Chapter 3 #2
“They’re going to adore you,” Olivia gushes when we’re stopped at a red light in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
She’s talking to the guy like he’s some kind of show pony that she can’t wait to parade around. They must’ve just started
dating and now they’re off to the big meet-the-friends event that the Redstockings rarely have to deal with since we don’t
play for keeps.
I get this urge to butt into the conversation, and I could control myself, but where’s the fun in that?
“Oh, do you think so, Olivia?” I say. “I don’t always make the best first impression, but it means a lot that you have that
kind of confidence in me.”
Olivia doesn’t say anything. She just sits there like she’s trying to convince herself that I didn’t actually speak.
Then she starts whispering to her man in a serpentine sort of way, asking for advice no doubt.
It pisses me off because she should be able to make up her own mind about what to say, and also it’s such a rich-person thing to do, for Olivia to see her Uber driver as merely a means to an end.
You can always tell the character of a person by the first five words they say to their Uber driver.
If they say five words at all, which they usually don’t.
“I asked you a question, Olivia.” I turn off the radio to amp up the awkward silence as I wait for her to answer.
The guy has to speak on her behalf. “Sorry, I think she might’ve been talking to me,” he says to me. “But how’s your night
going so far?”
My stomach recognizes his voice before my ears do. I whip my head around while I’m zooming up the Seventh Avenue circus, nearly
clipping the side mirror of a Tesla that’s incompetently parked.
“Chris!” I think and say at the same time. There’s no gap between the two.
He looks just like he did the last time I saw him—the same dark parted hair and mellow brown eyes and those lips that need
more of a shape. He’s not wearing a suit this time, but he still has a button-down shirt and dry-clean-only pants. It’s really
not any better, but it seems better.
I’m weirdly relieved to see him. It almost feels like I’ve been driving around the luxury neighborhoods where I thought he’d
hang out, just on the off chance that something like this would happen. That’s not what I’ve been doing; it just kind of feels
like that.
“Emily Jane?” He seems uncertain, which I guess is fair since I’ve bleached my hair and buzzed part of it too, and I’m wearing
these amber contacts today that make me feel like I’m a cheetah that just escaped a zoo.
“Just EJ,” I correct, though hearing my full name doesn’t bother me as much as I would have expected.
Olivia murmurs something, only to Chris, but I can still hear it. “You know her?” is what she says.
The way she puts that othering emphasis on her makes me scream inside. I mean, why do women always have to go pitting themselves against each other? I’m not pitting myself against her; I’m just reacting to her hostility.
They’re the kind of uninteresting people that dating app algorithms pair together because they’re programmed to match like
with like, as if people are trying to find their clone, not their lover.
“Did you meet on a dating app?” I ask, hoping to confirm my theory and get Olivia more involved in the conversation so she
can give me a chance to disprove the judgments I’ve made. Or maybe just confirm them more.
“We did,” Chris says, and I make a clucking sound to congratulate myself on being right.
It strikes me that there should be a dating app that deliberately matches opposites to keep things interesting. Maybe I’ll
pitch the idea to Hal later and share in the profits.
Olivia is doing her little mumbling thing again and Chris is explaining to her that he met me at an art gallery once. There’s
not much emotion in his voice, but there never is so I don’t take it personally. He’s probably just being extra careful not
to arouse any suspicions.
“Chris asked me to marry him,” I elaborate for Olivia’s benefit, just so she understands the context. “But don’t worry, I
said no.”
He tells her it wasn’t anything, just a practical joke, but I see Olivia withdraw her hands from his arm. There’s a victorious
lurch in my stomach.
He reaches for her hand again but she resists. It’s so petty. We’re all going to be dead in the blink of an eye, and here
she is wasting her life being miserable, punishing a man she’s choosing to be with. It doesn’t even seem like the makeup sex
will be good, so what’s the point?
“Don’t worry,” I say to Olivia. “I told Chris he wasn’t my type.”
That just makes her prickle up even more like she’s a desert cactus. I’m really wondering what Chris sees in her. Maybe she
gives better blow jobs than she looks like she would.
“Chris, feel free to text me if you ever need a private ride,” I say, dripping temptation over the words private ride. Then I rattle off my phone number. I say the numbers pretty fast because I don’t want to make it too easy for him. He blinks
twice and I’m pretty confident that he memorized it on the spot. I mean, he’s an accountant, so numbers should be his thing.
We’re still some blocks from their Midtown destination, but traffic is all backed up. I’m starting to feel suffocated by having
them in my car, so I pull over and eject them with pomp and circumstance.
“Here you are,” I say. “We’ve arrived.”
Olivia doesn’t point out that we’re not there yet. She just slithers out like she’s relieved to be rid of me and my stench.
Chris thanks me for driving and follows her out. He seems to know it’s not safe for him to linger, that he might fall victim
to my charms like he did the last time.
“See you soon!” I call out with cherry-flavored cheer as they walk down the sidewalk.
They’re not holding hands. It’s like Olivia is still trying to freeze Chris out. Not enough that their relationship will fall
apart, just enough so he’ll take her out to a Michelin-starred dinner tomorrow night. As if that’s where happiness lurks,
in the shallow shells of hundred-dollar oysters.
They should be thanking me, really; I’ve given them conversation fodder, no doubt more interesting than whatever they’ll talk
about at their posh little party. Everyone sitting around comparing six-figure salaries and planning their next European vacation
so they don’t have to find anything original to bond over in the present.
I keep driving for a while longer.
I’m all wound up after that, and sometime after midnight I start thinking about sleeping with my riders.
It’s the easiest way ever to have a one-night stand, all these people going home from the clubs after failing to find someone to go home with, and then they luck out with an irresistible Uber driver.
I’m not in the mood for it tonight, though, so I drive back to Bushwick and park the Red Rocket outside the Inn in the parking
spot that we’ve painted with a big “Private Parking—Violators Will Be Towed” sign to scare off the other cars. The police
around here have bigger things to worry about than coming for us.
I’m not ready to go inside. Privacy appeals, so I walk around the neighborhood. Emptied spray paint cans litter the gravelly
potholes of Knickerbocker Avenue. Spotty streetlights illuminate sidewalk graffiti with shapes I’ve never seen before but
immediately recognize as true.
This is what art is supposed to be. Communal and evolving, on full display for everyone and their mother to see and stomp
their feet on, scream out for. Not something private and static that’s caged away in galleries and museums where you get arrested
for touching it, hushed for expressing the uncouth emotion it stirs within you.
Revolutions aren’t born in fancy theaters where rich people pay an arm and a soul for tickets. Revolutions are born on grimy
city blocks where broke communities refuse to break by walking together, dancing together, dreaming together, banding together.
Feeling a surge of affection for Bushwick, I try to scope out a street fight, a drug deal, a shoplifting bust. I’m not going
to insert myself in the middle of it; I just want to watch something interesting swirl around me, swirl within me. But it’s
dead quiet.
I’m not a fan of silence; it makes everything louder inside.
It makes me wonder when I’ll hear from Chris.
Because the question is “when,” not “if.” I know he’ll text me once Olivia stops censoring his phone.
He’s obviously bored out of his bones. The problem is that all his friends are bored too, so he just thinks that’s the way relationships have to be: pairing up with someone who makes people say, “Oh, what a perfect couple,” when you post photos on social media.
Little do they know your faces sag back to apathy right after the camera flashes.
Guys like Chris want someone who seamlessly fits into their life, as if it’s a good thing to fit in.
As if it doesn’t mean that you hardly even notice the other person’s existence and don’t evolve in their presence at all.
It’s late. Chris and Olivia are probably in bed right now. The thought makes me itchy, so I take off my patched denim jacket,
and then I peel off my T-shirt and then my bra too because the metal wiring is poking into my skin. Talk about a grassroots
advertising campaign for liberation. I continue down the block, past Blazin’ Skinz Tattoo Parlor, which looks as reputable
as it sounds. Tony’s Pizzeria, our no-frills anchor, is wedged beside it, just dilapidated enough to keep the swarm of Manhattanite
foodies from invading and propagating our deep Brooklyn culture into a social media hashtag.
The streets are nearly empty. I’m not scared for my safety. My aura oozes invincibility. The neighbors would come help me
anyway, at least the ones who aren’t far away on a trip where screams sound like seagulls.
I expect to be noticed, but the few people I pass don’t glance twice. They barely glance once, too absorbed in their phones
or their pizza or the real or imaginary music in their ears. And isn’t that the truth about Bushwick—you can walk around topless
and not even stand out. Kind of great but kind of sad too. It almost makes me miss Michigan, how I could be guaranteed to
cause a scene just by going running in a crop top. Gasp, the scandal of a belly button.
Refusing to slump under the defeat of it all, I maintain the strong neck of a sphinx as I return to the Inn and take a scorching
shower. No one else in the building is using the hot water this late; it’s all mine to hoard. One of the best perks of being
nocturnal.
I take out my contacts. The gray irises bleed through again. Looking away from the mirror fast so I don’t have to see myself like that, I bumble into my room and settle into the bottom bunk. The thin little mattress bends to my body like most things do.
I try to conjure up a steamy scene for a lucid dream, but all I keep thinking about is how Chris blinked twice when I gave
him my number, like he was trying to tell me he got it.