Fiona and Jane(36)

“I said Taiwan, not—”

“I can eat it all at level-five spicy.” He grinned, a pleased expression on his face.

“Cool,” she said. “That’s amazing. Good for you.”

Underneath the table Tish squeezed her hand. “Let’s go on a bathroom break.”

In the ladies, they pressed into an open stall together. “Here,” Tish said, and handed her the bullet.

Fiona unscrewed the cap and dipped the little spoon in.

“Ready?” Tish had a foot on the flush to cover up the sound of Fiona’s snuffling.

After they each took two bumps, Tish pocketed the blow and they washed their hands at the sinks.

“What do you think of Gil?”

Fiona looked at her friend in the mirror. Tish had lined her bottom lashes with a shimmery emerald pencil tonight, which made the amber flecks in her eyes pop. “I don’t know,” she answered. “Who cares?”

“Didn’t you hear what I said earlier?”

Fiona shook her head and turned off the tap.

“He’s Ari’s client? Hello?” Tish said. “He’s from, like, a really rich German family. Supposedly they were Nazi sympathizers or something. It’s a big secret.” She uncapped a lipstick. “It’s fucked up, but whatever, he’s making Ari rich.”

“Isn’t Ari already rich?”

“Flirt with him a little, why don’t you? I know he’s not your usual type, but . . .”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Tish said. “Just that you can try something different. A guy who can take you on vacations.”

Fiona turned to watch her friend apply a coat of deep red to her lips. “You mean I should be more like you, then.”

Tish capped the lipstick and slid it back into her purse. “There are worse things—”

“I’m not looking for a sugar daddy,” Fiona said.

Tish gave a small laugh. “But you’ll sit at Ari’s table, drink his alcohol, right? Do his blow.” She bared her teeth at the mirror, checking for lipstick.

“I don’t care about this place.” Fiona tasted the bitter medicine drips at the back of her throat. She swallowed hard. Her heart was beating fast in her chest. “I just wanted to hang with you tonight,” she said. “I’m leaving, and I haven’t seen you at all lately.”

“You didn’t pick up when I called you last week,” Tish said.

“We could’ve gone anywhere tonight.”

“It’s not my fault,” Tish said. Behind them, a woman stumbled into the bathroom and crashed into one of the stalls, banging the door shut behind her.

“It doesn’t even matter. You’re moving anyway,” Tish said. She shook the water from her fingers and reached for the pile of brown paper towels between the two sinks. “Look. I didn’t know that when I set you up with Willy—”

“Don’t, Tish,” Fiona said. “We don’t have to get into all that—”

“Maybe then you wouldn’t be leaving New York like this—”

“Have you talked to him?” Fiona couldn’t help but ask. “I keep thinking I see him,” she said quietly. “Walking down the street, on the L train.”

“Babe.” Tish turned away from the mirror and faced her. “He’s gone. I didn’t know if I should tell you.”

“What?”

“Willy moved to Hong Kong,” Tish said. “I just heard about it from one of our college friends this week.”

Fiona studied the chrome taps, the dark gray marble of the sink’s counter, spotted with water.

“I’m sorry,” Tish said finally. “He’s there for six months for some project with a pop star. It sounds stupid, but supposedly he’s getting paid bank. So the money he borrowed from you—”

“Tish. Willy didn’t exactly— I didn’t tell you this—he stole that money from me.”

“He did what?”

Gagging sounds rose from the bathroom stall. Fiona thought of the old days when she used to binge lemon soju and Hite bombs with Jane and Won. She could almost smell the fry oil that permeated the air in that hole-in-the-wall Korean place in Garden Grove. The parking lot in back where she’d vomited, then kept drinking with her friends. How small her world seemed now, suddenly.

She’d moved to New York because she believed doing so meant something, corny as it sounded: she came here with the intention of discovering herself. Eight years later, she had none of what she’d set out to achieve. Somewhere, she lost her head. Her heart. Jasper, her college boyfriend—he lived in Astoria, and beyond that she knew nothing about him anymore. Kenji, the friend she’d seen through cancer treatment, and who’d carried her through the worst of her breakup, had left the city for a teaching fellowship in London two years ago. The leave of absence she’d taken from law school, for her mental health. She’d met Tish in a women’s group her therapist recommended; that was where jokes about the sisterhood of hoes had begun, all those men she’d tried out after she left Jasper. Tish introduced her to Willy. Oh, him. Willy moved to Hong Kong. Fiona let out the breath she’d been holding.

“You okay?” Tish asked. “What do you mean, Willy stole from you?”