Interstitial #5
sinking, like a car in quicksand. But she doesn’t know any other way to do it. “I don’t know any other way to do it,” she
tells Leo. Her voice cracks. She removes his head from her lap, rises, bends to untangle the leash from his back paw.
Leo’s tongue darts out and he licks her cheek. He doesn’t know what’s wrong, but he’s trying to make her feel better. The
way dogs learn human ways of living is astonishing, thinks Mae; the way we expect them to adapt to our ways of living instead
of the reverse. We don’t deserve their graciousness and goodwill, and yet the lucky among us receive both.
“Let’s go, buddy,” she tells Leo. “Time for breakfast.” They walk back on the cool, wet sand, close to the water. Two broken
people. Well, one broken person and one broken dog, searching for whatever can fix them.
Jordan walks the rest of the way in a state of intense agitation that even the beauty of her surroundings can’t mitigate. Bernadette wants her to kill a story about Bernadette herself. If Jordan calls Samantha Braddock and says there’s no truth
to it, the story won’t run, and Jordan will one day be Bernadette’s partner at the firm.
She has Samantha Braddock in her contacts. They’ve worked on stories in the past. It wouldn’t take much. She can say one sentence about how much she loves working for Bernadette and how disgruntled the unnamed employee must be (is it Irina?) to issue such untruths.
It’s complicated. On one hand, Bernadette is a brilliant problem solver. Her instincts are unparalleled in the industry. She’ll
take a call from a client in distress anytime, anywhere, at the expense of pretty much everything else. On the other hand,
Jordan has seen her belittle Irina for bringing up ideas in a staff meeting. She’s publicly berated Tom for failing to get
that actress (you’d know her if you heard her name) under contract when she was going through that situation on the movie
set. She’s condescending, she micromanages, she’s definitely a narcissist. To deny any of that would be a lie.
And then there’s Memorial Day weekend.
And then there’s the fact that Jordan doesn’t lie to the press.
On the other hand. If Jordan keeps her morals intact Bernadette won’t make her partner. She’ll still get clients, but they
will be the bottom-feeders. Bernadette will start to punish her in ways large and small. Eventually, she’ll have to leave
the firm.
It’s a Gordian knot she can’t untangle, especially without coffee.
The sky is clear and the sun is all the way up as Jordan reaches the beach parking lot. All of the cars belong to the surfers
right now, but soon enough the surfers will leave and the summer morning jockeying for a parking spot will begin, the moms
with the young kids, the parents of the surf lesson students. She puts on her flip-flops and crosses the street to Summer
Sessions, and the Sandpiper Cafe inside the shop. She would have killed for a place like this when she was a teenager, but
the surf shop moved locations and expanded when Jordan was already launching into her adult life. At Sandpiper you can order
a complete and healthy breakfast; you can choose from a full coffee bar menu; you can dress like a surfer or date a surfer
or be a surfer, or whichever combination of all three feels right to you.
She orders a cappuccino and a smoothie from a beautiful suntanned girl in a Roxy T-shirt.
She thinks about the cocktails and wine from the night before and adds a coconut water from the refrigerated case near the register.
She repairs to the bench outside the pickup window, sipping the water while she waits for her name to be called.
She woke this morning in near darkness, but now it’s as if a curtain has lifted in a dark auditorium and in the center of the stage is a perfect summer day.
She hears her name, and the beautiful suntanned girl slides the coffee and smoothie out to her through the pickup window.
Here is a conundrum: only two hands, but three drinks. Not the smartest thinking for a girl without a car. She sits back down
on the bench to contemplate this, and—
“That’s a lot of liquids,” says a voice behind her.
Jordan turns and there is the ghost of Simone.
“Oh my god,” she says. “It’s you.” So it was Simone she saw running the day before. She’s a little older, yes (who isn’t?),
but with the same spun-sugar hair, the improbable tan layered over freckles, the soccer-player legs. Simone is wearing running
shorts, a fitted tank top, and sunglasses, which she lifts to reveal the same eyes Jordan remembers, will always remember.
Sea-glass green. Her heart beats extra fast. Her eyes were the rarest color in the world, seventeen-year-old Simone had informed
Jordan. She was very proud of her eyes, as though she had somehow chosen the color herself.
“How are you going to carry all that?”
Simone was the first girl Jordan kissed—she was Jordan’s first everything.
“I’m actually done with the coconut water,” Jordan says. “So now I have two drinks for two hands.”
“Well, that’s good.” Simone smiles. Her teeth are California perfect. “You look fantastic, Jordan Shipman. Look at you, all
grown up.”
“Ha,” says Jordan “Yeah, I guess I am. You too.”
“I look fantastic, or I’m all grown up?”
Jordan takes a few seconds with this, looking carefully at Simone. So she’s still a flirt. “Both,” she says finally.
God, Jordan was crazy for Simone. They’d met in the beginning of the summer before college. Simone was working as a lifeguard
at the Beach Club and Jordan was a member, which right there tells you most of what you need to know about New England, because
even though Simone’s parents were loaded, it was time, connections, and family, not money, that got you a membership at the
Beach Club. They were inseparable that whole summer.
Simone visited her once at NYU, freshman year. At a pregame the first night of her visit Jordan lost track of Simone for a
little while, and when next she saw her she was making out with a guy wearing an Obama T-shirt. Jordan had left the party,
stomped all the way down Mercer, leaving Simone to find her way back to the residence hall.
“Did you walk here?” Simone asks now, drawing Jordan back to the present. Jordan nods. “I could give you a ride home. I’ve
got my car right here. I just finished my run and grabbed a coffee.” Simone holds up her own cup for proof. There isn’t a
drop of sweat on her, but that’s Simone for you. Her legs, which are quite visible, so please don’t judge Jordan for looking,
are the same lean, strong legs that all those years ago could rise effortlessly on a surfboard, race along the beach, wrap
themselves around Jordan. She points to a Honda CRV in the small parking lot.
Simone had been angry when she finally got back to the room. “What’s the big deal, Jordan, it was just a kiss, I always said
I was bi.”
But Jordan had been angrier, so angry she could barely talk. “Sorry,” she spat, “but you never said you were bi. I thought
you were here to see me.” She’d been so shocked and hurt she felt like she had sunburned skin and Simone had slapped it.
“I was! I am! So what, it was just a guy at a party. It was just a kiss. It doesn’t have to be so complicated, Jordan. Why can’t we just have fun?”
But Jordan couldn’t get past it. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t. If she couldn’t have Simone completely, she didn’t want her at
all. They hardly spoke the next morning when Simone packed her bag, got in the cab that would take her back to LaGuardia.
And they didn’t speak again after. During the next summer Jordan avoided places she might run into Simone, even turning around
on a run when she thought she saw her coming the other way.
“Or I could walk you home,” says Simone now. “I can hold one of your drinks.”
Simone’s parents own one of the gigantic homes along Ocean Boulevard, across the street from the beach. Simone’s father made
his money in the early days of the tech boom. When Jordan knew her, all those years ago, when Simone’s family had just bought
and renovated the house, the money was new money. Jordan supposes it’s older money now, or at least middle-aged money, with
a couple of lines on its face and some extra weight around the hips.
The summer between sophomore and junior year of college she ran into Simone’s mother on the beach, who told her Simone had
a summer internship in California and wasn’t coming back. Soon enough Jordan’s visits were shorter too—an internship in the
city before senior year, then graduation and her first real job. She blinked, and the endless girlhood summers were a thing
of the past, and that was a wrap on Jordan’s first love. If one of her sisters reported that they’d seen Simone or talked
to her, she’d pretended that she didn’t care. She had cared very much, until she made herself not care.
Now Jordan is full of mixed-up feelings—years-old hurt, and also nostalgia, and also genuine happiness at seeing someone she
once truly loved, someone who turned her on, mentally, physically, emotionally. “Sure,” she says. “Walk me home.”
They cross the first parking lot, cross the street, cross the second parking lot. They cross everything they can cross and now they are on the beach. The early surfers are carrying their boards from the water, peeling off their wetsuits, packing their cars, and shaking the water out of their ears.
The tide is coming in now. Simone stops to take off her running shoes, and Jordan slips her feet out of her flip-flops. She
can’t believe she’s here, with Simone, after so many years. Simone is a stranger! But also 100 percent familiar.
“Feet in the water?” asks Jordan. “Or stay dry?”
“Definitely in the water.” They walk down, brace themselves, get their feet wet, brace themselves some more. This is how you
have to do it on the Seacoast, where the water in the summer is almost always just the wrong side of welcoming. If you’re
lucky you might be able to wade in almost comfortably on a single hot day in mid-August.