Chapter Thirty-One #3
“What? God no. You’re my favorite person here. But just, like, take people’s drink orders and make sure Poppy gets the gluten-free dessert, and you know Char is vegan now.” She leans in, all cute and conspiratorial. “Don’t tell her there’s dairy in the soup.”
I nod, standing there like it’s all fine.
Like this is what I came for. I feel my face doing this thing it used to do when I worked for Penelope—polite, blank.
But inside, I’ve collapsed. I am invisible.
I walk out into the dining room. I watch everyone, settling into cocktails and polite small talk.
(“I’m not spending seventy K a year on Collegiate so that Dean can go to Indiana. ”…“Why would anyone go to Indiana?”)
How silly I’d been. Why hadn’t I known? This is how it always was with our friendship.
What happened inside 527 Park had not made me a different person in the outside world.
I was still Emily, with the “sorry” stutter.
Beau rattles ice around in an empty tumbler in my direction.
I stand there, unmoving. He scrunches his forehead with its yellowy blond waves. “Emily Joan? Another gin and tonic?”
The guests notice that I am clutching a steak knife.
Holding it so tight that my knuckles pulse.
I blink and I think one of the women looks identical to Daisy.
No, she is Daisy. She’s yelling at me to do it—FUCKING DO IT!
I stab the knife as hard as I can into the custom wooden table with the fancy French name. Gasps, then silence.
I blink. Daisy is not there. The knife is still in my hand. I’d only imagined that she’d given me permission to commit felony manslaughter on the French mahogany. It is only me, in my DVF sample sale dress, surrounded by Penelope’s chicly malnourished friends and their dietary restrictions.
“There’s dairy in the soup,” I say. And I walk out, booties still on.
—
That night, I woke up on the couch. Holden’s ears had been hurting him ever since we did a swim class in the Japanese onsen.
He’d finally cried himself to sleep on my chest in the living room.
I left him in his swing and walked into his nursery to pull the shades and straighten his crib to transfer him to bed.
That’s when I noticed Sebastian watching me again.
The same internal force that was begging me to stab a dining room table that cost more than most homes assailed me, but this time I didn’t imagine it.
Daisy told me how to handle guys like Sebastian.
(“The voyeurs are my favorite, honestly.”) All I had to do was listen.
I have no idea why I did it except that Daisy told me to. She swore it would work, always did. “Take your power back,” she’d said. So I tried it.
I looked into his eyes from beyond our shared courtyard.
I opened my silk robe, giving him a full view, for a long time.
For as long as it took him. I stared straight into his eyes, never wavering.
He must have thought we had a connection.
Bless his heart. This was a purely offensive move, power passing between us in my favor.
He stroked harder, putting his whole arm into it.
I half smiled. Enjoy it, buddy, because as soon as you’re finished, you don’t get to look anymore.
I’m not bric-a-brac on your cluttered shelf.
I watched his eyes close, his mouth release a silent scream, sweet release pulsing through his entire body.
I squinted. Even with the courtyard between us, I could see his face morphing from pleasure to fragility.
Smile gone, I shut my robe tight and pulled the blinds.
—
The next day, I push Holden to the elevators.
The construction crew is rolling up the rosin paper, finished with the gut renovation next door.
After we pick up Holden’s prescription ear drops, we go get a hearty bunch of sunflowers at the bodega and a dozen bagels at Russ & Daughters to drop off at Audrey’s.
Audrey’s bloodwork was fine, but the doctor ordered a week of bed rest. She’d stayed loyal, not saying a word to the hospital staff, or even her own husband, about 527 Park and how she ended up having an adverse reaction to the liver-detox IV.
I knock on the door. Sebastian answers. (He looks like a Stuart.) He is even more tongue-tied than Phil. “Oh…uh…Audrey’s sleeping, but do you want to…um, come in?”
“You can drop it, Sebby. We both know you’ve seen my tits.”
He looks behind him. “What?”
I reach to shake his hand. “I’m Emily from Apartment D1809, across the courtyard. You know, your neighbor, your wife’s mom friend, who you’ve been ogling every night. I wanted to ask you, now that we had that little moment, do you think you could stop?”
“I don’t know what you think—”
“You don’t get to look at me anymore. It’s done. Get it?” He is speechless. “Good.”
“I think you should leave,” Sebastian says, slamming the door so loud it wakes Sloane. She is crying and yelling “Mommy” in the background. I leave the bagels on the welcome mat and say, loudly, through the door, “Take care of Audrey.”
I am floating. I feel lighter than I’ve felt in months. I lean down to confer with Holden. “Well, that could not have gone better, could it, little koala?” And as we walk away, he looks at Sebastian’s slammed door and gives his first-ever bye-bye wave.
It’s a lovely day. We walk outside, passing the bench where I first met Brit. She hasn’t returned my texts and is still dark on socials. I call to see if she and Quinn want to meet up. “The number you have dialed has been disconnected.” Brit was always prone to melodrama, but this seems extreme.
I push Holden a couple of blocks north to Brit’s apartment tower. We take the elevator eight floors up. But when we get to Apartment 1803 and the Howdy welcome mat and the dried floral wreath that Brit made, I find catalogs and packages piled up. I knock on the door. “Brit? You there?”
A neighbor across the hall opens her door, pushing a collapsible shopping cart and walking a tiny white dog on a retractable leash.
“C’mon, Moshe.” I approach delicately, knowing that there is a fragile strain between the original Stuy Town residents and the residents who have moved in over the past decade.
I once introduced myself to Rabbi Oldak down the hall, and he’d waved his hand at me and said, “I can’t keep up with all the comings and goings. ” We’d lived there for four years.
“Hi. Excuse me. I was wondering if you know where Brit went.”
She squints. “Who?”
“Brit? Or, um, Brittany? She lives in 1803. Has a baby girl—Quinn—and her husband, Elliot, I think?”
She pushes her cart to the elevator. Moshe sniffs Holden, then buries his head in the Yoyo, looking for food. “Where do you people always go?” She tugs the little white dog onto the elevator. “Away.”