I tell myself: I’m tired…but I still have things I need to do.
I tell myself: I’m sad…but I still have things I need to do.
I look around the apartment—everything is in order. I put fresh napkins and forks out on the dining room table. I make sure the sugar bowl and the artificial sweeteners are represented. I make sure the coffee has brewed. I move it onto a cart that Czarina has designated to be used for the coffee service.
It’s all set. And then I think of one more thing. One more touch. Another factor for the grand finale.
Delicately, I take Czarina’s champagne flutes from the glass shelf on which they usually perch. Each flute is as thin as paper and as clear as air. I cannot hold one without feeling nervous—and that’s precisely why I am taking them down now.
If there’s no way to stop being nervous, I have to learn to be okay with being nervous.
I’m still careful—each flute gets its own passage. When I’m done, they make it look like a chandelier has been spread across the table.
It feels right, and I take some satisfaction from that.
Part of me wants to leave it like this. Without anyone else around, symmetry can be achieved. Under these conditions, nervousness can dissipate. It can be just me and my well-dressed table. Me and my—
Me inside my—
Fortress.
No, I tell myself.
Look for the door.
Find it unlocked.
I step across the hall, and enter Mr. Bergman’s apartment. In the dim light, I can see Parker and Ilsa tangled in a tango. Li is knitting, but her eyes are decidedly on the dance. KK is going through Mr. Bergman’s drawers. Frederyk and Caspian are thumbing through a book of Fran Lebowitz essays that Mr. Bergman left behind. Johan is the only one who turns to me when I come in. He smiles, shifts in his seat. Making room.
“There’s coffee and petit fours and champagne for a toast,” I announce. “If anyone is interested, please return to our table. The corks will be popped in five minutes.”
I turn around and leave before I can get any response. I head straight back to Czarina’s, and her kitchen.
For about a minute, the music goes on next door, but then it stops. I hear them all come back. Most head straight to the dining room. I try not to worry about the champagne flutes as they take their seats.
“Do you need any help?” Parker pops his head in and asks.
“I need so much help,” I answer, smiling.
He comes all the way in.
“Sorry we absconded,” he says. “I was going to get you, but figured you and Jason might be stuck somewhere in the past. How’d it go?”
“The past has been relinquished. The future is being reached for.”
Parker raises an eyebrow. “That so?”
I nod.
“You up to something?”
“Yes, but I’m not entirely sure what it is yet,” I tell him. “How about you? You and Ilsa dance partners again?”
He laughs. “I think we’re good to tango, but not sure I’d say we’re gonna be partners again. To quote a late great, I wanna dance with somebody who loves me. And I have a sense that I’m not her baby tonight. Which is as it should be, I think. Best-case scenario is that it’s less of a mess than it was before—and that’s what you were going for, right?”
“I guess?”
Parker offers me a level glance. “Look, when it all comes down to it, I think you took the breakup worse than I did. Maybe worse than Ilsa did. I don’t know. I’m not saying it was the cause of you being so low, but it definitely happened during your blue period. And because me and your sister were so busy hating each other, I think that—I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe she and I could have helped you more if we’d teamed up for it. She and I apart didn’t help you at all. And I know we never talk about it, and I’m not saying we have to talk about it right now—but being back here and all, it makes me think about that.”
“My blue period,” I say. I’ve never heard anyone refer to it like this before. It’s not something we ever talk about.
“Yeah.”
I can’t get off of it. I need to know more. I ask, “What do you know about my blue period?”
Parker’s proceeding with caution, but still, he’s proceeding. “I think both Ilsa and I know more than you think we know, Sam. But we never knew how to bring it up. We knew you hurt yourself, but…we were taking your lead when it came to talking about it. We thought if you were keeping something a secret, it wasn’t our right to force it out of you. At first, I figured you were talking to her about it, and I’d guess she thought you were talking to me about it. Since we weren’t talking to each other, it wasn’t like we could compare notes. Although now I wish we’d gotten over our bullshit to at least check in. We kinda fell down on the job, didn’t we?”
It’s like suddenly I have to rewrite the past year of my life. I thought Czarina was the only person who knew. She was the one who took me to get help. She was the one who lied and said we’d gone on a spontaneous jaunt to London—with some spontaneous Manhattan “shopping trips” away from the apartment after that.
I genuinely thought everyone had believed that.
Especially Ilsa.
A chant springs up from the dining room: “CHAMPAGNE! CHAM-PAGNE! CHAM-PAGNE!”
“I need to get out of here,” I tell my best friend, who doesn’t really know me as much as I should have let him.
“If you need to bolt, I can bring in the bottles,” he volunteers.
I shake my head. “No, not right this moment. But
