I finish the connections. The mics are ready for the assault. Tony/i/é nods and the lights dim. I head off, but not before I catch the nod of Evan E., Fluffy’s drummer. I smile and nod back, then press back into the crowd. I’ve lost track of Norah, lost sight of where our table used to be. All the tables have been shoved aside now.

Fuse: lit.

Fuse: burning.

Ready.

Set.

Explode.

The guitars rampage. The drums batter. Owen O. snarls bastardizations at the world. A bell rings and Pavlov’s dog has a f**king seizure on the dance floor. Since I’m not a part of it yet, I see it: how a group of people can become a blizzard, how all the time spent buying and picking out exactly the right clothes doesn’t mean shit now because nobody is looking at clothes or poses. It’s about force and pulse and unleashing the gigantic urges. I am pushing through skin and spike to get to Norah. I am jolting through this human turbulence to catch sight of Tris. I am slamming though this bright, bright darkness to figure out who the f**k I’m looking for, and why.

Norah. She’s ten feet away. Not looking for me or for anything else. She is in the middle of this conflagration and she looks entirely alone.

It scares me.

I recognize it.

I am hearing Lars L.’s bassline. I am falling into it, the black of it, the pit of it. It screams that time is an angry machine. Music is an angry machine. We are all angry machines.

I’ve lost my kilter. I am downwarding. And it’s worse because I know I should be going up.

Norah. Just make your way to Norah.

Dev is in my way. I try to maneuver around him, and he responds with a fevered shove. I shove back. He catches my shoulder too hard and I spin out. I stumble. I bodycheck Norah.

She doesn’t laugh. She just throws herself right back at me. Slam and retreat. Then I slam and retreat. We should be smiling and we’re not smiling. I throw my whole body at her, full-frontal crash. She is all resistance. She holds her ground and there we are, no distance now, her face so close it’s almost a blur.

“What the f**k?” she yells, and it’s not me she’s speaking to.

Dev’s elbow hits my back and I press forward and she’s right there and I’m reaching out and she’s right there and right at that moment the amps amplify and the music takes on such a pulse that it becomes my heartbeat and her heartbeat and I know it and she knows it and this is the point where we could break apart and that would be it, totally it. But I look into her eyes and she looks into my eyes and we recognize it—the excitement of being here, the excitement of being now. And maybe I’m realizing what a part of it she is and maybe she’s realizing what a part of it I am, because suddenly we’re not crashing as much as we’re combining. The chords swirling around us are becoming a tornado, tightening and tightening and tightening, and we are at the center of it, and we are at the center of each other. My wrist touches hers right at the point of our pulses, and I swear I can feel it. That thrum. We are moving to the music and at the same time we are a stillness. I am not losing myself in the barrage. I am finding her. And she is—yes, she is finding me. The crowd is pressing in on us and the bassline is revealing everything and we are two people who are part of a lot more people, and at the same time we’re our own part. There isn’t loneliness, only this intense twoliness. There’s only one way to test it, and that is to dare a movement, to push it farther and see if she wants it to go there. I find her lips and I make that kiss and she’s pulling my hair and I’ve got the fabric of her jacket bunched in a fist and it’s nothing like talking and it’s right there and we’re taking it and taking it and taking it. And my eyes are closed and then my eyes are open and I see her eyes are open and there’s a part of her that’s pulling back even as our bodies are pressing and it’s the fear, of course there’s the fear, and I just hold her close to tell her I understand.

Lars L. launches straight into “Take Me Back, Bitch” and I flinch and Norah sees it and I have no way of saying it’s not her, it’s not now, it’s the ten thousand thens that she has nothing to do with. I lean in and kiss her again, the same way that you run to your room and blast the music when your parents start shouting. I know it won’t work and it doesn’t work because some things you don’t need to hear in order to hear. The mind has an ear of its own and sometimes memory is the fiercest f**king DJ alive.

Now Norah’s yelling “What?” and it is a question for me. And then she says the hardest question of all—the one that takes so much hurt and bravery to ask—which is “Why did you stop?” and the bassline is too strong and my body is being battered from all sides and one of my favorite bands has turned against me and I’m yelling “I CAN’T TALK TO YOU HERE” and she screams “WHAT?” and I am right in her ear and yell “NOT HERE” and then “I CAN’T TALK.”

Her hand finds my hand and immediately I’m being led away. We are piercing through the rumbling tumbling crowd and our arms are like the most precarious bridge, held together by that single, pulling clasp. I think, If she lets go, it’s all over. If I let go, it’s all over. And because she is holding on so tight, I hold on so tight. I am being jostled from all sides—I know there will be bruises tomorrow—but somehow this hand-hold is immune. Somehow we stay together. We are graced, and we are together, and the twoliness is trumping the loneliness and the doubt and the fear. We are making it through. Thank you, music. Damn you, memories. Thank you, present.

She looks around, then gets me into a small room to the side of the Laddies’ Room. It’s the size of a closet, and it’s dominated by a lime-green couch in front of a big mirror. There’s a priest’s collar thrown over the back of the couch, and plenty of open makeup. I expect Norah to look at me mischievously, but instead she looks determined. She keeps hold of my hand and launches herself into me, squeezing and grappling and kissing me so hard my lips can barely kiss back.

“You,” she says, her hand now leading my hand over her br**sts and her free hand gliding over my chest. And it’s hot in this small room, and she’s feverish and she’s kissing me and my mouth is opening and her hands, her tongue, her hips are exploring. But her eyes aren’t as adventurous. And I don’t know if she’s trying to pull me back or pull me in or just plain trying to pull. If this is desire, I’m not clear what it’s a desire for. I’m aroused—so f**king aroused—by the heat of it, the fever of it, the dark—yes, darkness—of it. But I can’t lose myself in it because I can’t find where she is, outside of the music, inside these movements. Her hand is pressing my hand against the wall, and the other hand is under my shirt, rising up to my neck, then starting to go back down. And down. And her fingers have found my trail and my hands both press the wall. The heat of it, the fever of it…the look in her eyes is unsmiling and I just want it and I just can’t do it and she’s reaching down and down and as she touches me there I am about to explode and I want her to say something, even my name, but she doesn’t and suddenly I can’t. I want to be sure, and I’m not sure, and I say no, because I want her to be sure and I just can’t be sure that she is. She kisses me again and strokes a little and this time I’m really not kissing back and I’ve got to stop it before something happens and I don’t understand what’s going on here and I let go of her hand and her other hand stops and even though I am up against a wall, I pull away.

Why did you stop?

I don’t want her to say it. But it’s there in her face. If she had something to prove, now I’ve disproven it. So the dead equation of our actions lies between us, and I don’t know what the f**k I can do.

“Did you see her?” she asks. And at first I want to ask who. But then I know, and I say no, and I ask, “Did you see him?”

She turns ten degrees away from me, back toward the noise, and answers yes.

10. NORAH

The mosh pit didn’t lie. I knew that and yet I ignored the evidence the pit threw back at me. Why did you stop? Can the oracle answer the one better question now: Why the f**k did I keep going?

I tell Nick, “Yes.” He thinks I mean, Yes, I saw Tal. I didn’t see Tal. I did see Tris. It will be easier for Nick, later, if he thinks it’s Tal I saw. Then he can blame it all on me and my hang-ups. But there’s a reason women go frigid and Nick can f**king go look in the mirror if he wants to view that reason.

WHY AM I SUCH A FUCKING LOSER?

I race out of the closet room, slamming the door behind me with my foot, pleased by the snarl of “OW, THAT FUCKING HURT!” I hear from Nick’s side of the door. I know Nick needs a few minutes to himself to get his parts back in order. I have some time to do what I need to do.

What I did not need to do was what I just did. I got no Oi. I only got Oy. I trusted in the power of the pit, believed in the come-on when Nick tested FUCK-SHIT-COCK on the mic, looking right at me. I knew there was no way Tris would not be showing up at this club, and knew I’d better take my chance before it blew up like Where’s Fluffy in performance. I’ve never been the girl to make a move, which is maybe why night after night I go out with Caroline and the moves are always made on her but never on me. And I wasn’t thinking about Where’s Fluffy opening their set with “Take Me Back, Bitch” when I did what I did, moved what I moved. I was thinking about that second song on the playlist Nick made for Tris, “Take a Chance on Me” by Abba. Either Dev slipped something into my Tina Colada or it was the sensual memory of the song of the Swedes, because I was in the pit with Dev and Hunter and I was believing in the band and in time and in the mosh, maybe even believing in God and Nick. That heaven-hell was hot as f**k in the middle, and that had to be the sign that I needed to just f**king go for it.

First shot at bat? Strikeout. All wrong. My eyes were open for the second half of that horrible-great kiss and right on schedule I saw Toni frisking Tris at the door and I knew my window of opportunity was about to slam shit, I mean shut. I am nothing if not determined, as well as extremely foolish, so it was not my hormones leading Nick to the closet room for a second shit, I mean shot; no, it was worse, it was plain stupidity leading me, the patented Norah-brand stupidity (the kind that writes regression letters to Evil Exes) that my brain holds in higher contempt than ignorance because it’s the exclusive Norah brand that will lead down a path to what I hate most: regret.

I didn’t even bother with foreplay, I lunged right in like I was Tal after too much Manischewitz Passover wine. I knew it was too soon, Nick was too raw, but I was goddamn ready to thaw and prove I wouldn’t leave him cold. And I thought I did prove that, I mean I had him, at least I thought I did, I mean he responded, sort of, at least I thought he did, or maybe what I thought was response and mutual attraction was merely the fact that he’s a guy, and an Elmo doll could accidentally graze it and it would respond. But the moment passed so quickly and if I am being honest, I know it only half responded and barely that because Julio probably knew it was Sub Z calling.

I will not do any more instant replay of that scene. I will not.

I am so humiliated.

I can feel the humiliation burning my face, branding me, making me hotter than frigid could ever imagine being, hot with hate. I hate the regret, pumping through every artery of my body, craving a cheeseburger right now. I hate time and I hate this night and if I truly believed in God outside of that momentary lapse of faith, I’d hate Her too.

I even hate Where’s Fluffy. My former favorite band, now destined to be remembered for the rest of my life as the band I was listening to when I went down like the Titanic, ahem. I hate Caroline for being passed out when I really need to talk to her. I hate Tal for all the times of No, touch it this way and You’re doing it all wrong, Norah, because now Nick, my first shot at redemption, knows it too: I have no f**king idea how to do this. It’s like that mythic God takes human beings at creation and divides us into subsets: Group A gets the hot looks, sex appeal, and lots of action with natural ease (Caroline); Group B is the makeover prospects who will figure it all out and eventually get their action (Tris); and Group C is the rest of the poor schmucks (me) for whom God has decided, You’re on your own. Don’t expect much.