twenty-three minutes. What was I recording? Finally, 2009 me found something to focus on: I’d turned the lens to the New York City skyline and stopped wobbling long enough for it to focus. We were up on Calhoun’s roof; it had a great view of Manhattan.
Sarah’s voice rang out from my computer’s speakers. “Alex, can you hand me another beer?”
“This is our second-to-last Tecate, people.” It was Alex, off-screen as I’d struggled to zoom in on the Empire State Building. I realized why the cityscape looked odd: no One World Trade Center yet.
“What are you doing, Linds?” he called out. “Come back here.”
I’d responded with a single giggle, whipping the lens around to face them. I could feel it now, the bubble of pleasure that he wanted me there. A place in the circle.
Figures formed in the dark: Sarah and Alex lounging on the cement roof, facing the same way like sunbathers at the beach; dutifully, they waved. I hit pause and mapped my friends out like pieces on a chessboard: Kevin had already left for the big show with his band. I remembered him being on the roof earlier in the night; a headliner might not go on until midnight, but he’d want to watch the openers. And Edie. As far as I knew, at that moment Edie had been alone in SAKE. Pawing with interest at Kevin’s vintage gun, sadness swelling around her like purply smoke. If the story I’d heard was wrong—if Sarah and Kevin were right, and Edie hadn’t been alone in the final moments of her life—then this recording could be everything. An unchanging record of who was where, when.
I hit play: I’d wobbled over to the group and caught a span of the sky as I sat. Someone must have grabbed the camera from me—Alex, I could tell when he hooted, “Say something for posterity, Linds.” He was aiming at me, and suddenly I was staring into my own eyes. Old me looked surprised, squinted hard, and for a moment I had the eerie feeling that we were looking at each other, that she could see me. Then she—I—laughed and shrieked, “Give me my camera, you fucktard!” Christ, no wonder I’d deleted this mess.
The lens made another pass around the roof, a drunken version of the slow pans you take at tourist destinations. There were fuzzy orange orbs here and there, unfocused—probably other groups hanging around on the rooftop, kicking off a balmy Friday night by drinking in the dark. Someone else wandered up and I jerked the camera in surprise. Male voices said hey and asked if we had a light; everyone chattered, the staccato of cross talk.
“You guys seen…?” one said right near the Flip cam, loud enough that the microphone picked it up but not clear enough to make out the name. Jim? Jen? Jan? Then the guys wandered away and I caught their backs, cigarettes glowing between their fingers. One of them was wearing ironic light-up sneakers that glittered in the night.
“Where’s Edie?” I asked as Alex fiddled with the iPod attached to a speaker. I panned to Sarah, who was smoking serenely.
“She’s a fucking bitch,” I heard myself add matter-of-factly. It was loud but not angry—the know-it-all tone of a little kid sharing a dirty fact.
“I know, I’m glad she’s not here,” Alex said back.
Sarah murmured something inscrutable, then repeated it to Alex’s “Huh?”: “You’re on tape!” she said again, pointing at the lens.
“I don’t fucking care.” His voice rose to a bellow. “I want that bitch out of my apartment!”
I whooped in agreement, so loud next to the Flip cam’s mic, then shouted, “I want to push her off this building!”
“I want to slit her throat!” Alex hollered back. He grabbed the camera and leaned in close, steadying it on his face. He giggled. “I’m just fucking with you. It’s cool.”
He let go and suddenly the view swooped down to my feet and stayed there for a second, then went black as the tinny sound blared on. As the seconds ticked by, understanding dawned: I’d thought I’d turned the camera off and had instead left it recording, in a purse or pocket or something. We were only three and a half minutes in.
As nausea curled inside me, I jumped ahead in few-minute chunks, confirming by the blackness and slivers of butt-dial din that this was it—nothing but accidental recording. A little gurgle of female voices around the eight-minute mark, too muffled to decode. But in the