Marisha Pessl - Night Film

“After that …” He smiled. ”Something really good.”

We ordered shots of Patrón and danced and reloaded the jukebox — my old man vintage music, as Nora called it, The Doors, Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’,” and Elvis Costello’s “Beyond Belief ” interspersed with Hopper’s hip selections like Beach House’s “Real Love” and M83’s “Skin of the Night.”

At every moment, I felt Ashley was with us, the invisible fourth member of our little party. I sensed we were all acutely aware of her, though we didn’t need to mention her by name. It was obvious Nora and Hopper had resolved her life and death in their heads. They believed in her without question, without doubt. She’d made the world all right for them, even better. They still believed the myth, I reasoned, the myth of the devil’s curse. They were still living in an enchanted world — Ashley, not struck with cancer, but a wild avenging angel, and Cordova, not catatonic in a nursing home, but an evil king who’d fled to the unknown. For the rest of their lives, they’d have this magical reality to turn to when their car keys inexplicably moved across the room, when they read stories about children who went missing without a trace, when someone broke their heart for no good reason.

But of course, they’d think. It’s the magic.

It felt as if we’d been to war together. Deep in a jungle, alone, I had relied on them, these strangers. They’d held me up in ways only people could. When it was over, an ending that never felt like an ending, only an exhausted draw, we went our separate ways. But we were bonded forever by the history of it, the simple fact they’d seen the raw side of me and me of them, a side no one, not even closest friends or family had ever seen before, or probably ever would.

And in between the laughter and the jokes, the music, a long stretch of silence fell over us. We were sitting side by side on a wooden bench underneath a dartboard and a Coors Light neon sign. I saw the moment for what it was — the chance to tell them the truth.

I stared at Hopper’s profile, his head tipped way back against the wall, the gold strands of Nora’s hair stuck to her flushed cheek, the words shouting in my head.

You can’t imagine what she hid from us. It was the ultimate triumph of life over death — never to give in to her illness, never to stop living.

It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps Ashley had not been so delusional in the last days of her life, a truth Inez Gallo had been so eager that I accept. Maybe she, displaying that searing intuition for people and a heart not even Gallo could take away from her — maybe she’d somehow intended this moment. Perhaps she’d planned with her death, the three of us would find each other. It was why she chose the warehouse. She knew I’d go there looking for clues — and encounter Hopper who’d be wondering about the return address on the envelope. And why else would she leave Nora her coat?

I realized the moment had drifted away. Hopper rolled off the bench, shuffling across the bar to put another song on the jukebox, which had gone silent, and Nora went off in search of the bathroom.

I remained where I was. That had to be it.

I’d tell them both the truth one day. But now, tonight, they could keep their myth.

Hours later, the bar was closing, turning up glaring lights, erasing the mirage of forever. It was time to go. I was bombed. Outside, on the sidewalk, I embraced the two of them, announcing to the empty city — New York City finally a little drowsy and at a loss for words — they were two of the best people I’d ever met.

“We’re family!” I shouted at the walk-ups, my voice half swallowed by the deserted street.

“We heard ya, Aretha,” said Hopper.

“But we are, ” Nora said. “We always will be.”

“With you two in it?” I went on. “This world has nothing to worry about! You hear me?” Nora, giggling, put her arm around me, trying to pry me off the telephone pole I was hugging like Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain.

“You’re wasted,” she said.

“Of course I’m wasted.”

“It’s time to go home.”

“Woodward never goes home.”

Filing down the sidewalk, we fell silent, knowing it was coming within minutes, our parting, knowing we might not see each other for a long time.

We hailed a cab. That’s what you did in New York at the close of a night, cramming together into your filthy yellow stagecoach with the faceless chauffeur, who delivered you, one by one, relatively unscathed, to your quiet street. The night would be filed away somewhere, one day brought out and dusted off, remembered as one of the best moments. We piled in, Nora in the middle, her now-exhausted roses slung over her knees. Hopper was crashing on a friend’s couch on Delancey Street.

“Right here,” he said to the driver, tapping the glass.

The cab pulled over, and he turned to me, extending his hand.

“Keep looking for the mermaids,” he told me in a hoarse voice. He lowered his head so I wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes. “Keep fighting for them.”

I nodded and hugged him as hard as I could. He then kissed Nora gently on her forehead and climbed out. He didn’t immediately go inside, but stood on the sidewalk watching us drive away, a dark figure drenched in orange streetlight. Nora and I watched out the back windshield — the moving picture we had to keep our eyes on, reluctant to blink or breathe, as it’d become only a memory in seconds.

He held up his left hand to us, a wave and a salute. And the taxi rounded the corner.

“Now we’re heading to Stuyvesant Street where it intersects East Tenth,” I told the driver. “Close to Saint Marks.”

Nora turned to me, eyes wide.

“You told me where you live,” I said.

“I didn’t. I purposefully didn’t. ”

“But you did, Bernstein. You’re getting absentminded in your old age.”

She huffed, crossing her arms. “You spied on me.”

“Nope.”

“You did. I can tell.”

“Please. I have better things to do with my time than worry about Bernsteins.”

She scowled, but when the taxi pulled over in front of the brownstone she didn’t move, only stared ahead.

“You won’t forget me?” she whispered.

“It’d be physically impossible.”

“You promise?”

“You should really think about coming with a warning Do-Not-Remove-This-Tag. You’ll fall for her against your will, like it or not.”

“You’ll be all right ?”

She turned to me, really asking it, worried.

“Of course. And so will you.”

She nodded, as if trying to convince herself, and then suddenly she smiled as if thinking of an old joke I’d made, one she was finding funny only now. She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. And then, as if some spell were about to break, she streaked out of the cab, door slamming, up the stoop with her leaden purse and arms full of roses.

She unlocked the door and stepped inside. But then, she slowly turned back, her hair gilded by some hidden light behind her.

She smiled one last time. The door closed and the street went still.

“That’s it,” I whispered, more to myself than the cabdriver. I turned around, sitting back against the seat, pale yellow light washing over me as we pulled away.

It was a fluke. But then, life is.

It was a few days after my night out with Hopper and Nora, when I’d just started recovering from my hangover. I was cleaning my office. I let Septimus out of his cage, so he might fly around for a little exercise. I yanked the leather couch away from the wall and noticed, wedged along the floor, the three black-and-white reversing candles Cleo had given us.