Tuesday Nights in 1980 by Molly Prentiss Page A

visible and making yourself disappear all at once. Visible because you were leaving your mark; invisible because it was so much bigger than you that it swallowed you. You were just this tiny thing, and the art was huge. The art was a big void that you could jump into, try to fill, and swim in forever. When he looked up again, Winona was gone. The clock in the corner informed him that so was 1979.
    When Engales emerged outside, the crowd was engaged in postmidnight hoopla: extra kisses, extra champagne, extra confetti, just for good measure. He saw that Arlene had found a beau of sorts: a short man with a prominent mustache, who had led her to a corner of the balcony and was feeding her grapes on a stick. When she saw Engales she pointed at the grapes and mouthed: Means good luck in Spain!
    Engales gave her a thumbs-up and a raised-eyebrow face. Rumi had gone missing, and he was once again unsatisfied with his surroundings—all there was was the drone of high-end chatter, a sea of old men in tuxes, a few younger women who did not interest him in the least, in designer clothes whose price tags were meant to stand in for style. He scanned for the writer, but he must have already left, which for some reason saddened him. Someday. In general, Engales could feel the night taking its inevitable turn for the worse: the memory of the music, or the memory of the memories that the music had conjured, played in his head, alongside Winona’s odd psychic reading. The party began to feel both surreal and unimportant. What was he doing here? So far away from home, with all these rich people he didn’t know, drunk on champagne?
    He had managed in the past few years to avoid such thoughts. The city had consumed him so, he had refused to think about Franca hardly at all, had only sent her one postcard saying he had arrived, to which she had responded with a lengthy, overly sentimental letter that ended with a cryptic: I’ve got big news, Raul. But I’d rather tell you over the phone. If you might call? Yours. Yours always. F. He hadn’t written back, and he hadn’t called. Her letter had felt like looking her in the eyes: there was just too much there. The letter reeked of home, and he didn’t want to think about home. This was his home now, and Franca’s big news—surely it was something domestic, they’d bought a new house, sold the bakery, or else Franca had gotten pregnant with Pascal’s child—could wait.
    But now, with the New Year upon him and the music still in his mind, he couldn’t help it. He wondered what Franca was doing. If she was drinking champagne, unless the military had banned that, too, or maybe she was asleep. But then again, he didn’t have to wonder. He knew. He always knew. Franca was sitting by the window with a glass of water, looking out and up at the moon. She was wondering where her brother was, what he was doing right now. But then again, she didn’t have to wonder. She knew. She always knew. Her brother was on a balcony with a bunch of rich people, looking out and up at the moon, thinking of her.
    Cigarette.
    Engales escaped back through the glass doors and through the maze of rooms and down a dark stairwell and back out to the street. There he found Rumi, just as he had the first night he met her, sitting on the stoop next door as if she had appeared by magic lamp. At the sight of her, a trophy of the future, all thoughts of Franca fell away again. Here was his life, right here on this stoop, living inside of Rumi’s beautiful mound of hair.
    â€œWell, if it isn’t the painter,” Rumi said.
    â€œWell, if it isn’t the lesbian,” he said, sitting next to her on the cold step, starting his immaculate cigarette-rolling process.
    â€œWhy’d you leave?” she said. “You were getting on so famously with Winona.”
    â€œYou saw that?”
    â€œYes, I saw that. And I’ll tell you exactly what is going to