Oona Out of Order Read online

  “It’s okay, she’s”—Oona inhaled a giant yawn like a vacuum—“at some craft festival in New Paltz. I’ll get the machine. I just want to hear her voice.”

  “Of course you do, sugar. Hang on, I think it’s … here you go. There’s some water and a bottle of juice on the end table. Give a holler if you need anything else.”

  “Thank you.”

  Cyn nodded and left the room.

  The phone felt heavy when she picked it up to dial Madeleine’s number.

  “Hi, Mom. Looks like we keep missing each other.” Such an effort to keep her voice steady, the tightrope between slurred and choked up. “I’ll call again when I can. Love you.” It would be a few days before her mother returned, but Oona wouldn’t tell her about the incident, wouldn’t tell her much at all, and wouldn’t see her until long after her face healed. Was shame making her punish herself, denying her mother’s consolation? Was the avoidance an emerging defiance? Maybe both.

  A slump, a sigh, and she pulled the covers tighter around herself. When she closed her eyes, she saw the dirty warehouse advertising frozen oxtails, felt the air being squeezed out of her by an angry fist. What had driven her to such a confrontation? Could be she’d been testing the limits of her known future by putting herself in harm’s way. The attack should’ve served as a warning—her life was like tissue paper, easily crumpled up and tossed aside. It should’ve sent her scurrying to her sensible roots. But surviving it had the opposite effect. It made her feel ironclad, invincible.

  In the dark, she brought a hand up to her tender face.

  I’m still here.

  I have time.

  * * *

  Cyn wasn’t wrong about that heap of parties. The months that followed were full of excess, fun, and superficiality.

  After the attack, all Oona wanted was to recapture the high-wire exhilaration of her outings to Pandora’s Box and Antenna. This would require an elixir of alcohol, drugs, and a smattering of danger, but time travel would be her safety net.

  So she became a staple of the club scene. Cyn, Jenny, Desi, and Whitney made friends faster than a virus finds a new host, and Oona expanded her circle of acquaintances as a result, people to whom she was connected via venues and costumes and drugs, flimsy and fragile as a spiderweb. Though at the core were the five of them.

  They established a social routine: Limelight on Tuesdays, Antenna on Thursdays, and occasional weekend outings to the Roxy and Tunnel. Their favorite spot was the World, a former wedding banquet hall with peeling gold leaf and an aura of faded opulence. Going there was a special treat because it opened sporadically and operated without a liquor license. It played house music, hip-hop, rock, and punk, attracting a crowd that erased the boundaries between genders, races, subcultures, and sexual orientations.

  “I spilled a drink on Prince once,” Desi boasted one late night at the World, from a balcony overlooking the cavernous dance floor. “Right where we’re standing. Someone shoved into me and I dumped my vodka cran all over his white ruffled shirt.”

  While the others gave impatient smiles, having heard the story one too many times, Oona’s eyebrows shot up and she asked, “Did he get mad?”

  “Oh, honey, no. He just took off his shirt and threw it over the railing. Walked around bare-chested the rest of the night.”

  Oona herself had some smaller brushes with the present and future (in)famous, though she didn’t always recognize them for who they were or would become. When they went dancing at the Pyramid—a shoebox of a club on Avenue A—and she spotted Lady Bunny and RuPaul’s big blond wigs, Oona was tempted to sidle up and tell them they’d be world-renowned drag queens (though they probably already knew that). At the Limelight, a Gothic church turned disco, when a man with clownish makeup and a diaper/corset ensemble offered her champagne, Whitney told her to turn it down. The champagne turned out to be piss and the man was Michael Alig, club promoter and ringleader of the Club Kids, whose antics would become the stuff of legend and nightmares in a few years when he’d be indicted for murder.

  “And who is that?” she asked Desi one night at the Roxy, pointing to a boyish man waiting for the bathroom. “I keep seeing him around and he looks so familiar.”

  “Oh, that’s Moby. I think he’s a DJ? He’d be cuter if he shaved his head.”

  Sometimes there were after-parties at Save the Robots and sunrise breakfasts at 7A or Sidewalks—Bloody Marys more often than eggs since Ecstasy, coke, and K killed the appetite. Then there were underground parties at unconventional venues: Burger King, Home Depot, a subway car. They swarmed like rainbow-colored bees, with Johnny Panda leading the charge. Someone would bring a boom box and tinny techno would punctuate their outlandish cheer. The parties were fun in concept and amusing for the first half hour, the Club Kids dazzling in a mundane setting. Then there was the rush when the police arrived and they scattered before being rounded up for disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, or indecent exposure.

  While technology had been her umbilical cord to the world in 2015, this year’s Oona was happy to disconnect from screens (not that she had a choice). The novelty of convenience was replaced by the familiarity of the analog: going to stores instead of shopping online, hailing taxis instead of ordering Ubers, using landlines and pay phones instead of her cell. It was nice to see people out and about living their lives rather than curating them for the Internet or hiding behind their devices. It also made it easier for Oona to drift apart from her mother, to return fewer of her calls.

  Yes, Oona was happy to disconnect.

  Her days and nights took on a flipbook’s repetition, each image the same with minor changes. One night she came home covered in glitter; another in fake blood. One night she came home with a broken heel; another a broken handle on her Wonder Woman lunch box. She developed a taste for house music, techno, freestyle, and breakbeat, finding appeal in the rhythm. She conjured clocks ticking off the seconds and tracking her pulse, each song an erratic metronome that stated she was both moving and standing still.

  Her nights were full of so much sound, silence balanced out her days. She recovered from these outings in her music room, splayed out on the fuzzy carpet, often ignoring her records. Sometimes she’d sneak a wistful look at the guitars, but she never touched them.

  “Music should be our biggest high,” Dale often said—so fervent, quixotic, naive.

  Sorry, baby, but I need something stronger.

  The calendar might’ve put her at twenty-seven, but inside, she was barely out of her teens, with so little accountability and so much disposable income. And so it was the year of color, artificial highs, and staged recklessness.

  Building off her silent-film-star haircut, Oona adopted a club version of a flapper look, wearing low-waisted dresses fringed with unconventional materials: chains, dollar bills, bones, bacon strips, syringes. She had long necklaces made of pill capsules and candy, cocktail rings with jeweled skulls and insects trapped in amber. The classic style of a bygone era made modern, warped. Her look wasn’t as extreme as some others, but it still caught the attention of a producer for Geraldo, who stopped her one night at the Limelight and asked if she’d like to appear on an episode about Club Kids. Oona politely declined. She also avoided being mentioned in Michael Musto’s nightlife column in The Village Voice.

  Once in a while she wondered if she should be doing something more substantial with her time, but forced her focus on the inconsequential: the next outfit, the next party, the next drug and alcohol combo that would bury her in a blizzard of chemicals.

  It was a temporary fix, but she felt at home among these oddballs. That would have to suffice, at least for 1991. Who knew what year would come next? She could be twenty-one and middle-aged again, or even a senior citizen. No telling when she’d revisit her youth, so she turned the year into one long party.

  The party got interrupted three times.

  The first time was a Friday morning in March. Just after eight, Oona was exiting a taxi dropping her o
ff at home, still in last night’s garish outfit.

  Coming up the street, a grocery bag in each hand, was Madeleine. “I thought we could finally have breakfast together. Unless you want to keep avoiding me?”

  “I already ate breakfast.” Two Bloody Marys, but surely the tomato juice counted as nourishment.

  “You look like you haven’t eaten in months. Cocktail mixers don’t count.”

  Is she a mind reader now? Her mother’s sarcasm was like a Brillo pad on Oona’s bare skin. “If we’re gonna fight, can we do it inside?” Trudge trudge trudge up the steps, into the house.

  “I come bearing bagels. You don’t bring bagels to a fight. Why don’t you go change while I lay out the food and make coffee. Nice outfit, by the way. Never saw a dress made of duct tape before.”

  Oona entered the kitchen a few minutes later, face scrubbed, wearing clothes made of actual fabric. Her mother slid over a plate piled so high with smoked salmon, the bagel beneath it was barely visible.

  “I like the new hair. What else is new?” Madeleine asked. Getting only a shrug in response, she said, “I was in Home Depot the other week when it turned into a spontaneous party. I saw you there.” A sharp click as two bagel halves popped out of the toaster. No eye contact as she focused on spreading them with cream cheese.

  “Why didn’t you come say hello?”

  “Because you looked high as a kite and were busy dancing with a giant panda. I figured you didn’t want to see me.” She waved the cream-cheese-covered knife as if conducting an invisible orchestra. Bafflement made her mouth wide and mirthless.

  “I just needed to—I don’t know, enjoy myself. Be someone else. Get out of my head.”

  “Mission accomplished, from the looks of you.”

  “See, this is what I didn’t want.” Oona pushed her plate aside. “The veiled judgment. Motherly wisdom. Last year was … not easy. I just want to have a good time while I can.”

  “Are you sure that’s all it is?” The paper-thin slice of salmon glinted as Madeleine popped it into her mouth. “God, this lox is so good, it melts in your mouth. Maybe you’ll enjoy it when you sober up. You know, your father’s mother was an alcoholic. And Charles was a heavy drinker. That type of thing is hereditary.”

  “I’m not an alcoholic.” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, which came away dusted with glitter.

  “I’m not saying you are. And how you decide to have a good time is up to you, but you should know addiction runs in your bloodline.” A sigh when that provoked no reaction from her daughter. “You know I’m not a prude about drinking, drugs, sex—none of it. But I always saw you often enough that I knew I didn’t need to worry. When you avoid me, I wonder what you’re hiding.”

  To deny any obfuscation would be an insult to her mother. The least she could do was offer some transparency. “Maybe I need to hide for a little while, Mom. Maybe that’s what this year is about for me.”

  “Maybe.” A whimper of agreement.

  How terrible it must be when the source of your pain is your own child.

  “Whatever you’re worried about, don’t be,” Oona said. “I’ve seen how things turn out and we’re both okay.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re bulletproof. It doesn’t mean what you do today won’t have consequences years from now.”

  “You don’t need to tell me about consequences.” She thought back to the birthday dinner with Crosby, the painful limo ride after. Would this year be happier if she was still with him? “I can’t win with you, Mom. You give me shit about being too serious. Try to get me to loosen up and have more adventures. But now that I’m having them, you’re giving me shit about that, too.”

  “Nobody’s giving you shit.” The corners of her mouth turned down. “I just miss how you used to open up to me. We were so close. It’s … an adjustment for me, these different versions of you.”

  “Yeah, I know all about making adjustments.” Oona poked at her bagel, with no intentions of eating it. “Sorry it’s so hard on you.” The harshness of her tone startled both of them. “I really am sorry,” she said, chastened. “I’m just tired.”

  “Go get some sleep, then. We can have breakfast together some other time. I’ll put the food away and see myself out.”

  The second time the party got interrupted was at the end of June, when the owner of their favorite club, the World, was found shot to death in one of its gilded balconies. The club closed for good.

  The third time was in September at the Limelight.

  While heading to the bar, Oona spotted a familiar blue pompadour.

  Crosby.

  Seeing him shouldn’t have triggered more than a twinge of regret, but instead his pale handsome profile flooded her with something stronger and more complicated: the loss of what might’ve been. I was loved by him and now I’m not. What would it have been like, feeling a natural high with him rather than chasing an artificial high with her friends?

  Was it too late? Maybe enough time had passed that he could forgive her.

  In her drunkenness, she decided it was a good idea to find out. As she approached Crosby, a redhead with Bettie Page bangs in a black latex dress slipped a possessive arm around him.

  Recognition flickered across his features before a solemn mask slid down his face like a steel door slamming shut. Oona wanted to backtrack, but the redhead nailed her in place with a smug leer. “Can I help you?”

  “I thought … never mind.” Oona turned around and rushed to Jenny, who handed her a small glass vial and made it all better.

  The drugs made everything more fabulous until they didn’t, until the hangovers became increasingly brutal.

  After seeing Crosby, Oona found herself in a vicious cycle of needing alcohol and drugs more often and earlier, to feel normal, to feel nothing. A hamster running on a treacherous wheel.

  Next year. Next year I’ll take it more seriously. Next year I’ll try to make something of myself, do something meaningful.

  She still gave to charity anonymously, donating exorbitant sums to children’s hospitals, animal shelters, AIDS research, and other organizations.

  “Do you know how much money you’re throwing down the toilet in taxes?” Harold Rubin, one of her advisors at Chestnut Investment Services, complained. “You need to offset your significant capital gains. We’re talking millions in potential deductions if you set up some kind of foundation.”

  “I’ll set up a foundation later on.” When Kenzie does it for me. After he learns long division and gets a diploma or two. “Not right now,” she said over the phone, certain they’d had this conversation before. “Besides, I’m going to make more money than I could ever spend in a lifetime.”

  “Don’t be too sure about that, Oona. I’ve seen how quickly people can make and lose money, how careless they get. You’ve been on a hot streak, but you can’t predict how the markets are going to behave. For one thing, I think you’re getting out of biotech too soon.”

  “I am, but that’s okay. I have a good feeling about this Qualcomm IPO.” She chuckled, knowing the stock would increase by nearly 12,000 percent in the years to come.

  While she tried to maintain a low profile about her wealth on the club scene, rumors circulated that she was an heiress with millions.

  “I heard her mother’s related to the Astors.”

  “I heard it’s mob money.”

  “I heard she was some kind of pop star in Europe in the eighties.”

  “I heard her grandfather invented the lawn mower.”

  Whenever someone asked Oona flat out, she’d give a mysterious smile and shrug. Except one time, after she’d chased two tabs of Ecstasy with copious lines of cocaine. She was with her usual crew, at Sidewalks at five A.M., on her second Bloody Mary.

  “So come on, where does your money really come from?” Desi prodded.

  Oona was slouched in the booth as if her bones had been rubberized. “I actually travel through time and memorize stuff that’ll make me money. Mos
tly stocks, some sporting events, that sort of thing.”

  “Like Back to the Future Part II?” Jenny asked.

  “Kinda.”

  Silence around the table.

  Could it really be this easy?

  A seed of relief—they believed her.

  Oona waited for an onslaught of follow-up questions.

  There weren’t any.

  Instead, an outburst of laughter. First from Whitney, then the rest of the table. Even Cyn laughed, though she was the first to stop as curiosity clouded her features.

  A waiter came by, and Oona asked for another round of drinks and the check. She usually picked up the tab, which didn’t bother her. If she spent more time sober, it might. She glanced around the table: these people would be strangers to her in a matter of months. Maybe she’d chosen them as friends because they were strangers to begin with. And there she was, little girl lost, with buckets of money.

  On New Year’s Eve, they went to Antenna, arriving early for “refreshments” in a VIP room before the countdown. Dressed in a black-sequined top hat, sleeveless shirttails unbuttoned to her bra, and glittery fishnets, Oona played a shinier, skimpier version of a modern-day Marlene Dietrich. She wouldn’t be out long—only wanted to enjoy a few final moments of whimsy—and palmed the Ecstasy tab Jenny gave her, nursing her champagne for the next hour.

  A little after eleven, she slipped out while the group was distracted by one of Jenny’s stories.

  Down the hall, a few feet from the stairs, a voice over her shoulder.

  “Where are you sneaking off to?” Cyn asked.

  “Just going to the bathroom.”

  “Upstairs? To the one five times as crowded?”

  A breezy shrug. “I wanted to walk around a bit.”

  “It’s not as fun when you’re sober, is it?” Oona opened her mouth to protest, but Cyn clucked her tongue. “Don’t even, girl. I saw you palm that E. And you’ve been sipping champagne looking like Michael Alig’s pissed in it. What’s the real story?”

  “I’m just tired.” But she owed Cyn more than that. “And it’s becoming less fun even when I’m not sober.”