One Last Thing Before I Go

with the full knowledge of your incredibly rich history of serious fucking mistakes.”
    “I’m sorry. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
    “What I’d like you to do is to unfuck my mother.”
    “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
    “Fuck you, Silver. I’ve done nothing but make it easy for you. And in return, you’ve turned my life to shit. You’ve turned all of our lives to shit. That’s what you do.”
    “There’s a rest stop. Let’s pull over and get some ice cream.”
    “Fuck you, and fuck your ice cream.”
    “You say ‘fuck’ a lot.”
    “Every single fucking ‘fuck’ is earned.”
    “You know, what happened between your mother and me isn’t really something for you to be angry at.”
    “No?”
    “I mean, if you think about it, it’s really not any of your business. It’s just a mistake made by two consenting, slightly intoxicated adults. And we’ll face the consequences of that mistake, if there are any, just like you have to face the consequences of, you know . . . yours.”
    “I think you need to stop talking now.”
    “I wish I could.”
    “Just hold it in.”
    “I’ve been trying all day. It just keeps pouring out of me. It’s like something is loose.”
    “Something is loose, all right.”
    “I think you should forgive me.”
    “I’ve spent my entire life forgiving you.”
    “And I appreciate it.”
    “You’re such an asshole.”
    “I am. I know I am. Just tell me what I can do to make it up to you.”
    “You can stay away.”
    “What?”
    “From all of us. Mom, Rich, and me. We’re a family, the only one I’ve got. And now, thanks to you, that may all fall apart. I’ve already lost one family, and I can’t do it again. Not now. Not ever.”
    “Casey.”
    “I’m not saying it to be mean. I just need you to understand.”
    “Please.”
    “Do you understand?!”
    “I understand.”

CHAPTER 43
    O n the elevator ride up, he collapses against the wall and sinks down to the floor, unable to summon the strength required to remain upright. He is profoundly exhausted, can feel his remaining energy slowly seeping out of him like blood in a horror film. He watches the door open onto his floor, sees the faded wallpaper of the hallway. He’s never seen it from this angle before, at eye level with a small constellation of scuffs and tears from the corners and wheels of countless suitcases and pieces of furniture, as sad, defiant, angry, lost men moved in and out of the Versailles. They should leave marks, he thinks. Gashes and smears, scars for all the lives and families coming undone, for all the damage still to be done.
    The door slides closed, and the elevator is still. It feels strange to be in an unmoving elevator, like time has stopped. Maybe, when the door opens again, he will walk out into another world, one in which Casey didn’t say all the things she said to him on the drive home, things that are now permanently etched into the scuffed hallway walls of his brain.
    It’s quiet. Someone will push a button soon, and the elevator will either take flight or descend, and life, or whatever the hell it is he’s living here, will start again. But for now, there’s nothing but the piercing stillness of this immobile box, and the soft, intermittent sounds of his shallow breathing. The elevator would be a strange place to die. On the plus side, though, he’d be found pretty quickly, before he had time to ruin his apartment with the stink of his rot. He’d become something of a legend in the Versailles, the former rock star discovered dead in the elevator. Speculation will run rampant about the fact that he was found barefoot, with his damp sneakers in his hand. And then, after a little while, with a bit of turnover, he will just become one more footnote in the vast compendium of the building’s ever-growing tragic lore.
    With that in mind, he somehow marshals the strength to pull himself to his feet and stagger down the hallway to his apartment, where he falls down onto his bed, and where, with a surprisingly minimal number of interruptions to urinate, he spends the next forty-eight hours in semiconsciousness and complete silence.

CHAPTER 44
    A shley Ross is celebrating her bat mitzvah at the Stoneleigh Country Club, with three hundred of her parents’ closest friends. It’s an island theme, and three black men in dreadlocks and robes play calypso music on steel pans in the atrium, which is festooned with fake palm trees and a wall