Diversification #7
nor smudge the old ink. Something vulnerable shifts in Lili at the subtle gesture of how she’s handling them. “You look a
lot like her, it’s striking.”
Lili nods. “I know.”
“She also looks like her hair clogs the shower drain,” Jackie jokes.
Lili—laughs, surprisingly. A little hiccup of a laugh. “Sorry,” she says.
Jackie affectionately nudges Lili’s shoulder with her own. “You look a lot like your dad though, too.” Jackie glances between
the photograph and Lili’s face, as if comparing. She nods, confirming. “Your dad was hot.”
“O-kay,” Lili declares. Jackie laughs, handing back the photos. There are a few she missed, sticking together—degradation of glossy
gelatin coating, ages in storage—that she loosens now, so they can breathe before she packs them away again.
“Oh, wait, I love this one,” Jackie says, tapping a finger to pause Lili’s organizing shuffle. “That’s a really beautiful
photograph.”
It’s the photograph of the three of them—her mother, her father, little Lili—on the beach: wind, ocean air, sunshine. It’s
the one Jane texted her that sent her spiraling. It hurts, like a surge of powerful water, seeing that image, recalling the
anniversary that just passed, how hard it hit her, but also—the feeling of Aleksandr holding her. The desperate grasp of her
fingers in his jacket. The warmth of his body enveloping her.
I’m here, I’m here—I’m not leaving.
“What were their names?”
“Aisha and Jack,” she provides, biting a raw scrap of skin at her cuticle. She feels the buzz of her walls, rising again.
Like the electric hum of a fence, warning her of dangerous areas ahead, terrain too rough and sensitive to traverse. She’s
taken a tentative, exploratory step forward—time to go back.
She smiles at her friend, shaky but not ingenuine. “Come on,” she says, grasping Jackie’s hand. “Let’s go, we’re going to
be late.”
Later, using the printer in Aleksandr’s study, she prints a copy of the photo. She tapes it to her mirror at home, among the
loved Polaroids of her friends; she doesn’t want the original to fade any further from age or sunshine. In her own bed in
Williamsburg, while Jackie is out with Simon, she tugs out the stowed-away shoebox from her closet, and spends a quiet hour
slowly leafing through the pictures from her childhood, reorganizing the new ones into their chronology, guided by the orange
digits of the date imprint. She lingers on some, breath sharp, feeling both so close and so far away to something. Flashes
of happiness, these memories with her parents have felt too painful to look at. The sight of herself as a small child, her
big grin, their hands in hers, makes her want to cry.
Inside the rest of Jane’s box, she found her mother’s diplomas, her birth certificate, a few small childhood art projects—and
a little teddy bear, handmade, that she remembers with a jolt: Her social worker had sewn it for her while she was in the
group home, using some of her father’s old shirts—it had smelled so deeply like him—
Lili freezes, before immediately packing everything up again, shoving it back into her closet along with her shoebox of photographs.
She’s not ready for that.
But overall, she tries to feel this old loss, and not collapse underneath it.
When she sleeps over at the loft, she leaves the door to Aleksandr’s closet open, comforted by the silhouettes of his clothing.
That painting—Rublev, golden—gleams in the corner.
Amina (10:07 p.m.) party pics are here!
James (10:07 p.m.) fucking finally. what were you doing? hand-developing these?
Amina (10:08 p.m.) im a busy woman with many demands on my time
James (10:08 p.m.) yes and i have an ig feed to curate
Amina (10:08 p.m.) men shouldn’t have social media
Jackie (10:08 p.m.) ami, these look so good!!!!
Amina (10:09 p.m.) thx! if anyone wants copies, lemme know
Jackie (10:09 p.m.) me!!!!!! can i have the one of me and lili by the plants?
Amina (10:10 p.m.) you got it
Seeing her phone light up on the counter, Lili opens the group chat as she brushes her teeth.
After dinner out with her friends—cold martinis, Greek food—Lili had walked back to the loft, relishing the dark night air.
Her teacup of half-drunk yerba maté still sat on the kitchen counter from when she’d stopped by that afternoon with bags of
fresh groceries, imperfect produce from the farm that she gets for free. Knowing he was coming back tomorrow, she’d thought
she could cook something, then.
Now, spitting out her toothpaste with the sound of the bath draining behind her, Lili idly flips through the photos: James
making drinks in the packed kitchen; Jackie and Lili hugging against the plant wall, vivid red hair and gleaming black hair
vibrant against the lucid green; a shot in the hall mirror of Lili inspecting her eyeliner, Amina half hidden by her camera
flash—
Lili’s thumb stops flicking through the album.
The two of them. Aleksandr had pulled her into his lap when he was sitting on the couch.
Lili’s arm is slung around his shoulders, his hands on her waist, and the conversation is going on around them: Amina and James sitting beside them, gesticulating adamantly to Elijah out of frame, dark party caught in the Polaroid camera flash, but Lili’s looking at Aleksandr, a mischievous gleam in her eyes as she says something only to him, words between them, and there’s a smile on his lips, as he watches her, listens to her, and it’s like it’s just the two of them, there, some conversation, some secret language amid the others—
And she hadn’t—she hadn’t—
She hadn’t realized how they look at each other.
Lili hesitates, before tapping share. She sends the photo off, then clicks her phone closed. Anxious uncertainty twists inside
her.
Heading out of the bathroom, she goes into his closet. Despite her clean teeth, she rummages for the pack of cigarettes. She
smirks a little, spying a second cigarette missing, past the one they shared a few weeks ago.
In the living room, she hops onto the window ledge, and lights a cigarette. Drawing her knees into her chest, she takes a
long inhale. She tries to find calm in the drift of smoke, the rasp at the back of her throat. Tapping ash out the open window,
she listens to fragments of distant conversations in the street below: pedestrians passing, work dinners at the restaurant
on the corner, a gallery opening party.
Her phone buzzes next to her.
Aleksandr Petrov.
“Hey,” she breathes, sliding the call open.
“It’s a good photograph,” he says. “What you just sent.”
His voice is low, sending a warm thrum through her. It soothes her nerves. “Yeah,” she replies, toying with the seam of her
borrowed socks, cigarette hot between her fingers.
“Do you have the original?”
“Um, no—Amina does, though, I can get it. Why?”
“I’d like a copy.”
Her chest tightens. “Why?” she repeats.
“It’s a good photograph, Lili.” In his tone, she hears a smile that she can’t quite interpret.
“Right.” She takes another light inhale from her cigarette. “Yeah, I can ask her.”
“Thank you. It’s getting late for you, isn’t it?”
Lili shrugs, tapping out more ash. “Yeah, I just got back from dinner with everyone. How was your day?”
“Good. Still going. We have some final meetings to review terms in a bit.”
She frowns. “It’s almost nine for you.”
“Yes?”
She snorts. “Have you seen any of the city?”
“Not much. It’s beautiful, but we’re focused on the acquisition. I’ll come back sometime.”
“You should go to Tennessee Cove, if you have any time,” Lili says. “It’s just an out-and-back trail, doesn’t take more than
two hours, but the ocean’s stunning there. Black sand beach.”
“It’s near the city?”
“Yeah, in the headlands across the bridge. I used to go there all the time in high school,” she adds, quiet. That feeling
of being intentionally alone, she remembers. A relief from daily loneliness. “In winter, especially. Almost no one’s out there.
I loved it there.” Lili watches her cigarette burn down between her fingers, as Aleksandr is silent on the other end, listening.
She hears the reassuring, steady pattern of his breath. The spark of uneasiness incited by the photo calms. “Anyway,” she
continues, “if you can convince Michael, you should head out there.”
“I am allowed on my own without an escort, sweetheart.”
Lili smiles. “Right, of course.”
“Are you at home?”
“Yeah, I’m at the loft. I stole one of your cigarettes,” she confesses, sheepishly.
“Ah, without me,” he teases.
“Watch yourself, I saw the extra one missing.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Aleksandr deadpans.
“I won’t tell Michael,” she assures him, conspiratorial. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
He laughs, affectionate. “Such magnanimity. What are you doing tomorrow night?”
“Nothing, I think,” she says, stifling a yawn. “What’s up?”
“I have to attend a gala dinner. I’d like you to join me, if you can.”
“What about your escort?” Lili jokes.
“Michael already has a date. But he wouldn’t be my first choice, regardless.”
Oh.
“So, it’s—like, as a date?” she asks.
“Yes, Lili. As a date.”
She chews her lip, considering the unexpected snap of unease when she first saw the photograph, clarification of the sharp
shadows of—something. Growing shapes of meaning, pointing to outlines of potential loss, absence that is full for now.
But the threat of loss, and absence—it hinges on the swell of having.
“Okay,” Lili breathes. Near a whisper, but clear.
“Yes?”
“Yes,” she repeats. “Yeah, I’d really like that.”
“Alright,” Amina says, stepping back. “What do you think?”
Lili examines her reflection in Amina’s mirror.
It’s a beautiful dress—stunning, really. Black, simple, fitted but still loose enough to be suggestive rather than overt.
Its high neckline skims under her collarbones. Silk, sleeveless, but an entirely open back.
“It’s—yeah, it’s nice,” Lili says, turning around. The open back dips low enough to see the dimples at the base of her spine.
“Gorgeous, actually.”
Amina nods approvingly. “It’s Demeulemeester. I thought you’d like that. A bit alt, avant-garde, deconstructivist, but still