Chapter 25
My friendship with Chris is in such a good spot that I have no desire to tilt the balance and do something unruly. Or I guess
I have every desire to do that; I have just enough self-restraint not to. Maybe you can’t fully lose someone if you never
really have them, but you can lose them partway, the fractions shattering in a way that whole things don’t.
This means I make an effort not to make an effort with him. I spend more time back at Lone Wolf and the House of Yes, stirring
up feelings for other people like a witch perched in front of a new cauldron when she knows her last batch was better, more
potent.
Leaves drop from the sparse city trees onto the sidewalk, and cold weather surges into the battered Bushwick streets, clapping
back at steaming manholes. There’s not much bliss on the home front. Hal is all angsty about how Astrid’s student visa is
expiring at the end of the year.
“Her entrepreneurship visa got denied,” Hal moans one afternoon in early December. We’re eating s’mores that Tara has baked
in the toaster oven to keep us warm. Blustery squalls batter the basement windows, testing the seal, searching for an in.
It’s the first snowstorm of the season.
“Astrid’s role as cofounder of your stealth-mode start-up didn’t make the cut?” I say, unable or maybe just unwilling to take the matter seriously.
“Cut it out, EJ,” Hal says. “This isn’t a joke. It’s my entire future crumbling before me.”
“Don’t blame me, blame the political system,” I say.
And so she does, ranting about all the quacks who are threatened by immigrants when all of the country’s best innovators have
been foreign-born, and even the Founding Fathers were immigrants from Europe and the entirety of America is stolen land. “The
hypocrisy is too preposterous to even analyze,” she fumes, then proceeds to dissect it nonstop.
“I’m on your side,” I assure her when she pauses long enough to stuff two charred marshmallows into her mouth, cheeks puffing
like a chipmunk storing up for hibernation. “But I really don’t know why you’re so distraught. You couldn’t ask for a better
excuse to break up than deportation. It’s all neat and tidy. Sounds like a dream to me.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” Hal retorts, writhing around on the couch as if spiders are crawling inside her flannel pajamas. With a surge
of practicality, she plucks herself from her spasm. “We’ll just have to house Astrid here at the Inn,” Hal goes on. “She’ll
get a fake ID and evade the authorities until we can find her a permanent solution. What do you think, Tara?”
Of course she’d try to manipulate the situation and go for Tara first. I interject, “No thank you. We won’t be housing a criminal.”
I’m thinking less about the trouble it could get us into, which is admittedly intriguing, and more about the way it would
ruin the whole dynamic of the Inn. With Hal and Astrid living here as a couple, I’d feel like a third wheel in my own home.
“I asked Tara.” Hal glowers.
“There’s no way Tara wants Astrid here either,” I say. “It’s putting all of us in danger.”
“Since when have you cared about danger?” Hal shoots back.
“Are you going to listen to what I have to say about it?” Tara asks.
Hal and I quiet down. I’m proud of how Tara is sticking up for herself. But the pride quickly mutates to dismay as Tara speaks.
“I could get behind the idea of Astrid staying here,” she says. “Sure, there’s some risk involved, but it would be walking
the walk when it comes to our view on immigration policy. In the absence of governmental progress, we have to be the change
ourselves.”
“Exactly,” Hal says, nodding vigorously as if Tara has seen the light. “That makes two against one. Sorry, EJ, you’re outnumbered.”
“I could tip off the police,” I say. “That you’re housing a fugitive.”
“Good luck paying rent if Tara and me are locked up,” Hal says.
It smacks hard. “I’d find a way,” I say, but I know she can feel that my threat is an empty one. All of us can.
Hal rises from the couch, pulls on her frayed snow boots and a puffer jacket, and heads out into the storm, just like that.
“Good thing I’m not the only dramatic one in the friend group,” I say sardonically to Tara.
Tara tries to smile but doesn’t quite succeed.
“Do you really want Astrid to move in?” I ask Tara.
“Not really,” she says. “But it’s better than the alternative of Hal moving out.”
“Hal wouldn’t move out,” I say. “Astrid would go back to Norway, and things would return to their rightful state, just the
three of us here.”
“I’m not sure,” Tara says. “I was watching Netflix with Hal on her computer last night and ads kept popping up for jobs in
Oslo. I think she’s been looking.”
“The algorithm’s got it wrong,” I say, because it has to be so. “They must’ve heard Astrid talking about having to go back
and find a job in Norway.”
“Maybe.” Tara looks doubtful, tugging at her hair, long and braided these days. “But you’ve got to admit, Hal has never been this way before.”
“Certifiably insane, you mean? I agree, it’s a new level, even for her.”
“I just don’t want us to lose her.” Tara loops her arm through mine, like she’s leaning on my leadership.
“We won’t. I’ll come up with a solution. Don’t worry.”
Tara passes me the tray of dilapidated s’mores. “You’re the glue, EJ,” she says, “that holds us all together.”
The praise makes me more committed than ever to figure things out, to keep Hal with us. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing
to let Astrid stay at the Inn. Sometimes a small loss is worth preventing a bigger one. I’d bet all my savings I’m right about
that. I know that means I’m not actually betting anything, but that’s the great thing about being broke. You can risk it all
without losing anything.