The Futures(59)

After dinner, Abby headed toward the subway, and I pretended to walk back to my apartment. But I pulled out my phone and called Adam instead. He was at a dinner party that night hosted by a classmate of his from high school, a downtown party girl who lived in an enormous SoHo loft. “She’s a brat,” he’d said. “Trust fund when she turned eighteen. Never had to lift a finger.” Adam’s critical streak was something I was still learning to navigate. He was suspicious of people who had it too easy, but at the same time he seemed suspicious of people who hustled too hard for their success. That’s what I thought at the time, at least. Although later I realized I was wrong about the latter: it was jealousy, not suspicion.

I did sometimes wonder why he acted so friendly toward the people whom he claimed to dislike. I’d asked him why he was going to the dinner party if he hated this girl, and he shrugged. “She knows a lot of people. Her parties are good for networking.” He grazed his hand along the back of my head. “I’d have more fun with you, though.”

When he picked up the phone, there was a swell of sound in the room behind him, conjuring a picture in my mind: the beautiful people, the expensive clothing, the perfect decor. I felt a sharp pang of loneliness. “Hey, you just finish dinner with Abby?”

“Yeah. You’re still there?”

“They just cleared the main course. Maybe another hour or so?”

I took a cab to his apartment. The happiness of dinner with Abby had vanished, and I was in a maudlin mood. I wandered around Adam’s apartment with an enormous glass of red wine, tempted to let it slosh over the rim onto his pristine carpet. But Adam hadn’t done anything wrong; there was nothing I was allowed to be mad about. At some point I lay down on the couch and later woke to the sound of the front door opening. The glowing readout on the cable box said it was 2:00 a.m. I’d been in his apartment for more than four hours.

“Where were you?” I said, rubbing my eyes.

Adam sank onto the couch, slung his arm around me. “Sorry. It went later than I thought. I called. Your phone must be on vibrate.”

I rested my head on his chest. He smelled like bourbon and a sugary dessert. The faint scent of tobacco, which I had gradually grown to like. I ran my hand over his shirt, down to his belt buckle, and turned my head to kiss his neck. My addiction was kicking in despite my bad mood, despite the beginnings of a red-wine headache. I pulled him toward me. We had sex on the couch, my dress hiked up and his pants tugged down, fast and hard and mechanical. But something seemed different in Adam. He hadn’t needed this the way I had. He was going through the motions, sating my hunger without needing to sate his.

Afterward I told him what Abby and I had talked about over dinner.

“I think I’m going to call Sara. You know, Sara Yamashita, from the party. I’m going to ask her to lunch.”

“You are?”

“She told me to keep in touch.”

“Sara’s a lot of talk. I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

“But it’s worth a shot, right? It can’t hurt.”

Adam reached for my hand. “Trust me, babe. I know Sara better than you do. It might not be such a great idea. All I’m saying is don’t rush into it. You want to be deliberate about your next move, right?”

“I guess.” I glanced again at the cable box—it was almost 3:00 a.m. I started gathering my things, the scarf and boots and coat I’d scattered around the apartment like an animal marking its territory. “I should get going.” Adam sat back on the couch, taking a beat too long before he stood up to walk me to the door. I wondered how much longer we were going to have to do this—saying good-bye in the middle of the night, sneaking back to our own lives. I was already getting sick of it. In the cab ride home, I checked my phone. There were no missed calls or texts from Adam, despite what he’d said—nothing, from anyone, all night. I was annoyed all over again.

When had I lost the power to control my own moods? I felt so porous that fall, so absorbent of whatever the people around me were doing. There was nothing to keep me tied to the earth. I scudded in whatever direction the wind decided to blow. My mistake was that I kept interpreting it as a good thing, confusing that lightness for spontaneity.

*

“Julia! Hey!”

Someone waved at me from the sidewalk outside the entrance to the bar. It was Camilla, a girl from the lacrosse team. We had lived in the same dorm for my three years of boarding school. She had arrived at school with glasses and curly hair and prissy sweater sets. But after a few months around the older girls, she’d learned the ways of experience—hair straighteners, tight jeans, push-up bras, contact lenses. She started sneaking boys back to her room in the middle of the night. She was legendary by senior year. Camilla stubbed out her cigarette as I approached and gave me a hug.

“Oh, my God, I am so glad you came. It’s fucking freezing. How can you stand this place?”

“Yeah, sorry. Not exactly sunshine and palm trees. When’d you get home?”

“I flew in on Sunday. I decided to make a week of it.” Camilla had gone to USC and was working as an assistant to some big-shot movie agent in Los Angeles. She had a tan, and her hair smelled like coconut oil. I was vividly aware of how different her life was from mine. “Let’s go inside,” she said, tugging my hand.

I followed Camilla toward the corner of the bar where the other lacrosse girls were standing. Most of them worked in consulting or in finance or as paralegals. A few of the finance girls joked blackly about how much time they had left—the bosses were just waiting for the holidays to pass before they brought down the ax. There were one or two outliers who, like Camilla and me, had found low-paying assistant jobs in more “creative” industries. “That sounds…interesting,” one girl said after I told her about my job at the Fletcher Foundation. She was an analyst at Goldman Sachs, and we quickly ran out of things to talk about. I was about to use my empty glass as an excuse to leave when I felt a hand on my shoulder.