Rich and Pretty(36)

That first year, they held hands on the sidewalk. Gabe’s fellowship ended. He became Doctor Lawrence. He gained twenty pounds. He ran the half marathon. He flirted with vegetarianism. He took a job at the Cooper Hewitt. He decided to give up his apartment, because the commute sucked. He asked her if they could get a place together. She suggested he move in with her. He did. He studied the cookbooks she brought home, learned to make scrambled eggs, very slowly, over a very low flame. He never did start leaving the door open while he peed. She did, sometimes.

He wanted to get married. He wanted to marry her. Lauren listened for it, the voice that would tell her what she was supposed to do, but she never heard anything. That’s what you were supposed to do, with big life choices: Listen to your instinct, listen to your inner voice. Hers had gone silent, or she didn’t have one after all. Lauren imagined that everyone but her had them, voices, cartoon guardians perched on their shoulders, saying yes, or no, or try this, or run. She tried creative visualization, which was something like prayer: a new last name, a child, a station wagon, a move to Riverdale. She wasn’t opposed to any of this, strictly speaking, nor, though, was she tempted by it.

She didn’t know what to do, but in the end, not knowing what to do is a way of doing something, too. Gabe lost patience. Finally, two years ago, he moved out. His brother helped him carry his things down the two flights of stairs. He called, from time to time, that first couple of months after. They met once, for a drink, at an unremarkable and dark bar on the Upper East Side, something near the museum, and convenient for him, since he’d moved to Queens. It should have been comfortable, but was not. It was as though they were strangers, or cousins, or their parents had been good friends and they’d been raised together with the assumption that the friendship would continue through the generations. It seemed impossible she’d ever known him, in a way. It seemed impossible that he’d lived in her apartment, that he’d shaken hands with her father, that his tongue had been inside her ass. They had two drinks, and then he stood to leave. He hugged her tightly, and there were tears in the corners of his eyes, and then, horribly, they were spilling onto his cheeks, which were bare. He’d recently shaved that beard. “I don’t know why this is happening,” he said, and then “Good-bye,” and then he was gone, so abruptly he forgot to pay the bill or offer to split it. She paid it and left.



There’s a knock on the door. Lauren’s eyes were closed, but if she’d fallen asleep, she feels very awake now, almost like it’s morning, though it’s only been moments. She stands. There’s sand on the tile floor. She must have tracked that in this evening. She puts her hand to her hair, touches it, primping by force of habit, trying to look glamorous for the maid, the waiter, come to tell her she’s left her phone at the table.

“Hey.” It’s Sarah. Cheeks a little red, a dead giveaway that she’s been drinking. If her parents had been the type to care about that sort of thing, her adolescence would have been much more difficult.

“Hi.” She pulls the door open wider, and Sarah steps inside. Lauren sits back down on the bed and looks at her. “What’s up?”

“Ugh.” Sarah slips out of her shoes and falls onto the bed next to her. “Ugh.”

“Too much to drink?”

“I need some water.”

She reaches over her friend’s body to the bedside table, blessing the faceless women responsible for the turndown service.

Sarah drinks. “Fucking Christ. Why did I do this?”

“Drink too much? It’s fun.” Lauren shrugs. “You’re celebrating.”

“It’s day one and I’m exhausted already.”

“You just need to sleep it off.” Lauren pats Sarah’s knee.

“I can’t drink like I used to.” Sarah squirms around on the bed. Their heads are almost touching. “I’m old.”

“You need to pace yourself, is all,” Lauren says. “We’re not old but we’re not seventeen. God, how many times have we ended up like this? Drinking bottled water, trying to fix what couldn’t be fixed?”

Lauren remembers: Hannah Cho’s apartment, on Park, in the Nineties, just below where the train escapes from underground, a big bed in an unused bedroom, she and Sarah curled up just like this, after drinking a bottle of the Chos’ red wine out of little porcelain teacups from the china cabinet in the dining room. Hannah was in her bedroom with Tyler Oakes, the rest of the party had drifted away hours before, and Sarah and Lauren were drunk enough that standing was risking vomiting.

Then, freshman year of college, a house party so crowded they spent the night on the porch, drinking the beers they’d brought themselves to avoid having to stand in line, show stamped hands to one of the guys who lived in the house. They left the party after two beers each, drank their thirds on the walk home, their breath misting in the October air, sat on Lauren’s bed in the outside room of their shared double, windows opened wide, blowing cigarette smoke into the darkness.

In London, that liberating season in another country, another city, another life, a preview of adulthood, sipping whiskey on ice as a gentleman at a pub—a gentleman, he seemed impossibly old at the time but was probably in his forties—had shown them. He was taken with the two young American girls, had treated them to the good stuff. Falling into bed, laughing hysterically at something, at nothing, at being alive, at drinking like a grown-up, at being wanted by a grown-up, the way that man, that night, had commanded the publican, the way he produced the beautifully colored pound note from his fat wallet, then went home to jerk off to the memory of the two of them, picturing four breasts, two mouths, one tongue timidly meeting an unfamiliar clitoris. Lauren thinks of that guy, sometimes, when she orders a whiskey in a bar.