Chapter 22
Why teacups? Emily texted. I mean back then
I guess in case there was a raid, to fool the cops. Make them think the place was a teahouse
Or pretend to fool them. Teacups wouldn’t fool anybody
Maybe the cops pretended to be fooled
Emily felt breathless, not because of what they were texting, but because of the texts’ immediacy.
Gen’s came as swiftly as Emily sent them.
Emily had the impulse to hide herself away to read them even though no one else was in the apartment.
Jack, as they had agreed, had the children for the weekend.
She wrote, Why do you think I’ll like the place
You already like it, Gen wrote. All this talk about teacups
That’s not an answer
Gen didn’t reply for a while. Emily had time to shower, dress, second-guess what she was wearing, change, and then change back into what she had been wearing before, which was tight jeans and a loose shirt. The windows darkened. The Empire State Building glowed orange. Halloween was soon.
Emily’s phone buzzed. Because it’s hidden, Gen wrote, and not everyone knows about it.
You have to walk down an alleyway that seems to go nowhere.
You tell the bouncer a password. You walk inside, and everything is beautiful.
Three dots appeared, then disappeared. Finally, Gen wrote, It is very you.
Emily flushed. Her hand that held the phone felt as though it were still vibrating from the text. What’s the password? she wrote.
Just say that you’re with me.
On the subway, Emily’s car had a group of teenagers.
They were talking about classes and what they were going to do later that night.
They were loud. They paid attention to no one but themselves.
Emily imagined Connor and Stella becoming that age.
This made her miss them, so she tried not to think about that.
Instead, she imagined Gen and herself at eighteen.
Some of the group, a trio, got off at the next stop and waved at their friends through the windows, shouting.
They were so young, their faces bright. Emily loved them.
She got out at Delancey Street and walked swiftly down the alleyway Gen had mentioned. A large man stood in front of a door that Emily wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been blocking it. When he heard Gen’s name, he opened the door and said, “She’s in the room at the back, behind the bookcase.”
The wood and brass bar shone against the garnet silk-hung walls.
A fire illuminated a few people who sat on an old-fashioned couch that looked like it had hips.
Emily went straight toward the bookcase set deep into the wall.
Maybe it was supposed to be fun to figure out the opening but, impatient, she knocked on the bookcase’s frame.
A set of shelves swung partly open to reveal a woman with wide cheekbones and black hair cut like a boy’s.
“This room’s booked for a private event,” she told Emily, who heard someone say, “Who’re you talking to?
” The speaker appeared behind the woman, looked at Emily, smiled, and said, “Come on in.”
“Shipley,” said the woman, “behave.”
Shipley had a quick face and wore black eyeliner but somehow not in a feminine way. It went with the black-ink tattoos etched down Shipley’s arms and hands. Even the fingers were tattooed between the knuckles. “I am behaving,” said Shipley. “I’m being hospitable.”
“I think I have the wrong room,” said Emily.
“So what if you do? We’re fun, I promise.” Shipley, though no older than Emily, had an androgyny that looked well-worn, with scuffed boots and old jeans and nothing new, not even the watch, a metal Timex.
“Sorry,” the black-haired woman said to Emily in a tone that was kind but firm. “No random hot extras tonight,” she told Shipley, and moved to shut the bookcase.
“Emily!” Gen called from deep within the hidden room.
She pushed past the black-haired woman and Shipley—Gen’s friends, Emily realized with a deflated sense of stupidity.
Gen hugged Emily—casually, as if this wasn’t the first time they had touched in fifteen years.
Gen smelled the same. She fit against Emily in the same way.
Every response Emily had always had to Gen’s body coursed through her.
She felt a bone-deep, idiotic desire, no less strong for its familiarity, yet not quite the same as it had been in their past. It was sharper now, for its keen sense of impossibility, for how it revealed a longing not just for Gen but also for what they had once had, a longing so entwined with regret that the braided emotion was as tight as a whip.
Over Gen’s shoulder, Emily saw that the wood-paneled room held a group of people, most gathered around a table, a few looking curiously her way.
Emily let go of Gen as soon as she could without being obvious about it. Gen’s expression was relaxed and unbothered, her smile loose. She wasn’t looking at Emily but around the room. “Let me introduce you to my friends.”
“Oh, interesting,” said Shipley.
“That’s okay, right?” Gen asked Emily.
“Of course.” Emily was too proud to show her disappointment.
She had assumed that Gen’s invitation had been for her alone.
Even though she had known it wasn’t a date, she had anticipated this night as though it were one.
Now she confronted the embarrassing reality that she was just another name on a list.
“This would not be my move,” Shipley told Gen, who ignored the comment and said, “Emily and I are old friends. We went to high school together.”
“Were you this gorgeous in high school?” Shipley asked Emily.
Gen lost her smile. “Hey, Ship—”
“I’m Kate.” The black-haired woman who talked like a teacher thrust her hand out for Emily to shake. “Sorry I was rude. We didn’t know you were coming.” Emily’s embarrassment deepened. She had been such an unimportant guest that Gen hadn’t mentioned her to her friends.
“Gen, my man!” A solid guy with a sweet face appeared at the door. “Come here!” He bear-hugged Gen, let her go, shook a scolding finger, and said, “Next time, give me more of a heads-up and I won’t be late.”
Late? Emily was on time—or at least, had arrived by the time Gen suggested.
Even a little earlier. Her anger, which had been at herself, for having imagined this night differently even though Gen had never said it would be just the two of them, and there was no reason Gen couldn’t invite friends—Gen had said that she and Emily should “do some friend stuff”—shifted its focus.
Now she was angry at Gen. Had Gen invited friends so that she could introduce Emily, or had Gen regretted making plans with her and, last minute, turned the night into a group event to avoid being alone with her?
Already, Gen was distracted, listening to the sweet-faced man, Adam, describe how a rat (“A literal rat—no, I am not joking”) got onto the subway at Twenty-Third Street and ran up and down his subway car (“Everyone jumped onto their seats. I jumped onto my seat. And I like rats”), then sauntered out the doors at Astor Place.
“So you saw a rat,” said Kate. “This is New York. I once saw a rat big enough to eat a cat. I saw a hawk dive-bomb a trash can and pull a rat into the sky.”
Why hadn’t Gen just canceled?
“Hey, don’t go,” Shipley said to Emily. The other three weren’t paying attention.
They kept talking about rats. “You’ve got that going look on your face.
Let me pour you a drink.” Emily wanted to get away from Gen, yet didn’t want to reveal how upset she was by leaving the bar abruptly, so she let Shipley lead her to the back of the candlelit room.
An ice bucket with a magnum of champagne stood near the table where other guests were seated.
“I get the sense that you weren’t expecting us,” Shipley said to Emily.
The champagne was cold and crisp and made Emily realize that she was hot.
Her face was probably red. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time, right? ”
Emily thought about going home to her empty apartment. She took another sip. The champagne felt like a snowfall against her mouth. “Right.”
“Who’s this?” someone called from the table.
“Gen’s friend from high school.”
“Come join us, Gen’s friend!”
Once she and Shipley sat, the group around the table became six. Most of them were athletes, though Paul, who was willowy yet muscular and wore a single sapphire earring that shone against his brown skin, was an honorary athlete, they said, because he was a ballet dancer.
“I am an actual athlete,” said Paul.
“Ballet’s not a competitive sport,” said Candace.
“Do you know how many people you have to destroy to become a premier danseur? Do not talk to me about competition.”
“Well, I’m a professional poker player,” said Becca. She sounded like she was from the south, her voice slow and cozy. She adjusted her thick-framed glasses. “That means I’m basically an athlete, too.”
Nita languidly played with her short, pink hair, which had grown out just enough to show dark roots. “Poker doesn’t get you into the Olympic Village, honey.”
“Neither does Swan Lake !”
“My true athleticism isn’t ballet,” said Paul. “Once when I was in the Pines—”
“Shut up!” several of them shouted.
“I am so over the Pines.” Nita zipped her Carhartts up to her chin as though protecting herself from a rain shower. “Fire Island is an endless dickfest.”
“Fire Island ain’t all bad,” said Becca. “I like Cherry Grove.”
“Cherry Grove is a bunch of lesbians cross-stitching on the beach,” said Paul.
“I clean up with the handicrafts type. Knitters love me.”
“Fire Island rivalries aside,” said Paul, “if they ever did let me into the Olympic Village, I would head straight for the equestrians. They look like lords come to demand their tithes.”
“Sometimes I think y’all don’t respect me,” Becca said. “Poker is too a kind of sport, if you think about it.”
“I bet poker requires stamina,” said Emily.