Cackle by Rachel Harrison
FORTUNE
The sky is a strange color. Not quite red but too violent to be orange. I search for the sun, imagine it tired and bitter, slouching away after another long shift. I find it hovering over New Jersey. Poor sun.
“Annie,” Nadia whines behind me, “you’re bumming me out.”
“Sorry,” I say. I contort my mouth into what I think is a smile, but Nadia winces at the sight of it, so I’m guessing the attempt is unsuccessful.
“Girl,” she says, “pull it together! It’s your birthday.”
I groan.
“All right, all right,” she says, roping her arm around me. “Let’s get you wasted.”
We dodge the bags of trash reclining on every curb, avoid the rogue dog turds swarming with flies, unashamed in the middle of the sidewalk. When I first moved to New York City twelve years ago, starry-eyed and energetic, a college freshman, it didn’t seem so dirty. I can’t tell if it was because I was young then, charmed by the skyline, always looking up, or if it used to be cleaner.
“Here,” Nadia says, putting her hands on my shoulders and ushering me into a random bar. It’s almost chic. Draped-bead chandeliers hang from a high ceiling. The place is crowded with couches and mismatched armchairs, stuffing sneaking out through straining seams. Nadia directs me to two stools in the corner where the counter disappears into the wall.
“Perfect,” she purrs. She’s wearing a low-cut leopard-print jumpsuit, which at first I thought was a smidge much, but now that we’ve received immediate attention from the bartender, I’m beginning to appreciate her strategic fashion choice.
She orders us vodka lemonades and tequila shots.
I’ve been out with Nadia only once before, at a karaoke fundraiser for our school that was near torture. She performed an earnest cover of Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn.” I sat squirming in the corner, anticipating a flood of secondhand embarrassment, but the crowd was surprisingly into it.
I watch her now, as she sticks her pink acrylics into the bowl of assorted nuts on the bar. She tilts her head to the side, searching for a specific nut, exposing her long, delicate neck. Her hair is dark and thick and falls down past her shoulders, curving like a chain of crescent moons. She’s got false lashes that are in a constant flutter.
She teaches biology. She’s good at it, too. At school, she doesn’t wear a lick of makeup. All the students whisper about how she’s the hottest teacher.
It doesn’t matter how old you get. A superlative will always be insulting when it’s awarded to anyone but you.
The bartender drops the shots in front of us. They’re accompanied by a tiny plate with two lime wedges and a crusty saltshaker.
Nadia lifts up one of the shots. “To you. And your new job. Oh, and fuck your ex.”
She takes her shot.
I take mine, too. The mention of Sam is like an ice pick to the sternum. I begin to count the bottles of liquor lined up behind the bar. Are there enough? In this bar? In this city? In the tristate area? How much will it take?
“It’s all happening,” Nadia says, snapping her fingers as our cocktails arrive. “New job. New city.”
“It’s not a city,” I say. “It’s a small town no one’s ever heard of.”
“Yeah,” she says, and pauses to aggressively suck the remaining juice from her lime wedge. “But that’s how all romance movies start. You’re going to move to this, like, small-ass town and meet some brooding lumberjack, and he’s going to be named Lucien and have a six-pack even though he’s a low-key alcoholic. He’ll live in a trailer and have a tragic past. It’ll be great.”
“Sounds great,” I say, my voice flat.
She nudges me. “Oh, come on, Annie. Loosen up! Have some fun. It’s your birthday!”
I wish she would stop reminding me of that.
I hadn’t planned on spending my thirtieth birthday with a coworker I barely know who just ate a bar cashew out of her cleavage, or drinking a vodka cocktail that’s going down smooth as battery acid. Admittedly, it’s not the worst. It’s just not what I had envisioned.
I saw myself with Sam. On vacation somewhere. Butchering the French language while attempting to order food at a café in Montmartre, in the shadow of the Sacré-Coeur. Or in London contemplating the paintings at the Tate Modern and having cream tea, then smuggling back Cadbury bars in our suitcases. Or a simple weekend trip to the Hudson Valley or Mystic, somewhere we could take the train to and get a nice hotel room with a big tub and laze around in those cozy robes.
“Okay,” she says. “What is it? Is it him? Are you thinking about him? Is it thirty? Because thirty is not old, okay?”
She’s twenty-seven.
“It’s all of it,” I say. “I’m sorry. It was nice of you to come out with me.”
She raises an expertly shaped eyebrow. “I told you all year we should go out. You were, like, not about it. Look, I don’t know you that well. But I know you’re not a super-social person. And it’s easy not to be social when you, like, have a person at home who’s there all the time. What I’m saying is, basically, maybe this is a good thing for you. You can get out there. Meet new people. Live your life.”
“I guess,” I say. Unfortunately for me, “getting out there” and “meeting new people” are among my least favorite things. I’ve forgotten how. The years since college have eroded my social skills, and I’m shy to begin with. I prefer the couch. I prefer familiarity.