Sam and Ilsa's Last Hurrah Read online

  “Is Caspian your favorite at dinner tonight?”

  “Of course not. You are.”

  She holds on to my hand and leads me back inside to the elevator.

  When we return to Czarina’s apartment, we find the worst-case scenario for Sam and Ilsa’s last dinner party.

  Sam is playing the piano, accompanied by Johan on a fiddle I think Czarina’s third husband (the scamp!) left behind. Parker is crooning into a mic, while Caspian and KK and Freddie are making out on the sofa and Jason hovers in front of Sam, besotted.

  This party is a delight.

  I was not missed.

  So I walk over to the grand piano, and I’m just about to slam the fallboard down onto Sam’s prancing fingers, when Li pulls me back.

  The music and merrymaking stop. All eyes are on us.

  Li says, “Time for the rager we were promised, Sam.”

  twelve

  SAM

  I am not against drinking. But I can’t say I enjoy it very much when my friends drink excessively.

  I’m trying to stay at the piano. Because if I keep playing, no one’s going to ask me why I’m not getting plastered. I’m trying to keep it jaunty—some Gershwin, some ragtime.

  I don’t think anyone’s listening.

  They are raiding Czarina’s liquor cabinet, which, if we’re honest, is more of a closet than a cabinet. Ilsa’s dispensing its contents to everyone like she’s the Florence Nightingale of gale-force nights.

  I am not going to be the guy who tells everyone else what they shouldn’t be doing. I am sick of being that guy.

  I want someone else to be that guy.

  I want someone else to step in.

  Nobody else is stepping in.

  Johan’s letting Ilsa mix him a G & T. Jason’s swilling whiskey like its post-marathon Gatorade. I am not looking in KK’s general direction because I don’t want to know what’s happening there. Parker has lined up seven beers on the windowsill. Li doesn’t seem to be drinking. Neither is Ilsa, but I’m thinking she’ll start once everyone else has been given their pillage.

  I wish Johan were still playing beside me. That felt good, to be harmonizing without having to open my mouth. His strings. My strings. Vibrations overlapping in the air.

  But now he’s laughing at something Ilsa’s said.

  I want to play louder. Drown everything else out.

  Impossible.

  Maybe that’s why I gave this up. Playing with other people around. It wasn’t making anything better.

  I forgot that.

  But that’s not really the reason. No, the reason is that audition. That failed audition. I’d wanted to go to Juilliard for years. It’s the best music school in the city, which to a New Yorker means it’s the best music school in the country. My rehearsals were flawless, my preparations impeccable. But as I waited there for my name to be called, I started to drown within the importance of what I was about to do. I got flustered, and when they asked me to come in, I didn’t even hear them at first. When I finally did hear them, when I finally was given the chance to shine, I sputtered. My thoughts were too loud. I couldn’t hear the music. I made mistakes. Probably not that many, but enough to throw me. I was fine—but the audition required me to be great.

  When I got home, I couldn’t keep it hidden. I told Ilsa everything.

  Her response? She told me, “If you can’t stand the pressure, then don’t put yourself under the pressure.”

  I think this was her way of being supportive. But it also kicked away the last of the beams that were holding me up.

  “Can I make a request?”

  It’s Jason at my shoulder. Jason, whose breath is proof enough of how far gone he is.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “How about ‘How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?’ ”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know that one.”

  “ ‘Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry’?”

  I’m sensing a theme. I say, “Jason. Stop.”

  He slaps his hand down on the side of the piano. “Fuck it,” he says. “I’ll settle for ‘You Belong to Me’—either the standard or the Taylor Swift version.”

  “I think the Taylor Swift song is ‘You Belong with Me’—”

  “Well, fuck YOU.”

  I’m playing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” and I keep playing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”

  “Jason, I think you’re drunk,” I observe.

  “Well, I think you’re sober. So there.”

  “Is there a problem here?” Johan sidles over and asks.

  “No problem,” I say.

  “There wasn’t until you came over,” Jason spits out.

  “What does that mean?” Johan asks.

  “I think it’s pretty straightforward,” Jason replies. “It means you’re the problem. Jesus. You can’t just come over here and take him. You have to put in some time.”

  “Nobody’s taking me anywhere,” I point out. The song is too fast under my fingers. I hit a wrong note. I keep going.

  Johan moves to get the Maker’s Mark bottle out of Jason’s hand.

  “Here,” Johan says. “Let me take this and bring you some coffee instead.”

  But Jason won’t relent. He stabs out with the bottle. “She sent you over here, didn’t she? I HATE YOU, ILSA!”

  “Feeling’s mutual!” Ilsa calls out.

  Jason lets go of the bottle. It knocks the G & T out of Johan’s hand. There’s a shattering on contact, then another, more muffled break when the bottle and glass hit the floor.

  “Shit!” I yell. I stop playing and jump off the piano bench. “What else can go wrong?”

  Before I can get an answer, I go to the kitchen for more paper towels, a broom, and a dustpan. I notice that it isn’t two seconds after I stop playing that the stereo starts to blast a cake’s worth of Drake. Li’s been waiting by the controls, waiting for her opening.

  When I get back, Johan and Jason are shoving each other, working the glass and the drinks further into the floor. There aren’t enough Altoids in the world to cover up the smell of intoxication coming from the rug.

  “Stop it!” I shout, wondering why no one else is halting them. I mean, this mess is universally recognizable as not good. And Ilsa’s mixing Li a drink.

  Johan stops, but Jason’s still in his space.

  Parker takes the broom, paper towels, and dustpan from my hands.

  “You take care of Jason, I’ll take care of the spill,” he says.

  It’s worse than a spill, I want to tell him. We’re never going to clean this up. Never.

  It’s a stain.

  We’re leaving a stain.

  But if I don’t get Jason out of here, he’s going to leave even more of a mark with the Maker’s. So I tug his sleeve, pull him away from Johan.

  “What?” Jason yells.

  “I’m giving you a time-out,” I tell him. “Come with me.”

  He stumbles under my grasp. KK laughs, but I can’t tell whether it’s at Jason or because Caspian is tickling her with his lower jaw.

  “Where are we going?” Jason asks.

  “My room,” I answer. There’s too much to drink in the kitchen.

  “Oooooh. I remember your room.”

  I am sure that what he remembers is not the same as what I remember. That’s what made it so hard to break up with him. He is remembering sex and kisses and being together. What he can’t possibly remember is how lonely I still felt. Even when he was there, I kept thinking, This isn’t enough. Because it didn’t stop me from worrying. It didn’t block the intricately self-directed fears from my mind. Sometimes he could distract me…but I always knew it was a distraction. As soon as he left—sometimes before he left—my mind would return to its magnetic north, pointing toward all the things that could and would go wrong.

  “I’ve never seen you drink this much,” I say as I steady him through the hallway. “Is this a new thing?”

  “Just getting ready for college!” he replies.
>
  There are echoes, deliberate or not, of what I told him when I called off our relationship. I dwelled on the fact that he was going to Boston in the fall and I was staying, as a way of not getting into the fact that we were in different places already. It didn’t seem fair to tell him that I didn’t think he really knew me, because I was the one who’d kept my thoughts to myself. I hadn’t let him in, so I couldn’t blame him for not understanding what was inside. I blamed it on Boston instead.

  When he gets into my room, he goes straight for the bookshelf. “Yup,” he says, then takes a collection of Nathan Englander short stories off the shelf. “I gave you this, you know.”

  I nod.

  “Remember the night I got it for you?”

  I don’t. But I tell him I do.

  He thumbs through the book for a second, as if our own history is written inside. Then he puts it back on the shelf and looks at me hard.

  “Why did you invite me here?” he asks.

  “Honestly, to prevent more damage to the living room. No ulterior motive, just interior motive.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t mean here. I mean tonight. What got me back on the guest list?”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  “URRRRRR,” Jason groans, making a buzzer noise. “Try again.”

  Try again?

  “Because…it’s been too long. And we’re leaving soon, so—”

  “URRRRRR. Not it.”

  “What—you don’t think it’s been too long?”

  “URRRRRR.”

  “What?”

  “URRRRRR.”

  I am getting more and more annoyed. “What do you want me to say?” I ask.

  “I want you to tell me why you invited me.”

  “I already told you! It’s because I wanted to see you.”

  “URRRRRR.”

  “Because you’re my friend.”

  “URRRRRR.”

  “Stop it!”

  “URRRRRR.”

  “Because I wanted you here.”

  “URRRRRR. Be honest.”

  “I am!”

  “URRRRRR. One more time: WHY DID YOU INVITE ME?” he shouts.

  “Because I felt bad!” I shout back. “Okay? I FELT BAD.”

  “DING DING DING!”

  “But I also wanted to see you!”

  “No, no—don’t cover it up now. You felt bad. And do you think having me here should make you feel less bad? Is that fair? Shouldn’t I, as the brokenhearted party, be the one who gets to determine how you feel?”

  “You’re not the brokenhearted party.”

  “You dumped me!”

  “It wasn’t working!”

  “It was! I was just up against too much.”

  Now it’s my turn to groan. “That means it wasn’t working!”

  “No. It means that your sister was against me and you wouldn’t go against her enough for me to win.”

  Yes, Ilsa thinks Jason is boring. Yes, Ilsa always believed he was the safe choice. Certainly, Ilsa was still trying to sell me on other boys while I was dating Jason. She actively encouraged me to break up with him, leaving morning Post-it notes on the bathroom mirror that said Today’s the Day You Get a Better Boyfriend!

  But Ilsa was not the reason I broke up with him.

  “It’s not that,” I tell Jason now. “It was never that.”

  Jason laughs. “It was always that. Whether you see it or not. Your blind spot is five-foot-six tall, without heels.”

  “I can think for myself, okay?”

  He comes over to me, starts to give me a hug. I don’t fight it, but I don’t really encourage it, either. This is our relationship in one action: He thinks he’s helping, and I think it’s awkward.

  “Untether yourself,” he whispers in my ear.

  Like—

  Like—

  Like it’s that easy.

  Like he has any idea what he’s talking about.

  Like he didn’t want me to be tethered to him instead.

  Like I’m not already tethered to everyone.

  Only that’s not actually how I see it. It’s not like there’s this cord that connects me to him, or to Ilsa, or to anyone else. No. When I picture it, it’s more like I’m one of those old illustrations of Gulliver, tied to the ground with hundreds of different ropes. Ilsa controls some of them, sure. But others are manned by the friends I care about. Some are staked by strangers I care about, or are tied to the fact that every time I check the news it feels like the world’s going wrong. Tie after tie after tie. And I just lie there on the ground, giving them more time to get more ropes. I rarely struggle. Because the few times I tried to cut the ropes, I ended up cutting myself instead. Which was not what I wanted, either.

  Jason doesn’t know any of this. Ilsa would, if she’d only open her eyes. Parker has moments when I think he understands, and other moments when he seems too deep in his own life to be considering mine.

  Jason hugs me tighter.

  “I miss you,” he says. “I miss this.”

  It takes a good minute before he realizes I’m not hugging him back. And even then, he disengages without acknowledging it, acting like we’ve both let go at the same time.

  “When I think back on high school, this is what I’m going to remember,” he says. “I’m going to remember being here with you. I wanted to be at the center of the universe, you know?”

  “This is hardly the center of the universe,” I point out.

  “But for you it is!” he says. “Both of you!”

  “Well, I’m losing it, too. You’ll head off to college, and when you get back, this whole place will be gone. Say goodbye now, while you can.”

  Jason looks like he’s about to cry. And I’m thinking, There’s no way this place can mean that much to him. Then he says, “Aw, Sam—you poor thing,” and I understand he’s sad for me now.

  This lasts a few seconds. Then he goes back to being sad for himself.

  “You will always be my first boyfriend,” he says, moving in for another hug.

  I hold my hand out in front of me, to stop the embrace from happening.

  “I wasn’t your first boyfriend,” I remind him.

  He takes my hand and moves it to the side of his hip.

  “But you were the first one who mattered.”

  He’s looking me in the eye as he says this, and I look away. There’s some cheering from the living room. I have no idea what’s going on.

  Jason’s moving in again. “We still have a couple of weeks…,” he murmurs.

  “But we don’t.” I move a decisive distance away. “We really don’t.”

  I can’t stand how when you hurt someone, the odds are good you’ll have to keep hurting them again and again until they become numb to it, indifferent to it. I didn’t invite Jason over here tonight to hurt him. I thought this conversation had been completed months ago. But now I see we’re going to have some form of it for many years to come.

  “Give me one reason we can’t try,” he says.

  And because I want to end this smaller conversation even if I can’t end the bigger one, I say, “Because I like Johan. Because I am trying things out with him.”

  This does not go over well. Jason guffaws, stumbles back.

  “Johan? Do you realize you’re going after #Stantastic’s sloppy seconds?”

  “I didn’t know they’d been together until tonight.”

  “Oh, wow. Then you have no idea who you’re dealing with, do you? Do you have any idea what he did to Stan?”

  “I’m sure I would have read about it.”

  “You did read about it, Sam! Don’t you get it? Johan is #TheDictator!”

  I look at him blankly.

  “With a k,” he clarifies. “#TheDicktator.”

  “Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”

  “Jesus, Sam! #Stantastic’s only been griping about #TheDicktator for months. #ThePassiveAggressiveOlympics? #TheDevilAteAllMyPringles? #Couldn’tBreakHisHeart B
ecauseHeNeverHadOne? Haven’t you been following any of this?

  I shake my head.

  “That was Johan. #TheDicktator was Johan. He’s, like, a dating no-fly zone. He didn’t just gaslight #Stantastic—he gasbonfired him.”

  “That’s not a thing. Gasbonfiring is not a thing.”

  “You know what I mean!” Now it’s Jason’s turn to shake his head. “Man, I thought you knew. I was expecting #Stantastic to show up and, like, drown him in molasses on Facebook Live.”

  “It sounds like Johan’s version of events is a little different from Stan’s.”

  “Because he’s a liar!”

  “He said Stan was the one who was passive-aggressive.”

  “Lies!”

  “How do you know? Were you there?”

  “No. #TheDicktator wouldn’t let #Stantastic introduce him to any of his friends. How else could they have dated for so long without us knowing?”

  “Maybe Stan was the one keeping the secret,” I argued.

  “Have you ever, EVER known #Stantastic to keep a secret?!? And, let’s face it, he may be dramatic, but #Stantastic is not a liar. I can see you still don’t believe me.” Jason reaches for his phone and comes up empty. “As soon as I get my phone back, I can show you what #Stantastic’s said over the past few weeks. Then you can decide.”

  “The past few weeks?” I say. “I thought they broke up a while ago.”

  “Maybe to someone who has no heart…but to someone who has a heart, whose heart has been broken—it’s practically yesterday.”

  Jason is biased. I must keep telling myself that Jason is biased.

  He goes on. “How well do you know him, really?” Then he comes back closer. “I know you much, much more.”

  “URRRRRR!” I shout, crossing my arms in front of me. And once I do it once, I can’t stop. “URRRRRR! URRRRRR! URRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!”

  It’s a shockingly effective way to repel an ex-boyfriend. He stumbles back, looks a little green. Then he recovers his footing. But his expression…still a little green.