Frenemies(61)

Irwin/Steve turned out to be handy with power tools, and before I knew it, the walls in my living room and bedroom were lined with matching, uniform bookshelves—the kind that weren’t made of crappy plywood, and which housed my books without taking up floor space. It turned out that my apartment was significantly more spacious than I’d realized—since I hadn’t seen parts of the floor since I’d moved in.

It also turned out that Irwin/Steve was significantly nicer than I’d imagined. He was a freelance writer of nonfiction articles who lived on caffeine and deadlines, which explained his rage over my numerous interruptions to his routine. He was also the owner of a pickup truck, so the next day my new friend and I took a trip to the Pottery Barn near Copley Square and I blew a huge chunk of my savings on an overstuffed love seat, chair, and ottoman, all in a deep burgundy color with plentiful pillows. This was furniture that made me happy just looking at it. Irwin helped me haul my new, grown-up furniture back to the apartment, and I ordered us a pizza to celebrate.

After he left that night to work on another article with a looming deadline, I sat in the quiet of my new, improved home, and liked what I saw around me.

In a few short days, my apartment had been transformed from a sad and pathetic dorm room into a cozy, comfortable place that I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave. I needed a few accents, to be sure, but my home was homey for the first time. A place to read and relax, and, I was sure, grow up. You would have to, in such an environment. The apartment itself demanded it.

And if I could effect that kind of change in my apartment—the pit of dormitory despair as Amy Lee had once called it—I figured it couldn’t be too difficult to work a little spring-cleaning on myself. A new year was coming, I was turning thirty in just two days, and it was high time I introduced the new, improved Gus to the world. I was fuzzy on the details, but I knew the basic outline. I knew how I wanted to be, it was simply a question of being who I wanted to be.

I thought I had had it all figured out before. I’d had the plan perfectly clear in my head. I wasn’t going to cross over into thirty without the triple crown in hand: serious boyfriend, career, and great friends. But then Nate hadn’t acted according to the plan. And I didn’t know what had happened to my friends. I didn’t know if anything was fixable, either. But I had the career, sure, so score one for me.

It was time to accept that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t have to have it all figured out by the time I turned thirty. Maybe I could just work on me, and see what else fell into place.

I was pretty sure that was otherwise known as living.


“I haven’t heard a peep out of Amy Lee and I’m guessing we’re not going to,” Georgia barked down the phone line late that night, without the slightest preamble. “Because as we’ve discussed, she’s better than us and therefore not required to behave the way she wants other people to behave.”

“Maybe she doesn’t know what to say,” I suggested, as an alternative view.

I was lounging on my new love seat, enjoying the feel of the fabric and the view of my new bookshelves. Some people lusted after cars, which had never made sense to me. For me, bookshelves could inspire whole spontaneous sonnets, so maybe it was an each to her own scenario.

Anyway, just being near them made me feel optimistic and charitable.

“Whatever,” Georgia said. She was clearly nowhere near any bookshelves. “The point of this phone call is that I rented a car and I’m picking you up tomorrow morning at ten-fifteen. And don’t you dare do that thing you do, with all that oh I’m almost packed nonsense, okay?”

Our friend Lorraine, who was famous for over-the-top parties ever since a memorable graduation extravaganza back in school, had taken over the entirety of a sprawling cliff-top mansion of a hotel that commanded nearly panoramic views of the bay below. According to Lorraine’s e-mail, The place is unbelievably high class—in the summer you practically have to be a Kennedy to get a room in the Hill House—but this is the off-season, people! We’re gonna just PRETEND to be Kennedys! Perhaps because she was feeling thirty approach, Lorraine had decided the time had come to be famous for a new extravagant party.

Everyone we knew was going.

“Ten-fifteen,” I told Georgia, with extra emphasis on the fifteen. “I hate it when you show up early. You know that’s as rude, if not ruder, than being late, right?”

“Just be ready,” Georgia ordered. “These are dark days, Gus. Don’t force me to take out my mood on you.”

That was why I didn’t tell her that we had a problem, which I had opened my mouth to do. I didn’t want to have the fight in advance. I just wanted to bask in the glow of what felt like a brand-new apartment and thus a brand-new life.

Everything else—Amy Lee, Nate, Helen, even my assorted misconceptions about Henry—was just so much detritus.

I’d taken the actual detritus of my life and placed it on the curb.

I could do it emotionally, too.

All I had to do was start cleaning out the corners, and work from there.


“What the hell happened in here?” Georgia demanded the next morning. She’d arrived—as I’d expected—a few minutes before ten. Now she was standing just inside the doorway, actually gaping at the apartment as if she’d never seen it before.

Which, of course, she hadn’t.