One Last Thing Before I Go

around in a tight circle, holding hands and laughing. Denise, Rich, Casey, Rich’s two sisters—tall, gangly women who could, at best, be referred to as handsome—Rich’s parents, who are surprisingly small given their towering offspring, Denise’s father, whose face remains without creases from a lifetime of not smiling, and Ruben and Elaine, who don’t seem at all put off by the fact that they have just married off their ex-daughter-in-law. Ruben, in particular, has his face raised to the ceiling, his eyes closed, and an almost rapturous smile on his face as he moves around the circle, holding Elaine’s hand on one side and Casey’s on the other.
    Casey momentarily steps out of the circle and comes running over to Silver, grabbing both of his hands. “Come on, Dad.”
    She called me Dad.
    “I think I’ll sit this one out,” he says, but even as he says it she is pulling him, off his chair, onto his feet, through the throngs of onlookers clapping to the beat, and into the center of the dance floor to join the circle. It’s Denise who breaks ranks to let him in, so he ends up holding her hand on one side and Casey’s on the other as they dance the horah, pulling one another around in an accelerating circle. Ring-around-the-rosy at high speed, Silver thinks. Denise smiles happily at him and squeezes his hand. He is happy for her, even as her joy leaves him dented.
    Around they go, and even as they pick up speed, keeping time with the band, he feels everything slowing down. He is aware of Casey, her fingers in his hand as she laughs, trying to manage the excessive folds of her gown while keeping up with the tempo. He remembers her as a little girl, squealing with glee as he held her hands and swung her in circles around the room. And here they are now, older and sadder, but still spinning.
    He sees the band, playing this strange hybrid of a traditional Jewish horah fused with jazz, sees Baptiste, like him, years away from their brief moment in the sun. He wonders if Baptiste’s life after the band has mirrored his own. They’ve never really talked about it. He sees Dana, standing with a second backup singer he doesn’t know, remembers her toes curling up on his comforter that last sad, sexless night they spent together.
    He sees his father and mother looking over at him, the love in their eyes tempered with concern and confusion over what he’s become. He’d like to tell them how grateful he is to them, how none of this is their fault. He should tell them that, as soon as this dance is over. That they did everything right and he turned out wrong anyway. Just like he did everything wrong, but Casey will turn out right.
    He sees the beads of sweat forming on the highest peaks of Rich’s forehead, where his hair is beginning to recede more aggressively. He’ll be bald within a few years, but it will only make him look better, more dignified. Silver always reserved a quiet contempt for men like Rich, straight-laced, earnest, uncomplicated. Content. And now he’d give anything to be like that, to have always been like that. Instead, he was blinded by the flare of fleeting, accidental stardom, and when it was over, he never stopped seeing spots.
    Silver sees all of this in an instant as he dances around in the circle, his feet stomping the ground, the sweat dripping down his face. And then he lets go of Casey and Denise and finds himself in the middle of the circle, spinning counterclockwise, like an inner wheel within their wheel, spinning and sweating and laughing and crying. He feels the love around him, feels the people in his life swimming past him in a blur, feels the grief and regret crashing down on him in waves. He spins. Faster and faster, his feet keeping time in half beats, quarter beats, eighths. His hands come up to his sides, then higher, reaching up above him. He is faintly aware of clapping and cheering, catcalls and whistles as he spins, eyes closed, the lights flashing like lasers behind his lids. He remembers going to the planetarium in high school to see a laser light show set to rock music. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin. Sneaking in a joint and getting high as the lights exploded across the ceiling. There was a girl. He held her hand. He can’t remember who she was, but he has a sense of her smile, her clean white teeth, the smell of her shampoo as they rested their heads together, the erection he hid artfully under his shirt until the marijuana calmed it down.
    Silver spins and sees