For a moment I’m frozen. It’s the same way I felt that time in LA when I stepped out of the grocery store and there was a guy in a black hat, black suit. Are you Jewish? he asked, and I didn’t know how to answer.
In the end I just mumbled something that I hoped sounded indistinct and hurried off, head ducked down. If I’d stayed, he would have offered me Shabbos candles. It’s a mitzvah—a good deed—for a woman to light them on Friday nights to welcome the Sabbath.
I kept thinking about it for the rest of the week, wondering if he knew people in New York. Wondering if his best friend’s cousin had been my friend. If his niece was my classmate at Bnos Menachem.
Chabad is big, but it’s not that big. He might have heard of me.
I wonder now if Michal has heard of me—if tales of my general fuckery have filtered out of Chabad and into…whatever type of Orthodox Jewish she’s supposed to be.
The type of Orthodox that wears headscarves and black lipstick.
Stop it. I’m not going to waste time making up some fantastical backstory for Michal Pereira. Her life is her life, and as long as she’s happy…well, good for her. But there’s a reason I left.
“Um…I’m good. Thanks, though.” I feel guilty for saying no, so I guess some things never change.
Her face falls slightly. “Oh. Okay. Just figured I’d ask.”
Well, now I feel like a terrible person. “Want to do something after Shabbos instead?” I offer, hoping it doesn’t sound too much like a consolation prize. “It’s just, I’m not really…I’m not shomer Shabbos anymore.”
“You don’t have to observe the laws of Shabbat to come to a dinner with me,” Michal points out. “We’d be happy to have you tonight, even if you spend the whole evening turning light switches on and off.”
I can’t help but smile a little. Lots of things are not allowed on the Sabbath—anything that might pass as work, which includes stuff like turning the lights on or off. Because something something do-not-kindle-a-flame something. It made sense to me once upon a time.
“I know,” I say. “But…it’s a long story, okay? It’s just not my scene right now. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hang out.”
Shabbos used to be my favorite holiday. Lucky for me, since it happened every week. But for the past— God, has it really been eight years? For the past eight years, it’s just been another Saturday.
“I get it,” Michal says. “No worries. We have a space for you if you ever change your mind.”
She smiles at me as she gets up and heads for the door, but a part of me can’t help feeling sad now, like I’ve disappointed her or something.
Maybe I should have said yes. She isn’t Chaya, no matter how much she reminds me of my former best friend. Chaya would have kept prodding until I surrendered. Chaya would have shown up on my doorstep right before sunset with a bottle of vodka and a bag of molly hidden in her school satchel.
I thought I was doing better. I wasn’t seeing Chaya around every corner anymore. But maybe that was an artifact of living in LA, where the sunlight could blot out every shadow. In perpetual summer, Chaya’s ghost had nowhere to hide.
The halls are half-empty by the time I finally make it out of the classroom, almost everyone in their next class or out to grab a bite with friends. A few still linger, crouched against the walls poring over their portfolios or gathered in small knots laughing and trading phone numbers.
It takes me a moment to spot him, but I do.
Wyatt leans against a doorframe halfway down the corridor, deep in conversation with another student. I hesitate, but he’s between me and the exit. My choices are either to walk past him or to turn around and hide in Zhu’s classroom for however long it takes before Wyatt fucks off.
I choose option A because I refuse to stoop to option B’s level.
He catches my eye as I go past, and my heart stammers, my skin prickly and hyperaware of the way my shirt fabric rubs against it, like every part of me has just been powered on.
There’s this thing your brain does when you’re super anxious where it shuts off for a little while to protect you. I read about it online. You stop encoding memories for a few minutes, and everything’s a sear of white noise, and then—once the moment’s passed—it all goes back to normal. The feeling reminds me a little of getting high: that moment right after you take the hit or push down the plunger of a needle. The way your mind fogs up like a cold window. My ears used to pop, even.
Well, that’s what it’s like for those five seconds as I walk by Wyatt. Once I’m at the other end of the hall, I don’t even remember how I got there. My brain simply did not record it.
I glance back at him, which would have been a mistake if he’d done the same thing—although something like that would be perfect in a romantic comedy. He’s still talking to the other student. All I can see is the back of his head and the way his starched white shirt strains between his shoulder blades.
I barely know the man. One fabulous night doesn’t really count. Nor does obsessing over his body of artistic work for like five years.
Stop. Being. Pathetic. Telling myself that doesn’t really make a difference. But at least I’m not indulging this nonsense.
* * *
■
I leave Wyatt and his sexy shoulders in the hall and head to the darkroom.
The darkroom is what I used to imagine the Christian hell looked like, informed by all the horror movies I binged on after leaving New York. Even the slightest amount of natural light will ruin film development, so the darkroom is illuminated in red. The few other students working in here are dark silhouettes moving from the wet side of the room to the dry, lovingly pinning their work on the clothesline that spans the length of the room.
It’s quiet, though, which I like. There’s no rule against speaking in the darkroom, but despite the hell similarities, something about it feels holy—meditative. People who do need to talk do it in murmurs, heads bent close together, like they’re whispering a prayer.
I spent Tuesday developing the negatives I’d shot on Monday for my Printing Techniques class. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with analog film. But I like the ritual of it: Clipping the negatives. The circulation of fluids through the tank—developer, stop bath, fixer. Rinse. Dry—the strips of negatives hanging like ribbons in open air. I left them here and retrieved them this morning to examine on the light table, hunched over a loupe and drowning in shifting color.
That leaves me with five photos that I actually want to print. Sometimes what looks good in negative doesn’t hold up in full size, but I can always go back to the negatives if I change my mind.