“Ilana! Don’t you have homework?” Anna asked.
“It’s winter break, Anna.” Ilana grinned at her.
“Still, isn’t there a reading list? Shouldn’t you be sketching or something?”
“There’s so much work here—I thought I’d help out.”
“Go, go,” Josefina said, smiling proudly and waving Ilana away.
“OK, OK,” Ilana said on her way out the door.
“What do you want?” Cristina asked Anna sharply.
“Grocery list, please.”
“Come on! The usual stuff,” Cristina said.
“Give me a break, Cristina.”
“All right, I’m coming. You two, back working. Do the sweaters in tissue. Hear me? Tissue.”
The back doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” Anna said to Cristina. “You make the list.”
Brian, the doorman, nearly finished with his break, stood with his hat in his hand. He was a short portly fellow, a third-generation doorman. “Anna, I’m sorry I didn’t know they were home,” he said. “Barclay didn’t tell me. He was so surprised to see them last night, and it was just him, so he had to unload all the bags and everything himself. He forgot to mark the board.”
“Thanks, Brian,” Anna said. “I appreciate your coming up here.”
They shook hands. The Italian guys, Joe and Alfie, might have kissed her cheek. Brian stepped back, skirting the large trash cans where all the household waste went, and stepped onto the service elevator.
“Hey, Bri, happy New Year!” Anna said.
For things to work seamlessly in the lives of the co-op’s residents—called “shareholders”—all the cogs needed to whir together, flushing the back channels behind the landmarked facades of Park Avenue. Plus, Brian and the boys knew that Anna was ultimately responsible for ensuring the heft and accuracy of their recent Christmas tips, the massive windfall when the best white-glove building staff made half their salary. Generally, the month before Christmas the service level went from premium to optimal as everyone toiled in thirsty anticipation.
While Cristina bustled around the kitchen checking supplies in the freezers, wine fridges, pantry, and both fridges, Anna turned her attention to party planning. First she solicited menus and bids from the Von Bizmarks’ favorite three caterers and put them all on hold. She specced out an invitation and ordered proofs from two stationers.
“You want lunch?” Cristina asked from the office doorway. “We have chicken from the plane.” She brought Anna a plate to eat at her desk while she continued to make phone calls and cross things off her list: flowers, check; music, check; photographer, check. At some point, Mrs. Von Bizmark came home with a list of various people she wanted to see and things she needed to buy, which she handed off to Anna before going to take a nap. After dealing with that, Anna made a list of all the things she’d have to take care of the following day because it was already after five: rentals, publicity, an apartment walk-through . . .
Anna’s mobile phone rang—an unknown 212 number. Probably her sister, Lindsay, calling from some conference room at her job to heckle her about coming over for New Year’s Eve. Anna reluctantly answered, preparing to reject her invitation. Again.
“Hi, this is Chad calling from the Miranda Chung Gallery. Is this Anna?”
“Yes, this is Anna,” she heard herself say, suddenly very much outside her own body. It felt like receiving biopsy results. She held her breath, anticipating good news.
“Hi, Anna!” He sounded friendly! Definitely positive. “Thanks so much for sending in your portfolio”—he flipped through some papers—“‘Taken From.’ So much good stuff here!” This was it! Her moment! “But we are just all full up at the moment. Thanks for thinking of us. And please do come and collect your work by the end of the week, okaaaay?” She must have agreed and hung up.
The bottom fell out of her stomach.
Anna had not known until then how much she had expected to win this time, how much she felt entitled to it. A gallery, Miranda Chung. In the darkest corner of her mind, she unfolded a note that read Your last chance before it ignited and turned to dust in her hands.
Dazed, Anna departed Park Avenue for the subway, the city like the cold dark bottom of the ocean, streetlights bobbing above, taxis swimming by. Anna felt like a smudge of herself, oozing down the sidewalk. On the subway, an old lady in a knit beret munched noisily on some unidentifiable food she’d plucked from a brown paper bag. The crunching felt like a balled-up piece of aluminum foil rolling around the inside of Anna’s skull. The city could become like this when it turned on you: saturated, intense, and overwhelming.
Carroll Gardens’ narrow streets and short redbrick buildings cozied up to you, while Park Avenue stood back. Anna and Adrian’s little walkup sat modestly on a residential block with an uneven sidewalk and variously maintained converted brownstones. Usually their neighborhood felt homey, welcoming, but tonight this short walk meant that there were only a few precious moments left before she would have to speak aloud and thereby make real her rejection.
Anna dreaded Adrian’s reaction, which she knew would be something kind like, “Just keep painting.” Which, like, yeah, but this wasn’t a simple hobby for her. After an overpriced MFA at Yale and a few reasonably successful exhibitions as a student, she was thirsty for some outside affirmation that her efforts, her vision, her creativity were actually worthwhile. Adrian—with his meaningful work helping less-fortunate city dwellers receive free, high-quality prepared food that would otherwise be discarded—never seemed to fully get that Anna was not just creating her large vivid paintings for only her friends and family to see.
Anna climbed to the third floor, feeling heavy with disappointment, when a sudden unexpected sound from inside the apartment jarred her. A woman’s high laugh. Without deciding to, Anna stopped breathing. Just froze, a foot and a half away, the thin door of the cheaply renovated townhome doing little to stop the speakers on Adrian’s computer from broadcasting the contents of his conversation.
“Would love . . . of course . . . ,” the woman’s voice said.
Anna felt . . . puzzled. Adrian was FaceTiming with another woman? She didn’t recognize the voice. She quietly clicked open the door behind him and slipped inside. On his screen, a woman with a crisp dark bob in a suit at her desk. Adrian held one index finger up off camera at Anna: One sec.
“I really appreciate your time,” he said.
Adrian turned to Anna in his swivel chair. From the waist down he wore sweatpants and gym socks, but his top half was interview ready. Crisp white button-down shirt, hair carefully tousled. His cheeks were just the right amount of dewy over his carefully cropped beard. He was too scruffy, round in the gut, and disinterested in fashion, generally, to qualify as metrosexual; Adrian’s facial hair, hearty appetite, and interest in nonprofit work further distinguished him in the New York design scene.
Anna stared at him until he finally blurted, “I’m applying for a job.” She prodded him with her raised eyebrows. “At LVMH.”
A set of emotional waves cycled in and began crashing over Anna’s head. First, the sense that somehow he was moving forward and she was stuck in a rut. Nonsensically, Adrian’s interview made Anna feel Miranda’s pass even more keenly. Then, the surprise. Had he purposely kept this from her? Did he suspect Anna would not be completely supportive about the sudden deletion of the word nonprofit from his résumé? Was that in fact the case?