Like most twenty-first-century American writers, I have a slightly tortured, carefully hidden, somewhat abashed but ultimately bedrock belief in destiny. Probably all writers, in all historical moments, do. To tell a story, you need to believe things happen for a reason.
So when Lacie texted me to ask me out just as I was bustling around my cousin’s apartment getting ready to meet Tony for the lease-signing, it seemed like a sign, something destined, meant to be. She wanted to know: Was I by any chance free tonight? Like, in an hour? She had two comps to see a theatrical production of Mrs. Dalloway, and Ian had canceled. This she followed with another string of inscrutable emojis: eggplant, praying hands, lightning bolt.
This wasn’t a real invite. I knew that. I was merely the person in her phone least likely to have Tuesday-night plans one hour before Tuesday night began. Still, it made my heart jig.
A round of Google mapping revealed what I had suspected: minus the ability to teleport, there simply wasn’t enough time to drop off the check and still meet Lacie. Could I call Tony? No—we hadn’t exchanged numbers. Either I showed up with the certified check in forty minutes, or that sunny studio would go to the next Katrina Vosges who came along.
I started to type back a polite refusal. Then backspaced. Tried again, this time capitalizing “love”—“I would LOVE to, but…” It sounded fake. Insincere. I tried a few different versions (thinking, all the while, of Lacie staring at her phone, watching those mysterious bubbles), before realizing that anything less than immediate, enthusiastic acceptance would read as snapping her olive branch over my knee.
All the way down the block I pretended to myself I was headed toward Park Slope. Even texting Lacie to suggest a quick pre-show drink, I was congratulating myself on my maturity. Then, at the last stop in Manhattan, I got off.
* * *
—
The cocktail lounge beside the theater was silky and hushed, with a red velvet curtain to shut away the vulgarity of the street. I spent a lot of time arranging myself on the stool, trying to find a hook under the bar, stuffing and restuffing my cardigan around my purse so it wouldn’t hang onto the floor.
When she rushed in I thought: Lacie. In smart black booties and a wild floral wrap dress, she was her own weather system, kissing me on the cheek, slipping her purse easily onto a hook, cooing, “Thank you for coming! I know, it was so last-minute, I could kill Ian for canceling, I mean”—she lowered her voice while sliding onto a barstool—“I hear the show is terrible, but whatever. How are you, how’s the hunt?”
My stomach clenched. Was I being an idiot right now? But sitting together with Lacie in public pleased me so much that I couldn’t believe it was a mistake. Quickly I told her about the places I had seen, the elevator that smelled of piss, the studios that smelled of mold, the crumbly brick and half-renovated disasters renting for north of $2,000. Carefully I omitted any mention of Tony.
“It’s just—moving here is hard. Apartment hunting is insane, but you can’t talk about how insane it is without sounding like every other person who has ever moved to New York. But it turns out that knowing it was going to be impossible has not stopped me from being utterly amazed at how impossible it is.”
She laughed. “No, totally. There are some things you just have to experience. Like, getting choked up at the ultrasound of your baby is totally clichéd, but everyone does it.”
“Yeah. This is exactly like that, except bone-crushingly awful.”
Our cocktails arrived, mine in a ladylike punch glass, fragile and ridiculous; hers in a highball glass, sturdy and serious. Instantly I regretted my choice.
Lightly she touched my arm. “By the way. You were totally right. I moved the loom into the living room, and I’ve been working every night.” A glitter in her eyes as she spoke.
“Oh, really? That’s great. That’s wonderful, Lace.” Carefully I hoisted my brimming punch glass. “To feeding the beast in the corner.”
“To feeding the beast.”
We clinked. When I met her eye, there was something live and febrile there. A dark warm river flowed between us.
* * *
—
Still, sometimes I think that if we hadn’t seen a truncated, experimental Mrs. Dalloway that night, it might have gone differently. But when they got to the part about Sally Seton—dark, large-eyed, untidy Sally Seton, with the power to shock—sentimental feeling swelled in me.
Her way with flowers! The actors twirled about the stage. They all wore funny hats with flowers and stiff brims. Cut their heads off, and made them swim on the top of water in bowls. Extraordinary! they exclaimed in their horrible British accents, swinging around the beams of a framed-out house. They really got going with the flower bit. Cut off their heads! Made them swim in water! Hollyhocks and dahlias, flowers never seen together! Extraordinary!
It was honestly ridiculous, more like a spoof of experimental theater than experimental theater itself, and yet I found myself thinking how we, too, had once been mere children, loving one another in the deep, dumb way of the young. Memories began speaking brightly to me, a smear of warm light: our high, childish voices, our childish pleasure in having bodies, in using them. Riding bikes, walking on curbs, skipping rocks. Prank phone calls, epic sleepovers, endless summer days at the pool. It had all vanished. But I didn’t. I’m fine.
Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw Lacie raise her hand. Delicately she dabbed her eye. My spine lit. Careful not to turn my head, I watched as she rubbed out the wetness on her cheek.
* * *
—
When the lights rose we gathered our bags in that special bubble of silence that comes after shows. She didn’t turn to me and ask my thoughts, or make some wry dismissive comment. Carefully we edged our way up the aisle.
Out in the lobby, Lacie hooked her purse carefully over her shoulder. “Well.” She looked bedraggled, as if she had just walked a mile in strong wind.
“That was incredible.” I shook my head. “Just—incredible.”
She nodded gravely. “There’s such a sense of—worlds dissolving. It’s just like—Peter and Clarissa, they love each other, you feel their love is more perfect than what’s between Clarissa and Richard, but it’s untested.”
Ushers were locking the doors to the house and beginning to sweep, but she made no motion to go. I looked at her. Did she mean that we were untested? But the problem was that we were tested. Tested, and broken.
In my lungs there was still this kind of shattered feeling, as if a rib had gone somewhere it shouldn’t, as if the air wasn’t going in and out right. Before I could think too much about it, I found myself saying, “Actually, I was thinking about us, for a while, in there.”