“Ugh. You are not a David Smith wannabe.”
She shrugs. “He apologized. But I broke up with him anyway.”
“Why? I thought you really liked him.”
She shifts her eyes.
“Raya?”
“Jesse called.”
“No. Oh my god. What the hell, Raya?” I think of Jesse, her androgynous concave frame, the ball cap she always wore over her floppy Justin Bieber hair, the lip ring. Raya met her at a friend’s birthday party, and the two of them didn’t come up for air for eight months. Raya had slept with women before, but never had a relationship like this. They were inseparable, like trying to distinguish fire from its flame. But Jesse was also insecure and manipulative and wildly codependent and it took Raya years to extricate herself from their relationship. They’d break up in these dramatically angry displays of emotion, but Raya always seemed to get pulled back into Jesse’s orbit—until finally, the last time they broke up and Jesse moved to Portland.
“Did she move back?”
“No. She’s still in Portland. Said she misses me. That she’s my twin flame.”
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s like soul mates on crack. It’s your soul’s perfect mirror. And in all the reincarnations, you’re drawn to each other, but you’re so alike that the relationship is superintense and typically can’t sustain itself.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, I agree with the her-being-on-crack part.”
“Mia.”
“Raya.” I hold her gaze until she sighs.
“I know, I know. I think I just need to swear off creative types.”
I hold up a finger. “Um . . . first of all, Jesse’s a bartender—is that technically a creative type?”
“She’s a mixologist,” Raya says defensively. “Anyway, I’ve just started to think, maybe there isn’t room in a relationship for two artists. We’re all moody and narcissistic and self-loathing as fuck. There’s no balance.”
I stare at her, dumbfounded, recalling the one doubt she voiced when I was dating Harrison: Doesn’t it bother you that he doesn’t really get you, artistically? Her words cut me, because the truth was, it did, a little. He respected my work—he never trivialized it like some guys I had dated—but he didn’t share my interest in it. We would never have long, in-depth conversations late into the night, say, debating the ethical evaluation of art or the merits of a famous sculptor’s latest work—an exhibition of various windows that he did not create, but just purchased in flea markets and home goods stores and hung in a gallery in Bushwick. But I told her then, and I still believe now, that I didn’t think your partner had to—or that it was even possible for them to—fulfill you in every way. “That’s what I have you for,” I said to Raya, and I meant it. But that didn’t mean it didn’t cross my mind every now and then—like today, when Oliver so fully understood what having your art rejected felt like, and I didn’t have to say more than a couple of words. Not that I was comparing him with my husband.
“Maybe I need someone who has a real job,” Raya continues. “A retirement plan. Health insurance.”
“OK, now you’re just scaring me.” I force myself back to the present. “Have you been spending time with Harrison?”
“No,” she says. “But that’s my point! Maybe I need to. Be with somebody like Harrison. You guys don’t fight about carrots.”
“No, we fight about big stuff—like whether we should have a child.”
“Sorry,” she says.
I wave her off. “Look, every couple fights about stupid stuff,” I say, thinking about the entry table. The buzzer sounds.
“Food’s here,” she says.
Once we’re settled back on the couch with chicken saag and have refilled our glasses with Syrah, she turns to me, her face filled with sympathy: “So . . . what are you gonna do?”
I sigh. “I have no idea. I suppose we should go to counseling or something. That’s what Vivian says, anyway. That’s what she always says.”
“Well, maybe she’s right. It sounds like an impartial person might help you find common ground.”
“Common ground? It’s not like you can meet in the middle when it comes to having a baby, though, can you? You can’t have half a kid.”
“I know. But still, it might help. At least understand why he’s changed his mind.”
“Yeah.” I wait a beat. “I think I’m just scared, to be honest. What if we go to counseling, but it doesn’t help? What if he doesn’t change his mind? If this is just who he is—forever? Then I have to do something. Make a decision between Harrison and a baby. And as much as I want a baby, I don’t know if I’m ready to do that.”
Raya grunts with empathy. “Well,” she says. “You don’t have to do anything right now.” She picks up the bottle and fills my glass. “Except drink more wine.”
I look at her gratefully and take a sip. “Can we talk about something else now?”
“Sure. What’d you do today? Did you make it to Prisha’s exhibit?”
Maybe a change of subject was a bad idea. “Not exactly.” I sigh, and with just one look Raya knows something happened. I tell her about meeting up with Oliver.
“Oh my god!” she says, as if she’s just had a serious epiphany. “What if he’s your twin flame?”
I stare at her a beat. “You think Oliver is my soul mate on crack.”
“Maybe!”
“You do realize that I’m married, right?” Which is awfully hypocritical since I was the one all heart-thumpy over touching his hand mere hours ago, but still.
She waves me off. “You know I don’t believe in long-term monogamy.”
“Yes, you only believe in sane things like past lives and twin flames and clearing a room of negative energy with smudged sage.”
“Exactly.” Raya grins. We sip our wine in silence for a few minutes and then she stands up. “OK, come on.”
I don’t move. “Come on where?”
“We’re going to a psychic.”
“What? No. I’m not going to a psychic.”
“Why not? Look, when you dream about someone and then meet that someone in person, and it turns out that person has been dreaming about you . . . it means the universe is trying to tell you something. And you need to listen. Besides, no one else has helped you so far.”