Сара Пинскер - A Song for a New Day

This was another thing altogether. Loud, for one. The guitars swallowed every inch of space in the room, filling the air, replacing the oxygen in her lungs. She put her fingers to her ears, but the guitars kept coming. The kick drum rose up through her bones; the bass mimicked her pulse, or her pulse mimicked the bass.

People danced all around her. They held the inches they had carved from the crowd, but moved within that space, some bouncing on their toes, some shifting their torsos, their hips. She moved, too; the song demanded it. It blocked everything else out.

The song ended, but the drums kept going, rolling forward then shifting to a new beat, with a new urgency. The audience adapted. Rosemary found herself moving forward with the crowd, pressing toward the stage, dancing, dancing with real people, in real life. The bubble her mother had told her to imagine had formed around her; she was in the crowd, but untouchable. She had space.

Except thinking about the bubble made her think about the reason she had needed the bubble, which made the fear real again. She hadn’t noticed that her baseline panic had subsided as she listened, but now she noticed its return, a tidal wave that had sucked the ocean miles out to sea and now returned it as a solid wall.

She stood in the middle of the basement, surrounded. If she fell, she’d be trampled. If someone shouted “Fire!” they’d crush each other in the rush for the stairs. The music held her upright, but she was no longer dancing. The exit was too far. Her knees buckled and the music stopped, or the music stopped and her knees buckled.

“What the hell?” someone said, above the crowd noise.

Hands grasped her arms and forearms, reached under her armpits, pulled her to her feet. She didn’t know whose, tried to slap away whatever stranger was touching her, but they dragged her toward the stage area. The song stopped short and the musicians cleared to the sides. She found herself sitting on a buzzing amplifier.

The bassist stood over her. “Hey, this is the woman from the other night.”

“There’s a first aid kit in the kitchen, under the sink,” Luce said. “Somebody grab it for me?”

“I’m okay,” Rosemary said. “I’m okay.”

“You are not okay. You’re bleeding from at least two places, one of which is your head. Did you get beat up?” To someone else: “Did anyone see what happened to her?”

“No, I’m not bleeding, I—” She put her muddy palm to her head; it came away bloody.

Luce glanced at her, then spoke into her mic. “We’re going to call it for tonight, friends. Sorry. See you next time. Thanks for coming out on a rainy night.”

She turned to Rosemary. “Can you walk?”

Rosemary nodded, though she wasn’t sure.

An aisle formed through the crowd, and Luce and someone else helped her up the basement stairs. At the top, someone pressed a plastic box into Luce’s hands, then they rounded a corner and climbed another flight. Alice in the background saying, “Shit. I told that kid not to come in tonight, maybe thirty or forty minutes ago, but she wasn’t bleeding when I talked to her, I swear. I don’t know how she got downstairs.”

Luce fumbled with a lock on the top landing, touched a small box mounted on the doorframe and put her finger to her lips, and then they were on the second floor.

If the first floor was sparse, this room was the opposite. The same basic furniture categories, an entirely different effect. Hardwood floor with a plush throw rug under a low table. Bookshelves full of actual print books. A deep purple couch. Scarves draped over the lampshades. She went to check her Hoodie to see if this was the Chelsea Hotel 1967 Veneer from SHL headquarters, then remembered she’d left it at the hotel. Momentary panic: did she still have her bag? Amazingly, yes.

The walls were a warm red-purple, with white trim. They were lined with pictures, dozens of pictures, snapshots of bands caught in midsong, sweaty close-ups, blood-covered guitars. The guitar picture made Rosemary touch her head again.

“First things first, let’s get you cleaned up before you bleed all over my furniture. Unless you think you need a hospital? You don’t have one of those biometric tattoos, do you? The ones that call your doctor if you get a boo-boo?”

Rosemary looked at her hand, the blood, the mud. She realized she was supposed to answer. She hadn’t been in a hospital since the pox. Her case had been relatively mild, the fever worse than the nerve pain, but she remembered the other kids clawing at their faces and arms, screaming, babbling from fever. And before that, the emergency room full of adults whose moans had unsettled her far more than the crying children. She shuddered. “No hospital. I’ll be okay. No tattoo.”

Luce gave her a close look, then nodded. Led her down a short hall and into a small bathroom, and put enough pressure on Rosemary’s shoulder to encourage her to take a seat on the closed toilet.

“How about I’ll clean this out, see how deep it is. If it needs stitches, or if you’re still loopy when I’m done, we’ll reconsider the hospital idea. I’m pretty sure you have a concussion, and whatever got your leg had teeth. Should I be worried about rabies? Werewolves? Zombies?”

As she talked, Luce opened her first aid kit and laid it on the sink rim. She put on gloves and opened a packet of antiseptic wipes. “This is where you tell me what happened.”

“I, uh, I climbed a fence, but I caught my leg on the top, and I must have landed on my head, but I didn’t—ow!—I didn’t realize it? So I guess I landed harder than I thought, and then—ow!— I guess I wasn’t thinking straight, and I came inside, and it sounded really good and—ow! Would you stop poking at my head?”

“Almost done.” Luce tossed the wipes in the garbage. “It’s not that deep, but I made it bleed again. Head wounds always bleed worse than they are. I can stitch it if you want.”

“Does it—does it need stitches? Are you a doctor?”

Luce laughed. “I used to be certified as a nurse assistant, and I did a year of actual nursing school when I was trying to sort myself out, but more importantly, I’ve cleaned up my share of musicians. Head meets headstock, hand meets ceiling, drumstick projectile. Anyway, I’ve seen worse. I think you’ll get by without stitches. It may scar either way, but it’s at your hairline, so it won’t be too noticeable. You’ve also got an impressive lump, which is what bothered you when I poked it, not the cut.”

“No stitches.”

“Fair enough. In that case, can you hold this gauze for me while I tape it shut?”

Rosemary let Luce guide her hand to her head.

“Let’s take a look at your leg now. Your pants may be a lost cause.” She inverted the pants leg and tugged it up Rosemary’s calf, then grabbed some more wipes. “Also, let’s go back to the part where you said you climbed a fence. I’m assuming you mean my back fence, and I’m helping you after you broke into my club, after you ditched me the other night, after I vouched for you with Alice?”

That summed it up pretty well, so Rosemary didn’t say anything.

“Have you had a tetanus shot recently?”

Rosemary nodded, peered down at her bloody leg, then looked away. “My parents have a farm. We keep current on tetanus.”

“Okay, good. You’ve got a puncture I’m going to flush out, but I won’t stitch this, either. Then there’s the question of the concussion. I don’t suppose you have anybody who can come get you, keep you awake?”

“No—I don’t know anybody here.”

“Right-o. I guess we’re going to be best buddies tonight.”

Rosemary opened her mouth to protest, to say she needed to get back to her hotel, but Luce shut her up with, “Unless you’d rather hang out with Alice?”