A man behind the register called out, “Hey, Cyn, do we have the snakeskin pants in an eight?”
“We’re out of eights, but should get more next week.”
“Cyn?” One of the names in the letter?
“What is it, sugar?” Her eyes ran up and down Oona’s body. “You got skinnier. Breakups are the best diet, right?”
Grinning, she answered, “Right. So is the flu.” What a delightful surprise, to stumble across one of her friends.
“I bet this would look great on you.” She held up a minidress made of fuchsia mirrored tiles.
Oona followed Cyn around the store, collecting bright, skimpy outfits before modeling them for her friend. In the end, she settled on the fuchsia dress but still bought the other clothes, in case Cyn worked on commission.
Is that why she’s friends with me? Because I buy lots of clothes? Is that why I buy the clothes? So she’ll be friends with me?
It didn’t matter; it was worth it to find someone allegedly familiar. Someone who didn’t accuse Oona of behaving like a different version of herself. Maybe she could actually carry over a friendship from the previous year.
“So we’re meeting up at Jenny’s between nine and ten, then heading over to Antenna around eleven. We’ll be going all night, so take your disco nap. Oh, Jenny just moved. I’ll give you her new address.” Cyn scrawled it on the back of Oona’s receipt.
“I don’t know … I’m still … Maybe I’ll just meet you all there.” While she was pleased about this reunion, the thought of trying to pass as her 1990 self to an entire group of people was nerve-racking.
“Uh-uh. You’ve been away too long. Now you know I won’t come to Brooklyn to drag your ass out, but I expect to see you at Jenny’s. She has a special treat planned, so you better be there.”
When Oona got home, there was a message on the answering machine from her mother. “Just wanted to see how you were feeling. Call me, kiddo. I miss you.”
But Oona didn’t call her back. Instead, she went upstairs to try on all her new clothes again.
11
Jenny’s ground-floor studio was in a run-down sliver of a sooty gray building on Avenue B, next door to a redbrick tenement with broken windows. This was years before gentrification would take full effect in the East Village. This Alphabet City still had drug dealers on corners outside of bodegas, hunched-over junkies weaving up and down the street, and cracked sidewalks decorated with debris: empty cigarette packs, Styrofoam cups, used condoms, broken bottles.
Some would’ve been scared off, but Oona had a bystander’s appreciation for the urban grit. Knowing how New York would be transformed in the ensuing decades—the cleanup, the influx of money, the reduction in crime—made this version surreal and cinematic. Though the man with a bandana tied around his face like a cartoon bandit, casually strolling down the block with a baseball bat, was very real indeed. A reminder Oona wasn’t watching actors on a screen but real people from behind a transparent and very breakable taxi window.
As if to punctuate the thought, there was a shatter of breaking glass in the distance—almost musical, like out-of-tune wind chimes—followed by a volley of shouts in Spanish.
She paid the driver and got out of the car.
Maybe going to Jenny’s wasn’t the best idea—not because of the neighborhood, but more Oona’s inability to shake off her sense of being an impostor. Granted, she wasn’t a phony as much as circumstantial amnesiac. Even so, the idea of passing as someone who knew these people—who were strangers to her current self—caused a tightening at her temples. She’d failed with Crosby; what made her think she’d do any better with her friends?
Pessimism notwithstanding, she went to the door and rang the bell.
A drag queen with a blond bouffant and a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth answered the door. The thump of house music blared behind her.
“Well, well, well, it’s about time you showed your face again. Love the whole silent-film-star-meets-space-disco look. I have those in red.” She nodded at Oona’s white go-go boots. “Come on in, Desi’s mixing up margaritas. I’ll take your coat.”
Here goes … something.
“Look who I found loitering.” The queen announced Oona.
“Dressed like that, I’m amazed you didn’t get picked up for solicitation. Just kidding, dollface.” A slender man with olive skin and dark, slicked-back hair handed her a hurricane glass filled with frothy blue liquid. He stood on tiptoes to kiss her cheek.
“You’re just jealous because you could never afford me.” Oona instinctively understood a certain amount of attitude was required. She regarded the cocktail. Would alcohol make her behave more like the Oona they knew or less? I guess we’ll find out. She took a long sip of the drink, which tasted like oranges and lighter fluid.
“Coat’s not off and the claws are already out. Welcome back, girl.” Cyn swooped in and gave her air kisses on both cheeks. She’d swapped her pink Afro wig for a glossy purple pageboy.
A buxom brunette with her hair in large curlers stepped out of the bathroom. “Sorry things with Crosby didn’t work out.” She had a thick Long Island accent.
“Have some couth, lady!” scolded the blond bouffant.
Oona glanced between the two of them. Which one was Jenny? “Hey, Jenny,” she called out.
“I’m standing right here, I don’t know why you’re shouting.”
Okay, Jenny is the blond bouffant. Who’s the brunette?
“I, uh … I love what you’ve done with the place.” Oona glanced at the apartment’s bare-bones decor, gray boxy furniture framed by walls like cracked eggshells. Not an interior design any normal person would compliment, so she drowned the idiocy of her statement in several long swallows of her drink.
Desi, Cyn, and the brunette cackled with laughter.
“You can shove your sarcasm right up your ass, missy,” said Jenny as ash from her cigarette dropped onto her chest and she flicked it away.
“Hey, our girl is nursing a broken heart, give her a break. She can be as bitchy as she wants.” Cyn kneeled over a coffee table, cutting up pale yellow powder on a Deee-Lite CD case.
“Oh yeah? What’s your excuse, Cynthia?” Hand on hip, Desi went around the room with a blender pitcher and refilled everyone’s glasses. He purposefully bumped Cyn, causing her to scatter some of the powder.
“Careful with that, Cyn. I’m not getting more till next week.” Jenny turned to Oona. “Wait till you try this shit. It’s gonna blow your mind.”
The brunette squeezed Oona’s shoulder and rolled her eyes. “Oh my god.” She drew out the word: gawwwwwwd. “All week long, it’s all we’ve heard about, like Special K is the best thing since E.”
Patting a spot on the sofa beside him, Desi said, “Oona, come sit next to daddy and tell us what’s new.”
She perched on the edge of the cushion. “What’s new with me?” Tongue numb, brain going fuzzy, she kept sipping her blue drink. “Let’s see … Crosby found out I fucked another guy and dumped me. That’s new.” So nonchalant, like mentioning a dentist’s appointment.