like a sound wave. One night we’d co-opted the casual karaoke in the back room here, signing one another up for increasingly ridiculous songs: Alex covering TLC, Sarah on Alice Cooper. Someone put me down for a Talking Heads song that apparently everyone knew but me, and when I’d started to look miserable, Edie had jumped onstage with me, sharing the mic and pulling me into crazy dance moves and turning the whole thing into a not-mortifying experience. I could still remember the high-pitched thrill of that night, playing what Kevin had dubbed karaoke roulette, freezing at the end of every song to see if my name was up next.
I sat at the bar and ordered a ginger ale. A couple walked in and picked a booth near the door, her thin and long-haired with epic eyeliner, him bearded and broad and confident. They looked so nonchalant about each other, so unimpressed that they’d found a partner, and I watched them for a little too long.
“You just getting off work?” The bartender was drying glasses with a towel, a cute, short guy in a sweater despite the heat.
“That’s right. Taking a walk down memory lane, actually.”
“Oh, did you used to come here a lot?”
“A very long time ago. It looks pretty much the same, though.”
He nodded easily and leaned against the counter. The door screeched open behind me and my heart froze up: For one moment I knew, absolutely knew, that Edie was walking into the bar. Why was I so afraid of her, still?
Instead, two bros sauntered in, making too much noise, monkeys hooting.
“You all right?” the bartender asked, smiling. He’d seen me jump. I laughed and assented, but the thought hit me: What the fuck am I doing here?
Suddenly I was old, exposed, the sad, single woman drinking alone among the children. Abruptly, I pictured my parents, and in piped the diatribe I sometimes find myself spitting into the silence: You were afraid of me, but I should have been afraid of you. If you’d been braver, maybe I’d have grown out of it. Maybe my brain could have matured, the unbridled blossoming everyone else’s neurons seem to enjoy. Maybe I wouldn’t have these black, gaping bullet holes in my own memory. Maybe I could have grown up like everyone else managed to do.
I glanced up and realized the bartender was looking at me; I’d been almost talking to myself, my expression curled into a mask of anger. I flashed him a smile and swept myself outside, gulping in the twilight air. I turned in the direction of the subway; a cab rounded the corner and I nearly stuck my arm out.
But I was so close to Calhoun now, just a few more bends, and I realized I’d hazily imagined myself getting inside—seeing if traversing those old, dark passageways would stir up anything useful. Maybe I’d try the walk from the rooftop to 4G to see just how far I’d drunkenly stumbled to SAKE. I crossed the overpass and glanced down at the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, clogged with cars. The heat was thick, sticky, changing form and coalescing into the cicadas’ hum.
I turned a corner and stood stunned for a moment: What the fuck was this? In place of Calhoun Lofts were two ugly buildings, all green glass and white molding. I took a few steps forward and craned my neck, as if these buildings were just a front and my home-away-from-home was hiding back there, obscured from view.
So it was gone. How had I missed this in my research? I pictured the demolition, a wrecking ball tumbling the cinder blocks in slow motion, a crane pawing at the foundation like a curious dog. I imagined the door to 4G buckling and then collapsing like cardboard; I saw the cubbylike bedrooms crumbling one by one. It was gone. The last clinging particles of Edie’s blood wiped totally clean. I felt something complicated in my chest, grief and dismay and relief and horror twisting around like fingers in a fist.
The front door to one of the buildings swung open and out popped a middle-aged woman carrying a small fluffy dog, which she set on the sidewalk. She bent to fix its collar and then jumped back—the thing was already peeing, splashing onto the cement directly in front of the glass doors. I turned away and called myself a cab; even as I waited, I felt a drowsy relief in entering my address.