He shrugged. “If you got married you’d join one.”
“True.” Nina thought about that. “I could always pretend I married into you, so to speak.”
“We could throw a wedding.” He laughed. “One thing that can be said for our family is that we love a wedding, or a birthday, or really any excuse for a party. We’re a sociable lot, mostly.”
Nina fake shuddered. Or at least, she faked a fake shudder, because inwardly she was actually shuddering. “I am not a party person. I’m an introvert.”
“Don’t worry,” Archie responded. “You can always say no.”
Nina went back to his question about her childhood. “You know, as a kid I felt alone a lot, but I also really liked being alone so, you know, it was fine. I spent a lot of time reading and lying on the living room rug watching TV. What about you?” The iced coffee arrived, and they toasted each other instinctively.
Archie took a sip and sighed. “It was happy at first. I remember hanging out with my mom a lot, and kids from the neighborhood, but then my mom got sick and it got sad. I was still pretty young, but old enough to feel bad I couldn’t do more to help. I got good at making tea. I got good at giving foot rubs.” He looked at the table. “I think I did more physical caring for another person during that period than I’ve ever done since, although I love my wife and son very much.” He met her eyes again. “Not sure what that says about me.”
They paused to consider this, then Nina plowed on. “And what about Eliza, your stepmother and now the widow?”
Archie shrugged. “We only really got together—all of us—at the holidays, usually at our dad’s instigation, so I don’t know if we’ll even do that anymore. I don’t know her very well; they live on the other side of town.”
“Santa Monica?”
“Worse: Malibu.”
“Might as well be Mars.” They both nodded. Los Angeles is a big city, as everyone knows, but there is an even bigger divide between the West side and the East side. To get from east to west you have to cross under the 405 freeway. There’s a stretch of Olympic Boulevard where you can see the 405 just ahead, a parking lot in bridge form, where it can take you over an hour to go one or two blocks because a portion of the traffic is going up the ramp to get on the freeway and blocking the way for everyone else. People have gone insane on that stretch.
Whenever Nina was stuck there, which was rarely, because she would rather have filled her ears with flaming dog turds than go to the West side, she thought of that Andrew Wyeth painting Christina’s World, where the young woman is lying on the hillside, dragging herself up toward a barn in the distance. That same sense of desperation and struggle and reluctant acceptance permeates the very air in that part of town. It is purgatory. Or limbo. Sartre said hell was other people, but that was only because the 405 hadn’t been built yet.
“How long were they married?” Nina realized she’d probably have to meet this woman; she might as well know more about her.
“Oh, a long time. Since 2000, maybe? Millie is ten, and she was born quite a few years after the wedding.” He shrugged. “Sorry, I’m not so good at dates.”
“Millie is our half sister?”
He laughed. “You get used to it. We end up just using everyone’s name and not worrying exactly how they’re related unless someone asks.”
“Do people ask?”
“Sometimes. People will say, is this your son, or is this your father, and you have to say, no, the little one is my brother and the older one is my nephew. Most people ignore it, but some people think about it for a minute and either demand a full explanation, which is a pain, or realize for themselves it means your father never stayed married for very long, and it gets awkward.”
Nina looked at him. “Like now, you mean?” It actually didn’t feel awkward; it was as it had been with Peter. A weird feeling of knowing someone already; a total absence of the usual pressure she would feel with an attractive man; a kind of comfort.
Archie’s expression grew cooler. “Yeah. That was dad’s dark side, unfortunately. He was funny and handsome and charming, but he was also a narcissistic loser. He married and left three wives and didn’t seem to lose a night’s sleep over any of it.”
“He didn’t leave your mom. And he didn’t leave Eliza.”
“But he cheated on my mom, and who knows about Eliza. The fact that you exist means there might be more of us out there.” Archie shrugged. “He always seemed so loving, but it was like he was two people: the one who was there in front of you, and the one he turned into the minute he left the room.”
“The one in front of you loved you, at least.”
“Yeah, but the other guy always won in the end.”
He reached up his hand and called for the check.
Back in her apartment that night, Nina sat in front of her bulletin board and stared at it. She looked up other people’s visualization and organization practices on Pinterest and realized hers was woefully in need of updating. At the very least, she was now a different social being, someone with a family. Someone who might need to write down more birthdays, for example. Or have more invitations to decline.
Concerned, she started looking at bullet journaling instead, to see if maybe that would work better for her new, wider circle. Honestly, you couldn’t turn your back on the Internet for a minute. There were, like, fourteen thousand pins about bullet journaling, which was a way of laying out a daily planner to be more . . . something. Prettier? More efficient? Nina leaned back against the wall and started daydreaming. How did this whole thing come about? Who was Bullet Journalist Zero? Who was struggling to capture and condense everything about their life using traditional journaling methods (which are what . . . lists? calendars?) and thought, hey, wait, let’s do it This Way Instead and spawned a worldwide phenomenon?
Nina imagined a young woman, let’s call her Brooke, the kind of Basic Girl that Nina both despised and envied, a woman who understood contouring and highlighting, and followed people on Instagram who cared passionately about tiny niche verticals such as, for example, contouring and highlighting, and who had a boyfriend with a YouTube channel about his crazy life with his three husky puppies and his hot, contoured, organized girlfriend. Imaginary Brooke considered herself a Boss, but at the same time enjoyed the girlie things of life, the cushions, the candles, the body glitter, and the trending Starbucks drink.
Having created the concept of bullet journaling, Brooke would then spend months perfecting her art, learning awesome new calligraphy styles, taking fantastic photos and posting them, and watching the rest of the Internet take her idea and run with it. Finally, she would start a company selling blank notebooks, Japanese pens, tiny stickers, and templates so her followers could bullet journal in their own, unique way within a Brooke-approved design framework. BrookeCo would spawn a whole lifestyle channel on some upstart streaming network, and Brooke would retire at forty, having married and divorced Husky Guy (who, it turned out, only really liked young dogs), and live a life filled with Meaning, Joy, and Meaningfully Joyful Accessories. Nina hated her.
Having invented and disposed of Brooke, Nina decided to love the one she was with, and stick with a regular bulletin board. She sat there a second, considering her goals.