Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The following Saturday when I got home from the Garment Center after a long day of hunting down textiles and trims for my designs, the lights were on, and Annika’s coat hung on the hook in the hallway.
After mentally psyching myself up, I rapped my knuckles against her door then barged into her bedroom uninvited and froze on the threshold.
Liquor store boxes were stacked in the corner and bare nails stuck out of the walls where her framed prints used to hang.
“Spring cleaning?” I asked as she taped up a box and labeled it.
“I’m going to Paris,” she said just as if she’d announced that she was running to the deli for a pastrami sandwich.
“Paris?” I leaned my shoulder against the doorframe. “For how long?”
She folded an armful of clothes and laid them in the open suitcase on her bed. “I’m moving there.”
It took a moment for the words to register but when they did, they hit with the force of a Mack truck. “You hate me so much that you’re moving to Paris ?” I blurted.
She turned her back to me and grabbed the rest of the clothes hanging in her closet, leaving wire hangers and dust bunnies behind.
“Not everything is about you, Cleo.”
I knew that but this seemed drastic, not to mention sudden. “When did you decide this?”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past month and I realized that I’ve been playing it safe. When did I stop having such big dreams? When did I decide that it was okay to settle for good enough?”
Annika was a Juilliard graduate and a dancer in a post-modern dance company. I thought she was already living the dream. If she wasn’t happy at her current dance company, there were a million other opportunities right here on her doorstep.
Which led to the obvious conclusion that she was fleeing New York to get away from her backstabbing friend.
I sank to the floor and sat cross-legged next to a box labeled Summer Clothes and stared at the empty wall where a Breakfast at Tiffany’s poster used to hang.
When Annika moved in two and a half years ago, we painted her walls cotton candy pink and celebrated our new living arrangement with Chinese takeout and an Audrey Hepburn movie marathon.
“What does Paris have that you can’t find in New York?” I asked.
“The Eiffel Tower. The Seine. Flaky croissants and crepes and the Louvre. It’s the City of Lights. The fashion capital. The most romantic city in the world. I’ve always dreamed of living in Paris, remember?”
How could I forget? In 11 th grade, Annika was obsessed with all things Parisian. That year, she was dating Antoine who was in a synth-pop band that we now referred to as the French Milli Vanilli.
She gave herself a pixie cut, smoked Gauloises, and wore Breton stripes, skinny jeans, and ballet flats.
But I’d chalked it up to a passing fancy when the following year she dated the punk rocker and channeled Nancy Spungen a la Sid and Nancy fame.
“Last summer I was offered an opportunity to study in Paris with an incredible choreographer,” she said, scooping up her bras and underwear from the top dresser drawer and dumping them into the suitcase.
“On my way home, I met Gabriel so I turned down the offer because of a cute boy. How lame is that?”
I had no idea that she’d turned down an offer to study in Paris. “You never told me.” I tried to hide the hurt in my voice but couldn’t quite pull it off.
Annika turned to look at me. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, lowering herself to the floor next to me. “I never told anyone.”
I wasn’t just anyone . I was her best friend and number one confidante, but I guess we were both keeping secrets. “Why not?”
“I was scared.” She smoothed her palms over her black leggings. “Scared of failing. Scared of moving to a foreign city where I barely speak the language…” She turned to me. “I’m not like you. You’ve always been so independent and so strong in your convictions.”
“That’s not always a good thing.”
“It’s better than being codependent,” she said. “My therapist encouraged me to figure out who I am and what I want before jumping into another relationship and literally making that my personality. And she’s right. It’s like…oh, my new boyfriend is into Satanic cult rituals. Sign me up.”
I scoffed. “I would never let you join a cult.”
She huffed out a laugh. “You know it’s true though. I try to change who I am to fit the narrative of what I think they want. So I’m taking a hiatus from men and I’m going to Paris to find myself.”
I still didn’t understand why she couldn’t do that right here in New York, but I guess she felt the need for a fresh start, so I had to support her.
“I think you’re being a little too hard on yourself.
But if this is what you need, then I hope you find it.
Go to Paris and have a love affair with yourself. ”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry I said all those things. I didn’t mean them. I know you would never do the things I accused you of.”
“I’m sorry too. I’m so sorry I lied.” I let out a shaky breath. “I never meant to hurt you and it kills me that I did.”
“Like I said, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I understand why you didn’t tell me.
If I had been in your shoes, I probably wouldn’t have said anything either,” she admitted.
She pulled her backpack into her lap and fished out a pack of Marlboro Lights.
“It was just a really crappy situation all around.”
Annika lit two cigarettes and handed one to me. I took a deep drag of nicotine and chemicals and blew smoke rings at the ceiling.
“I still can’t believe he’s your Notebook Boy,” she mused.
“The first time I met him, I thought he was homeless.” She laughed.
“He was talking to a man who I’m pretty sure really was homeless.
So I tossed a twenty into his guitar case and left him the salad I’d just bought.
” She could barely speak because she was laughing so hard.
I laughed too. “You never told me that part.”
“You were in Wonderland.”
When Annika met Gabriel, my mom and I were in London for my grandfather’s funeral. We spent most of that trip wandering through Highgate Cemetery in the rain and drinking gin down at the local pub with a crew of octogenarian dart players.
Nigel Babington—eccentric artist, gambling addict, and raging alcoholic—was in his late forties when he had a one-night stand with a twenty-year-old model. He met her at a club in Chelsea, drank “copious amounts” of gin, and promptly forgot about her.
One year later, he found a baby on his doorstep and said, Welcome to Wonderland, Alice .
Outrageous birth stories run in the Babington family, apparently.
“But you should have seen his face,” Annika said, dissolving into fits of laughter. “He chased me all the way across Washington Square Park and threw the money back at me. He refused to accept a ‘pity donation.’ But what really incensed him was that I hadn’t even stuck around to listen.”
I could picture it all so vividly. Silver-haired Annika strolling through the park in her leggings and Capezios, tossing cash into a busker’s guitar case and going on her merry way like it was no big deal. To her, it wouldn’t have been. Money had never been an issue.
Annika grew up wealthy. She was raised in a sprawling apartment on Central Park West, summered in The Hamptons, and spent her spring breaks in St. Bart’s. A socialite slumming it on the Lower East Side.
“What about the salad?” I thought to ask.
“Oh, he kept the salad,” she said. “It had grilled chicken on it and he was starving .”
We both laughed and it felt so much like old times that I’d temporarily forgotten that she was moving to Paris.
No more Sunday brunches, late-night chats or epic adventures trying to move our flea market furniture up five flights of stairs. Stopping on every landing, holding our hand up and wheezing, I can’t go on. Not. Another. Step.
I had no idea how we’d managed to get that sofa all the way up here but as soon as we’d shoved it through the front door, we did a victory dance and high-fived each other then plopped onto the sofa, exhausted.
See? We don’t need a man , I’d said.
You’re right, Annika had said. We needed ten men for this.
“When are you leaving?”
She bit her lip and gave me a guilty look. “Wednesday. I know it’s kind of sudden but I only just?—”
“Wednesday? ” I screeched. “You’re leaving in four days?”
She pulled an envelope out of her backpack and tossed it into my lap.
I slid the check out and stared at the amount. Nine hundred dollars. “What’s this for?”
“Two months rent in advance.”
“You already paid this month’s rent. I’m not taking your money.” I jammed the check back in the envelope and tossed it in her lap. “You’ll need it for Paris.”
“Take it. And make sure you cash it,” she said, throwing it back at me. “I feel bad enough about leaving you high and dry. So if you don’t cash this check, I’ll feel even guiltier. It will hold you over until you find a new roommate.”
A new roommate.
I scratched the side of my neck. It was hot and itchy with welts forming. Just the thought of having to find a new roommate made me break out in hives.
“Fine. I’ll cash the check,” I said. “But we’re going out tonight and I’m buying.”
“Our last hurrah.”