EZRA
‘ Y OU KNOW – IN A BETTER WORLD , THE HOSPITALITY SECTOR would be totally egalitarian.’
‘In a better world, wouldn’t everything be egalitarian?’
‘Obviously.’ Mac sighs. ‘But I’m specifically talking about the server and the customer being on equal footing.’
‘That table of twelve really got to you,’ I muse, swirling sake around my cup. We’re currently in a cosy, wood-panelled sushi bar uptown – Mac and Marika are meeting here for an appropriately chic ‘late lunch’ but seeing as Mac and I were on an early shift, he charmingly suggested that I come and ‘keep her seat warm’ until then. Being pathetic, I agreed – resisting the urge to text Audrey every time I’m otherwise unoccupied has recently become an Olympic-level sport, so I was glad for the diversion.
‘Who else? You know, one of them actually had the nerve to give me shit about my nose ring? Like that impacts my ability to wait tables, somehow.’
‘I only cleared their plates. Suspiciously clean, given that they apparently hated the food.’
‘I think servers should be entitled to fight at least one customer a month,’ he says seriously. ‘There’s not a single one of them that I couldn’t have taken.’
‘Nah, you’re too pretty. You don’t want to risk ending up like me.’
‘ That’s how you broke your nose?’ he asks incredulously. ‘A fight?’
‘More or less.’
‘Huh. I really didn’t expect that.’
‘Me neither. I probably would have dodged, otherwise.’
‘Who started it?’
‘That probably depends on who’s telling the story,’ I say, shifting in my chair. I don’t love this subject, actually, and I’m starting to regret bringing it up.
‘And that would be you, or … ?’
‘My old roommate.’
‘Ah. I mean – I don’t condone violence in any context, but that makes a little more sense.’
‘You were literally just talking about fighting customers.’
‘Hyperbole. Verbal evisceration is more my thing.’
‘Roommate troubles, then?’ I say, brisky amending the topic at hand.
‘Depends,’ Mac says. ‘Would you consider coming home to discover most of the furniture on the kerb “roommate troubles”?’
‘What?’
‘Everything except the TV , basically. The empty space is more “nurturing to creativity”.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘My thoughts exactly. But it’s not like any of it was mine, so …’ He sighs again, running a thumb around the rim of his empty cup.
‘To top it off, the rent is going up,’ he adds morosely. ‘I’ll have to pick up some extra shifts.’
‘Except you’re already working full-time?’
‘That’s late capitalism, baby.’
‘I didn’t realise we’d be three.’
Mac and I turn to see Marika, wearing brick-coloured trousers and an oversized white shirt. It’s the most casual ensemble I’ve ever seen her in, and yet half of the restaurant is openly staring. She throws her coat over the back of a chair and takes a seat beside Mac, either oblivious or unbothered.
‘Post-work drinks?’ she asks, surveying the table.
‘Something like that,’ I say. ‘I’m not staying.’
‘He’s keeping me company,’ Mac confirms, getting to his feet. ‘And he can keep you company while I go pee.’
‘Lucky me,’ Marika says dryly, leaning backwards and regarding me with her fox-like eyes as Mac breezes away. ‘Good day?’
‘Could be worse. How are you?’
‘Good.’ She nods. ‘Busy. How’s Audrey?’
‘Shouldn’t I be asking you that?’ I say.
Marika smiles. ‘I don’t know. I get the sense that you’re seeing more of her than I do.’
‘Not since yesterday,’ I say, sounding more defensive than I’d like. My ear feels hot suddenly – thing is, I’ve got no idea how cool to play this. There’s a chance that Audrey’s told her everything, but Audrey also told me that Marika spends most of her time with Nicole, meaning maybe Marika won’t know that things have … escalated.
‘Yeah?’ Marika says, raising her eyebrows slightly. ‘Was that the gallery thing?’
‘The cinema.’ I smile, ignoring a twinge of discomfort. ‘Gallery was the day before.’
Maybe it’s weird, but I don’t really like thinking about that night at the gallery. It was when Audrey and I first kissed, obviously, so on one level it was probably the greatest night of my life. On another, I can’t quite get past that conversation I had with the girl in the smoking area, and my insane, paranoid conviction that Julian or Jonah or whatever his fucking name is did something to Audrey.
I mean – yes, he is a confirmed creep. Yes, Audrey has been in contact with him at least twice – the photoshoot and his party, after which she was extremely upset. But I have no way of knowing if they even interacted that night. I barely noticed him – didn’t even realise he was the host until someone pointed him out, and I turned to see this bored-looking dude in painter overalls and thousand-dollar sneakers. Except now I remember him smirking unpleasantly, eyes roving the room. It’s projection, I know. But …
‘I actually got talking to a girl in the smoking area about that brand you guys are working with,’ I hear myself say. ‘At the gallery, this is.’
‘Oh?’ Marika says mildly, but her eyes are intent. She’s seen straight past my casual segue, I realise, immediately recognising that I’m burying some kind of lede. I feel a flicker of doubt, but it’s already too late to change course. Besides, I have no intention of spouting my fucked-up little conspiracy theory. I just figure that if she’s worked with this guy, she has a right to know what kind of person he is.
‘Yeah,’ I continue, attempting to sound blasé. ‘It turns out that a friend of hers used to work there. So did that photographer you guys did the shoot with. Julian. Except he wasn’t actually called Julian—’
‘Jonah,’ Marika says. ‘He changed his name.’
‘Right,’ I say, taken aback. I’d assumed this would be a revelation to her.
‘Is that the whole story?’ she prompts. ‘A girl knows a girl who knew Julian?’
‘No, uh – it’s that I think he might be a fucked-up person,’ I manage, looking down at my sake cup. ‘I mean – that’s what it sounded like, anecdotally. And you and Audrey both spent time with him, so, like – I just thought you might want to know.’
‘Fucked-up how?’
‘Uh – harassing this girl when she was an intern,’ I say, throat dry. ‘Groping her at a party. And maybe others – it sounded like it might have been a recurring thing, but I don’t really know.’
Marika says nothing to that. I still can’t bring myself to look at her but she remains perfectly still in my periphery.
‘I guess I just wanted to make sure that you won’t see him again,’ I add. ‘The campaign – that’s over now?’
‘The shoot is, yeah,’ she replies, tone unreadable. ‘I assume you’ve told Audrey about this?’
‘… No. Not yet.’
‘Why?’ she asks, so sharply that I almost flinch. I have this weird, irrational conviction that she’s staring right into my skull, watching the feeble machinations of my brain with steely disdain.
‘I don’t know,’ I manage.
‘You don’t know,’ Marika echoes flatly.
‘I mean – I wasn’t sure that I should,’ I add hastily, floundering. ‘She’s been kind of down recently and I didn’t want to make it worse.’
‘Implying what?’
I finally glance up, panicked.
‘Nothing,’ I say quickly, wondering when exactly this turned into an interrogation. ‘It doesn’t matter – forget I said anything.’
‘Did something happen at the party at Julian’s apartment?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘I lost track of her for a bit – when I found her again, she’d been crying.’
‘Did she say why?’
‘She mentioned something about being homesick.’
‘What about at your party?’ Marika presses. I stare at her, uncomprehending.
‘Your birthday party,’ she repeats. ‘When she spent the night. She told me that she drank too much, got weepy …’
‘Yeah,’ I say, my brain offering the memory of her slumped against the bathroom wall, mascara tracks lining her pale cheeks. ‘She did. Why?’
‘She was sick, the day before,’ Marika says, absently flexing her hand. ‘She didn’t get out of bed. That was all after the test shoot.’
‘The what?’
‘A photoshoot. At Julian’s studio, ahead of the campaign.’
‘The two of you together?’
‘Separately,’ Marika says after a pause. ‘Alone.’
I briefly shut my eyes, pain lancing my skull. I wanted so badly to be wrong. For Marika to shut this entire thing down—
‘Jesus,’ Mac says, sauntering back to the table and dropping into his chair. ‘Did someone die while I was away?’
‘My patience,’ Marika says smoothly, flipping over a menu. ‘What are we having?’
‘A woman after my own heart.’ Mac smiles, turning to me. ‘You staying? I was only kidding about—’
‘I can’t,’ I say, getting to my feet and reaching for my wallet. I fish out a few crumpled bills and then I’m gone, moving for the door like there’s someone chasing me. I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t want any of this to be true, and if it is, I don’t want to know about it. But I’m overwhelmed by an awful, crushing certainty that it’s too late – that I’ve set events in motion, triggering something I can’t even comprehend.
I quicken my pace when I’m out on the street, ducking my head. All I can think to do is get back to my apartment, turn up the volume on the TV as far as it’ll go and dive into a bottle of something stronger than sake. And yes, I probably have a fucking drinking problem, but maybe that’s what happens when a well-meaning colleague of your mother’s passes you their whisky soda during her wake because you’ve been shaking uncontrollably since the church service and doing a bad fucking job of hiding it.
I don’t think that anyone could reasonably blame me for wanting to feel less. That day and every day since.