Vintage Contemporaries


 
 
 Dedication
 for Erica and Julia and Allison
 for Heather and Claire and Alia
 
 
 Epigraph
 Life never worked out so well! Love never had it so good!
 —front cover copy, Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin, Pocket Books paperback
 
 
 Contents
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Epigraph
 1991: Joy in the Face
 2005: The Heart Unstrung
 1993: The Emotional Megaphone
 2007: It’s Done When It’s Done
 Notes
 About the Author
 Also by Dan Kois
 Copyright
 About the Publisher
 
 
 1991
 Joy in the Face
 
 
 You are not the kind of girl who would be at a place like this at this time of night, Emily thought. Louis somehow heard her little chuckle of recognition over the noise in the club, turned to her, and said, “What.”
 In answer, she pointed at the girl with the shaved head, who despite her thoroughly modern look was dancing like a character in the beach-blanket movies Emily’s mom used to watch. The girl twisted; she shagged. She drew men toward her—a stockbroker type in a tie, a tall guy in a fedora—and then dismissed them with a turn of the shoulder. Emily loved watching her.
 Emily Thiel was standing by the wall in a nightclub she didn’t like, nursing a drink she couldn’t afford. She was a nervous young woman of twenty-two. She liked to think of herself as sensible, but knew that others saw her as prissy. They always had. She wore jeans everywhere, even to this dance club, where women wore skintight vinyl pants or they wore miniskirts, but they sure didn’t wear jeans. She was trying to be a good friend to Louis, who had been lonely since they moved to New York and had asked her to come out with him tonight.
 The club was on the first floor of an elegant, run-down building on Thirtieth Street and had been famous, in an earlier incarnation, for being the place where Madonna danced in a movie. That was how they knew what name to look up in the Yellow Pages. She knew its heat was waning because when they got there the doorman had let them right in.
 Louis danced in place next to her. He was wearing his favorite shirt, the one with the blousy sleeves that a boy had complimented him on once in college. The music just kept on thumping away, the beat seemingly never-ending, which she understood must be the sign of a good DJ but which to her seemed to eliminate what she loved the most about listening to music. There was no melody to grab hold of, just an imperative to dance.
 “Dance!” Louis shouted. He held out a hand. “New York won’t eat you,” he said, and she wasn’t so sure, but she finished her drink and followed him out.
 On the dance floor the music turned, somehow, to a New Order song she liked, and she threw herself into it. The girl with the shaved head was to her right, and Emily felt happy that while she wasn’t with her by any means, she was included in the broader circle of the girl’s attention. Once they made eye contact and the girl smiled. She tried to copy her, not her exact steps but the way she seemed to move with purpose. Even when she had gone out with her college boyfriend, Paul, Emily had always felt stuck inside herself while dancing—she had tried to encourage him to take her to movies, but he thought since she liked music she wanted to go to shows. She did, but she didn’t want to dance. But this girl in the club seemed to know how to dance with people, directing her energy toward others and receiving energy in return, speaking to them with her arms and hips and responding to the ways their bodies replied.
 For just a moment she had that with Louis—they twirled around each other in a way that surprised them both into laughter. But then the song segued into something a little darker and more cruel-sounding, and Louis started dancing with a man he’d pointed out to Emily earlier, so she made her way back over to the wall.
 As she watched Louis and the man get closer and closer to each other, she relived the twirl with exhilaration. Her sister had told her a story about the surf lesson she’d taken on her honeymoon. Anne-Marie had spent half an hour fruitlessly paddling and was wondering what was even the point, but then she caught a wave and rode it for what seemed like forever. The feeling was so unexpectedly wonderful that she signed up for a second session the next day. That’s how Emily felt about that moment on the dance floor. It made the whole night worthwhile.
 Neither she nor Louis had real jobs yet—they were both temping—so theoretically they could stay out until dawn and just skip a day, but by one in the morning they were both exhausted. “You wanna do one more cigarette and then go?” Louis asked her. They stood at the edge of the ballroom, as far from the speakers as they could get.
 “Hey, look at this,” Louis said, and pulled a napkin out of his pocket. He opened it just enough for Emily to see the phone number scribbled on it and then slipped it into his coat.
 “Oh, wow,” Emily said. “I’m proud of you.”
 “I’m proud of me, too. Did you dance with anyone you liked?”
 “Only you.”
 “Stop.”
 “Can I bum one?” It was the bald girl, and as soon as she spoke Emily recognized her. Emily pulled out a cigarette, handed it to the girl, lit it for her. “Thanks,” she said. “I’d stay and talk, but I’ve got a guy to seduce.” And indeed she immediately walked toward a group of young men and took one of them by the arm. He followed her a few steps, casting nervous laughter