Page 45 of White Lights
Now whatever—whoever—crashed out there, too.
She doesn’t want to go inside her suite, but where else will she go?
She hears Simon’s violin playing a Beethoven song she recognizes. Opus 132 in A-minor, one of the few CDs her mother owned and used to play for Dez and Mo in the car as kids when they were fighting.
Dez has held it mostly together today, hour after humiliating hour, but she can’t do it anymore. She turns the doorknob, finds it open, and staggers inside.
She sees only Simon’s feet, propped up on the back of their white couch.
“How’s your foxy mentor?” he calls, putting down his violin.
“Simon—”
When Dez can’t make herself say more, Simon’s head pops up from the couch. At the sight of her, he springs up off the couch. “Hey. You good?”
“No,” she whispers.
Simon takes Dez by the elbow and guides her to the couch.
“You look like you’re about to drop,” he says.
Dez does, onto the couch.
“Um.” Simon sounds nervous. “This calls for … what? What do we need?” She hears him moving toward the kitchenette, talking to himself as he riffles through the few cupboards. “We have no food, so my notorious Nachos and Sympathy are out. But we do have gin. Can you work with gin, Dez?”
Dez can’t answer. She’s thinking about the thing that fell out of the sky. Simon returns and sits down next to her holding two shot glasses and a bottle.
“We could also …” he says, tossing his head. “My mother used to slap me when I’d get like this after church. Sometimes it helped.”
“Gin,” she says into the couch.
She hears him pour the shots. She sits up and forces herself to face her roommate, to look him in the eyes. They hardly know each other.
“Simon?” Dez brings her knees to her chest. “Something extremely fucked up just happened.”
“I gathered from the extremely fucked-up PA announcement,” he says, but his tone is less confident, less jokey. “And Yael said they’recanceling our introduction to the Vault tonight. Do you know what it’s about?”
“Where’s Yael?” Dez asks. She’d rather only tell the story once.
“She just stepped out,” Simon says.
Yael’s bedroom door swings open, and the woman bounds into the common room, smoothing a hand over her high bun.
Her roommate eyes the gin and clucks her tongue. “You assholes started without me?”
“Didn’t you just leave?” Simon asks Yael, pointing, confused, at the front door.
“Yeah, well, I’m back.” Yael grabs a shot glass, downs its contents, gags, and flops onto the white leather chair across from them.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” Simon says. “Cuz Dez just got here … so when did you—”
Yael shrugs and looks annoyed. “Whatever, you were probably jerking off, creep.”
Simon’s gaze travels to Yael’s open bedroom door. Dez follows his eyes, where a cold grip of air reaches toward them. Dez notices Yael’s thick purple drapes swaying in the evening breeze. Who leaves their window open in a blizzard?
“Don’t worry about it,” Yael says, addressing them both. She leans forward in the chair and clasps her hands. “Look, I have some difficult news.”
“I do too,” Dez says, sitting up.
