1148 PM Mia #2
Back out on the street, they could hear competing choruses of “Auld Lang Syne,” sung slow and drunk and brazenly off-key.
Fireworks erupted in the sky above them, their pops echoing off the buildings, their colors flashing, then fading in the night.
Two black plastic shopping bags hung from Marco’s hands, swinging back and forth as they walked.
“Do you like working at Details?”
“I don’t know. Sure?”
“What’s that mean?”
“I mean it’s a job. Am I supposed to like it? I feel like most of the time I’m just trying to wrap my head around the fact that I’m going to have to work until I die.”
“You don’t have to keep doing this work,” Marco said.
“You know what I mean.”
“If you could do anything, what would it be?”
“I don’t know.”
Marco looked at her. “I don’t think that’s true.”
Mia curled her fingers into fists. They were finally getting cold.
“Okay, fine. I would be an actual writer. Like a journalist or something.”
“Then why don’t you go do that?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you want to be a journalist, go be a journalist.”
“Ha. Um, okay?”
Marco’s face hardened. “I’m serious. If you want something, you should go out and get it.”
“I guess I just don’t think it’s that easy.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I’m a woman? Maybe because it’s just not?”
They were standing beneath half a block of scaffolding. He probed his cheek with his tongue and looked up at the wooden planks above them. She could tell he was getting frustrated, though she didn’t understand why.
“You strike me as someone who could do with a little more confidence,” he said.
“I think that’s probably true.”
“So why don’t you have any?”
Mia frowned, scratching at her left earlobe. She felt like she had lost the conversation’s thread.
She said, “Who are we talking about here?”
Marco looked at her strangely, then turned and continued walking south.
Mia hung her head—then rushed to catch up with him.
Across the street a man stepped out of a building with a small beige dog on a leash.
He wore slippers and a red robe, and he stood smoking a cigarette while the dog lifted its leg and pissed.
For a few minutes Mia walked silently next to Marco, worrying that she had said something wrong and broken something fragile.
She imagined them reaching the apartment, where they would go back up to the party, drifting in with different groups of people and not seeing each other again.
The thought of losing him so quickly made her feel physically ill, overcome with a wave of nauseating desperation, and as they crossed Broome Street and passed the bodega with the bad ice, she wondered what, if anything, she could say to change the course of the evening.
She thought of Sasha, of how easily and comfortably she moved through the world, and wondered why she couldn’t be more like that.
What the fuck was wrong with her? Maybe it was her height.
Whereas Sasha was tall, Mia was short—but then again, so was Napoleon, and Danny DeVito, and look at everything they did.
The bigger problem, she knew, was her brain, which she was beginning to understand as a minefield of half-ideas and sensitivities, these thoughts that seemed important and valid, but that once she articulated them withered in midair.
Marco climbed the stairs of the stoop, and with her head still hanging she followed a few feet behind him. Then when he reached the building’s door he turned around.
“That girl who stopped us from talking earlier,” he said.
“What about her?”
“She isn’t anyone. She’s my cousin. Actually, she’s not even my actual cousin. She’s someone who I grew up with who I’ve always called my cousin.”
“Okay,” Mia said.
“And when we heard the countdown a few minutes ago.”
“Yes?”
“Well, we were in the bodega, so I couldn’t…”
He took his hat off and shoved it into the pocket of his coat. His hair was matted. The tips of his ears were red.
“You couldn’t what?”
Marco’s expression was blank, but then it took on a strange, intense focus.
He set the bags of ice and mixers on the ground.
Taking a step forward, he leaned in to kiss her.
Mia closed her eyes. She thought, It turns out I was wrong about this too, and felt his lips move apart, his tongue gently brushing against her own. A moment later he pulled his head away.
“You’re blushing again,” he said.
A police car drove down Orchard Street, its lights turning, its siren silent.
Marco’s face flashed blue, then pink, then blue.
He leaned in, and again Mia felt his lips.
This time he placed one hand against her cheek, and the other one against the small of her back, pulling her closer to him.
She could feel her heart beating against the wool of her sweater and up at the base of her throat, and she raised herself up on her toes.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
“It’s nice.”
“Are you sure?”
The police car turned on its siren, though now it seemed to Mia to be very far away.
She said, “Marco?”
“Yes?”
“Please stop talking and kiss me.”