Sam and Ilsa's Last Hurrah. Rachel Cohn

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СКАЧАТЬ dinner parties ago, when #Stantastic #livetweeted #Stanstunnedbyboredom all night, we banned cell phones from our parties, which improved our parties to an infinite degree. Now our guests savor their food instead of just Instagramming it. They enjoy the city view instead of getting lost on their phones trying to add “@theStanwyck” location to their Facebook posts. They talk to each other.

      Now I have a change of heart. “Let’s not put away the phones tonight.” I maybe can’t handle a whole evening of witty conversation with guests when suddenly I’d rather spend the night crying in my room because Parker is here, and he’s probably going to talk all night about what amazing (not reckless) girl he’s taking to prom, or about all the first- and second-tier colleges he got into because what Ivy League school wouldn’t want a half-Dominican, half-African American male valedictorian who’s also a star lacrosse player, a champion ballroom dancer (in his previous Ilsa life) and the son of vegan baking royalty.

      I’m going to be a hostess like Czarina tonight. I’m going to act like everything’s just grand even though I can’t believe Sam invited Parker. I feel so betrayed. Much as I think it would be healthy for Sam to have his heart broken, I would never then invite the cause of his pain to his own party after the breakup! This hurts.

      “Please, let’s put away the phones!” says Johan. “I’ve always been curious to go to a party without them. I know, we could lock the phones in my violin case.” He walks over to where his violin case rests on the floor by the foyer. As he’s about to open the case, Johan looks up at us and says, “I didn’t know what to bring as a host gift. So I brought the ‘garish’ inside here.”

4

       SAM

      Once upon a time, there was a marketing genius. And this marketing genius noticed that boys wouldn’t play with dolls, so dolls for boys needed a new name. He decided to call them action figures, and because of this, boys began to play with dolls. The marketing genius must have been proud.

      I wonder what this marketing genius would think of what’s inside Johan’s violin case. Because these are definitely action figures. Same height. Same plastic.

      Only, all of these action figures are Dolly Parton.

      It’s not just the chests, which would make a shrimp out of Barbie’s. It’s the whole package. Petite and big and bold all at the same time.

      There’s Dolly in her coat of many colors, a poor, sweet girl about to make millions.

      There’s Dolly singing ‘I Will Always Love You’ – which you know because an angel-winged Whitney is smiling behind her.

      There’s Dolly standing on a desk in a triumphant 9 to 5 pose. Her boss cowers, hog-tied below.

      And finally, there’s Dolly arm-wrestling . . . someone.

      “That’s Sylvester Stallone,” Johan explains in his charming woodwind voice. “From Rhinestone.”

      Rhinestone.

      I am nearly at a loss for words. “You’ve built Dollywood. In a violin case.”

      “I like to think of it as a fiddle case. But yes. When you specified garish, I assumed you meant awesome.”

      Parker gives me one of his oh, so this is what white people do in their free time looks, but I can tell he’s glad Subway Boy hasn’t proven to be the instant disappointment that most Subway Boys must be once you have them over for dinner. Ilsa looks annoyed – maybe because Parker’s within ejection range without a trapdoor in sight, or maybe because a stranger has just upped the garish ante, and she’s not sure how many chips she has left to place.

      “Let me get you that beer,” she says, off to the kitchen before Johan can tell her the hair in the Dollys’ wigs was spun from unicorn tears.

      “I’m going to go see if she needs help carrying that beer,” Parker says, following.

      Johan moves to close the violin case, and I cry out, way too loud, “No! Don’t!” Then, as if to compound this manic burst of uncoolness, I walk over to the piano and clear a place for the case . . . by sweeping off all the sheet music with my arm, as if I’m in some retirement home’s production of Amadeus. As a result, the Goldberg Variations scatter through the air, Debussy ducks for cover under the bench, and Muhly mulishly meanders toward Czarina’s beloved lime-green couch.

      If Johan is alarmed, he doesn’t show it. He gives the Dolly clones their pride of place. He casually plays a few notes on the piano in honor of the installation. I hear the words in my head.

      Islands in the stream.

      That is what we are.

      If Ilsa were here, she’d be on the piano, singing along.

      I –

      I –

      I look away. I know a new person is supposed to mean a new start. But I’m still me, and eventually he will see that.

      “Do you want something to drink?” I ask.

      He looks at me like I’ve made a joke. Then he realizes maybe I haven’t.

      Right. Pretty much the only fact I know about him is that he wants a beer.

      “It’ll be any minute now,” I say, looking down. I am rolling over Beethoven. I want to apologize to him.

      “I loved hearing you play,” Johan says.

      “I loved the feeling of you standing right behind me as I played,” I don’t reply. “There was even a moment when I forgot to worry about impressing you and actually enjoyed myself.”

      It had been so simple. He’d seen the piano. Asked me who played.

      All I had to do was say, “I do.”

      All I had to do was sit there and let the song happen.

      No. Make the song happen.

      “I gave it up,” I find myself saying to him now.

      There are so many things I am saying underneath this. Mostly to myself. But beneath that. Something I am trying to give him. Some indication of who I am, of what this is.

      “When?” he asks.

      “A couple of years ago,” I tell him. Even though it was actually only seven months ago, after I sabotaged myself out of music school and vowed never to perform in public – never to be put on display like that, with all of the pressure – ever again.

      “But clearly you didn’t give it up entirely?” He lifts some fallen notes from the floor.

      “That was the weird thing. I gave up on it, but it didn’t give up on me.”

      “Music is inescapable, isn’t it?”

      The way he says it, I can tell there are things he already knows.

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