Keith was sweating. The pants were made of some sort of shiny pleather, a material that allowed not an ounce of air in nor out.
“Hey.” Sarah appeared behind them. “Two minutes.”
Not counting his wedding day, Keith hadn’t cried in front of another person since grade school—not his parents, not Shawn. He looked at Sarah and wanted to apologize, even more so because he knew an apology wasn’t necessary. Keith wasn’t a neanderthal—he was in therapy! Men could cry, yadda yadda. That didn’t mean it was comfortable. Keith felt like his skin was transparent and Sarah had seen—could still see—his beating heart. She shone her flashlight across the way once, twice, and someone on the other side flashed back. There was a table that held all their props—hats for the choreo during “Yes or No” and color-coded microphones, like dots on a kindergarten class rug. Keith was always yellow for a reason lost to time.
“You ready? Got everything you need? Waters are right here, and, Scotty, there will be a vodka soda waiting there as soon as the runner gets back. Keith, just let me know if you want anything.” Sarah was good at her job.
Scotty bowed. “Much obliged.” He high-fived her.
The music began to play, and five spotlights appeared on the stage. Scotty bounced on his toes like a prize fighter. He whiffed a slo-mo punch at Sarah, who pretended to fall back.
“Have fun! Break a leg!” Sarah said. She smiled widely, her freckled cheeks round.
Dr. Robert was always encouraging Keith to make friends, as if that were easy to do. Maybe it had nothing to do with being famous and was just a by-product of heterosexuality and middle age—there was no way to tell. He had some guy friends here and there, but nothing too deep. The girls who’d been his friends before he met Steffani were off-limits, live wires that had been extinguished when they got married. He wouldn’t even know how to get in touch with them now, it had been so long. Sarah was different—she was just easy to hang out with. It was clearly okay that she’d seen him cry, and that all by itself kind ofmade him want to cry again. Keith wanted to explain all of it to her, where he was in space, how he felt about the guys and the group and his wife and his life, but it wasn’t the time. He wanted to explain about the woman who’d asked him how he was—it wasn’t a real question most of the time! Did Sarah agree?—and how that had set him off.
“Are you gonna watch? Don’t watch,” Keith said. What he didn’t want her to see was how happy it still did make him, the way a vampire looked with his mouth full of blood. When they weren’t in front of the fans, it was easy enough to pretend that they had normal jobs, or that this abnormal job was in some way equivalent to other things, but when they were in the middle of it, with all the Talkers singing every single word and getting every joke, there was no mistaking it. This was dinner, these were the nutrients his body craved. This was what made it hard to move on, no matter how much he wanted to.
“Of course I’m going to watch!” Sarah did a little pelvic thrust, and the keys dangling from her belt jangled. She took a step back just as the spotlights shone straight down, creating five little identical white pools in a line across the back of the stage. Scotty hit Keith on the butt, and they stepped out onto the stage. The light was hot, and Keith squinted. His body felt jangly with anticipation. The theater was small and already smelled like sweat. He could walk into a room in his house a million times, and Steffani would never look at him the way the Talkers did. Not even a fraction of it. This was what was so hard to say no to—the pure acceptance and love from setting foot onstage in front of these people. He looked up at the crowd, and they screamed.
19
Friday, 9:53 p.m.
Deck 2
At Katherine’s relentless insistence, Annie had brought exactly one costume. She’d been sure she wouldn’t even put it on, but now that she knew how hardcore everyone was, Annie was glad she’d thought to packsomething. Katherine was the one who did costumes and had never met a theme party she didn’t love. Sometimes Annie wondered if there were any older sisters in the world who were fun, or if they were all like her, studious and dutiful and boring. It was actually one of the things she’d liked about Shawn when she was a kid—they were both older siblings. He wore it better than she did, loosely, like he just happened to be holding everything together, not straining the way Annie did to make sure that no ball ever got dropped.
The theme was MTV Night, and the Talkers were pumped. Maira was wearing a T-shirt that had TV static on it and silver rabbit-eared antennae that she’d glued to her headband, and she was holding their spots while Annie got dressed. It was clearly a Madonna costume, though the label read’80s Party Girl. The package contained two inches of black rubber bracelets for each wrist, fingerless lace gloves, a black tulle skirt, a black tank top, and a giant bow for her hair. Annieput it all on and added her own pair of gray leggings, which looked black enough in the dark. The end result was silly but not, Annie thought, altogether bad. If anyone from work had seen her in this outfit, Annie would have died of embarrassment on the spot, but here, it was fine. She didn’t look anything like Madonna, but the costume was easily identifiable, and she felt comfortable walking through the halls to the elevator to go back up to the lido deck. When the elevator door opened, another woman wearing ’80s Party Girl got out, and they high-fived. A towel-clad and face-masked Belinda Carlisle and a kohl-eyed Susanna Hoffs wearing an Egyptian headdress got in, and the doors shut.
“I’ve had like thirteen drinks already today. If I die,” the woman in the towel said, mouth a straight, solemn line through a thick layer of white goop, “you can have Shawn.”
The Bangle closed her eyes and put her hand over her heart, her thick black eyeliner underlining the seriousness of the proclamation. “Thank you.”
Annie looked out the back of the elevator just as they passed the giant, larger-than-life heads of Boy Talk. A clump of women standing on the fifth floor were clearly trying to detach Corey’s banner, and Annie watched as they took turning trying to undo the zip ties holding the vinyl in place.
Upstairs, DJ Pancake was playing the top hits of the ’80s, and the Talkers were in heaven. She wondered what he looked like. He was the Wizard of Oz of theAmerican Fantasy, playing all the music and staying entirely out of sight. What if he was young and handsome, and that’s why Boy Talk was keeping him hidden, to maintain their own supremacy of beauty? Annie clocked lots of costumes she recognized as she made her way through the crowd toward the tiki bar: Robert Palmer and a fleet of video vixens in black minidresses and lipstick; a half dozenThriller-jacketed Michael Jacksons; aRhythm NationJanet Jackson with a key dangling from her hoop earring; Annie’s reflection in several otherVirgin-era Madonnas, as well as a few “Vogue”-era Madonnas; four women dressed as naked Red Hot Chili Peppers, complete with prosthetic sock penises; Britney Spears with a stuffed snake slung around her neck; Britney in her “…Baby One More Time” schoolgirl pigtails; several Bruce Springsteens with white T-shirts and red bandanas; George Michael with eyebrow-pencil stubble; Salt-N-Pepa; Stevie Nicks in a gauzy dress, holding aloft a stuffed bird; the Jamaican bobsled team; John Lennon, who seemed to have wandered onto the wrong cruise ship; the little girl dressed as a bee from the Blind Melon video; a lonely member of KISS, which (thank god) was the only actual black face paint visible. It felt like a three-dimensional walk through her youth.
Maira was in their spot, but someone else had claimed the barstool next to her. People had been doing it earlier and earlier—that afternoon, Annie had seen several Talkers stretched out on towels, napping in the spots they wanted to claim for the party that night, asleep in the full, direct sun. Maira crossed her arms and shook her head, furious, but Annie shrugged.
“It’s fine!” she said. “I’ll find a spot!” Annie paused before she moved on. “I wanted to ask—I know this sounds certifiably insane, but I was just curious—are they all married?”
Maira leaned back and let out an enormous laugh. “Welcome to the club, baby!” She raised a hand for a high five and then ticked off the statistics on her fingers. “Terrence, yes, newly remarried, very happy, they’re always licking each other’s faces on socials. Scotty has a boyfriend. Shawn’s very happily married. Keith’s married too, and there’s a lot of speculation because Steffani doesn’t go to shows or come on the cruises, but I think she just is a private person, and that’s fine, we can respect that. To each her own, you know? Corey, who knows? Certainly will be divorced if it isn’t official already. I could have toldyou that wasn’t going to last. But you’re not asking about Corey, are you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was just curious in a sort of general way.” Annie was grateful that no one could see her blush in the dark.
“If you say so!” Maira raised her glass, and Annie tapped her knuckles against it. “Come find me later!”
“I will,” Annie said, and looked around for a hole in the sea of people big enough for her to stand in.
Mr. Beer Pong was standing in the shallow end of the pool again. He was dressed as Freddie Mercury, with a black wig and a mustache, but his body language was unmistakable. This time he was dancing with two women dressed as nurses. He didn’t seem to be with them, the same way he hadn’t seemed reallywiththe playing cards, but he did seem to know a lot of people. DJ Pancake was playing hits, and the Talkers were in good spirits. A woman on the upper deck was waving a sign that saidMy divorce was finalized today!and Annie watched her dance with her friends, waving the sign back and forth. When her divorce was finalized, Annie had sat on a bench in Central Park and cried so much that a woman pushing a stroller had thrust a handful of baby wipes at her. “I don’t have tissues,” the woman had said in apology and then kept walking toward the playground. That had made Annie cry even more.
Annie walked to the back of the lido deck, where there were stairs leading up to the balcony. The breeze was strong, and her bow flapped against the back of her head like clumsy wings. A clump of white women wearing thick gold chains and big hoop earrings leaned over the railing, and Annie inserted herself into the small empty space next to them. A tall blonde in a leather jacket said, “And it’s like, no,Chuck, the grass is never greener! The grass is always fucking brown!” and her friends cheered. Annie wondered how many of them there were who had just gotten divorced, if someone asked, if half the boat would raisetheir hands. She would like to see it. There were probably support groups—on the internet, there was everything—but it seemed so silly to need support. She was healthy, she was stable, she wasfine. Before the divorce, Annie had sometimes wondered if she was doomed to be miserable forever.Miserablewas too strong a word—unhappy. Less happy than she might have been with someone else. But now that she and Chris were divorced, Annie wondered if being alone was better or worse than being unhappy. Some days, she wasn’t sure.
The jumbotron above the balcony began to flash, and the crowd snapped to attention. Shawn’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “I see there are a lot of virgins in the crowd tonight,” he said. “Or at least,like-a-virgins…” The women next to Annie squealed and pointed at her. The guys appeared one at a time, just like always. Were they tired of being introduced? It was hard to argue with the accumulation of screams.
Terrence appeared first. He was in a Creamsicle-colored suit and a black-and-white bow tie with a huge blond wig and a captain’s hat. Annie didn’t recognize who he was supposed to be, but she clapped anyway. Scotty toddled out next to him with star-shaped sunglasses and then hoisted one of his legs onto the railing to show off his bedazzled platform shoes. “Elton John!” another Elton John screamed from the crowd. Keith came out next, dressed as a young Bob Dylan, with a cloud of dark hair and a harmonica around his neck. Did Keith like Bob Dylan? Annie didn’t know—she wanted to text her sister and ask. Scotty held a microphone in front of Keith’s face, and he blew, producing a more or less harmonious chord. Everyone threw their hands in the air. Corey sauntered out next, his top hat and long black curls instantly recognizable as Slash. His sleeveless arms had been decorated with fake tattoos on his real muscles. Finally, Shawn emerged, microphone in hand and a wall clock around his neck swinging back and forth.
“Let’s party like it’s 1980!” Shawn said. Everyone was ready and told him so. DJ Pancake put on “Yes or No,” one of Boy Talk’s biggest hits, and the guys jogged down the stairs to the stage. Annie was close to the stairs, and the guys were only a few feet from her as they made their way down. Keith looked up and made eye contact with Annie and looked momentarily startled. He pointed at her and then gave a little thumbs-up and waited for her to respond. She gave a little thumbs-up back, and Keith nodded, satisfied. He looked more relaxed as Bob Dylan, better than he’d been that morning. The women next to Annie turned to stare at her, their leather jackets squeaky and new.
