista to Gilroy!” says Li, pleased. “And have burned off all the calories for all the spaghetti with hella tons of garlic I’m going to eat when I get there. Oh, I love this game.”

  I love her for loving my favorite game.

  I’m the only person left. I sit back down at my seat and take out the two remaining cards. “Andalusia, and yarn.” I feel confident that the first card was what Parker wrote down, and the second was what Li wrote down. What is the magic hat trying to tell me?

  “Andalusia’s not a real place,” says KK. “Someone made that name up. Sounds like a fairy world.”

  “Andalusia’s a real place,” says Parker. “It’s on the southern tip of Spain, opposite Morocco. It’s where flamenco dancing originated.” He looks at me, and gives me that smile that melts me. “Ilsa’s best dance.”

  I was never a great competitive ballroom dancer, but when I was at my best, it was because I was dancing the flamenco. The sultry, powerful dance where the female is the star. Sam says, “It’s not a bad idea, Ilsa. Go to Spain for a while and study the art you love the most!”

  Li says, “Or come to Taiwan with me next month. To study knitting.”

  Taiwan! What the? Someone believes in me enough to think I could learn to knit?

  Johan asks, “Taiwan is known for its knitting schools?”

  Li says, “No, but my great-grandma’s house is. She’s a boss knitter. I go to hers for a few weeks every summer. You should come with me, Ilsa. See something else of the world beyond Manhattan. Go to a place that’s completely foreign to you. Learn to knit some scarves.”

  Manhattan is such a huge universe unto itself, I’ve never given serious thought to traveling or living anywhere else. That’s not true. I’ve given serious thought to it—but never formulated any realistic initiatives to make that wish come true. I mean, I applied to schools that would take me elsewhere. But I had no actual intention of going. Maybe that’s what’s been most reckless about me all along. Not that I’m flighty, but too rooted. It’s Sam I’ve accused of playing it too safe. Maybe I should have been looking more closely at myself.

  “I couldn’t afford that airfare,” I say. I have babysitting money saved, but not that much.

  “I bet Mom and Dad or Czarina have frequent-flyer miles they’d give you,” says Sam. “Although, if you and Li are going to be anything more than friends, impulsively going away to visit her family might not be the smartest way to find out.”

  When have I ever taken the smart approach?

  Are Li Zhang and I more than friends?

  Our lips touched, but just for a second.

  It felt like a second that changed everything I knew and understood about myself.

  It’s not like suddenly I’m a lesbian.

  But suddenly I’m not as straight as I assumed I was.

  Suddenly I’m more open-minded than when I started the evening.

  Just as suddenly, we hear some keys being tapped on the piano. Sloppy keys. Our heads turn and we see Jason slumped at Sam’s piano. He looks up and says the one thing he knows for a fact that only I am allowed to say to Sam. Jason says, “Play it, Sam.”

  eighteen

  SAM

  The song that Jason’s playing (badly) tells us that, as time goes by, the fundamental things apply. For evidence of this, we’re given a kiss and a sigh. I’ve always been clear on the kiss, a love-story standard. But the sigh has always confounded me. Is it a sigh of pleasure or a sigh of disappointment? Which is the more fundamental?

  I stand up to relieve the keys from Jason’s fingers but am stopped when Johan stands up as well and asks me to dance.

  Everyone is watching. For that reason, I can’t say yes. And also for that reason, I can’t say no.

  So instead, I don’t say anything at all. I let him walk me over the glass shards I created by hand (in combination with the wall). I let him hold me like it’s our last night in Casablanca, and the whole nightclub is watching to see what we’ll do. At first, I’m a cardboard cutout of myself, thinned by insecurity. But then I allow myself to lean into the music, however poorly played. And by leaning into the music, I find myself leaning into Johan, to this dance.

  I look over his shoulder and see Ilsa extend a hand to Li, who takes it. Soon they’re dancing, too. Then Parker, no doubt to annoy KK, asks Frederyk to dance, and Caspian, no doubt to annoy KK, accepts.

  Jason isn’t singing, so we all supply the words in our heads. This doesn’t leave room for many other words, so instead of trying to speak, we rely on fingertips and motion, steps and sways.

  It’s not a long song, but when it’s over and I check my watch, I see we’ve moved past midnight.

  Johan says to me, “At the very least, we’ll always have this.”

  And I think, yes, this is one of the fundamental things, too: Even in a world so full of conflict and panic and distraction and demand, two people can still find a peace like this, dancing to an old song. This is not hiding; this is finding. This is not retreat; it’s a reminder of what matters.

  Taxed by the demands of the keyboard, Jason steps away from the bench and moves to the record player. There, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong have been waiting their turn. When the phonograph offers its arm, they take it and begin to sing about the nearness of you.

  “This has been quite an evening,” Johan says—and the way he says it makes it sound like it’s coming to an end all too soon.

  “I haven’t shown you the roof yet,” I offer.

  “A wonderful point,” he says. “I think it might be time for us to venture to the roof.”

  Parker and Frederyk join Jason by the record player, while KK pouts at her seat. All that’s left on our makeshift dance floor is the nearness of Ilsa and Li. Johan and I leave them to it.

  “We’re going to the roof,” I tell Parker. “Be back shortly.”

  Jason is displeased, but contains his displeasure. Caspian is encouraging, telling me to have fun.

  “We’ll hold down the fort,” Parker promises.

  I remember something and pick up a bag from t
he kitchen. Johan says he’s not that hungry, but I tell him to wait. As we head upstairs, Ella and Louis fade behind us. The spirit of their song carries us along.

  It should feel romantic. It should feel like we’re coming up here to kiss, not sigh. But—

  That’s not what I’m feeling.

  I’m feeling time going by.

  I’m feeling I need to get to the fundamental truth of the night.

  And while I like Johan, I don’t think he’s the truth I was supposed to find.

  “It’s a nice view,” he says, and luckily, he’s looking at the midnight skyline, not at me.

  “It’s not bad,” I tell him. I take out two of the plastic bottles of bubble liquid that Jason brought as a host gift and give Johan one.

  “Ah,” he says approvingly.

  We open the lids and retrieve our wands. It’s strange to blow bubbles at night—they’re barely there, but we know they’re there.

  I set the bubbles free over the streets of Manhattan. When I look over to Johan, I see that he isn’t focusing on the bubbles—he’s focusing on me.

  There’s such power in that. Being someone else’s focus.

  “Are you ready to leave it all behind?” he asks. He gestures to the city, which never recognizes such gestures.

  I tell him, “I’m always jealous of people who get to be new to New York, because they get to be amazed by it in a way that I’ll never be amazed by it. I know it’s an extraordinary place, but it’s always been ordinary to me, you know? And I worry that it’s like living at a high elevation—I’ve gotten used to breathing here, and every part of my body is tuned to living here. I don’t know anywhere else. I don’t know how to live anywhere else. But I guess it’s time for me to know somewhere else before this becomes the only place I ever know. There are all these kids who are struggling so hard to get to this city—I understand that so much. But I might need that in reverse.”

  “Why?” Johan asks, letting a parade of bubbles out in my direction. It’s not a challenge; it’s curiosity.

  I catch one of the bubbles on my wand. “Our whole lives, Ilsa and I have been living this story. It’s not a bad story. It’s a good story. But—it’s always the same story. And eighteen years old is way too young to have your story figured out. If you consider it written at eighteen, that means you haven’t been the one writing it—not that much of it, at least. I mean, look at you—you’re, what, a nineteen-hour flight from home? You’re living in a different part of the world and a different part of the day from all the people you grew up with.”

  “I left the nest,” Johan says with a smile. There is one bubble still lingering between us.

  “Yes—you left the nest. You might not have changed your character, but you definitely changed your story. And I—well, I need to do that, too. Don’t you think?”

  He tries to blow more bubbles, but the soap pops in the ring. He dips his wand again and this time puts the orbs into orbit.

  “You owe it to yourself to try,” he tells me. “And you may eventually owe it to yourself to fail. You’ll see. It can be very lonely, and the second-guessing can be alarmingly severe. I love it here, but I still spend about half my waking thoughts on some variation of wondering whether I made the wrong choice. That’s always going to be a part of it. But, like you said, I’d rather be exploring than be settled down at this point in my life. And there are so many things I’ve brought with me. My music. My studies. Dolly.”

  “Your homosexual flair,” I say, sending some bubbles back his way. One of them catches in his hair before it disappears.

  “Yes, my homosexual flair. Though I made sure to go somewhere that would give that flair enough oxygen to thrive.”

  “It’s what Dolly would want.”

  “Certainly.”

  We’re not touching, but it feels like we could at any moment.

  “I want to kiss you,” I admit. “But I also don’t want to kiss you, because I know that at some very definite point I would have to stop kissing you.”

  “I feel the exact same way. If you were staying, I would at the very least get another date out of you. But you’re not staying. I think that much is clear. And I don’t want to be a regret factor in that decision.”

  “Man,” I say. “Aren’t we mature?”

  He laughs. “Absolutely.” Then he leans in and kisses me. I kiss him back. Just once. It is definitely the first time I’ve ever kissed a boy with a bottle of bubble liquid in my hand.

  “Okay, not that mature,” he says. “I could’ve resisted doing that, but I didn’t want to. Just one for the road.”

  “For new times’ sake,” I say.

  “For new times’ sake,” he agrees.

  Without thinking, I sigh. It’s not a sigh of pleasure. And it’s not a sigh of disappointment. It’s just me taking in some of the air at this altitude, then letting it out again. One of those punctuation marks you deploy simply by being alive.

  I turn to look at all the buildings around us. Johan stands so he can face them, too. There’s something so invigorating about being surrounded by this many lights in the darkness, this many shapes for the eye to see. Intimidating, too. But mostly invigorating.

  I have to imagine there will be something invigorating about being apart from them, too.

  I imagine Czarina looking out the window of her Paris apartment, seeing a twist on this nightscape. Home but not quite. Similar street sounds, but a different underlying music.

  And I imagine Ilsa still here. Ilsa without us. And it—

  Well, it hurts to think of her like that.

  Even if KK’s here, too.

  Especially if KK’s here, too.

  Johan’s wand is out and he exhales bubbles into the night like Bogie once released cigarette smoke.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” he says.

  “Just worried about my sister.”

  “I don’t know either of you that well, but I sense—well, I sense that maybe the two of you need to have a talk? Your choice is going to be your choice—but let her into it, too. I made that mistake with some of my friends, and believe me, it’s easier to let her in now than to try to get her back later.”

  “Good to know,” I say. Then, feeling like I need to complete my doctorate in awkwardness, I add, “And it’s good to know you, too.”

  “Likewise,” he says. “And this isn’t it, you know? We took a lot of subways in order to find each other—this is hardly the last stop.”

  I hug him then, and he hugs me back, and it could easily escalate from there, but it doesn’t, because we are standing somewhere between the kiss and the sigh, and that is fundamentally okay.

  “It’s probably time for me to go home,” he says, stealing one last glance at the city around us.

  “And it’s probably time for me and my sister to figure things out,” I say. “Which will mean clearing out the guests.”

  “Good luck with that. I sense there’s at least one guest she might not want to let go.”

  It makes me so happy that he’s talking about Li here, not KK or even Parker.

  “Before we go, there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to do,” he says. Then he explains. And there’s no way I can object. For a frenzied minute, we are filling the air with as many bubbles as we can. And then, when we’ve achieved maximum bubblosity, we run through them, whooping all the way.

  When that’s done, we soapily small-talk our way down the stairs—conversing about the week ahead as if our weeks have long been familiar with one another. Ella and Louis are still singing when we get back to the apartment, although the record is on its other side now. In the dining room, Parker has broken out a broom and is sweeping up the glass and crumbs. Frederyk and Caspian are clearing the table. Nobody else is in evidence.

  Seeing me notice, Parker explains, “Jason peaked fast, then fell hard. I tried to maneuver him back to your room, but he said he was scared to be here when Czarina learns you broke a glass—he nearly lost all his cookies when I told him
what happened. So he’s riding safely home as we speak. Li and Ilsa have taken themselves to Czarina’s off-limits bedroom—but in the interest of full disclosure, I think it’s for conversational privacy more than anything else. Sensing the wind-down, Freddie and I started to clean up. KK sat there for about a minute watching, then said we were too tedious to be bearable and retreated to her own apartment, where, of course, no such thing as cleaning up ever needs to happen. It is unclear whether she will be coming back or not.”

  “You don’t need to clean,” I tell him. I spot Johan starting to gather the coffee cups. “Seriously. I’ve got a system. You’re doing me a favor by leaving it alone.”

  They all protest, and I counter-protest for about a minute, then Parker relents. I go to the lockbox and retrieve their phones—luckily, the combination has been changed to my dad’s birthday, so I get it open on the fourth try.

  “We’re good here, then?” Parker asks as he and others pick up their phones. I take it as a compliment that nobody turns his on immediately.

  I nod. “Yup. Go get some sleep.”

  “I’m holding you to California, man. I’ve already ordered a piano for my dorm room, so you’re pretty much obligated.”

  I give him a hug. “It just may happen. We’ll see.”

  “Meanwhile, tell your sister to unblock me, so I can thank her for the dance. And for not hating my guts anymore.”

  “Should I tell her that verbatim?”

  “Maybe just the first part.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “I should probably take my leave as well,” Caspian says. I am a little worried he, too, is going to want a hug, but instead he offers up Frederyk’s pinkie again, and we shake. “I had no idea what to expect from this party, and I have to say, that was exactly what I got. Good luck with your journeying. If either of us can help in any way, let us know.”