Элисон Скотч - The Song Remains the Same

He double-steps back to me, and I tilt my head and assess the oddities of the situation: the paparazzi, the party, and that Anderson, B-list newly turned A-list actor, is jumping to my defense in the midst of both.

“Nice to see you again, Anderson!” she shouts back.

“You know her?” I ask once he’s beside me.

“We have a history,” he says, offering nothing more, so I leave it be.

“Should I be concerned that I have ‘sources’ now?” I say.

“They save those for the most important people.” He smiles.

“Ha ha.” I smile in return.

“No, I’ve just been through this before—I mean, even before before. I figure if I can help the girl who saved my life…” He holds the door open and I squeeze my way inside. We both fall silent, surveying the landscape, a moment of peace before we’re swallowed up.

“Stay close,” I say finally. “Who knows who half these ghosts are and what they’ll conjure up.”

He grasps my elbow. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”

At first, this party seems like an ingenious idea. The new me agrees. The techno music is on just the right level—loud enough to give the energy a needed pulse, quiet enough so that I can still hear everyone’s cheers of encouragement, reintroductions, and the occasional awkward pause because they really don’t make a greeting card for your friend who defied death and lost—nearly literally—her mind.

Still though, it feels good, welcoming, almost heartwarming, to be here. Rory hands me a club soda after a gaggle of college friends wander off. I’d recognized their faces from my pictures: pressed together, holding spilling plastic cups of beer, in some fraternity basement— Golf Night! —our cheeks glistening with sweat, our bra straps askew under our tank tops. Tonight, they hug me and rub my back, and everyone takes out their phones to schedule a girls’ night, which is something we evidently used to do whenever we were all in the same place at the same time, which, Samantha tells me, wasn’t too often.

“Life got so busy,” she says, like this is something to feel guilty about. “You were always here, at the gallery; I’m usually in London or Hong Kong for work; the moms could never find a sitter.” I think she’s about to start crying. Jesus, please don’t start crying! What I would really like is if people could stop crying around me! But she glues herself together. “Let’s not do that again? Okay?” She reaches for my hand. “Let’s be better about it this time.”

So we pull out our phones and promise to be better about it this time. I already suspect that we won’t be. Old patterns, old dogs, new tricks. All of that. Until I catch myself slipping back into the former me. No, no, no. Things will be different, things must be different.

“I know I can’t remember everyone,” I say to Rory when she brings me the club soda. “But it’s nice to know I was this loved, that these people can all be my parachute.”

“Oh my god, have you been watching Oprah ? Because you’d never have said that before,” she says. If one can manage to simultaneously roll her eyes and make them bulge with surprise, Rory does so.

“Well, before, I could remember everyone.”

“No, but the part about being loved. The parachute.” She shakes her head, taking the high road, setting aside her default response of sarcastic derision. “Anyway, it’s nice to know, nice to hear.” She hugs me, and the scent in her hair reminds me of that memory: the one in my dream that was really a dream about nothing. Honeysuckle. She smells like honeysuckle. But it’s a splinter, a fleeting spark of imagination I conjured up from somewhere deep inside. No matter what Liv says. No one can verify it, and if no one can verify your memory, who knows if it ever really happened?

We’re interrupted by Jamie, who tugs me away by the arm into a corner near a skinny cylindrical sculpture that reminds me of a penis but that Rory assures me sells for nearly twenty grand. Behind it, Anderson is talking two inches too close to three women, all stark lines and black eyeliner and towering heels, whom I know somehow from the art world.

“ American Profiles, ” Jamie says, his skin flush clear down his neck. “They said yes!” He is glowing, beaming. If he were any more excited, he’d be levitating. “I just got the news. And their connection—he came through. At least partially.”

“My dad? You found him?” I have to lean up against the wall to steady myself.

“No, not quite. It’s not that easy.” He glances toward the crowd. “But the producer—she made a call. To your dad’s best friend. He’s here tonight. Or will be.”

“He’s coming here tonight?” My nerves flare.

“I thought this is what you wanted. She scrambled to make it happen.”

“No, no”—I wave a hand—“it is. I just…didn’t expect it. There are so many questions to be asked.”

“I know,” he starts, but then sees someone in the crowd beckoning. “I’ll circle back, don’t worry. I just want to grab this writer while I have her. Keep an eye out for him.” He’s sucked back into well-wishers, armed with their chardonnay and cheese cubes and cold purple grapes.

I stand there, frozen, keeping that eye out, until I see him. Well, until he sees me, really, since I wouldn’t spot him in the first place, and moves through the crowd toward me. He is older, likely my father’s age, but still handsome, with wavy, boyishly blond hair and wrinkles around his eyes that he’s grown into. He clutches me in too close a grasp for a man I’d never met, and after two claustrophobic seconds, I push my hands against his shoulders and politely wedge some air between us.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t remember you.” It comes out rudely, and I’m unsure if I’m embarrassed at my brusqueness or not. Would this sort of thing embarrass me? Being so trite, so forthcoming. The old me, probably not. No, that brusqueness was actually my defining characteristic.

He’s not offended, and instead, smiles widely.

“You’re still your father’s girl, I see. Blunt to the end. He’d admire that.”

“I’m glad,” I respond because it seems like the right thing to say.

“I’m Jasper Aarons,” he says. “Your dad’s oldest friend in the world.” He laughs. “And if you look at me, I really might be the oldest friend in the world.”

“Ah. I was told you might be here,” I say. “ American Profiles .” I spot my mom over Jasper’s left shoulder eyeing us carefully, looking like she’s trying not to stare but staring all the same. He turns and catches her glimpses and offers a sort of sophisticated half-wave, but she startles at him and scampers away.

“ American Profiles or not, it’s an honor. A privilege,” he says, glancing back at me.

I nod because now, this seems like the right thing for him to say.

“I have a lot of questions,” I stutter.

“And I’m happy to do my best to answer them.”

“How did I know you…before? From when I was a child?”

“You wouldn’t remember. I haven’t seen you in many, many years.” He stops and tries to pin it down. “Maybe since that summer that he left. Jesus .” He pales. “Could it have been that long?” He catches himself for a moment, lost in a place he doesn’t share. “Well, however long it’s been, when Nancy called—she’s a dear, very old friend who is now at American Profiles —well, I wanted to come down here tonight and tell you how much you meant to him. He’d be devastated to know that you couldn’t remember him, remember your childhood spent with him, so…even though I promised him I’d watch out for you, and I guess I failed at that, I wanted to come down and make sure that you knew.”