Content warning: Death/Afterlife
I meet him in the building’s lobby, which looks like just about any lobby in a three block radius. Marble, glass, gold. A misshapen bronze of some Greek legend. A doorman who smiles at him and not at me.
I try not to stare at him as we wait for the elevator, but on the way up he smiles at me a little knowing. It’s a night like any other, he says. And here, there are so many nights left.
The apartment is so crowded that the party is spilling out into the hall. He disappears almost immediately to find us drinks, and I do my best not to beg him to stay. It didn’t work to beg the first time he left, and maybe this way I could get used to him being gone.
On the balcony, three girls in gowns have climbed up onto the railing, their feet bare, their arms interlinked, laughing in that whole-bodied way, screaming every time their balance tips. We’re on the thirty-eighth floor. I turn away.
He’s nowhere to be seen, but I find a spot by the wall, uncomfortably aware that people are pausing in their conversation to look at me. I’m not supposed to be here, and I’ve paid a dear price. Just for tonight, he said.
Do I recognize anyone else in the room? I don’t know if that’s a question I want answered.
A woman hands me a glass that’s so dewy with condensation that it almost slips out of my grasp. It’s filled with a thick honeyed oily liquid.
Our guest of honor, she says. How does it feel to be the only living person here?
I take a sip. She watches me drink with something approaching envy. The honey sticks to the back of my throat as it goes down, and for a second all the colors in the room go sharp.
It’s all right, I say. This is some party. Almost worth dying for.
She laughs and watches the crowd with me. Two men sit at the piano, their arms crossing and uncrossing in a duet of some Joplin rag, a glass of honey balanced precariously on one’s knee that they both take sips from. Around them, in a frenzy of limbs and skirts and tailcoats, the dead dance.
Who did you come here with, she asks.
My husband, I tell her.
She watches in silence as I finish the drink. When her mouth moves, light comes pouring out, and I blink away the afterimages one by one by one.
Sorry, what did you say?
Oh you poor thing, she says, and she leans forward to speak into my ear.
Go after him, she says. You must go after him. The dead don’t know how to return.
She takes the empty glass from me, and pushes me into the dancing bodies. Immediately, there are hands pulling me in, the ragtime rising. I can hear my heart beating loudly and I know the rest of them can too. I keep going. I call his name. A hand circles my throat. I feel someone bite my jaw. I push my way out.
The next room is a narrow hallway that’s become a thicket of houseplants. They must have been moved in here to make room for the dancing. Martini glasses hang from the ficus.
I’m losing my strength. I keep going.
I pass two rooms, their doors open. I call his name again, and he doesn’t answer, so I don’t look in. The dead who are dancing still remember how to be alive. The dead in these rooms do not.
I find him, finally, in the kitchen. He looks surprised to see me.
Did you forget I was here, I ask.
It’s not always easy, he says, to remember.
He catches my hand in his, and the world should end there, but it doesn’t. He takes me to the next room. It looks like it hasn’t been furnished yet; there’s nothing except tall bare windows, and cushions on the ground. We sit down and watch the city. Even though I will have to return to it after this night is gone, it doesn’t seem real from up here.
Who lives here when the party ends, I ask.
He shrugs. There are so many apartments in this city where no one really lives, he says.
When he was alive, we thought about moving to this apartment. We came to see it together, when it was empty and new. Now, someone else has their name on the lease. Now, it belongs to the dead.
What do you do during these parties, I ask.
I dance sometimes, he answers. Mostly I just walk from room to room and listen to the music get quieter.
There’s another room after this one. I see him look at it longingly every now and then, over my shoulder. He wants to walk into that other room, and I know I can’t stop him.
I can still hear the music, if I strain my ears.
One more room, I think. One more room, and then I’ll return to the music.
He pulls me to my feet. We leave the view of the city behind.