The host greets me as soon as I enter the threshold of apartment 6, passing through gold streamers dangling from the doorframe. 

“Allegra, it’s great to meet you,” he says, sticking out his hand for me to shake. I notice his bald head, and his scant combover, five dark hairs struggling to cover all that bare space. I don’t remember meeting him before. 

“How do you know my name?” I ask. He looks like a man in an 80s office sitcom, deep lines on either side of his swollen nose, mouth sitting like a paper cut on his face. The stereo coughs out Bob Dylan.

“Everyone knows you, you’re like a socialite around here.” 

He gestures to the other guests, scattered around the dim room, licking powdered MDMA out of dime bags or making out near the massive yucca tree. They all turn to look at me. I can’t tell if they’re smiling or snarling. I don’t care. I’m only here to find Alison. 

I move past the host, my vinyl boots slipping on a slimy patch of liquid. Frances Ha is playing on loop from a projector, cast onto a red wall so all the white hues in the film are tinged with pink. On the leather couch, a woman is throwing up into a galaxy-print wastebasket, her long spidery eyelashes dusting her cheeks each time she bends over the bucket. 

“Alison?” I call out, shoving through the crowd to the narrow kitchen. A girl with a missing front tooth is sitting on the counter, reading sentences from Less Than Zero to a man with a chubby face. They both look at me, eyebrows curving upwards, lips parting for their wide smiles. “Have you seen Alison?” 

I want to clang the silverware around in the drawer, like Alison would do if she was angry or excited.  

“Alison? Who’s that?” The girl uncrosses her legs and leans forward, squinting her eyes.

“Alison. Alison Rimmer,” I pause, pulling my fur coat closer to my neck. “Everyone knows Alison.” 

I resist the urge to grunt. I only know how to describe her in sounds. A screech. A moan like you’re having the best orgasm of your life. 

“Sorry Allegra. Can’t say we do,” the man mutters. His voice sounds like it’s coming through a radio, somehow infused with static. “Do you want to read the next line?” He points to the book. 

I shake my head and move towards the back door, which leads out to the balcony. It’s just a square of concrete hanging off the brick wall, without railings. Six people stand around the periphery smoking cigarettes, unphased by the lack of barriers. When I look up, I see the pure night sky. Charlie notices me enter. He’s sporting a suit jacket and gym shorts, which he’s rolled up an inch to expose his white thighs. 

“Allegra! Thank God you’re here.” 

He passes me a cigarette and I take a puff, tipping my head back and blowing the smoke towards the stars. I watch the wisps float away like fake little clouds. 

I don’t know Charlie that well. We frequent the same bar, always exchange la bise upon seeing each other. I remember the feeling of his hot breath against my cheek, his scraggly moustache scraping my skin, but I don’t know much about him. He’s more of the listening type. I think that makes me talk more; the tension of an ear straining to listen, the expectation that I’ll have something thrilling to say. 

That unimaginable pressure. 

“These people need some entertainment,” he whispers in my ear.

I look around the circle—everyone is staring at me. Silvia, with blue hair and metallic green eyeshadow crawling up her eyelids. A man I don’t recognize who looks barely eighteen, sucking his cheeks in and out, like he’s chewing on air. A freckled woman wearing a chunky belt as a top, the buckle digging into her chest, leaving a red indent. Someone with two symmetrical lizard tattoos on either side of their neck, outlined in red ink. Charlie’s ex-girlfriend, Lycra, is sitting in the corner, and she lazily stretches her legs into the middle of the square. She sports white tube socks and blue plastic heels and a fresh buzzcut. 

“Has anyone seen Alison?” I ask. 

In unison, the group shrugs. I’m sure that they’re lying. Alison told me she would be here. But I don’t press further, because there is that small possibility that Alison could be hiding on purpose, wanting me to look for her. But she’s done that before, and she wouldn’t do it again. She’d never be the same person twice.  

“Maybe,” Charlie takes the cigarette from my hand, brings it to his lips and breathes in, smiling upon exhale. “C’mon, play a game with us. You’re the best at them.” 

I recall drunk Jenga with Charlie at the bar, the little wood pieces I wrote on: “describe your worst sexual experience,” “do a backflip or buy shots for everyone,” “three-way makeout,” “sleep beside someone you love tonight.” Alison is better at games, I want to say, but I stop myself. 

The group has gone back to chattering. This party, somehow, feels like a lung outside the body, on ice, waiting for transplant, incapable of breathing on its own. But once nurtured, maybe it will sputter to life. I need to find Alison. My leg shakes with longing and fear, but I can’t sacrifice the party. I can’t disappoint the people who think they know me, or really do know me. 

I clap my hands together, and the heads turn again, waiting. 

“Spin the bottle,” I say. 

Silvia offers me a beer bottle, still half full, which I pour out into the chasm below. 

“Hey, I would’ve drunk that,” Lizard Neck Tattoos protests. 

Silvia shakes her head. “It was full of molly water. And probably speed.” 

I set the bottle down on the concrete slab and the group whispers excitedly. I gesture at Lizard Neck Tattoos to spin first. They grab the neck of the bottle with their palm, which is also tattooed, thick branching ivy climbing from wrist to fingertips, and they jerk their arm, watching the bottle swing in a circle. It lands on the young-looking man. He seems surprised, like this was not in his realm of possibility. 

Lizard Neck Tattoos steps toward him. “You’re um, older than eighteen?” 

“I’m thirty-fucking-five.”  

Lizard Neck Tattoos takes his hand. I watch his shoulders roll back, relaxing under the touch. He leans in first, their foreheads touching, his eyebrows raised in anticipation. Their lips meet, unmoving, then Lizard Neck Tattoos nudges the thirty-five-year-old’s bottom lip, and they’re both in on it, kissing like they’re telling a secret, replaying an old conversation. Lycra cheers. 

I turn towards the door as they pull apart, as the thirty-five-year-old gets on his knees and pushes the bottle. A familiar scrape of glass against concrete. 

“Allegra, wait,” he calls, “it landed on you.” 

I know I could contest this. I have one foot in the kitchen, and the bottle is pointing between me and Silvia. But I turn around and walk forward and kiss him nonetheless, and I hope it looks real to the on-lookers, sweet, timid until it’s not. He bites my bottom lip softly. I feel a web piercing under his tongue. I hope somewhere Alison is seeing this. He snakes a hand around my back, and I stumble slightly. I feel my heel hit something solid, then the sound of glass smashing four floors down. I open my eyes. 

“No!” Girl-with-belt-as-top shrieks. 

Everyone starts to argue. Silvia cusses. Lizard Neck Tattoos peers over the concrete slab, as if expecting to see the bottle intact and upright in the alleyway rather than smashed into a million green shards. I go back inside. 

In the living room, the yucca tree is wilting, its spiky leaves bending inwards and browning slightly at the tips. Some guests are sleeping, arms wrapped around each other, flickers of black and white from the projector screen playing across their blank faces. A man on the floor rolls over and pokes my ankle. “The bedroom,” he whispers. I mouth a thank you. 

The bedroom is splattered with graffiti. Most furniture is plastic-wrapped and piled up in the corner, save for a bed in the middle of the room. The walls are covered entirely with illegible artist tags. The paint is still fresh and dripping. It clots and pools in small clumps on the floor. 

Everywhere, people are dancing. Stepping in the paint puddles in bare feet, dragging colourful footprints over the hardwood. Someone is rolling on the bed, bruising the sheets with an oily blue gloss. A woman in a white dress is using a brush to smear paint on her lover’s face, laughing with a big gummy smile. 

“Allegra!” another woman calls, sidling up next to me. Léa. She’s painted streaks of yellow in her hair. She’s wearing an assortment of gold bracelets that run all the way up her arms and clatter together. When she moves, it sounds like she’s doing the dishes, all that metal cutlery sliding against the basin. “Come dance!” she yells, pulling my arms, leaving blue fingerprints on my wrists.

“Have you seen Alison?” I call to her over the music, but she either pretends not to hear, or does not. She thrusts me into the throng of the crowd, bracelets rattling as her arms extend. The song, which is teeming with bass and guttural screaming, fades out, and the silence feels fraudulent, like everyone is pretending, like everyone is pushing their tongues flat in their mouths. 

“Let me tattoo you,” a blonde man says, lurching towards me. His lips are chapped. He grabs my hand and cradles it like it could live on its own, apart from my body. “You’re special, the way you dance,” he mumbles in my ear. In the corner, three people have started kissing, tersely, anxiously, like they’re afraid. 

“Tell me where Alison is,” I say to him. He meets my eyes. 

“Let me cut your hair. Just a bit. Bangs would look great on you.” 

Reluctantly, I offer up my split ends, clenched in my fists, frizz poking out from between my fingers. The blonde man shakes his head, grabs for two more inches of hair. He presses his palm against the top of my head, and with nail scissors he makes the cut. From left shoulder to right. The hairs drop like a curtain. I feel the absence of weight on my shoulders—it is unbearable, this lightness. I whimper like he’s done something terrible, then hug him, faisant la bise on each cheek. 

He clutches a few broken strands of my hair in his fist. “I think Alison is in Heaven, next door, where—” 

“The orgy,” Léa interjects. “Apartment 5.” 

I sprint out of the bedroom, past the mass of sleeping bodies in the living room, out into the hallway where the fluorescent lights make me dizzy, to apartment 5, a sleek black door with “HEAVEN” emblazoned under the knocker in curly pink letters. I try the handle, but it’s locked. I knock loudly. Wait a few seconds. Knock again. Knock quicker. Louder. So loud the staircase rattles underneath my feet. 

“Alison!” I yell, “Let me in!” 

I push my ear to the door but all I can hear is running water sloshing on the floor, like the whole apartment has been flooded or swallowed up by the sea. Tears sting my eyes, my voice falters. “Alison!” I keep yelling. I try to conjure up her image. I remember how people used to ask if we were sisters. People would mistake me for her. On the days I was daring, I would be her entirely; there were no borders between her skin and mine. I imagine Alison behind the door, looking through the peephole, smiling, or crying, or laughing, or nothing. I ball my hands into fists and throw all my weight against the door. It doesn’t budge. 

Charlie walks up the stairs, stumbling, and sees me. “Allegra. I think it’s over,” he looks at me softly. He touches my shoulder, tracing a line to the ends of my hair, where his fingers linger. “Nice,” he smiles, “it looks nice.” He offers me his flask, and I take one sip, then another, filling my cheeks like a chipmunk, waiting to feel the burn, then gulping it down. 

I let Charlie lead me back into the party. The sun is peeping through the foggy window. The sleeping people have woken up, and are wiping drool from their faces, easing back into their gawky dancing, leaping and twirling and staggering. A woman with crust from sleep bunched in the corners of her eyes offers me a shot in a cracked mug, the handle wrapped in duct tape. Then everyone else raises their glasses, and we drink, making our own private noises of disgust—retching, moaning, whispered curse words. Only I make no sound. Charlie puts me on his shoulders, and I fall back into the crowd. They carry me around the room, and I try to pull the leaves on the yucca tree, but they’re rubbery and stiff. The hands lifting my body are familiar: I feel the rough ones of the men who have bought me drinks. The girls who did my makeup, funnelled green apple vape smoke into my mouth in the bar bathrooms. The hands of someone I once had sex with, someone soft, who kissed me slowly, but I can’t pinpoint who. 

“Tell me a story!” Silvia yells. “Tell me something good!” 

The hands set me down on the ground, upright. Soon they’re all chanting. They all want a story. At previous parties, I have dazzled, read poetry about fighting dragons and having threesomes. But that was Alison: that was when she was across the smoky room, mouthing the words. Without her I can’t open my mouth. I don’t have anything to say. 

“Story! Story!” the crowd yells, like big children, and I imagine them all wearing dinosaur print pyjamas, sticking their thumbs in their mouths. I conjure up baby pictures in my mind—Silvia with her pigtails, Lycra and her teddy bear, Charlie in a highchair with baby food smeared across his face. 

“There was this girl named Alison,” I babble. 

I sway a bit. Everyone is looking at me. Lycra, as if on cue, crawls like a cat to my feet. Charlie holds my hand and I step on Lycra’s back, my soapbox. “I don’t know if I remember her. Like, she got lost somewhere on the way here.” I know I’m slurring. I know I have an alcohol bomb inside of me, fizzing and gurgling and mixing with my stomach acid. But everyone is looking at me and they want a story. Words slip out of my mouth. I’m as stiff as a monolith. 

“I only know how to describe her in sounds. A screech. A moan like you’re having the best orgasm of your life. Sometimes, silence, sometimes, a deep guttural scream, sometimes, all the silverware clanging around in your drawer. I thought I’d recognize her if I saw her again. Like a lost dog. I thought if I looked at her long enough, I would become her. Dress up in her skin.” My voice becomes louder. It echoes through the room. “Did I get her face wrong? The last time I held her, did I forget to run my hands along her nose, her cheeks, did I forget the easy possibility I would lose her? Did I swallow her? Did I drive her away? Like a hearse? Like plunging a stake in the ground?”

The crowd claps. Charlie whoops. I am relieved. I fondle my new hair. I step off Lycra’s back and take a bow. People are pulling out notebooks and t-shirts and uncovering patches of skin for me to autograph. I am smiling and waving, squinting against the string lights. 

I trip over something hard, Lycra’s blue plastic heel, and I feel my legs swing out, my vinyl boots flying off, my neck tensing, my head whipping back, smacking hard against the floor. 

No one speaks. The clapping peters out. Hands materialize around me, holding my hands, stroking my hair, checking my pulse. 

“Just a concussion!” someone yells.

I feel my eyebrows sliding off, warmth spreading from my head to my chest, a soft smile clinging to my face. Call 911! People are screaming. Who the fuck is Alison? Someone asks, before all the mouths shush him. Charlie is next to me, giggling in my ear. I hear the thunder of a drawer opening, of silverware chiming. I feel Alison floating somewhere above my body, and I imagine she is dangling from the ceiling, her arms hanging down like a chandelier. I feel fabulous. Blood and paint on my face. All dressed up for Heaven’s orgy. A real bomb. Let it be known: in this life, I got everything I wanted.