My heart was shuddering, convulsing in confusion; I couldn’t have said if I was scared or angry. “How do you know all this?”
“She texted me. Then I come home, and you’re wearing my dress. It’s weird, Rose. It’s really fucking weird.”
Deliberately I turned off the faucet. Made a big production of wringing out the sponge. Wiping my hands on a dirty dishtowel, then rubbing them again on my jeans. “I’m new here,” I said, in what I hoped was a tone of great dignity. “I’m trying to make friends. Tell me what is wrong with that.”
“Oh, please!” She almost barked a laugh. “Please stop with the outsider thing, okay? You’re not an outsider. You belong. People like you.”
“I am, though,” and I hated the whine that crept into my voice. “I just moved here. You guys have known each other for years.”
“We’ve known each other for years. Even in high school you were like this. Even in elementary school.”
“Yeah, but I was an outsider back then too. I was a pretty dorky kid.”
“Are you kidding? I was enthralled by you.”
“I was enthralled by you.”
We stopped a minute, panting. “You were so smart,” she finally said.
“I was so smart?”
“Yeah, you were taking all these AP classes, and you won that playwriting contest. I was a little in awe of you.”
“You were in awe of me?” I was starting to get furious. “Because I was taking AP classes? Come on, Lacie. You guys barely tolerated having me around. All the boys were gaga over you. They would practically follow you around.”
“No. Everyone was intimidated by you. We all knew you were this genius.”
“That’s stupid. That’s not true.”
She looked directly at me. “It’s true.”
In the silence that followed there was only the gentle whap, whap of the broom hitting the molding. “Relax,” I told her, and she grimaced and slowed down.
But there was still this pressure in the room. I made a weird chopping motion with my hands. “Not that it did me any good. I’m all ‘youthful promise’ that didn’t pan out.”
“That’s the most bullshit thing I’ve ever heard.” She waved the broom. Dust bunnies flew. “Take that back. I’m serious. Take that back right now.”
“It’s true.”
“It’s not. You’re working on your novel. You went to Iowa, and now you’re writing your novel, and you’re going to sell it for a million dollars. You’re brilliant.”
“You haven’t read anything I’ve written.”
“I read your play. I was in your play.”
“Come on, Lace. That was a hundred years ago. You have no idea if I’m good.”
“I don’t need to read anything.” She spoke with fierce, trembling dignity. “I know you’re good. I just know it.”
It unnerved me, this faith of hers. What did I do to deserve it? I was stabbing her in the back, day after day, word after word, stabbing her. I had just stabbed her. How could she forgive me so quickly? Why couldn’t she see how terrible I was? Her trust in me made me angry. “You don’t even know what my book is about.”
Just then, if she had asked, I would have told her. Just for the satisfaction of shocking her, I would have divulged. It’s strange how you can start to hate the people you’re hurting.
“Writers don’t like to talk about the books they’re writing.” She put down the broom and took up a dishtowel, and when she stepped beneath the overhead fluorescent, I saw the hairs growing on her face. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready.”
So invasive to see those pale, transparent hairs. So corporeal. For the briefest and most liberating of moments I saw Lacie as she was, and not as I wanted and feared her to be: not hopelessly hip, not endlessly smart, not carelessly beautiful, and complex, and always angled away from me, but someone tired and full, a little drunk and petulant; a person betrayed and let down and occasionally exhilarated by her body, like everyone else. A girl with a smattering of soft down on her face.
“Right,” I said. “I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”
“I just think it’s interesting. That’s all.” I rotated my glass a quarter inch and the condensation on the bar smeared. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not interesting. Maybe it’s totally boring.”
“People always remember the past differently. Especially that kind of stuff.”
We were at Applewood, in our usual spot, at the end of the bar watching back waiters carry steaming plates of locally sourced corpses. It had been a week since we had seen each other, and in that week I realized: we had to stop.
Which was why, after composing long, eloquent texts in my head explaining why we had to stop, which I imagined I would send just as soon as Ian asked me out, and then feeling slightly aggravated that he hadn’t asked me out, I decided to ask him out so I could tell him it was over. It was best to be clear about these things.
Naturally, the place to tell him was “our spot.” It was absolutely essential to ruin “our spot” with a nasty fight, so that it would be haunted by unhappiness and we would never be tempted to go there again. Yes, it was a measure of my commitment to ending things that I had chosen Applewood, for as soon as I told him it was over Applewood would be ruined, yes, in just one minute Applewood would be ruined, as soon as I told him this one fascinating new insight into Lacie’s personality…
“It was just weird, this talk. I got so angry that she said she idolized me, when I actually spent most of high school feeling completely left out.” Over Ian’s shoulder the bartender, still with his suspenders and beard, rattled a silver cocktail shaker. “Do you feel like Lacie idolizes you?”
“Me?” Ian pretended to think while I pretended to wait. Really my internal motors were revving in preparation for the brag about to burst from my mouth. “I don’t really think so…”
“It’s just, I feel like Lacie has this idea that I’m some amazing writer, that I’m this genius, but I’m not. All I do is sit at my desk and suffer.”
“I think suffering is mainly what writers do. Especially the good ones.” He looked down at his highball. Part of Applewood’s charm was its solid stemware. It gave your drinking weight. “I honestly have no idea what Lacie thinks of my art. I don’t really care.”
“But do you really not care?”