Supply and Demand
It’s only being friendly, Lili tells herself, after she spies the new cover of The Economist on the newsstand when jogging up the subway steps, snorts, and texts a picture to him.
Her phone buzzes with his response when she’s deep in the Butler library stacks on campus, looking for the Lowith text that
Kerr, her adviser, had told her to read.
“What are you smiling at?” Amina whispers across their shared table; she’s making a rare appearance on campus today.
Although she’s taking it half as seriously—more focused on her art career than school—Amina also needs to make headway on her own graduate thesis: Latin American studies, the evolution of power, protest, and progressivism in Vargas Llosa’s work as a reflection of broader ideological polarization and disappointments of democracy within the region.
“Just something on Twitter,” Lili replies, setting her phone face down.
As the day goes on, she tells herself to stop texting him. It’s just that not many people get the hilarity that is Chomsky
calling Rawls a personal friend, then proceeding to eviscerate his entire theory of justice, or the ridiculous choke hold
that Rumsfeld’s offhand construct of knowns and unknowns still has on poli-sci undergrads—(7:07 p.m.) I’m just saying, what about unknown knowns (7:13 p.m.) Lili, you’re entirely missing the point. Each time her phone buzzes, she forces back her fast smile.
There are so many reasons she shouldn’t see him again.
He’s older than her. Much older—forty-five to her almost twenty-three. As Amina disappears into the stacks, long black hair
gleaming in the library sunlight, Lili sneaks another look at his birth chart, still saved on her phone: January 3, 1977.
A birth chart full of red flags.
He represents everything she finds reprehensible. His entire industry propagates Western hegemony, exploiting people for profit,
letting the world burn as long as the S has a stake in almost every major listed company globally.
She’s written entire papers attacking circular ownership in asset management, with BlackRiver one of the worst offenders.
As they keep texting, she grasps for reasons to stay away, create safe distance from the memory of that night with him. It’s
just—it’s like her mind dissolved. Fell open, and fell silent.
She knows nothing good can come of someone meeting a need that deeply.
But Lili does stupid things sometimes.
It’s a messy blur at The Flower Shop later that week: Friday night, her birthday. Clamor and spilt drinks, salt under her
nails, stickiness of lime juice smeared across the back of her hand. A bright, buoyant buzz of alcohol grabs Lili strong and
early, blurring the night into grins, loud music, spontaneous hugs. Inside the packed bar—wood-paneled walls, kitschy floral
seats, atrocious art and tchotchkes from the seventies—everyone crowds into one booth: their closest friends from undergrad,
a bunch of Jackie’s modeling crew, Amina’s downtown art, publishing, and fashion friends, currently paying their dues at Gagosian,
FSG, and Helmut Lang, Jamie’s old college roommates just off their restaurant shifts, smelling like browned butter and fresh
thyme from prepping dinner service. Someone kicks off a bar-wide rendition of “Happy Birthday,” and Lili flushes, embarrassed
and delighted. Cheers of “happy birthday,” and where did Amina get a kazoo? Jackie drops shots onto the table, hollow clatter
of glass, bright orange-red nails, and it’s good tequila, now. Gathering clutter of cocktails, crumpled napkins, dying batteries on phones, and Lili shimmies out of the booth,
unsteady feet, dark and noisy, babble of conversations, the glint of the tiny nazar bracelet, golden on her wrist, that Amina
just gave her as a birthday gift, from her own grandparents in Iran. Squeezing into the tiny bathroom with her friends, Lili
takes a strong gulp of her drink, and taps through her contacts: Finance Guy, Don’t Text. Music thuds through the walls as Jackie narrates some recent dating app story, trying to fluff her red curls in the mirror,
while Amina checks the sharp line of her eyeliner.
She only needs to get him out of her system. That’s all. The thought of it will fester, otherwise—
A text alert buzzes in her foster family group chat.
Jane Remnick (11:47 p.m.) Hi Lili. Sorry, it isn’t a good time to have you visit. Busy with work.
Lili stares at the text. The laughter of her friends feels distant.
A simple response, no recognition of her birthday.
She clutches the cold sink.
It hits her, like a blow: how much she’d wanted them to say yes; how badly she’d been wanting to revisit places she’d once
called home and see if they still felt warm to her. Not just Marin, but San Francisco—places with her parents, memories of
her childhood.
She looks in the grimy mirror. She sees the features of her parents, caught between her own face and fading memories of them:
her mother’s brown eyes, her father’s cheekbones; and her own building fear, as she’d neared another birthday, that every
step she takes further into the rest of her life is another step away from them. That one day, it will be too distant to recall:
mornings in their small kitchen, the give of orange peel under her mother’s thumb, how she’d sleepily hidden in her mother’s
warm black hair, listening to her delighted laugh on the phone with relatives back home in Beirut, while her father cooked
breakfast: runny eggs in fresh shakshuka, the growing San Francisco sunlight, fog breaking.
Worlds away, now.
Lili grips the sink tighter.
You’re supposed to be here, she thinks. You’re supposed to be here.
She feels close to bursting with pain.
If she just holds on tighter—if she just tries harder—they’ll stay with her—the loss won’t be complete—
Then, fast, desperate anger rears: You couldn’t have texted me sooner?
she thinks. The collapse of hope feels worse—sickening, now—after having teetered on edge for days, waiting for Jane’s response; in its place, violence snaps sudden and heated.
She wants it all gone: the harsh overwhelm of shame—how her eagerness pushes them away, her insufficiency not enough to merit real attention—the burning stupidity of having yearned for this, for having even hoped—
“Alright, birthday girl?” Amina affectionately knocks her shoulder.
Lili looks up, startled. She catches Jackie’s glance in the mirror, watching her.
She has outrun this grief before; she will do it again. She’ll swallow it whole, before it can swallow her.
Lili flashes a bright, hard grin. “Yes, all good.” She throws back the rest of her drink. The rush of alcohol feels strong,
and possible. “Come on, let’s dance!”
Back in the bar, she keeps drinking, until she feels buoyant, until it’s difficult to think.
Heavier music, more dancing, unfamiliar cocktails—James hands her something with whiskey; Lili makes a face but drinks—salt
still sore on her lips from more shots, licking a streak of salt shaken along Amina’s collarbone, giggling when Amina kisses
her full on the mouth, the burn of alcohol and acid hit of lime. “Not again,” James mutters, “I’m never allowed to kiss other
people.” “Jesus Christ, I’ll kiss you, you sad idiot!” slurs one of his best friends Hassan, making his boyfriend Tommy burst out laughing, his drink
spraying, and Jackie shrieks as it hits her—then Amina has a Negroni that Lili wants some of, cold press of glass, laughter
in her ear—and Hassan sees friends of friends, an uproar of welcome, blurred introductions, new faces. She keeps drinking
until there is only the ground under her feet, the bodies of her friends around her, the night unspooling full and desirable,
the exhilarating focus of breathing, one breath after the other, the immediacy of only what’s in front of her.
Spilling out onto the street hours later, heat and cigarette smoke are thick in the noisy air. The pavement is packed with
people, alive and dark and gleaming: red stream of traffic lights, clatter of heels over sidewalk cellar doors, angry entreatment
of car horns in traffic, the acrid rasp of spliff from smokers on the curb.
As her friends discuss where to head next, Lili sways, humming along to music; an arm steadies her, James laughing. She grins;
she feels warm and glowing, after-hours brightness. Caught in it, wanting more, she spins, whirling out into the street.
Thoughts cluster in the back of her mind, an insistent heavy presence, anxiety that feels temporarily sourceless, but she doesn’t want to listen, not now—horns honk, and someone pulls her back; Jamie scolds her through laughter, telling her to stop being stupid.
“Jesus, don’t call her stupid,” admonishes Jackie, “it’s her birthday!
” Giggling, Lili wraps her arms around Jamie, spinning them together in circles.
It’s late. There are enough of them that Ubers are a headache, but no one wants to take the train back to Brooklyn or uptown.
West Village, crash at Jamie’s place? Amina’s apartment on Broome is closer, but too small, and Jamie’s fridge is always stocked
with LaCroix and neat boxes of prepared food from Citarella, and Jackie’s saying something about breakfast in the Village
tomorrow.