Ecstasy

Before

The young ones call me Mama Ghost because I've been at this so long.

I am a specter. A vampire. A night-creature.

You think I don't eat. You imagine I don't sleep.

I can see in the dark. I can hear what goes unsaid. I can hear your heart beat harder, faster than the DJ's dubstep, speed garage, trance buildups, jungle beats.

I've been there from the beginning-when the music was underground, when it was heavy, dark, and full of tribal calling. I was there for the first mainstream sounds, the candy and the kandi kids, the Technicolor dancers trading sticky necklaces and bug-eyed kisses on the dance floor. I'm there now, on the festival circuit, the commercial parties, the destination events. The three days of high-priced escape and brand-name DJs.

I'm there at bars. At after hours. At after-after hours.

I'm there when you need me. I keep your secrets. I've seen you at your worst. I know your bad habits. I've seen you beg and grovel. I've seen you plead for more, for favors, for just a taste.

I am your conscience. I am the devil on your shoulder. I am what you want, not what you need.

I've heard your desperate voice at 4 a.m. I've heard it at 7 a.m. I've heard it at noon. I can hear it even when you are stone-cold sober. I hear it when you are silent.

I hold the reins. I know exactly how much power I have to make your night or to ruin it. All of that in the palm of my hand-in the handoff, the hand-game-a quick palm to palm.


You put your life in my hands. Night after night. Party after party.

I can make you invincible and I can kill you.

I can make you stay up all night and find god on the dance floor or in the mirror or in the bathroom stall or in the toilet or in the face of a stranger.

I've seen you weave tapestries from the air.

I've seen your fingers communicate in Morse code.

I can make you see. And I can blind you.

I can make you divine. I can destroy you.

But I look after you. I protect you. I keep you coming back.

I am your best friend and I always pick up when you call.


The young ones come and go. They attach themselves to me. They want to do what I do. They want my superhuman strength. They think that all it takes is the ability to stay up all night and sleep all day. They think that comes from handfuls of pills. Envelopes of powder. But it takes more than drugs to sell drugs. Especially when you’re me-a woman.

You didn't expect that, did you? The first time you called? The first time someone pointed me out to you across the club, on the beach, at the back of the bar?

A woman. A mother. A wife.

Have you noticed that I'm sober when you're not? Have you noticed that I keep an eye on everything-that I'm keeping tabs, keeping track, keeping count, and keeping score. That I know who took what, who needs more, who has had too much?


You ever walked into the back room of the back room of the back room of a party at 3 a.m. to find seven guys on the wrong end of the night? Angry and amped, their attention-their fury and impatience-trained on you?

You ever been held up at gunpoint in an empty warehouse by a new supplier who wanted your cash?

You ever been pawed, patted, probed-fingers inside you-to make sure you weren't carrying a gun yourself?

You ever had to stand up to men twice your size, ten times as high, and forty times as brutal?

You probably think it's all parties and perks and VIP areas and backstage passes and comps.

You ever been raided? Surveilled?

Chased? Beaten? Choked? Cheated out of thousands of thousands?

You ever been caught at the UK border carrying five thousand pills destined for Creamfields and been offered a deal-flip on your suppliers and walk?

You ever sit there as they ask and ask and ask you to name names? As they isolate you and dehumanize you?

Three years I spent locked up in a foreign country at the mercy of guards and the sort of women I manipulated on the outside-the sort of women who begged and begged for a favor, a freebie, just one more. And then it was my turn for begging.

And that wasn't the worst of it.

My son. He turned me in.

I remember him at my arrest, wondering why he wasn't being taken in too.

The blood of my blood and all I am is his get-out-of-jail-free card.

You ever realize the only family you have left are the people you find in your never-ending after hours?

And you think you can do what I do?


What you don’t know is that I left your world by choice. Once I learned to see around the edges of things, see behind and through things-see the self you keep hidden-I knew I would never go back. Once I could read the contrails on the dance floor. Once I was initiated into the dark heart of the dance. Once I learned it was possible to see more, see wildly, see without barriers and boundaries, why would I blind myself again, turn my back on spiritual rapture and pretend it was nothing more than a sport and a pastime?

If you believe god is a DJ, then I am your high priestess-the one who brings you close.

I will show you that the night has no borders, no beginning or end. I will tunnel you into yourself and help you hear that what's pumping in your veins isn't blood, it's trance. It's four-on-the-floor. It's dubstep. Handbag house. Darkcore.

You will know that I am the puppeteer of your secret self.


I am the music and the party. I tune you in. I raise the goose bumps on your neck. I am the music’s synesthesia-the glow-pulse that envelops you, tap-tap-tapping on your heart and skin.

I will save you and set you free.

I am everywhere and nowhere. And you will always think of me.

Lena

The domestic terminal at the Athens airport is dark and crowded. The seats hard. The smell of cigarette smoke barely contained in the plexiglass lounge across the room.

Lena shifts her weight. Her body aches from the San Francisco flight.

The puddle jumper to Naxos is late. There will be a delay-deplaning, cleaning the cabin, boarding. The usual.

She watches the first passengers come down the gangway-a gaggle of women. British? American? They are boisterous and loud. They wear flowing dresses and crowns-the cheap tourist kind, the metal laurel wreaths sold at every shop in Greece. Some have flowers tangled in their hair.

The women link arms, singing, as they approach the passengers waiting to board.

They pass in front of Lena. She catches the stink of vacation-sunscreen and the deep funk of wine.

One of them-wild haired, her dress askew, her crinkled, freckled breasts barely contained in her sundress-trails a finger across Lena's cheek as she passes. The woman's finger lingers on Lena's chin. Her scent is strong-earthy, mossy, a feral crawl through a cave. Mud and sweat and something Lena can't quite place. The salt lick of the sea. She can hear something too-drumbeats and the ocean. A chant and a dance. A taste in her mouth-blood or wine, deep and rich, delightful and deadly.

For the first time in years, she feels the desire to dance. She feels the loosening of her limbs. The syncopation of her arms and legs.

She opens her mouth, as if to drink the woman's air.

Then the scent fades.

Lena rises to her feet, her hand outstretched to pull the woman back. Her mouth still open.

Then a restraining hand on her arm. She hits the chair, her purse tumbling to the ground.

"Jesus, Mom. Close your mouth. What the hell." Her son, Drew-his dead father returned to life. "Is there a lounge around here somewhere or does this shithole terminal not even have that?"

The smell, the sound, the taste-vanished. Still, something remains-a note, a last beat of Lena's heart before it's all gone.

"The look on your face, Mom. You look deranged."

Lena cranes her neck hoping for one more glimpse. She rises again. Her head swiveling-a frantic pinwheel. Her hands, once so graceful. Her body-they had called it musical.

"Stop, now." Drew's hand on her again. "They should have a separate terminal for drunk vacationers. Separate airlines."

"They do." Drew's wife, Jordan. Picture-perfect in a white linen dress, straight black hair, gold sandals. Not pretty though. Too cold for true beauty. "They fly low cost. À la carte drinks and no frills. It's a good business model. But with some flaws. For instance . . ."

Drew's hand leaves Lena and reaches for his wife. "Every business model has shortcomings."

"Yes, but," Jordan says. Yale undergrad and JD/MBA from Harvard. Her father the CFO of British Airlines, her mother a former flight attendant. "The low-cost model is beset by both employee strikes and unresolved passenger complaints, not to mention scaling baggage policies, which has led to-"

"The real problem," Drew says, "is allowing them to share terminal space. It's like waiting for a limo and having to watch a Greyhound bus arrive. Dad would be horrified."

But "Dad" is dead. Found on the beach dune below the hotel he was developing. Like he'd been struck down, the worker who discovered him had reported.

The island coroner ruled his death a heart attack.


The airport is noise and congestion. Anxious summer travelers. Hungry children. Irritated adults. Everyone in the here and now-checking the time, checking the monitors, worried about delays and connections-nothing like the women who just passed through.

"I don't mind the terminal," Lena says. Too many years of being cloistered and sequestered. The loneliness of luxury. Private dining rooms. Blacked-out windows of town cars. Cab-to-curb service.

"You grew up flying coach, so that tracks," Drew says.

"Drew." Jordan bristles. "Don't be such a snob."

"Pointing out facts is not snobbery. It's facing reality. My mother grew up flying coach."

"I enjoyed it," Lena says. "It was an adventure. Something you'll never understand."

Despite flying first class from San Francisco last night, her back is sore. Her calves are tight.

"At least on the island, we'll be kept away from women like those," Drew says, removing his hand from Jordan and waving toward the airport exit. "Whatever they got up to on their vacation, they're too old for it."

Vacation-as if it's a dirty thing done by dirty people.

Jordan and Drew don't vacation-they travel.

"Too old for what?" Hedy has returned from the smokers' lounge, her eyes hidden behind large designer sunglasses-saucersized tortoiseshell frames that forbid entry.

"Too old to be so drunk in public."

"No one is too old for anything," Hedy says, patting Drew's head before sliding off to talk to the gate attendant.

Drew smooths his hair. "Those sunglasses make her look hungover."

Jordan waves a hand in front of her face as if Hedy brought all the smoke from the lounge with her.

"She's going blind," Lena says. "Macular degeneration."

"I've heard," Drew says.

"She shouldn't smoke," Jordan says.

Lena watches Hedy chatting with the gate attendant, waving an arm stacked with cheap bangles. "No one should smoke."


Thirty-five years ago, Hedy burned so bright she was blinding. A party unto herself. A late night that turned and turned and never wore out. She and Lena had met in the company of the Frankfurt ballet. Lena was a workhorse-the best dancer in Ohio-but not as naturally talented as the others, always aware of her limitations. Hedy had no limits except those of her own making-the ones that led to weight gain and injury. That led to giving up shortly after Lena was let go.

So they traveled. They hitchhiked to Morocco. They accepted invitations to New Year's in Moscow. They put Ibiza to shame.

Back then Hedy hid behind cheap drugstore frames-disguising the aftermath of the nights that didn't end as she broke so many dawns she shattered calendars. A drama queen, of course. Louder, livelier than everyone else. The sunglasses were part of it all.

Then came the upgrade-sunglasses worn even while sober. Her eyes hurting. Always hurting. Tripping on the street. Crashing her car.

Rumors that she was out of control. No longer a party person but a drunk. No longer amusing but an addict.

By the time Hedy received her diagnosis at twenty-six, Lena had already stumbled into a hasty marriage. Chosen extreme financial stability over the wild nights, the hostels, the children-of-god-Goa-trance-full-moon mania.

Aren't you glad you stopped wasting your twenties, Stavros said to her on their wedding night. She should have known right then.

I didn't waste a day. But she didn't say it, certain that he knew better. He hadn't wasted his twenties. He'd dropped out of hospitality school in Hartford, Connecticut, and built an empire. Impressive for the son of an immigrant cabdriver. Not all of it was on the level-but those were secrets Lena learned to keep. Business is dirty, Stavros had told her. But our lives are clean.

She and Hedy drifted.

They saw each other every few years-more awkward each time. Lena dressed in smart tapered pants, Hermès bangles, luxe flats. A costume at first. Then armor against the realization she'd made a mistake. Hedy in harem pants, a knockoff bag trimmed with things that dangled and chimed, platform sneakers. But always designer sunglasses. By the time I'm sixty-lights out, she told Lena. By then I'll have seen everything.

A collectible-that's what Lena had become.

Nearly all of Stavros's friends had one-a dancer or a petite violist who hadn't made the cut. A tidy curiosity. There was Walter Salmon in Bermuda married to a Muscovite ballerina who defected for a better life in a Caribbean fortress. There was Leonard Stillman in Texas. who snagged the lead violist from the Shanghai Philharmonic. And Stavros, who got Lena and never revealed that she hadn't made the cut at the Frankfurt ballet.

Small mercies.


Drew stands, checking on whatever Hedy is up to at the gate.

This is his show. His trip. Lena and Hedy are only along for the ride as he slides into his father's shoes, finishing what Stavros started.