20
Stevie had chosen Madison Square Park as a meeting place, because it was close to their apartment and gave her a little time
to try to get herself together, find the cleanest clothes, smack on some combination lip and cheek stick in an ill-advised
way, and generally try to calm the fuck down.
That last one did not happen, so she decided if she could not appear calm, she could at least be funny. She plucked Helen’s
sticky note off the plastic and put the fruitcake in her bag.
“Thanks, Helen,” she said.
In terms of backdrop, you had to hand it to New York City. It seemed to shine brighter in the diamond-sharp cold, every rooftop
a jewel or a crown, every sign a glowing message to the night. Up on the mountain at Ellingham, the dark ruled you—New York
fought back. Even the darkest streets, the ones lined with apartment buildings or trees, never wavered in the fight. They
had streetlights, glowing windows, ambient light from all around.
Tonight, though, it was more than a glow.
It was New Year’s Eve. Party lights danced in apartment windows high above.
Vendors sold plastic hats and glasses that spelled out the new year in numbers.
The whole city was out, moving in couples and in herds.
People carried champagne and bags of beer and wine in Trader Joe’s bags.
The party was everywhere. You didn’t need a destination.
New York was the destination. Stevie was there, the cold flushing her cheeks and a faint misting rain fuzzing the wool fibers of the coat.
She hadn’t been drinking, but she was as drunk as anyone staggering along. She was grinning at a trash can, pacing in place
by the closed Shake Shack.
Janelle was always right. Always. That was the thing about Janelle. But—what if she wasn’t right this time?
More alarmingly: What if the right thing wasn’t the right thing?
What did that even mean?
And when would he get there? Which way would he come? By car? Would he drop down from the sky?
He was late, and he arrived on foot from the southeast corner.
David had a new coat. It was a black ski coat; not as formfitting as his coat that she was wearing, but it suited him, especially
with the red-and-white scarf he had looped around his neck in what seemed like a very English way. He’d trimmed his hair a
little as well—his looping waves no longer reached finger length. More like knuckle length. It made his face look sharper.
Made him look older. How had he changed so much in a few weeks?
Words. She needed words. Where were her words?
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” He hadn’t shaved, and there was just the slightest mustache darkening his frown lines. It made him look older. Like
a man, not a high school student. Because he was a man and not a high school student, and that thought was going to make the
top of her head come off.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, casually dropping onto a bench near where they were standing. Stevie sat down as well, not as casually—more like
a crash test dummy dropped into position.
“I’m here with Nate. He has to finish his book. An editor had an empty apartment. Why are you here?”
“Well . . .” David slouched with affected casualness. “I came home to see my mom and sister in Philadelphia. Mostly my sister.
But she, wisely, got out of the house because it was too depressing to stay with my mom and her new money manager boyfriend.
Then I saw your post, and I thought, New York is fun. I keep in touch with Ellie’s mom and I knew she’d know a place, which
is why I’m now sleeping on the sofa in the living room of an East Village polycule with three dogs. One of them manages a
restaurant, so the meals have been included. I don’t hate it there. Ellie always had the best connections.”
Ellie, their friend from Ellingham who had died.
Ellie the artist. Ellie with the baby socks in her hair, the saxophone she couldn’t play, the warm champagne in the bathtub.
Artist Ellie, who should have been alive still.
David and Ellie had been good friends. In fact, when Stevie first got to Ellingham, she thought they were a couple.
Ellie’s mom was an artist as well, and the two had lived in communes and artist colonies all over the place, including Paris.
“I was going to have to come back up to New York anyway for my flight back on the fourth,” he added.
“Flight back. Right. Janelle and Vi are here,” Stevie said. Like this was normal. Just catching him up on how things had been
going since he ruined her life. “To go to the ball drop.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah,” Stevie said. “The doorman told us.”
She felt her shoulders ease. Her mouth kept bouncing up at the corners. Everything got loose. How was this happening? How
did this switch get thrown and now everything was just going on like nothing had happened? Like she hadn’t just read that
letter. Like Helen hadn’t died or she hadn’t heard about a cult this afternoon or fought with Janelle or made Nate upset.
Whatever the reason, she was not going to fight it. Not right now.
“Do you want to see where I’m staying?” he asked. “I think you’d like the neighborhood. It’s not far.”
“Are there rats?” she asked. “Because I’ve been hanging out in a hidden garbage room a lot, and there are mice there, but
no rats, and I’m looking to upscale.”
“How many rats do I need to close this deal?”
“I’m going to need at least five rats.”
“Oh, then we can close right now.” He tipped his head, indicating she should follow him. “I actually do know a place we can go. Do you want this?”
He pulled a Coke can out of his pocket.
“A Coke?”
“It’s not a Coke. It’s a special cocktail I made with vodka, Malibu, orange juice, and just a hint of barbecue sauce from
my McNuggets. That was a mistake, but it adds a certain alluring something.”
“So you’re drunk?”
“I’m not drunk. I had one drink. I had two drinks. I had, at most, four drinks. I saved this one for you.”
“I’m good.”
“No problem,” he said, taking a swig from the can. “You have no idea what you’re missing. So, has it been a good trip?”
“One of the neighbors died at the place we’re staying. I mean, she just died. Of a heart attack.”
“Yeah . . .” David squinted at her. “This shit just happens to you, doesn’t it?”
“I found her,” Stevie said.
“Oh.” David considered this for a moment. “Sorry. Are you . . .”
“I’m fine,” she said quickly.
“You always seem to be,” he said.
She had no idea what that meant, but in the wet frost of the New York City air, in the waves of people with plastic New Year’s bowlers and top hats on, the people in light-up glasses, rushing out of bodegas with six-packs and tottering into bars on absurdly high heels .
. . a little ambiguity didn’t hurt. It felt like she was in a play, with the other costumed actors running to places.
Tonight, no reality was allowed.
David was staying on Eleventh Street, in a new apartment building. The entire ground floor was covered in signs that announced
that prime real estate was available for a great business opportunity, and that signage was quilted with graffitied ads for
makeup and albums and hand-lettered flyers that said things like VOTE FOR LAMP and CALL ME FOR A TERRIBLE TIME with rip-off
tabs with a phone number, all of which had been glued together by a thousand stickers. From that level the building looked
abandoned. Stevie wondered if he was going to invite her up, but he kept going, crossing the street and walking up a block.
“Okay,” he said. “I lied about the rats. It’s dogs.”
They had stopped in front of a place called Boris & Horton, which seemed to be a dog café, painted in soft pastels. Through
the windows, Stevie saw dogs lounging around café tables as people sipped from plastic champagne glasses. The dogs were being
given little dog canapés from a tray. The sign on the window read: NEW YEAR’S EVE EVENT SOLD OUT.
“Too late to get in,” he said. “But I saw you like dogs now so I thought you might want to see this. Even if we can’t get
in.”
“It probably sucks,” Stevie said as a dachshund jumped into a woman’s lap.
In New York, you could walk with no real destination in mind and still end up somewhere.
They walked up Avenue A, past someone barfing into a box on the sidewalk and people throwing confetti out of windows.
They wove through a maze of tall brick buildings with green window frames, all identical, and webbed by gardens and abundant
holiday decorations, glowing in the loamy gray. Then they were at a river’s edge—the East River, which was massive and churning
and smelled of the sea. Here, they were finally alone, or as alone as they were going to get.
Stevie pulled the coat tight around her and looked at the sparkling skyline on the other side.
“What’s over there?” she said.
“Queens, I think. Maybe?”
David noted her chill and moved around, like he was going to try to protect her from the cold with his body. She accidentally
moved away, so he stepped back, and they did a strange dance, working out the physical limits of their current state. He was
moving in accordance with her wishes, following her lead. After all the pain of the last weeks, having the upper hand wasn’t
a terrible sensation.
Stevie bit back a laugh. “My parents would shit a brick if they knew I was walking around New York City at night on New Year’s
Eve.”
“Speaking of. You said you were here because Nate’s here, but that doesn’t feel like the whole story. You were here for Christmas
too.” He had been paying attention.
“I sort of broke up with my parents,” she said.
He cocked his head, indicating that this was not surprising to hear.
“Fuuuuck,” he said.
“Yup. I’m eighteen,” she said. “It’s pretty much up to me now anyway.”
“It’s a great feeling, huh? I recommend it highly. Not going home is my favorite.”
“They’d just talk about you the whole time anyway,” Stevie said. She couldn’t help herself. It bubbled out of her mouth, like
a burp.
Just the way he was speaking right now, the way he lifted his chin slightly, Stevie realized he wasn’t drunk at all. He’d
made that up.