Distressed Assets
It’s cold when she wakes.
Sun slants through her bedroom window. Distant, she hears early runners outside, the downstairs coffee shop opening. Beside
her, Jackie sleeps. Curled around Lili, a protective posture. Her familiar perfume—sandalwood, iris, dried rose—is worn from
a night’s sleep.
Lili glances at her phone.
New messages, fresh missed calls.
Sitting up, she lets her feet hang off her bed, swinging listlessly a few inches above the ground. Her shoulders ache, curdled
around a sickening bruise of impact in her chest. She feels dirty, and she feels nauseous. If she starts to think, starts
to push through the disassociated haze, dazed in the aftermath of a blow—memories of last night, unfamiliar skin—
Her feet find the ground. She stands.
In the bathroom, she washes her face, brushes her teeth. She doesn’t glance in the mirror. Quietly, so Jackie can keep sleeping,
she changes into Carhartts and a thin shirt. She turns on the kettle in the kitchen. Opens the fridge, closes it a second
later; in her stomach, there’s the sense of rotted, dead things.
As she waits for coffee to brew, she packs her wallet and key ring—lighter than before, she shoves the acknowledgment away—into her tote.
Kicking her feet into her Blundstones, she fills her water bottle.
As the coffee drips through the Chemex, Lili watches the hot water spread over the thick filter paper.
Heat prickles her eyes. She forces it back.
She will not cry.
What right does she have to cry?
“Hey.”
She looks up. Jackie leans in her bedroom doorframe, watching her. Her curls are a mess.
“Hey,” Lili replies, looking back at the brewing coffee. She needs to get out of here.
“Are you—how are you?”
“Fine.”
Jackie frowns. “Fine?”
Lili nods. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Opening a cabinet, she grabs a travel mug. Pinches the paper filter, tilts the Chemex to pour
the fresh coffee.
“Where are you going?” Jackie asks.
“I have a shift at the farm,” Lili says, dumping the excess coffee into the sink.
“Now?”
“Yeah, it’s market day.”
Jackie’s frown deepens. “Shouldn’t you—I mean, couldn’t you call off work? Like, call in sick?”
“Why would I do that?” she asks, sharp.
Jackie just looks at her.
“I’ve got to go,” Lili says, grabbing her coffee. From her bedroom, she grabs her phone—low battery, enough charge for a few
hours—and leaves without looking at Jackie again.
Her phone keeps buzzing.
Throughout the farmers’ market, his name appears, calls and texts, as she helps stock radishes and purslane onto the farm stand, trains new volunteers, answers questions about when the last of the blueberries will land.
Lili flinches each time her pocket buzzes—as she hands back cash to the girls about her age in UPenn hoodies who buy a few flats of strawberries, brings out more leeks for a Hasidic couple, tracks down details about open slots in the fall CSA program for a pair of interested roommates—until she finally shoves her phone away, burying it in her tote kicked under the cash register.
She stays late after the market closes, helping take down tents, fold up tables, and pack away remaining produce; she tries
to occupy herself.
“Lili, you can head out,” Eileen tells her as they’re wrapping up inventory checks for restaurant orders. “There’s not much
more to do, I’ll take it from here.”
“Are you sure? I’m happy to stay—”
“Go!” she insists, warm but firm, shooing Lili with her clipboard. “Really, you’ve been here all day.”
“Fine, fine,” Lili says, trying to laugh. It burns like shame: how she loiters, trying to distract herself, grasping. The
stench of need.
Eileen smiles, unaware. “We’ll see you tomorrow, yeah? Oh! I emailed you the employment contract, can you bring it signed
in the next day or so?”
“Oh. Right, sure. I’ll do that.”
Eileen squeezes her arm. “Really glad you’re coming on board, truly. We had to fight for it, with funding, but everyone came
around. We’ll kick off with official onboarding next week, yeah? Start of a new pay period and all that.”
Slinging her tote over her shoulder, Lili heads home through the gently agitated hum of the neighborhood settling into Sunday
evening. Roommates doing grocery runs, parents pushing strollers with tired children and Duane Reade bags stuffed in the under-seat
baskets, makeshift picnics at Domino Park, the sun melting over the city. She watches these people, as she walks by them all—their
faces, their lives. Across the East River, the Williamsburg Bridge glitters in the late light, blocking One World Trade.
As she rounds her street corner, she braces herself.
But he’s not there. There is no black car waiting, no man she knows.
Lili stops on the corner. Staring at her street, she feels empty-handed and near dizzy.
Around her, conversations drift from apartment windows, the scent of fresh food and music from kitchens where people are cooking;
a group of teenagers further down the block are loud and laughing, turning onto Wythe. The lush purple sunset fades in the
sky.
It’s a lurch of both relief and hurt. Her head starts to throb, threat of tears again.
As if the physical space he’s giving her indicates care, trust—as if he doesn’t even fucking suspect what she’s done—
She runs up her building stairs, heavy soles of her Blundstones thudding against the steps.
When she shoves their apartment door open, she hears familiar voices, the hiss of vegetables stir-frying. Quiet music plays,
clink of plates settled on the table. As Lili kicks off her shoes, Jackie pokes her head into the hall. “Hey!” she exclaims.
She’s grinning too broadly. “Perfect timing, dinner’s almost ready.”
“All vegan, Marwan!” James announces from the kitchen. “I’m cooking, Amina’s setting up, the others will be over in a bit—”
“I’m good,” Lili says, heading for her room.
Jackie’s grin falters. “Maybe at least have some food?” she suggests.
“I’ll pass tonight,” Lili replies, forcing a smile that feels closer to a wince. She slips past Jackie into her bedroom. “Thanks,
though—”
Jackie catches her door before it closes. “Lili,” she says, low with concern, no longer smiling. “Come on, what—”
“I’m fine,” she insists. She grips the door tight. “I’m just tired.”
“Don’t do that, talk to me.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Her gaze narrows. “Lili, please.” Over Jackie’s shoulder, Lili spies Amina watching them closely, setting out plates for dinner.
“He called me to ask if you were alright when you didn’t call him today, to ask if you needed anything. He’s worried you’re,
like, hurt or something—”
“Well, I’m fine—and he shouldn’t be calling you. Please, Jackie, just—just leave me alone.” With a shove of her shoulder,
she shuts the door in her friend’s face, blocking out the noise and light of the living room.
It’s already dark in her room. The last bit of sun has drained, passed behind the buildings.
Alone, she lets out a breath, leaning against the door. Behind it, she can hear the slightly stunned silence of her friends.
Then the floorboards creak, as Jackie walks away.
Lili feels a fresh pang of guilt, piling onto the aches already gathered inside of her: for having turned Jackie away like that, and for the coldness she needs to preserve this frozen balance that’s so close to tipping over.
Muffled, she hears hushed voices, pitched low and serious.
She does not strain to make out their words.
Her phone buzzes.
Against the door, her shoulders ache. She realizes tension has been building in her body; that a few hours had passed since
he’d last tried to contact her. Maybe a work meeting, maybe a run.
The call keeps going.
Lili feels something start to crack in her chest.
Distant, she hears her friends, dinner, indistinct conversation.
Aleksandr Petrov.
Aleksandr Petrov.
Aleksandr Petrov.
She slumps down the door.
The sound of sirens, far away.
Somewhere in this city, there is a girl, in a museum, and a man beside her.
The scent of earth is fresh and rich, as Lili rips out the last of the chickweeds cluttering the beetroots. Standing, she
brushes dirt from her overalls. The shift is wrapping up. By the greenhouse, volunteers card through produce that won’t sell
at market. Eileen waves at her. Lili nods back, managing a smile. When she arrived at the Williamsburg location that morning,
she’d handed her paperwork—tax forms, employee contract—over to Eileen, and felt nothing but walls closing in.
One foot in front of the other, she’d told herself: as she’d gotten out of bed; as she’d dressed for the day; as she’d glanced
at her phone, and her throat had tightened, seeing fresh calls, new texts.
Late time stamps. 12:43 a.m., 2:07 a.m., 4:56 a.m.
Signs that he wasn’t sleeping. Just like her, but with such different reasons.
Soon, he’ll know—he has to, it’s inevitable he’ll figure it out, put two and two together; if not the details, then the contours.
But the idea of telling him herself makes her entire body feel like a scream.
All her possible explanations—all her fumbled logic about how she’d hurt herself before he could hurt her, how she had wanted to feel the inevitable hurtle towards her as a known thing, within her own power, giving herself time to brace—will mean nothing.
And this waiting, this hold between her action and his knowing, this no-man’s-land between choice and consequence, hurts more than she’d ever imagined.
She heads out without saying goodbye to anyone, her bag half full with some imperfect produce; she got lemon cucumbers, remembering
how much Jackie likes them. Past the compost and apiaries, she slips through the open slot in the chain-link fence covered
in posters announcing farm workshops and community events, emerging onto River Street—
A black car waits at the curb. Lili stops breathing.
But the familiar man standing there isn’t Aleksandr.
“Lili,” Michael greets her. Wearing a gray suit, his cold expression is almost unreadable. “So, you are alive.”