No One Knows Us Here(42)

This never happened as I hoped it would. She met up with friends, stopping for ice cream or bubble teas on the way home. She would have a cookie later, after dinner, she would announce. Then she would join friends for dinner, or maybe I would have a “business meeting” to attend.

I kept baking anyway. The more complicated and time-consuming the recipe, the better. After a day or two, I would wrap everything up and put it in the freezer.

I’d spent Christmas in Hawaii with Leo, while Wendy visited her grandmother. She wanted to go to Hawaii with me. We should be together on Christmas, she insisted. Conveniently enough for me, her grandmother had already made arrangements for Wendy to spend the school break with her, so I didn’t have to talk my way out of it.

Leo had business, in Hawaii, over Christmas? Yes. He met with some businessmen from China—he worked late into the night. With my days to myself, I lounged on the beach and at the pool and on the hotel balcony with its postcard-perfect view, the ten-foot turquoise waves framed by swaying palms.

We had separate hotel rooms. He didn’t want to bother me, with his hectic schedule, coming in and out at all hours, he said. Every evening I sat on the balcony and taught myself how to play chords and pluck out melodies on a ukulele I found in the hotel gift shop. After a week I could play three songs: “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” “Ring of Fire,” and “Riptide.”

In that booth with my friends, I was saved from elaborating on my new career when the server arrived with baskets of fries.

We ordered round after round. Margorie and I went to the restroom together, locking ourselves in the grimy little cell. We took turns peeing, and then I watched as she reapplied her makeup. Margorie had had the same hairstyle ever since I’d met her, baby bangs straight across her forehead. She always wore liquid black eyeliner, winged. She was reapplying it in the mirror, darkening the lines, flicking it out at the end. “Now you,” she said, and I turned to face her. The liquid liner felt cold on my eyelids. She blew on them, gently, to dry them. Her breath smelled like alcohol and limes.

“Check it out,” she said, and I looked at my reflection in the mirror.

“Nice,” I said.

“Steele certainly seems to think so.”

“We’re just friends.”

“Hmm.”

“Actually . . . I’m seeing someone.”

“That guy who lives down the hall?” Something must have passed over my face. “I knew it,” Margorie said, delighted with herself. “I told you he was your type. All brooding and artistic. He’s like a musician or something, right? A violin player?”

“Violist,” I corrected automatically, further piquing Margorie’s interest.

“Violist, huh,” she said.

“I only know because I can hear him play.” The last thing I needed was for Margorie to figure out who he was, that he was famous, at least a little bit. This seemed like something Margorie would find very interesting. I feared it was written all over my face, the whole story, or that I’d spill it all at once, the way we’d met, the whole love-at-first-sight, star-crossed-lovers situation. The way I memorized his schedule so I wouldn’t run into him in the halls, waiting to hear him start practicing before I slipped out to go to the store, darting back in right when he finished hours later.

For the most part, I had managed to avoid him. It would be easier, I reasoned, for both of us. We could just forget it ever happened. It was overkill, I knew. We could be grown-ups about it. Sleep together and then end it and then say hi to each other if we happened to collide by the mailboxes in the lobby. Exchange pleasantries. Maybe one day—why not?—become friends again.

I couldn’t do it, though. I didn’t feel capable of it, not after spilling my guts to him, then ending it the way I did. Not after everything. I ran into him only once. Wendy and I did. We were leaving the apartment to go somewhere, and he was leaving his apartment at the same exact time. It was bound to happen. Our eyes met, and both of us just stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity. I broke the awkward silence and said hello. And then we all began moving to the stairway, descending. We didn’t have to say anything to each other after all. We were spared by Wendy. I know you, she said to Sam. He smiled cryptically and said he didn’t think she did. You look so familiar, she insisted. We all exited the building, and I mumbled that it was nice to see him, and then we parted ways. Ten steps down the sidewalk, Wendy turned. Hey! she yelled. Sam turned around, and we looked at each other again. Ferguson! she exclaimed in triumph. He gave an embarrassed little smile and turned back around. I knew I recognized him, she said to me. Did you realize we live right next door to him? Isn’t that amazing?

I didn’t realize, I said. I had no idea.

“No,” I said to Margorie. “Not him. Someone else.”

“You know what would look good on you?” Margorie rooted around in her bag and produced a tube of highlighter, a palette of eye shadow. She began applying various powders and gels to my skin as I talked. I told her about my new boyfriend. His name was . . . Seth. He was a computer guy. I had met him in San Francisco, when I was there a couple of months ago, on a business trip. It was true I had been to San Francisco, to visit Leo. He flew me in for the day. We ate lunch in Chinatown and walked in and out of the shops. He bought me a fan and a porcelain spoon. Then he sent me off, back to the airport, and I was home in time to watch Saturday Night Live with Wendy.