line: “HOT BUSHWICK JAMZ.” I opened it and found twelve .mp3s tacked onto a quick hello—oh god, it was a playlist, from back before songs streamed through the air, when we bought music piecemeal (or ripped it off LimeWire) and uploaded it into devices that didn’t yet intuit what we’d want to hear based on our constantly fine-tuned preferences. I popped in earbuds and dragged the files into my toolbar’s long-dormant iTunes player: first, a lush synth-heavy number with braided, building chords. I hit next: a dramatic eighties-style hit, something appropriate for the climax of a John Hughes movie.
I skipped ahead to a stripped-down head-bobber with reverb-y guitars and droning male voices. I could picture them, onstage just inches from Edie and me in a semilegal venue: a troupe of skinny guys in plaid shirts or big trench coats, nodding their heads with their hair shaken over their faces. I read over the band names and smiled—lots of woodland creatures, a few colors. None of them had gone on to greatness, which probably would’ve made Edie and me turn on them anyway.
We’d loved going to shows together. One night I had turned to Edie from the packed audience of a concert, what felt like the millionth, and the whole crowd was so excited and the band onstage was killing it and Edie and I had just locked eyes, happiness rushing up through me like froth. She’d reached out and squeezed my arm with both hands, and for one second, life was perfect.
Edie had that air of never seeming to care what anyone thought of her, which of course made everyone desperate for her approval. She spoke lazily, softly, and people leaned in to listen. She smiled and raised an eyebrow when you said something dumb, a look that hurt like a hot iron. And when she laughed, when you got it right and she tipped her head back to guffaw…
I hit forward again and got an intense drum intro, then a hyperpulsing bassline: same venue, different punk kids onstage sweating and flailing while the crowd slammed into itself. I pictured us playing the song on Edie’s computer speakers, shaking our hips as we applied eyeliner and got ready for a night out in Williamsburg. The music felt ageless now; it was angry but somehow defiantly joyful, a middle finger to the sky.
As the song pummeled into my headphones, I searched by date and found the last email Edie ever sent me. It was a group email from our mutual friend about her coworker’s show at Spike Hill that Friday (the Friday); Edie had replied-all to say that she was probably going to stay in. No other emails from her that week, which made sense given our big blowup the weekend before.
I decided to work the other way, beginning with the oldest emails, from January. We volleyed back and forth almost daily, mundane emails peppered with our own affected shorthand: “see you on fridaze” and “let’s get some burr” and “sofa king” as our go-to adverbial clause (“sound it out,” she’d prompted on first usage). She complained about her fashion-school classmates; I told her about a hot but “possibly aspy” boy who’d left his socks on during sex. A sense of privacy infused every email, our own little world. People have described romantic relationships to me that way; perhaps this was the closest I’d gotten.
I saw a long chain that had tracked in one email, indented further and further so that my first email to Edie was a skinny column along the right; the subject line was “UM.” I started at the bottom:
From: Lindsay Bach
To: Edith Iredale
Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 2:06 PM
LADY. WTF happened with BC after I left last night? There was so much heat between you guys that everyone else was, like, shielding their eyes. Did anything happen??
From: Edith Iredale
To: Lindsay Bach
Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 6:16 PM
Ugggghhh I am so hungover I want to DIE. Isn’t he insanely hot? I know you’ve seen him around here too but there’s something about his voice, and those eyes when he’s listening to you…I want to have sex with his voice, Lindsay. Someone should come up with a way for me to do that.
But to answer your question, NO, don’t be stupid, of course nothing happened! I wouldn’t do that to Greg. It was totally innocent, just…intense. I don’t know. He got my number and said something about hanging out in Calhoun this weekend but