If a Pony Catch a Pony

Walking and taking the train both sounded like more trouble than I wanted to go to to get back to my hotel right then, but I didn't want to get a taxi, either, because I didn't want any drivers seeing what a mess I was. I decided to walk until I got myself together enough to deal with an easier form of transportation. The streets were a lot more crowded than they had been earlier, of course, because it's impossible to have a breakdown without a crowd showing up to spectate.

It took me a couple of blocks to realize how much harder the snow was coming down than it had been earlier. The flakes were big and wet, and if you looked up at just the right angle, it looked like they were coming down in a big spiral. The feeling I had outside the record store earlier came back, the feeling that I was just going to fade into the snow and never be seen or hard from again. I kept having to look down at my hooves to make sure they were actually on the sidewalk. Eventually I had myself so scared that I ducked into a train station just to calm down.

Since I was there anyway, I bought a ticket and took the train back to my hotel. By the time I got there, I had managed to get myself back together enough that I wasn't embarrassed to go to the front desk to see whether Symphony had responded to the message I sent the night before. She had, and as I read it, I had to fight to keep myself from bawling right there in the lobby. I have no idea why.

“Octavia! I can't wait to see you again! I'm also busy with family stuff on Saturday, so let's get together Sunday. Meet me at the ice skating rink around 1:00, and we'll go from there.”

Symphony had always been crazy for ice skating, and every winter we spent a lot of time at the rink in the park near her parents' place. Really, I spent a lot of time watching her and fumbling around just trying to stay upright, but it was always fun. I had half a mind to send her another message right then, trying to get her to ditch her family stuff and meet me there right away, but I didn't want to seem desperate or anything, so I just wrote back that I would be there, and went back up to my room for a bit. Almost as soon as I was there, I started pacing around like I had the night before. I was thinking about Vinyl Scratch again, what she had been doing in Canterlot in the first place, whether she had come back to Manehatten after her date with Amethyst, or if she was staying with friends there. I knew that nothing good was going to come of me obsessing over her more than I already had in the past twenty-four hours, but in a way I still kind of wanted to. At least I had enough common sense left to try not to. The problem was, I couldn't think of anything else to do with the rest of the night. I had ostracized Star Gazer, and I didn't really want to go out to any more bars after the mess I had made of trying to pick up Cheerilee the night before.

All of a sudden, I had this idea, though. I hadn't really wanted to go back to my parents' neighborhood just in case someone they knew saw me and told them about it, but for some reason the park that I used to play in when I was younger had popped back into my head, and I was thinking about spending the rest of the night trying to find it. I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was called, and I didn't even remember exactly where it was, but I figured if I just went back to the neighborhood and wandered around a bit, everything would come back to me. I wasn't even sure why I wanted to go there so badly. My best memories of it were from when I went there in the summer, and it would be completely different with snow and clouds everywhere. But the idea had grabbed hold of me, and I didn't have anything else to do, so I bundled up in my scarf again, grabbed my saddlebags, and headed back down to the lobby.

Before I left, I sent Symphony another short message, just to confirm that the time she suggested worked for me. I even started writing one to Vinyl Scratch, just to see if she was back from Canterlot, but I decided not to, and threw it away at the last minute. I could tell the front desk clerk was irritated that I had wasted the paper, but I went ahead and paid half of the rate for sending a message, and that calmed him down a little.

The train station was getting pretty crowded, since it was around dinner time on a Saturday night, and the snow from earlier in the day had let up a little bit. The car I got into was packed, which had never stopped bothering me despite the fact that I had lived in big cities my entire life. Fortunately, I was stuck near the door, next to these two fillies, which killed me a little. When I was a filly I always wanted to be right next to the door on trains, too. You could tell they were pretty well off, just by how their manes were styled, and they were having this very serious conversation. There's nothing more serious than a conversation between a couple of fillies. One of them was an earth pony and the other was a unicorn, and neither of them had their cutie marks yet. From what I could hear, they were talking about their families' Hearth's Warming plans. The unicorn was going out of town, and I could tell she wasn't too happy about it. The funny thing, though, was that the Earth pony was obviously jealous of her, even though she wasn't going to come out and say it. She kept trying to get the unicorn to say more about what she was going to be doing at her grandparents' house or whatever, even though she clearly didn't want to talk about it.

As we got closer to my stop, the train started to clear out a lot, since more ponies were going downtown than uptown. The two fillies got off at the same stop as me, and I thought about asking them if they knew where the park was. I didn't, though, since they both looked so preoccupied. I was pretty sure that it was north of my parents' place, or at least in the opposite direction of my old elementary school. And I knew it was in a part of town that wasn't completely filled with apartment blocks or skyscrapers, since my main memory of the place was of watching the sunset there. So I started by getting as close to my parents' apartment as I felt comfortable doing, then just heading in the direction I thought was most likely to get me there.

That worked about as well as you would expect. Every time I would see something that felt familiar—a building or a particular intersection or whatever—I would get excited and start walking faster, but then within a block or so, it'd be all wrong again. Even when I went back and tried heading in different directions from the points that felt right, I'd end up somewhere that I didn't remember ever seeing before in my life. It was frustrating and depressing, and even though I hadn't gone that far from my parents' neighborhood, I was starting to feel more and more lost the longer I looked. At one point I was almost certain that I had remembered where the place was, but all I found was one of those sad little concrete playgrounds with a hopscotch board painted on the ground and a couple of those short fences made for fillies and colts to be able to jump over while they're chasing each other around. I sat down on the bench there, even though it was made of metal and felt like sitting on an iceberg. It was just after five o'clock, that last gasp of twilight before it gets completely dark. All of a sudden, I was thinking about everypony back at Canterlot, and what they were doing. I thought about Amethyst again, and how she would know by that time that I wasn't coming back. I had no idea if she would even care, but I started feeling kind of guilty thinking she might have been worried enough to tell somepony at school and had them contact my parents. I had been working up an appetite with all the walking I had been doing, but when I thought about my parents sitting at home worrying about me, all I wanted to do was drink. Fortunately, that was easy enough to do anywhere in Manehatten.

The problem was, I still didn't want to go to a bar, or at least not just any bar. The only place in town that sounded good to me was this hole in the wall called The Lantern Club, which also happened to be the last place I had seen Vinyl Scratch before I screwed everything up by kissing her. Because her whole DJ thing was still so new, she had trouble finding anywhere she could perform in front of an audience that wasn't just her friends. But The Lantern Club was always willing to take a chance on different kinds of entertainment, and they gave Vinyl—or DJ Pon-3, which was the stage name she came up with—her first shot. It had gone over pretty well, and before long they had her performing there regularly. The last time we had talked, before that night on the roof, was over a couple of drinks after she finished a set.

Maybe I wanted to go back to the club because I thought Vinyl might be performing there, but I think I knew that I was still much too close to what happened the night before to have anything like a productive conversation with her. Really, I think I just wanted to go somewhere in town that I had really great memories of. The Lantern Club was the place where I had always felt closest to Vinyl. When I watched her DJ in her bedroom at her parents' place, she was always nervous, and her hooves looked so uncertain when she was crossfading tracks and playing with effects and all that. As soon as she got on stage, though, all that uncertainty vanished. She was so good in front of a crowd—so different from how she was when it was just the two of us. I loved seeing her that way. It was the first time I realized I was completely crazy for her, and not just attracted to her.

The Lantern Club was in the Burrows, the name that had been given to what used to be a wasteland between the mass of businesses downtown and the ritzy apartments uptown. When I was a filly, the neighborhood had no culture at all. That was already changing by the time I finished high school, though, and it had really exploded just after I left for Canterlot. Most of Manehatten changed slowly, if at all, but the Burrows were a big exception. There was a different feeling in that neighborhood. Uptown sparkled in the winter, but it was completely quiet once the sun went down. Downtown was always noisy and dirty, and smelled like liquor and food and debauchery. The Burrows were a different story altogether. It was like watching a pony give birth, so much noise, but also promise and even a kind of innocence.

Even though it was freezing cold out, I decided to walk to the club. For one thing, it was still pretty early, and walking would make it at least a little bit later when I got there. For another, I had suddenly gotten very miserly with the money I had left, even though I wasn't about to run out or anything. It was just that I had started to worry a little about what would happen if my parents really lost it when I told them about my decision to drop out of Canterlot College. If they kicked me out, I was going to need something to live on until I could find a place to stay. Anyway, the cold was good for me. I've never been able to feel too terribly depressed when I get really cold. It's like my body has to devote all of its resources to functioning, so I can't even really think about anything except what's right in front of me. Being hot is so much worse. When you're hot, all you can do is lay there and obsess over the worst things.

It took a little less than an hour to get to the Burrows, and then a few more minutes to find the Lantern Club again. I had only ever gone there with Vinyl, and she seemed completely at home in the Burrows from the minute she set hooves there for the first time. For me, it was a little harder to navigate. Even though I liked the creative spirit of the place, I never felt completely comfortable there. If you didn't know Vinyl came from a wealthy family, you'd never guess it by looking at her. I definitely don't mean that as an insult. She could fit right in with the cool ponies in a way that I had never been able to. I was always too reserved and, I'll admit it, judgmental. Vinyl didn't care. She wanted to have fun, and brought that attitude with her wherever she went.

As I suspected, the Lantern Club was mostly empty when I got there. A couple of scruffy looking stallions were setting up the stage for whoever was going to be performing, and there were a couple of older stallions at the bar. I hate showing up to bars too early, but I was ready to get in out of the cold, and wasn't in any mood to eat again, so I decided I didn't really have a choice. The club was tiny, and there were only about three tables, so I started a tab with a pint of dark beer and sat down at one of them. Some ponies really look down on you for drinking alone, but I've never cared one way or the other. It's just another of those stupid social conventions that everypony thinks is some kind of sacred dogma.

By the time I finished my first pint, the club had put on some music, and the place was starting to fill up a little. I grabbed another, and got back to my table before anypony could steal it. It surprised me a little that the music they were playing was the same kind of stuff Vinyl did as DJ Pon-3. I'll admit, I had always kind of thought that she was off doing her own crazy thing. That was the first time I realized that she was part of something bigger that was happening in Equestrian music. It was a bit of a scary feeling. I watched the way the ponies in the club subconsciously nodded their heads to the beat that was coming out of the speakers as they talked and drank. Of course music clubs had existed in Equestria for decades, but this was different. At places like Club Merveilleux, you drank and socialized, or you danced to the instrumental numbers the band was playing to warm up, which was just another way of socializing. Then when Sapphire Shores came out, that was when you really let yourself get lost in the music. That segregation didn't exist at the Lantern Club—not when they were playing this new kind of dance music that seemed to set the rhythm for everything that was going on inside the club's walls. As different as it was from what went on at Merveilleux, it was completely separated from what happened at the classical concerts I had been to and even played in. It was hard not to feel like what I had given my life to was quickly being swallowed up by something it could never hope to compete with.

By the time I finished my second pint I was starting to feel my body tingle a little, a good sign that I was on the right track. The club was really filling up at that point, and I got started on my third beer, which I decided would be the last before I moved on to the harder stuff. I was feeling warmer and more relaxed by then, and started eyeing the ponies who had come in. Most of them looked more like Vinyl, their manes carefully styled to look like they hadn't even thought about styling them, but there were also a few who looked like the kind of wealthy hipsters Star Gazer hung out with. It was a weird crowd, the kind of crossover between rich and poor that you don't see very often in Equestria. It was hard not to feel like some big change was coming, even if it might mean that what I had spent my whole life working for was about to become obsolete.

My third beer disappeared pretty quickly, so I went back to the bar again, this time for a scotch and soda. You could tell most ponies who came to the club didn't order cocktails, because the bartender was terrible at making even the simplest ones. I couldn't complain too much, though, since he loaded the drink with scotch and skimped on the soda, the complete opposite of what bartenders in the upscale places in Canterlot did. Of course the scotch was cheap here, but it would serve my purposes well enough. When I got back to my table, though, there was a mare standing next to it, almost looking like she was waiting on me. The alcohol was starting to slow down my reaction time, so it took me just long enough to identify her as Pretty Vision that it got the situation off to a nice, awkward start. When all the pieces finally came together, I still wasn't sure I could trust what I was seeing.

“Hi, Octavia,” Pretty said. She was dressed in a different outfit from the one she had been wearing at the theater a few hours earlier, which struck my increasingly addled brain as hilariously funny. Fortunately I still had it together enough that I just smiled at her.

“Pretty Vision, right?” I asked. “I didn't expect to see anypony I knew here. Want to sit down?”

“Sure!” she said. I had to admit, she seemed much nicer when she wasn't talking about a stupid movie with Star Gazer around. “So did you come to hear The Hoof Beats?” I had no idea what she was talking about, but I tried to add it all up.

“Is that the band that's playing? I don't know anything about them. Actually, I just came here to have some drinks because I used to hang out with a a friend of mine here before I left for Canterlot.”

“That's cool,” she said. “The Hoof Beats are kind of starting to take off, so I thought I'd come and see them here before they go on a tour of Equestria and get really famous.”

Just then, the noise in the room picked up a little, and Pretty whipped her head around toward the stage to see what was happening. Four ponies with shaggy manes all wearing simple black suits and ties had come out onto the stage, and everypony was starting to cheer for them. Pretty Vision jumped up out of her seat and was off toward the stage without another word, but as curious as I was about what the band played that got everypony so worked up, I didn't see how getting closer to the stage would help me appreciate it in the least. It was something Vinyl had chided me for the first couple of times I watched her perform there. She was always saying that the only way I could really get what she did was to be right in the thick of the crowd, dancing and getting completely lost in the music. But that went against everything I had ever been taught about how to appreciate music. Really understanding what a musician was doing meant listening, thinking, engaging with the music on an intellectual level. That didn't mean you couldn't get lost in it, but it did mean you couldn't do a lot of multi-tasking. I even tried to explain that to Vinyl, though I couldn't go quite as far as I wanted to, since I thought it would have been a little too much to tell her that the real reason I treated her music the same way I treated the classical stuff that I studied was that I wanted to give her the same respect I would give to any composer. Maybe I should have said that, but it always just felt too much like a stupid, smarmy come on.

As soon as The Hoof Beats started playing, I could tell that they were going to hold very little interest for me, even in my increasingly impaired state. Their style was so simple, just a couple of simple chord progressions that they alternated between for three minutes at a time. They threw in some sloppy vocal harmonies, which really drove everypony nuts. At first I wondered if their repetitions bothered me in a way that the ones in Vinyl's music didn't just because I didn't know them or feel anything for them as ponies. But when I thought a little more, I realized that wasn't true. When Vinyl would let a beat loop for minutes at a time, it was because she was trying to tap into something primal in the audience, which is a completely legitimate compositional technique. But with the kind of music The Hoof Beats played, it just seemed like a lack of skill. By the time they got to their third song, I had finished my scotch and soda, and really wanted another, but so many ponies had crowded in by then that the club was completely full and there was even a crowd on the sidewalk.

Then, things got even worse. I was thinking so much about the band and the crowd and how I was going to get another drink that I didn't even notice another pony I knew had worked his way over to my table, until he sat another scotch and soda down in front of me. It was Star Gazer.

“Hey, Octavia,” he said. “Looked like you needed another one of these. At least, I assume you still drink scotch and soda.”

“Star,” I said, way too drunk to sound remotely intelligent. “Um...thanks.”

“Can I sit down?”

“Sure.”

He could barely even pull out the stool enough to sit on it, there were so many ponies around.

“About earlier,” he said. At least, I think he did. The band and the crowd were so noisy, and I was so far gone, that I was only half convinced that he was really there and talking to me.

“We really shouldn't talk about it anymore,” I said.

“Ok, if that's what you really want.” It wasn't, but this just wasn't the time or place. I started in on the fresh drink. “Why did you come here?” he asked. “I didn't think The Hoof Beats would be your thing.”

“They're not. I just have good memories of this place.” My lips were numb, and I was slurring like hell, even though I was being really careful to pronounce everything just right. I also wasn't sure whether I was shouting or talking normally, but Star nodded, so I figured he was following me either way.

“Look, I'm supposed to be meeting Pretty Vision here,” he said. “I don't guess you've seen her, have you?”

I should have seen that coming, and I really didn't even want to talk to Star after what had happened earlier in the day, but it still completely took the wind out of my sails. It also kind of made me hate both of them. I tried to stay calm about it, but I was already having to work so hard at controlling my voice that when I responded, I probably sounded like I had was trying to talk for the first time after having someone describe speaking to me in writing.

“She ran up to the stage when they started playing.”

“Oh, great,” he said. He didn't even bother making fun of me. “Well, time for another epic battle.” He sounded put out as hell, but he still got back up and started shoving his way through the crowd to get to Pretty Vision.

The room was so packed, and I was so drunk that I didn't feel much like leaving, even though I desperately wanted to get the hell out before my happy memories of being there with Vinyl got completely ruined. Since I couldn't, though, I just sat there, finishing my drink, trying not to pay attention to the music and kind of watching for Star and Pretty Vision in the crowd. They had found each other, and were kind of dancing as much as anypony could in such a crowded room. Mostly, they were just bobbing up and down, but also rubbing their flanks together at the same time. It shouldn't have bothered me. I didn't really have feelings for Star or anything. But I hated seeing him wasting his time with somepony who I felt sure wasn't as smart as him. The more I thought about it, the faster I pounded my drink down, but even when it was empty, I didn't feel any better—just more confused by what was happening around me. That was when I noticed that Star had left the drink he had ordered on the table, too. I vaguely remember now feeling an overwhelming need not to be sober again for the rest of the night, and going after Star's drink like it was the only thing I ever really wanted in life.

After that, everything is fuzzy. I remember the band stopping, ponies starting to go outside, and me blindly following them, because I had this instinctive need to be back out in the cold. The big crowd was already segregating into groups again, and I swayed back and forth between them, hearing some laughter and laughing along even though in retrospect I'm pretty sure it was at my expense. And then I saw what I guess I was looking for, a little island of rich hipster ponies huddled together, and right there with their backs to me on the edge of the group were Star and Pretty, cuddled up in a way that was partially for warmth, but mostly for affection.

I stumbled over to them, almost right into them, and wedged myself between Star and the pony on the opposite side of him. I know no one would believe me, but I wasn't even angry at him. I don't know what I was thinking, but it wasn't that. I guess I just wanted to feel like I wasn't disappearing from everypony's life. I don't know if Star will ever speak to me again after what I did, but I do at least know he'll never forget me.

“Star!” I was yelling at him, even though I was right up in his face. “Did you ever find Pretty Vision?”

“Oh, Celestia. Octavia, this really isn't the time...”

“Oh, looks like you did!” I turned to the pony I had just shoved out of the way. He looked pretty angry. Like all of Star's friends, he looked like he took himself very seriously. “She's standing right next to him!” I said, like I was letting him in on some great secret. He didn't find it funny at all, even though I couldn't stop laughing about it personally.

“Hey, Octavia,” Star said. His tone had changed. Now, instead of being angry, he was talking to me like I was a filly. It should have made me mad, but I was so far gone that everything was hilarious to me. “Why don't I call for a taxi to take you back to your hotel? We can talk about everything tomorrow, when you're—“

“No! Tomorrow's too late! Too late.” Star was about to interrupt, but I kept plowing ahead. “I can't help your parents decorate, because I'm hanging out with Symphony.”

“It's ok, Octavia. Really, let's just get you a taxi, and—“

“I can't help you, but I know someone who can! You should ask Pretty Vision! Your parents would love her. They never liked me, but they'll love her! She should decorate their house!”

Some of Star's friends were laughing, but boy did Star and Pretty Vision look upset. Especially Star. I had never seen him so angry.

“I'll be right back,” he said, and it took me a minute to realize he wasn't talking to me. He started pushing me away from the rest of his friends, toward the street.

“I don't know what the hell you're trying to do here, Octavia, but if you weren't completely plastered, I'd be bucking furious.”

“I'm just—“

“Don't talk to me anymore!” He was yelling, and I was pretty sure his friends could hear us. Up to that point, everything had seemed pretty funny, but when he said that, nothing was funny anymore. A taxi happened to be going by, and Star flagged it down, then practically shoved me into it. He told the driver where I was staying, and slipped him some cash. Before I could even figure out what was happening, the driver was pulling away from the curb, and Star was already walking back to his friends. I had just enough presence of mind left to realize that I was in a taxi with a driver I didn't know, and that I should try to keep my emotions under control. He dropped me off at the hotel, and pulled away as soon as I stumbled out onto the curb. Didn't even try to help me get out. That's Manehatten, in a nutshell, but I don't really blame him.

I was feeling really sorry for myself at that point, and I was still having to fight really hard to keep the tears back, but I really didn't want to go back to my hotel. I didn't want to go anywhere else, particularly, but I really didn't want to go there. Instead, I just started walking down the street. Most ponies in Manehatten have seen so much that they just ignore a random drunk walking around, but a few did sneak a glance at me, probably because they could hear me sniffling and crying and all. With the snow falling, and me being all drunk and crying right there in front of everypony, just aimlessly walking around with nowhere to go, I started to feel like I was in one of the stupid movies that Star liked so much, where there was always some mare who you were supposed to think had led a very tragic life because even though she was very well off and didn't have any real problems, she didn't know how to connect with other ponies and so had to keep to herself and be all quirky and fascinating in private. That's why I hate movies so much. They encourage you to sympathize with their stupid, self-absorbed characters. Like being a cute, tortured hermit is the greatest thing you can aspire to.

Eventually, I didn't want to walk anymore. I didn't want to sleep, or cry, or think about Star or Vinyl or Symphony or my parents and how much I had let all of them down. Most of all, I didn't want to feel sorry for myself and turn into one of Western Sun's vapid, quirky little virginal recluses who was secretly waiting to be saved by the one pony smart and interesting enough to finally break down all the walls she had built around herself. For a minute, I thought about just sitting down right there on the sidewalk and waiting until I sobered up enough to go back to the hotel and sleep off the last of my drunkenness, but even that seemed too artificial. If I was going to hit bottom, I wasn't going to do it like an unrealistic character in an annoying movie. Instead, I turned around right there and started walking in the opposite direction. I still felt a little sick and dizzy, but all I had done for the past week was worry. I knew how to get around while I was feeling that way.