Emily St. John Mandel - Last Night in Montreal

Eli stood still, and the music rose around him. Michaela appeared at his side and took his hand. He followed her like a child as she forced her way through the crowd, speaking over her shoulder. The music was too loud and he couldn’t hear what she was saying; still, he followed her through the half-hidden door beside the DJ’s booth. Her hand was damp with sweat. On the other side of the door a bouncer sat reading on the staircase landing, leaning back in a rickety-looking wooden chair under an exposed light-bulb that shivered with every beat; he glanced up disinterestedly from Tropique du Cancer and nodded them down the stairs. The music grew quieter as they descended, until at the foot of the stairs it had become pure vibration, sensed rather than heard, like a complicated heartbeat coming from above. The Club Electrolite basement was a cramped, labyrinthine space, all cheap wooden doors and plywood walls. Wires brushed against him from the ceiling. He trailed after her, she called Lilia’s name, she flung open one of the doors and pulled him into an empty dressing room.

“Well?” Eli said.

Michaela dropped his hand, drew a deep breath, and swore softly. She sat down at a makeup counter, stared at herself in the mirror for a second, and then a sweep of her arm sent the makeup to the floor in a storm of silver tubes and tiny jars that broke open and spilled out bright powders and iridescent goo. Altogether, it was a beautiful mess. He stood leaning against the doorframe watching her while she covered her face with both hands and sat very still for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally. She blinked a few times, caught sight of her red-eyed reflection in the mirror and winced, cast around in the mess on the floor for a tissue. When she found one she dabbed at the mascara streaks on her face, gazing steadily into her own eyes in the mirror. “It’s just that I expected her to be here.”

He cleared his throat, but she didn’t look at him.

“Where is she?”

“She was here a half hour ago. We had a fight, but I told her not to leave.”

“Why did you bring me here? Are you a friend of hers?”

She made a brittle sound that could have been a laugh. “I wouldn’t say that friend is exactly the word, really.” Her eyes were glassy and bloodshot in the mirror. “I don’t think she likes me very much.”

“That page from the Bible,” he said, “the Twenty-second Psalm with her handwriting on it. Where did that come from?”

“She wrote that when she was seven or eight,” said Michaela, “in a hotel room somewhere in the States. I wish to remain vanishing. I always liked that line.”

“But why did you have it?”

“Because my father had it. He was the detective on the case.”

“I don’t understand. .”

“Well, it’s complicated.” She was staring fixedly at her reflection in the mirror; with shaking hands, she began reapplying eyeliner. “He was the detective on the case, and I read all his notes.”

“Can you just tell me where Lilia is, and I’ll get out of here?”

“She’ll come back to me,” she said, ignoring the question. “I’m the only one who knows her story. I’m her only witness.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Listen,” she said, “I have to go back onstage.”

“Can you at least tell me why I had to raise up that bloody white dish towel? I felt like an idiot.”

“How else was I supposed to see you in the crowd? The black lights pick up everything white. I didn’t think I’d run into you in the old city this afternoon.” Someone pounded briefly on the door of her dressing room. “I have to go back up,” she said. “Can you meet me somewhere later?”

“Anywhere,” he said.

She arrived at the coffee shop on Boulevard St.-Laurent just after two A.M., shivering her way out of a cab and sinking into a chair across the table from him. She said she was exhausted. She closed her eyes, and he took the opportunity to study her up close. She had a small faint scar on her forehead, imperfectly camouflaged with makeup. She was beautiful in a way that suggested very little time for beauty left ahead of her; there was a hardness and an exhaustion already settling over her face. Eli leaned forward across the table, close enough to smell the cigarette smoke in her hair.

“It’s two in the morning,” he said softly, “I’ve been here for days and I don’t speak the language, I just want to talk to Lilia and make sure she’s all right, I am very tired, and I need you to be straight with me. Can you tell me where she is?”

She opened her eyes. “How long did it take you to get here?”

“Thirteen hours.”

“Jesus. Did you walk?”

“I took the train. Could you tell me where she is?”

“I’ve never been to Brooklyn,” she said after some time had passed. She was quiet for a few seconds, staring out the window. “She told you she was abducted?”

“As a child. Yes.”

“You know what’s amazing? She doesn’t know why she was abducted. Only that she was. It’s incredible, what the mind can block. She wrote to me from New York City a few weeks ago.”

“She wrote you?”

“Maybe a month ago. I told her I wouldn’t tell her anything unless she came here.”

“You forced her to come here. Do you have any idea—”

“No,” Michaela said, “I suggested that she come here. Don’t raise your voice, or I will walk out of here and you will never see her again. She came here all by herself.”

He leaned back in his chair, looking out the window. The city had reached the stage of night when the taxicabs were appearing, ferrying the worn-out glittering nightlife home from the clubs.

“I don’t understand why she had to come here,” he said finally. “Whatever it is she wanted to know, couldn’t you have told her over the phone?”

“I wanted to meet her. I’d known about her half my life. But listen, I brought you here for a reason. I have to ask you something, and I want you to answer me honestly. There’s an argument that I was having with her, very recently.”

“How recently?”

“A few hours ago, just before I saw you on the dance floor. We were talking about a car accident. Did she ever speak to you about a car accident?”

“What?”

“An accident, ” she repeated patiently, “involving a car, that would have occurred when she’d just turned sixteen. Maybe two or three days after her sixteenth birthday. Because it’s absolutely imperative that you tell me if she did, if she told you anything about it, if you know anything, anything at all. I have to know.” Michaela clasped her hands on the tabletop, and he saw that her knuckles were red from the cold.

“What could a car accident that happened when she was sixteen possibly have to do with you?”

She just looked at him.

“No,” Eli said. “She didn’t tell me anything about that. I don’t know anything about a car accident.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, I suppose that’s your choice. Listen, I’m tired, and I want to get out of here. Can you tell me where she is?”

“I read my father’s case notes,” Michaela said. “My father was, well, let’s say my father was a little obsessed. The ironic thing is, I know everything about her life except the one thing that I really want to know. I even know the things she doesn’t.”

“I’m not following you. How could you know things about her life that she doesn’t?”

“I know why she has those scars on her arms, for instance. Do you?”

“No,” Eli said. “I never asked.”

“Even if you’d asked,” she said, “Lilia couldn’t have told you.”

“She doesn’t know?”