Oona snorted the line. Her lips, fingers, and toes went numb. This time she floated backward, the room receding into a long dark tunnel.
As the images before her warped, so did the music. It slowed, the vocals faded to nothing, and the bass line pounded louder and louder until it merged with her heartbeat. Muffled, whooshing as if underwater. She traveled with the flow of her blood, propelled herself forward. Her Frisbee-sized red blood cells swam past her, grazed her bare arms like firm Jell-O. Everything around her red, so very red. She swam through another dark tunnel and emerged among her nerve cells, violet nuclei housed in neon-blue cytoplasm, which gave way to a network of dendrites like twisting tree limbs. Tiny explosions went off around her, and she became tangled in nerve branches.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” she muttered.
A great white flash, and she was in a nest of wires painted with Day-Glo stars; another flash and she was among real stars, in deep space, gliding past a nebula. Its pastel cloud of dust and gas morphed into shapes: an eye, an hourglass, a pinwheel. It was the most beautiful thing Oona had ever seen.
Dale, can you see this? You should be here with me.
As she continued to float, the stars formed outlines of people, a celestial connect the dots. Though they were gender-neutral silhouettes, Oona could make out one of Dale and another of her father.
In her head, a disembodied voice whispered, “We all start here, and we all come back here. You are only stardust.”
From a distance, other voices grew clearer.
“Is she breathing?”
“Yeah, but we may need to carry her out.”
“Hold up, she’s moving.”
Oona’s eyes fluttered open. “I died and it was so beautiful,” she murmured. Four faces hovered over her. “Is it still 1991?”
All four nodded.
“Are you still my friends?”
“We sure are, baby doll, but it’s past last call and we need to leave.” Cyn bent down and eased Oona to her feet. “You good to walk?”
“Not good. Great.” Her limbs were helium light as she exited the club.
Outside, Desi, Jenny, and Whitney walked ahead in search of taxis.
“Oona, you’re gonna want to step it up,” Cyn said. “The Meatpacking District isn’t the best place for a four A.M. stroll.”
Old metal awnings further darkened the dimly lit streets, and the few cars that drove by did so with slow and seemingly sinister purpose. Layers of grime and graffiti coated the industrial buildings, some of which still bore hand-painted signs advertising wholesale meat distributors.
“In ten years this place is gonna be filled with designer boutiques.” Oona marveled at the neighborhood’s squalor, as if parading through a sepia-toned photo.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think that’s Calvin Klein drinking a forty on the corner.” Up ahead, a heavyset man in a bomber jacket sat on a stoop taking swigs from a paper bag. Casting him a furtive look, Cyn added, “Button up your coat.”
“But I don’t feel cold. I feel … magnificent.” Twirling around, Oona spread her coat open wider and laughed.
“And I feel like you’re gonna get us into trouble.”
As if on cue, the man looked up as they passed, sneered, and yelled out, “Tranny faggots.”
Cyn grabbed Oona’s arm and tried to quicken their pace, but Oona shook off her friend’s grip and confronted the man.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” she said. “How rude you are, or how ignorant.”
At that, the man lurched to his feet, showing his full refrigerator-like proportions. He grabbed Oona by the throat and threw her against a storefront’s steel rolling shutter with a tinny rattle. “You think I’m gonna let a little bitch like you talk to me like that?”
“She’s sorry. Oona, say you’re sorry.” Cyn tried to pull the man off her friend, but he swatted her away effortlessly, keeping a firm grip around Oona’s neck.
“I’m not sorry,” she wheezed. Unable to breathe, Oona’s earlier euphoria morphed into a dark confusion. She didn’t have enough air to say anything else. Her eyes darted to a sign across the street advertising frozen oxtails and back to her attacker, a looming, menacing shadow. As his hand clamped tighter, the edges of her vision blackened, and two contradictory thoughts raced toward each other.
No! Don’t hurt me!
Yes! Do it!
There was shouting, so much shouting, and the scramble of people running, but the only thing she saw was a giant fist coming at her face.
12
“You sure you don’t want to go to a hospital?” Cyn asked.
She and Oona were in the back of a taxi permeated with body odor and pine air freshener.
Bringing a hand up to her nose, Oona hissed as a bolt of pain shot through it, joining the throbbing chorus of her left eye and jaw. She tasted blood, but running her tongue over her teeth proved them intact. “I don’t think anything is broken.” Her voice was hoarse and it hurt to swallow. Wincing, she turned to Cyn, whose arms were folded tight.
“I’ll get you cleaned up at my place, then. You can crash on my sofa.”
“Thanks.”
Neither said another word as the car made its way to the Lower East Side.
“I really don’t want to put you out,” Oona said as they climbed the stairs to a second-floor apartment in a building above a luggage store.
“It’s fine.” But her tone and movements were clipped as she unlocked the door.
It wasn’t until Oona was sitting on the edge of the tub having her face dabbed with hydrogen-peroxide-soaked cotton balls that Cyn let loose:
“You want to explain what the hell happened back there? And don’t give me no excuses about drugs, because I’ve seen you more fucked up, and you’ve never done anything stupid like that before. Did you want to get killed? Because my skinny ass couldn’t stop him from beating on you, and if I didn’t get the others back in time, he might’ve snapped your neck, then come for me. What. The. Fuck.” Cyn tore open a packet of gauze.
The antiseptic seared her raw wounds and Oona gritted her teeth. “I don’t know where that came from. He was so—it was such an ugly thing he said. And so stupid—I mean, we’re both women.”
“Girl, I know I’m a stunning lady, but you can’t tell me you forgot I was born a man.”
These were the slipups Oona dreaded the most, the social land mines she tried to avoid. “It’s just…” Was there any explanation that didn’t sound lame? “I only think of you as a woman.” So many questions, but better they remain in 1990 Oona’s purview.
Cyn allowed a grudging smile. “You’re sweet, but it was dumb and dangerous for you to talk back to him. You think I don’t hear shit like that all the time?” Her face tightened again. “I worry enough about getting jumped without your smart mouth.”
“I’m sorry,” Oona croaked, her split lip trembling.
“No need to boohoo about it, just be happy he didn’t break your head open and keep quiet next time.” She secured a bandage across the bridge of Oona’s nose. “You feeling dizzy or nauseous?”
“No. Just cold.”