Элисон Скотч: The Song Remains the Same

Someone clears his throat in the doorway, and I float my eyes open, then shift them lower, to see a guy with a mess of blond-brown hair, the type you can gel into a just-ever-so-slight hipster Mohawk, in a wheelchair sitting in wait. He is wan and shrunken, but his cheekbones are perfect, the kind of facial structure you double-take on the street, and despite everything, I feel myself flush at his handsomeness, at the intensity of his stare.

“Excuse me, Nell, can I come in for a second?”

I nod, confused. A nurse wheels him to my bedside.

“It’s okay, Alicia, I can take it from here.”

“Press the call button when you’re ready for me,” she says over her shoulder on her way out, almost like she’s flirting with him. I squint. Why would she be flirting with him?

“I’ve heard that you probably won’t remember me,” he says.

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“That’s okay, it doesn’t matter.” He waves a hand, and I notice a flash of a tattoo on his inner wrist, a surprise against his skinny frame in a dishwater-colored hospital gown, folded into a wheelchair. “But I asked to see you when you woke up. It feels impossible that it’s been a week since…everything.” His voice breaks, and he swallows, then sews himself back up. “My name is Anderson Carroll, and even though you don’t remember me, you saved my life.”

“I’m sorry? I did?” I feel my forehead wrinkle, scanning my brain, but it feels like a muscle that’s been unused for too long, flaccid, impotent.

“We were sitting next to each other on the plane,” he continues. “I’d…well, I’d probably had one too many vodka tonics—I sometimes tend to do that while flying—and I’d zoned out for a few minutes. You woke me up when things starting going wrong, snapped me into my seat belt, told me to put my head down, curl up to steel myself against what was coming.” His words catch on themselves, his nose visibly pinching. “Look, I don’t know how we’re here, why we were the ones who made it. But I do know that I owe my life to you—I would have been tossed ten miles from that plane if you hadn’t strapped me in, had the clear sense to keep me calm.”

I stare at him for a beat and replay his words, my concentration lagging. I decide that I’d heard him right—that I’d saved him, that I’d been someone’s life vest, that in the horror of this situation, I’d come out of it a hero.

“You’re welcome.” I suck on the gash on my upper lip, trying to put the pieces back together. “How’d I do that? Keep you calm.” A small rush swells inside of me, that yes, I was that woman, that go-to gal-about-town, that I was the one who kept people calm ! Of course I was. Of course I was. I already knew myself, even when I didn’t know anything else to know.

“Just talking to me, holding my hand. You told me to focus on something other than what was happening, so we started coming up with our favorite songs, our favorite lyrics…it was chaos, but…” He stops. “I mean, obviously, it was chaos, people screaming, lights flashing, smoke pouring in, and well, I don’t know how you did it exactly, but you made me not lose my mind during it all.”

“Who did I say?” I ask.

“Sorry?”

“My favorite band. Who did I say?”

“Oh.” He angles his head to think. “I don’t know, we were just naming names, throwing stuff out to keep going. To be honest, I can’t even remember a lot of specifics.”

“To be honest, I can’t, either,” I joke, unsure if I’m joking at all.

“If it matters,” he says, “you’re famous.”

He flips over a People magazine in his lap. There we are: him—when he was ripe and alive, healthy, perfect, the kind you do do a double take on the street—with his arm linked around the waist of some svelte model-looking type emerging from a nightclub; me, in a navy cardigan and pearl stud earrings, looking very much like I’ve never stepped foot in a nightclub in the first place, looking nothing like the girl-about-town. No, no, no. This can’t be me. I am the hero, the go-to gal.

“Survivor Stories!” the headline screams in bold print.

“Probably not the best shot.” He shrugs, as if he’s responsible for the way my mouth curls under like I’ve just bitten into a sour orange. “I kind of hate it—I think they pulled it from a website.”

“I look like I’ve never had fun for a second in my life.”

Anderson laughs, and I laugh, too, because, what the hell, I don’t really get the joke, but why not?

“What?” he says. “No, I meant me. But regardless, I’m indebted. Truly. For the rest of my life, whatever you need, I’ve got your back.” Somewhere in the base of my neck, a headache begins to spin up through me. I wince, and he detects it.

He starts to reach for the call button.

“So how badly are you banged up?” I say, stopping him, refusing to relent to the pain for now. Part of me is exhausted, but the other part of me is grateful for his easy company, that he’s not hovering, close to a breakdown at any moment like my mother or my husband.

“Fractured some vertebrae,” he says. “Any worse, and I’d have been in this thing for life.” His arms flop around the wheelchair.

“So, technically, we’re lucky.”

“Technically,” he says. “Though rehab for the foreseeable future may be construed as less than that. I was supposed to be on a set, but now, it’s Des Moines until fall.”

“A set?” The wires connect from the news report. The moments of short-term cognitive clarity are unpredictable, coming and going at random. “Ah, yes. That’s right—you’re an actor?”

“I am,” he says.

“Like, big-time actor or a guy who says he’s an actor and actually waits tables?”

He laughs. “I was the worst waiter you’d ever seen, but yeah, I bussed my fair share for a few years. But now”—he clears his throat, suddenly ever-so-slightly self-conscious—“I guess I’ve earned my keep. Successfully retired my tip jar.” He shrugs. “A big TV show, some film stuff.” He smiles with his perfect teeth, and I can see it then: the movie star.

“Did I recognize you on the plane?”

“Maybe.” He shrugs. “We didn’t talk about it, and then, you know, I passed out.” I try to imagine it: the sour-faced me from that People cover chatting him up in first class. I can’t conjure it up, so I replace it with the fabulous me chatting him up in first class. Yes, that seems better .

I sigh. “I suppose I’ll be here for a while, too,” I say, “though I don’t think I have anywhere as glamorous as a movie set to be.”

“Don’t sell yourself short—you were on your way to meet with some new hot artist.” He shakes his head. “Again, can’t remember her name: Harmony, Faith something, maybe? Something hippie like that.”

My mother had hinted at something similar—the art gallery. I rattle it around in my brain: it seems reasonable enough. Not repellent, not a terrible fit, not something that the fabulous me couldn’t be doing to take the world on by storm.

“I promised you I’d come in and buy something the next time I was in New York,” Anderson says.

“A genuine promise or a promise by way of flirting?” I ask, and he bows his head faux bashfully and smiles. He’s an easy read already. I smile in return. “I’m married.”

He shrugs. “It sounded complicated.”

Complicated? I’m sorry, I don’t remember!

“Besides,” I say, “aren’t you, like, twenty-two?”

“Twenty-eight. I play young.” He exhales. “Listen, you look tired. Let me get out of your hair. I just wanted to come by and thank you as soon as I could.”