The Wangs vs. the World(38)

Saina lifted her bag of produce over her head, shimmied past the folding tables, and ducked out the back of the booth, her eyes on Leo. He was still smiling.

She felt light-headed.

It seemed unfair to walk up behind him, to surprise him like that, but she couldn’t, didn’t want to, approach from the customer side, where flats of lettuces would be wedged between them. As she crunched across the gravel towards an unsuspecting Leo, a tiny piece of rock wedged itself between her toenails, red now. She leaned down to pick it out and felt the strap of her mint-colored silk dress, just a summer dress, nothing special, slip an inch off her shoulder. Good. Heart beating, she pulled her hair over to the opposite side, leaving her neck bare. Not that she was expecting Leo to even look at her, really, but it didn’t hurt to be worth looking at.

And then, before she was ready, there he was. Close enough to touch. Close enough to smell. Shoulder blades pulling on the fabric of his faded black T-shirt.

Saina meant to tap him lightly, but instead her hand laid itself on his warm back and felt its way down to the curve of his waist. He turned. She dropped her hand. Stepped back.

“Oh. Hi. Leo. Hi.”

He looked down at her, neutral.

She lifted up her bag. “I’m buying things. Vegetables. I got river trout from the fish guys. And cheese. Taleggio.”

A nod. His eyes flicked to the oversize logo.

“It’s from an event. I didn’t buy it. I wouldn’t do that—I wouldn’t buy a Gucci farmers market bag.” Saina remembered that Leo didn’t know about her father and his fall.

“You might.”

Now. Say it now.

“Grayson’s gone.”

Leo froze, looking at her.

“He’s . . . I didn’t want him here anymore.”

He considered this for a moment. “Did he still want to be here?”

Hesitate and all is lost.

“Yes,” said Saina, immediately.

And then Leo’s eyes got soft in that terrible, amazing way that only men who are supposed to be invulnerable can soften. He looked at her, full of hope, and Saina felt herself die a little bit inside.



Saina knew that twenty-eight was still young. In New York she had friends in their early forties, holding on easily to beauty, who met talented men ten years their junior or rich men twenty years their senior—all the ones who were their age seemed to be too preoccupied getting divorced to fall into marriage—met them, married them, and made families with them as if their lives weren’t decades out of step. But up here in Helios, anyone in their late twenties was obstinately coupled. It was as if they’d all stepped out of some home ec manual left over from the 1930s, the women with their vintage flowered aprons and pots of small-batch preserves, the men with their beekeeping ventures and T-shirt-design companies. It wasn’t that Saina didn’t like the idea of growing her own heirloom tomatoes, it was just, well, it was lonely to make a fetish of domesticity on her own.

Back at home, she opened the door of her new Smeg refrigerator, specially powder coated in a bright yellow, and pushed aside containers of truffled Israeli couscous and goat’s milk yogurt to make room for a farmers market bounty of summer fruit, knobby cucumbers, ears of white corn, fresh mozzarella wrapped in asphodel leaves, and two overflowing bags of Fatboy Farm greens that Leo had handed her before they parted.



Outside, a car door slammed shut.

Her first thought: Grayson came back!

Her next: Leo really forgives me!



Who was this girl, yo-yoing between boyfriends, heart expanding and contracting based on how well she was loved? Not Saina. Certainly not. She was an artist; she was autonomous. Could someone’s base impulses usurp their better nature, making them forever into someone they didn’t recognize?

Footsteps sounded down the slate path and headed towards the side door. In a second the person would pass by the open kitchen window. Now was the time to duck down and slip out to the unfinished studio, where she should have been working all along, trying to recast the double-barreled disgrace of her betrayal and fall.



Curiosity kept her upright.

She watched as an asymmetrical haircut strode purposefully past her window, perched on top of a gangly body dressed in a hipster riot of neon-pink skinny jeans and a loose V-neck so deep that a nipple threatened to peek through. Billy Al-Alani. He spotted her through the window.

“The queen in exile!”

Saina sighed. “Friend or foe?”

“Knight-in-waiting and biggest fan.” He spread out his arms and dropped out of sight. Reluctantly, she stepped outside where he grabbed her up in a sweaty hug and kissed at her cheek. She pushed away from him, forcing a smile.

“What are you doing here? How did you even know where I live?”

“How can you live all the way up here? Don’t you miss Manhattan? Here, I brought you something.” He thrust a paper sack at her.

Saina opened it and looked inside. “There are bagels in the Catskills, Billy.”

“New York water, baby, there’s nothing like it!” He looked past her into the open door. “This place is pretty rad, though. I bet you’re really getting shit done here, right?”

Instinctively, she blocked his view. “If by shit you mean going to every estate sale on the Hudson, then totally.”

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”