Chapter 35 205 PM Mia #2
Sasha looked at herself in a mirror fixed to one of the room’s walls.
Since Mia last saw her she had changed into a full-body red leotard and a pair of knee-high black boots.
Her hair fell down past her shoulders, and on her face she wore a small black mask that covered only her eyes.
She turned to the left, running a hand across her stomach.
The leotard was a half size too small for someone Sasha’s height: the sleeves ended four inches above her wrists.
“I’m supposed to be Mrs. Incredible,” Sasha said. “Theo’s Mr. Incredible, and the kids are Violet and Dash. It’s, like, a family thing.”
“Well, you look great.”
Turning one hundred eighty degrees, Sasha considered herself from a different angle. She straightened the mask on her face, smoothed down a wrinkle in the leotard. She said, “Did you bring a costume?”
“Yes!” Mia reached into her canvas tote bag and brought out the mouse ears, fixing the headband across her crown. The price tag brushed her left ear. She reached up to remove it.
“So cute.” Sasha turned away from the mirror. She smiled, but then her face fell into a concentrated expression. Mia felt her face becoming hot again. A car door slammed outside.
“I’ve got an idea,” Sasha said. “Come with me.”
She took Mia to the primary bedroom, down the hall and on the other side of the staircase.
The bed was made, but the clothes that Sasha had worn to the train station were strewn across it, and there were two pairs of running shoes on the floor.
In an adjoining bathroom Sasha directed Mia to sit on the closed lid of a toilet, and then rummaged through a series or drawers.
Mia looked around the room. There were two sinks, two medicine cabinets, and two electric toothbrushes charging in their bases.
Lined up along the vanity was a collection of moisturizers and anti-aging serums in small glass jars.
The air smelled like shampoo and the tuberose perfume that Sasha had been wearing since college.
Mia picked a piece of soft black lint from her pants.
She reached up to touch the mouse ears and the headband pulled at the roots of her hair.
“Tilt your head back a little,” Sasha said.
She gripped a black eyeliner pencil, and with it she began drawing four straight lines on each of Mia’s cheeks, giving her whiskers. Using her other hand she held Mia’s chin to steady her face.
“Let’s give you a nose too.”
“Sasha, this is hilarious.”
“I know.”
“Like, very funny.”
“I know.”
“Like, how the fuck are we actually sitting here doing this?”
“I know.”
Sasha laughed. Her hair fell in front of her eyes and she gathered it with one hand and moved it over her right shoulder.
Mia laughed harder, and then Sasha did too, her torso convulsing and tears forming at the corners of her eyes.
From downstairs Ethan yelled up for her, stretching “Moo-oom” out into two whined syllables, but Sasha didn’t answer him.
Still laughing, she reached behind her to shut the bathroom door, and Mia felt a surge of kinship toward her.
With a single knuckle, Sasha dabbed at the corners of her eyes.
She took a deep breath and said, “Okay, now my stomach actually hurts,” as she waited to get hold of herself.
Then she brought the eyeliner pencil to the tip of Mia’s nose.
“I should bring these ears to Miami,” Mia said. “I’ll wear them by the pool and really freak people out.”
Sasha moved the pencil in wide circles, stopping short of Mia’s nostrils.
She said, “I actually wanted to talk to you about Miami.”
“What about it?”
Sasha took a step back. She pivoted her head an inch to the right, inspecting her work. Then she set the pencil down and rested the backs of her thighs against the vanity.
“I hate this, like, I really fucking hate this, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to go.”
Mia laughed again, but this time it came out as a weird, guttural chuckle.
Was Sasha kidding? That was the only explanation.
Because for the last week all Mia had been doing was texting her links to cocktail bars and fun restaurants and monosyllabically named boutiques on Lincoln Road, and to each one Sasha had responded with some version of omg, yes, so cute.
Mia had even put together a loose itinerary that she knew they’d never get around to completing, but that made her excited to think about and gave her something to do instead of working on her book.
But now Sasha was looking at her pitifully, her mouth pushed out into an exaggerated pout. Mia chewed on the edge of her thumb.
She said, “You’re joking.”
Sasha pushed her lips out farther, then placed a hand on the side of her cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I just can’t make it work.”
There was a twisty, sinking feeling in Mia’s stomach.
What did she mean, she couldn’t make it work?
The expression lodged itself somewhere in the back of Mia’s throat: all of a sudden she felt like one of Sasha’s chores, one that she didn’t have the time or wherewithal to complete.
She took her thumb away from her lips and set her hands in her lap. Ethan called out again.
“That really sucks,” she said.
“I know. Ugh.” Sasha inspected her hair for split ends. “Theo has this fucking work trip out in Phoenix that whole week, and our sitter is going to be down in Pennsylvania seeing her parents. I guess her dad broke his hip or something dumb like that.”
“What about your mom?”
“I called her, believe me, but she and my dad are going on this ridiculous cruise to Antarctica.”
“In December?”
“Well, yeah, because it’s technically summer down there.”
“Right.” Mia frowned. “Can’t you just find a different sitter or something?”
Sasha laughed, though now there was a sharpness to it that wasn’t there a minute ago. The twisty feeling returned to Mia’s stomach. Sasha didn’t feel sorry for canceling on her. In fact, she was pretty sure that Sasha had never planned to go to Miami at all.
“Blessedly you don’t have to deal with babysitters,” Sasha said, “but let me tell you: it’s really not that easy.”
Mia nodded. She realized she hated Sasha more than she had ever hated her during the course of their friendship; she also felt the need to apologize again on her behalf, like she had done in the car, as if all of this—Theo’s work in Phoenix and Sasha’s scheduling troubles; the entire concept of Florida—was entirely her fault.
Instead she looked out the bathroom’s window.
She ran her tongue across her teeth and thought: Aren’t there, like, a thousand apps for finding a babysitter?
“I should probably get back to the party,” Sasha said. “But look—we’ll find another time to go, I promise.” She offered Mia her hand to stand up from the toilet. “Wait, the hotel room’s refundable, right? If it isn’t I’ll obviously pay my share.”
Mia caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror.
She felt ridiculous with all this shit on her face.
She told Sasha not to worry about the hotel room—she said, “Yeah, no, so long as I call them in the next week I’ll definitely get all of the money back,” which was a total lie.
She had booked a nonrefundable room; if she canceled it she was going to be out at least five hundred dollars, but she would rather lose the money than get a Venmo notification that Sasha had sent it to her out of pity.
She could already see the message on her phone’s screen: a little palm tree icon, along with something like Next time!
After smoothing down the front of her sweater, she reached up to secure the mouse ears on top of her head.
The bathroom was big—the size of her living room in Greenpoint—though she was beginning to feel like she couldn’t breathe as well as she would have liked to. She needed some fresh air.
“You should totally ask someone else to go!” Sasha said, and it took every bit of effort Mia had to not scream, Sasha, shut the fuck up.
“I’m serious, why don’t you invite Adam or Richie?
Oh my God, you could go to that famous drag brunch with them!
You’ll have much more fun with either of the boys than you’d have with me, I promise.
Like, honestly, Mia? These days I’m such a fucking mom. ”
Mia thanked her for the suggestion. She said, “Yeah, maybe I’ll ask Adam or Richie,” even though she knew she wouldn’t. She had wanted to go to Miami with Sasha, and now that Sasha wasn’t going, she figured she would go to Miami alone.