4. Morningside Heights, USA
4
MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, USA
Before
I t was hard to believe that this would be the last Friday lunch with the Club. Things that used to annoy Alex—like how they insisted on frequenting pricey local restaurants when her campus dining card worked perfectly well—now felt preemptively nostalgic. After four years that felt simultaneously eternal and much too short, they were finally graduating. Their parents would descend on the neighborhood in just a few short days, and their little group would be just one of thousands in powder blue caps and gowns. There would be photoshoots and speeches, teary-eyed hugs and promises to visit. Everyone would be off to their jobs, their grad programs, or, for those who had no financial reason to hurry into adulthood, their years abroad.
Alex would be starting her internship at NPR almost the second that school was out, with only time for a quick dash up to Rochester before returning to the city. Having secured not just the internship, but an impressive story to tell the visiting families next week, felt like being pulled onto a lifeboat after treading water for hours. She could finally relax: she wasn’t a failure .
In truth, though, the internship was just one in a long list of accomplishments she couldn’t even remember her reasons for pursuing in the first place. Her superb grades, the all-state gymnastics team, getting into Columbia and securing a full scholarship, working nights and weekends to excel, excel, excel: none of it had been a conscious choice. There was only the propulsive force of escaping her hometown, finding authority figures she wanted to impress and exceeding their expectations, running toward a destination of which she could only see fractions at a time. But here she was, somehow, at an Ivy League university, surrounded by an elite group so clearly destined for greatness.
She looked around the table and tears welled up at the corners of her eyes, which she quickly brushed away as to not seem overly sentimental. But the seven of them—always requesting a six-top with a chair at the end if possible, to be closer while they talked—felt like family. Well, no, that wasn’t quite true: they felt better than family.
They were like a magical portal to the life she’d always wanted to have, the person she’d always wanted to be. The credit cards she’d taken out without her parents’ knowledge to keep up with their expectations was a small price to pay for how she felt in their presence.
The waiter arrived at the table with their food, bleary-eyed from dealing with a restaurant full of demanding undergrads.
“Okay, I have the brioche French—”
“Here,” Bee called over, raising a waifish wrist decked out in her handmade jewelry. “And the quiche, too.”
Even amongst this group, Bee Meyer’s pedigree stood out: daughter of a publishing magnate, founder of the coolest art magazine on campus, never not in an outfit that fell somewhere between West Village psychic and gallery curator.
“That’ll be out in just a moment,” the waiter replied, a pained smile on his face. “I have the monkfish.”
“That’s me, thank you,” Alex said, smiling back at him. She helped him ease her plate down. “And those fries, you can just put in the middle of the table.”
The waiter gave a quick thanks as he set down the piping hot basket, and she continued to air traffic control the remaining dishes. Few things soothed her as much as playing teacher’s pet for an overworked service employee.
As soon as the waiter’s back was turned, Sophie leaned in toward the table, lowering her voice in a conspiratorial way. “Am I crazy, or is he kind of hot?”
“ Very hot,” Paul immediately affirmed, dipping a fry into a little ramekin of mayonnaise. Since coming out last fall, he was having a bit of a romantic rumspringa, as if his world were rendering in color for the first time.
“Okay, can someone who isn’t Paul please answer?” Sophie topped off her water from the pitcher in the center of the table.
Back when Alex was dating Paul—when his cluster of friends first entered her life—she was terrified of Sophie. It seemed impossible that Paul could see someone as beautiful and intimidating as she was as just a friend. But it became clear early on that they could not have been more different, that Paul’s boundless enthusiasm and intensity was uniquely ill-suited to Sophie’s detached French coolness.
“He’s cute,” Alex offered, playing loosely with the chain at her neck. “Not really my type, but I can definitely see it.”
A few seats down, Danial looked up from his club sandwich.
“Yes,” Paul said between chews, “Alex’s type only exists in Aaron Sorkin movies.”
“How dare you?” she shot back, turning to face him. “I hate Aaron Sorkin.”
“Babe, you made me watch The Social Network at least four times sophomore year.” He pecked her cheek. “My middlebrow queen.”
“Okay, but that’s different,” she countered, jokingly pushing him off of her. “ West Wing Sorkin sucks. Social Network Sorkin is genius.”
“Genius?” Bee raised an eyebrow, always suspicious of art that was neither to her obscure tastes nor unapologetically silly.
“It’s true,” Dev insisted next to her. “It’s a masterpiece.”
“I don’t think these words mean what you think they mean,” she replied, reaching over to Dev’s plate for a bite of quiche. “Danny, have you seen it?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “But only in Farsi. And I don’t think Sorkin’s genius translates.”
It was always interesting to learn which of Danial’s cultural references were filtered through his trips to Iran. He once spent a whole afternoon telling Alex about those summers: video game tournaments with his cousins, his aunt playing Googoosh’s greatest hits on a loop in the kitchen, falling asleep in the living room to the smell of stewed chicken with pomegranates on the stove.
“You should watch it in English.” Dev pointed his fork in his direction, chewing a bite of French toast. “Jesse Eisenberg is incredible.”
“He’s okay,” Bee corrected. “He’s nice in real life, at least.”
“You met him?” Paul asked, turning to face her.
“Yeah, my mom worked with him on a project last year.”
Alex, feeling that familiar flush of inadequacy at the mention of Bee’s exceptional, artistic life, chimed in with a self-deprecating joke: “My mom’s big accomplishment last year was getting her favorite diner to carry sugar-free vanilla syrup.”
A quiet laugh rippled through the group, save Danial, who cocked an eyebrow before returning to his food. She wrinkled her nose, instantly regretting her knee-jerk impulse to sacrifice her mother for a cheap laugh. Danial had admonished her more than once for treating Elena with less respect than she deserved, and few things in life had embarrassed her more. Just seeing the way he treated his own mother was enough to shame her: the small ways he kept her close, even from across the country. He’d once spent an entire day in deep Queens hunting down a specific tea that her local store had stopped carrying.
And beyond the disparities in their relationships with their mothers, he frequently left her second guessing. She never quite knew where she stood with him, and they always ended up picking pedantic fights with one another, correcting each other on a word or reference. He always found a way to needle her, to bait her into a debate that both exhausted and exhilarated her. And she always called him Danial, stretching out and relishing its fullness while nearly everyone else called him by a nickname.
By the time all of their shared dishes arrived, the two of them had stumbled into a minor and unexpected argument about whether the fish she was eating had been shipped across the country.
“Monkfish is not a Pacific species,” Danial said, firmly but casually, asserting his intrinsic correctness. From behind him, the waiter came by to refill their glasses.
“Yes it is .” Alex concentrated on remaining as unflappable as possible, reaching across the table to snag a french fry.
Sophie and Bee—equally chic in their mostly black outfits, even in late May—looked over at the two of them, exhausted.
“Not this bullshit again.” Bee exhaled, reaching across the table for a fry.
“Let them fight,” Paul asserted, looking on approvingly.
“That’s actually not true,” Danial said. “But there are other fish species that are found in the Pacific. Would you like to know them?”
“I’m sorry,” Alex pushed back, “did you Google ‘fish distribution’ this morning or something?”
“Probably,” Sophie snorted.
Danial looked over at her, then shook his head. “No, I don’t need to brush up on this kind of thing. I stay ready with fish facts, so I never have to get ready with fish facts.” He dragged a fry through a dollop of ketchup on his plate, smiling in Alex’s direction.
“I know you’re making this up to get under my skin, and I’m not even going to give you the satisfaction.”
“You wish that were true.” He sipped his water. “Would you also like to know if monkfish is halal or kosher?”
“I’m not dignifying that with a response.” She stabbed another forkful of fish defiantly.
“ I kind of want to know,” Guy said, egging on the debate—mostly to please Paul. He raked a few fingers through his shiny blond hair, trying to look casual.
“Don’t you dare answer that,” Alex warned, watching Danial’s impish smile grow from across the table.
“Monkfish is halal—”
“I can’t believe this.”
“But not kosher.”
“I hate you.”
“I know you do, but that’s actually not even the argument. Are monkfish found in the Pacific Ocean? You seemed so sure—are you still ready to bet on that?”
Alex reached down toward her tote bag, and Danial immediately broke into a full-on grin.
“Reaching for Google already? I’m disappointed. Have some confidence in your arguments, Alex.” He popped a cherry tomato in his mouth.
Alex froze mid-reach. “I was reaching for my lip balm,” she lied.
They paused, looking at each other. Her eyes felt almost oversaturated by his beauty, the blue linen shirt unbuttoned slightly down his chest, the wild dark hair framing his angular face, the black-strapped leather watch he inherited from his grandfather ticking on his wrist. She felt her chest rise and fall with this game they played, this constant testing and prodding. As she leaned forward, hand still hovering near her bag on the floor, she felt his eyes move downward for a microsecond. Her pendant necklace dangled between her breasts, nearly vibrating with the heat of her.
“Dan is right,” Dev clarified, breaking the silence, his brand-new phone perched loosely in his hand without a case. “Can we please drop this now?”
Devesh Saxena, always two steps ahead, was the heir to a global manufacturing dynasty that started over a century ago in a tiny village in India. Born knowing his worth, he was devoid of patience for anything but Bee. They were their own kind of royal couple, and their edicts felt as substantial as actual monarchy. If they were done with a subject, that subject was closed.
“Lucky guess,” Danial offered, always falsely humble in the face of being right.
“Shut up,” Alex shot back, not wanting his pity.
“I’m serious.” He smiled. “This is one of my best Jeopardy categories—North Atlantic Marine Life.”
“You are so obnoxious.” Alex could barely contain her grin, even as she feigned frustration. Being quick-witted was her favorite card to play in life, but she loved being bested by Danial—it meant they’d be going another round very soon.
“Calm down,” Paul chided, bumping her shoulder with his own. “I’m not getting banned from another place because you two can’t be civil.”
“They would never ban us,” Danial offered, arranging another forkful of his side salad. “And by the way, you should check your phone.” He winked.
At this, her heart sank, knowing what it meant. He smiled as she bent forward to grab her phone from her bag, the notification on her screen confirming exactly what she’d expected: it was her move.
Alex couldn’t remember who initiated that first game of chess—a game that never really ended, because the loser would immediately request a rematch. This time, Danial’s queen sacrifice had backed her into a brutal sequence she could see unfolding even from a brief scan of the board. Her remaining knight was already toast, likely followed by a series of increasingly painful checks. Her eyes flicked upward from the screen and she caught him studying her, a glinting, conspiratorial joy lighting his eyes.
“Okay.” Guy clinked his fork to his glass. “I need everyone’s attention, we need to talk logistics for tonight. Pregame at my place, we’ll say eight-ish, then we head to Conrad’s around ten.”
“Yes, sir,” Paul confirmed, saluting.
Despite himself, Guy blushed slightly before continuing. He was nearly six foot five, a Nordic god in his proportions and heritage, yet in front of Paul he melted into a nervous little boy. “Anyway, Paul and Alex are doing the liquor run, but I’m going to need help securing party favors. My guy had to move back to Florida.” He said the word Florida like it was prison—and honestly, it might have been.
Sophie pulled a prescription bottle from her bag, shaking it for effect like a tiny maraca.
“I’m not talking about your brother’s Adderall, Sophie.”
“Hey, fuck you.” She pointedly removed it from the table, placing it back into her bag with a muttered French curse.
Even after three years, Alex was still blown away at the brazenness of the group’s relationship with drugs: how they did them, how they talked about them, how openly they brandished them in public. It was as if they were protected by an invisible electric fence of economic privilege. If they wanted to have a little shroom night in the park, maybe some molly at a concert, a line of coke here or there—none of it was a problem. None of it was something to worry about. They often teased Alex for being a relative prude when it came to drugs, and she didn’t know how to tell them: it wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy their effects, it was that for her, they were very much illegal in a way they weren’t for her friends.
When no one volunteered, Guy spoke again. “You guys are truly fucking useless. Dan”—he turned to him down the table—“you have to know someone.”
“I don’t, actually.” He dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his napkin as he replied, voice calm and unreadable. “And I’m not here this afternoon, anyway. I’m taking my parents to the Statue of Liberty.”
“Please stop making the rest of us look bad,” Dev joked.
Alex flushed with a familiar jealousy at his steadiness. He was a scholarship kid, too, but he managed to seem unburdened by it. He never faltered in front of the rich kids the way she did.
While Alex was just another kid from Rochester, Danial was fate incarnate, the human manifestation of his parents’ desire to build something beautiful in Los Angeles. They had both fled Iran during the revolution, starting over from zero without a word of English in America—a country with fresh memories of the hostage crisis. Their only child, Danial arrived six years to the day after their first meeting, and his brilliance became the star around which the family solar system turned. Schedules were modified to accommodate his chess competitions; endless nights and weekends were sacrificed to fund his already heavily discounted tuition at Harvard Westlake—the prep school that left him literally scarred after a particularly brutal hazing ritual. But the occasional cruelty of his ultra-privileged peers never deterred him. His industriousness became a security blanket, insulating him from a future in which he was dependent on other people’s kindness.
“What are you wearing tonight?” Paul asked, leaning into Alex and removing a rogue hair from the sleeve of her dress. The rest of the group chattered around them, Sophie and Bee gossiping pointedly about a classmate Alex thought was perfectly nice.
“I don’t know, actually,” she replied, distracted. From the corner of her eye, she watched Danial, who was now discussing the latest tech news with Dev.
“What about that slutty black dress you wore to my birthday dinner?”
“ Slutty ?” She snapped back to attention, slightly offended.
“You know what I mean, sexy. You look so good in that dress.”
It was true: that dress got two finance bros at the bar afterward to send them an entire bottle of champagne.
“Yeah, maybe. I’ll try on a bunch of stuff later.”
In the back of her mind, there was the relentless, burning thought of Danial and what he would want her to wear, what he would find sexy. This was her last night, her last real chance, and she had to play her cards right.
From down the table, she heard him laugh, the warm, self-assured gravity of it pulling her in like the sun.