Back in college, I’d told Ezra that I didn’t know much popular music, a consequence of a childhood spent listening only to my local library’s outdated cassette tapes, my mother’s gospel music, and my bus driver’s chosen radio station. In response, Ezra gave me homework. For an entire semester, I was to stop by his house after work to study party jams. I memorized lyrics to songs by artists ranging from Queen to Lil’ Kim, learned that I was meant to belt Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” with feeling but shout Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” tonelessly and at the top of my lungs. Perfection was not required, but general intelligibility was, and so Ezra ended all of his lessons with a practicum by blasting the songs through his state-of-the-art speaker system and stopping the music right before the chorus hit. Neither of us could sing, and neither of us could really dance either, but at the end of the night we would invariably try, serenading each other with mostly correct renditions of the songs we’d studied while flailing and spinning all over his kitchen.
Ezra had changed so much since then, but none of his trainers had succeeded in teaching him rhythm. (“I was never meant to be a triple threat,” he once joked.) When his poorly executed two-step became an even worse body roll, I had to cover my mouth to hold back a guffaw.
“If all your fans realized this is what you looked like dancing, they would get the ick immediately,” I said.
“No, they wouldn’t,” Ezra said, transitioning to a much more temperate fist pump. “They’d probably find it endearing, same as you.”
I did find it endearing. I found the way he tilted his head back to belt out the chorus, and how he threw an arm around Boris’s shoulders as they jumped to “Shout,” even more so. We danced our way through “Hey Ya,” then twirled to “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” kicked our feet to Pharrell’s “Happy,” and I realized how much I’d missed this. Missed him. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cut loose and had fun, but I could almost guarantee it had been a night like this, with Ezra. He’d always been good for me like that, capable of cracking me open and drawing me out. I’d grown up too early, Ezra too late, and we pulled each other toward a comfortable middle.
I wished Mal was here too. He didn’t like crowds the way Ezra did, but he’d probably enjoy the food, the clothes, the spectacle. I could imagine him staring up at the ornate tiled ceiling, making note of details I didn’t notice, like the trim on the tablecloths or the interesting husk in the flamingo woman’s voice. Maybe I’d be able to draw him out too, drag him to the dance floor. When the band transitioned to a slow song, like they did now, with a loud “All my couples, get out on the floor,” he would probably pull me close, sway with me, tell me how beautiful I looked and what he planned to do about it when we got home.
But he wasn’t here, and so when the lead singer stepped close to the mic, crooning out the first lines of Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable,” I made for our table.
“I’m getting water,” I told Ezra. I’d left my clutch hanging off the back of my chair, and I popped it open, fishing out my phone to check in on my boyfriend.
In the hour or so I’d spent cutting up on the dance floor, my phone had blown up. I had some messages from the usual suspects: Mal informing me that Dahlia had posted a picture of mein her story and requesting to talk afterward (“You look incredible,” he said. “Have fun, try not to catch a case, and call me tomorrow, please?”), Dahlia telling me something very similar but with ten more fire emojis, and one text from Renata, sent after she left the stage, insisting that she had intended to find me tonight but had been pulled into an urgent call by Rudy.
More peculiar, however, were the five missed calls from Denise.
“What’s up?” Ezra asked. I hadn’t realized that he’d followed me. He drained a glass of water in one gulp, shaking a lock of damp hair off his forehead.
“My agent is desperately trying to reach me,” I said evenly, though I felt like I’d just stepped through a trapdoor. “Which is weird, because it’s almost 11:00p.m. on a Saturday.”
“That is weird,” Ezra echoed. He knew better than anyone that a late-night call from your representation hardly constituted good news; the last time he’d gotten one, it was to inform him that one of his exes was threatening to leak his nudes.
“I’ll be back,” I said, throwing my clutch under my arm and hightailing it for the exit. The music reverberated through my body, pounding in my head alongside my heart. Had Denise finally gotten tired of me? Had her Saturday evening nightcap given her the courage to drop me, her most elusive client? I was stupid to have not gotten a clinical job. The influencer life was inconsistent even for those who were fully committed, and I clearly was not, and I had always known that when it came to money, I couldn’t afford to take risks. My savings would tide me over for two months, maybe three, if I budgeted appropriately, and I could always find a different agent, reach for my own contacts—
I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t hear Ezra’s footsteps behind me.
“You’re spiraling, Jo,” he said, turning me by my shoulders to face him. He pulled me into an alcove under the grand stairwell, tucking me out of sight. “We don’t know what’s happening yet, and whatever it is, we’ll manage it. Easy. Breathe.”
I followed his direction, taking a deep breath in, blowing it out.
“Okay, okay,” I managed, shivering. It didn’t matter how many times Ezra watched me lose my cool; I always felt naked afterward, like a bird with its feathers plucked out. “I... should call her back. You should get back in there. Have fun.”
“And leave you out here to have the world’s most glamorous panic attack?” Ezra teased. “No way. I’m staying right here.”
I blew out a huff of air. “Fine,” I said.
And then I called Denise back.
“I’m so sorry, Jo,” Denise said. “I was just looking over my inbox, and I missed it. I’ll be more diligent in the future. Again, I’m so sorry—”
“It’s okay, Denise,” I said numbly. I stared down at the email she’d forwarded me, five days after she’d received it. I heard her apologies echoing as though from a distance, like she was shouting at me from a faraway shore instead of through my speakerphone. I didn’t even notice when she hung up, too hypnotized by the email I was reading on my screen.
Dear Ms.Denise Gardner,
I apologize for multiple emails. I received your contact from Dr.Josephine Boateng’s website. It is imperative that we reach her for urgent matters regarding her mother, Ms.Prudence Boateng, who is currently admitted to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Featherstone General Hospital. Please have her call me back at my personal cell phone, listed below, or provide an alternate form of contact. Please be advised that I am on night shifts and will be available from 7pm to 9am daily.
Best,
Sahar Hosseini, MD
I read the email, reread it, tried to internalize what I’d read, failed to compute.
“Fuck,” Ezra said, vocalizing my thoughts.
“There you two are!” a musical voice rang out. “And together again! I take it this means that you’ve made up. Thank god, I was starting to get worried—”
