Free Die Once More by Amy Plum Page B

be around him all the time. So he and I were”—she presses the tips of her index fingers together—“the It Couple. We were at all the parties. He was the king of the downtown gallery scene, and I was his queen. He was crazy about me, and I was madly in love with him. After a year, he asked me to marry him.I said yes.”
    She pauses and takes a sip of her water. “On the surface things seemed too good to be true. But underneath, things were already spiraling out of control, only we were living at such a frenzied pace, I didn’t even realize it. You’ve heard of Andy’s parties, right?” she asks.
    â€œSex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll,” I answer honestly. No two ways about it. The Factory was all about debauchery.
    She nods, and I sense a weight of regret. “Were you into it too?” I ask.
    â€œI wasn’t into the worst of it. But . . .” She studies her hands for a moment before looking back at me. “Not all of us were angels before we grew our wings.”
    She’s right about that. You don’t become a bardia from living a pure human life. You become it by sacrificing yourself to save someone. Which is, I assume, the part she’s about to get to.
    â€œWe had this party at a big old abandoned theater in the Bronx. The place was dilapidated. The party had been going all night, and everyone was pretty out of it. There were too many people standing on this one balcony, pretty high up. It was like this theater box that would seat ten, but there were thirty people crowded on it. I was on the ground floor, waving up to Rosco, when I saw the supports start to crumble. Pieces of plaster were coming off and falling to the ground. I screamed at him to get everybody off, but he couldn’t hear me, and no one else would pay attention. Like I said, everyone was wasted.”
    Ava looks out the window, remembering. “I book it up threeflights of stairs and try to tell people what’s happening, but they won’t listen. I start pulling them off, and they’re all yelling at me, including Rosco. And then the balcony’s floor cracks and everyone makes a rush for the door, and suddenly it’s just me and this one girl who’s so strung out she can barely stand, in a crumbling theater box leaning out over the floor thirty feet below. Rosco’s standing one foot on, one foot off, holding his hand out to help us, and I’m trying to pass the girl to him, but she’s so high she doesn’t know what’s going on. The moment he grabs her, the floor gives out, and I fall to my death. Broken neck, plus crushed by falling masonry. I got the double whammy.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I whisper, because there isn’t anything else to say.
    â€œTheodore saw my light,” she says. “Corpse-napped me from the mortuary before they could cremate me. Funeral director didn’t want to get in trouble, so he didn’t tell anyone my body was missing and gave my parents someone else’s ashes.
    â€œThe first time I was volant—just weeks after I died—I went to find Rosco. And I found a lot more than I had bargained for. He was with the stoned girl from the party. He had been with her for a long time; they were engaged. And there were others. Lots of others.”
    â€œHe wasn’t a rake,” I say, “he was a psychopath.” I want to reach for her, to touch her hand . . . offer her some comfort, but I can tell she doesn’t want that.
    â€œYeah, well. I was afraid I was going to have to stay away from Manhattan for longer—so he wouldn’t see me. But he died a few years later from an overdose, and most of the others I kneweither did the same or scattered by the eighties. By then, I was used to my little haven in Brooklyn and was happy to have a river between me and anything to do with the limelight.”
    â€œBut you haven’t really left it behind. You still