Sweetbitter(75)

“But I guess I was wondering if it will ever stop.”

“Stop?”

“I don’t know, the city?” I said. “Changing? Like will it ever rest?”

“No,” they said in unison and then laughed.

“So then we just dance ourselves to death?” I asked.

“Ha!” Simone smiled at me and Jake smiled looking at his plate.

“This is so good, Simone.”

“It’s always the simple things, well executed, that are memorable. I don’t concern myself with complexity when I have guests.”

“What was it like when you moved here?” I asked her.

“What was it like? The city?”

“No, I don’t know.” I turned to Jake. “What was she like at twenty-two?”

She groaned. “He doesn’t remember, he was a child.”

“She was a heartbreaker,” Jake said, “and I was not a child anymore. You had your long hair back then.” He was watching her and I wondered if I was going to be the kind of woman about whom they said, She was a heartbreaker.

“Oh god, Jake, don’t start. When Jake was a baby he would never let me put my hair up. Hysterical tears, panic. God forbid I cut it.”

“Tears?”

“I was very particular about women, even back then,” he said, and he nodded toward my hair, which was down. “I still think it’s too short.”

“Me?” I asked, but he was looking at Simone again.

“Long hair like that is for girls, Jake,” Simone said, touching hers, which sat at her shoulders. Mine was much longer.

“I knew you were a girl once! You must remember.”

“Yeah, Moni, tell her.”

“I remember much forgetfulness.”

“Come on,” I said.

“The city in the early nineties was rampant with crime. Everyone was still reeling from AIDS, entire communities had been wiped out, and all the neighborhoods were being rezoned for development. Gentrification has always been with us, but these were massive, government-subsidized overhauls, not just a new coffee shop or a block of renovations. Was it so much better then? Do I miss not being able to walk this block in the dark? I can’t say. But, as trite as this sounds, it was a very free time. And by free I mean that I felt free to pursue the life I wanted, and I could afford to. There were still dark spots in the city, fringes, margins, and I believed—still believe—that those areas are what make cities thrive. But being twenty-two…that was confusing.”

“Confusing?” I asked. “Is that the word I would use?”

“Seems to be the age that ladies run away from home,” he said. “I never got to see twenty-three.”

I hadn’t put that together, that Simone and I came to the city at the same time in our lives. Our first escapes.

“You survived,” Simone said to him, and to me: “It was confusing because I didn’t know what I was yet.”

“Does it get better?” I asked. Can it? was what I really wanted to ask.

“Aging is peculiar,” she said, moving a piece of parsnip around the plate with her fork. “I don’t think you should be lied to about it. You have a moment of relevancy—when the books, clothes, bars, technology—when everything is speaking directly to you, expressing you exactly. You move toward the edge of the circle and then you’re abruptly outside the circle. Now what to do with that? Do you stay, peering backward? Or do you walk away?”

“Aren’t you in a new circle?”

“Of course. But that circle for a woman is tricky.”

“Tricky?”

“It’s a circle of marriage, children, acquisitions, retirement funds. That’s the culture you’re asked to participate in. Now…if you decline?”

“You’re in your own circle,” I said. It sounded lonely, but also fearless.

“It’s not so bad.” She smiled. “There’s a settling of the mind. Think of it as trading bursts of inspiration for a steady, prolonged focus.”

“Don’t you think you were a bit reckless?” Jake asked sharply. I didn’t know which one of us he was talking to.

Simone was quiet for a moment and said to him, “I think I did the best I could.”

“Isn’t that part of it? Being reckless?” I asked.

They didn’t answer. They were staring at each other. The record had gone off and I got up to flip it, and Simone stood and started clearing the plates. When I went to take the bottle of wine, Jake grabbed my hand.

“Come here,” he said. He pulled me onto his lap. I looked at Simone in the kitchen, but then put my face into his hair, held his face on my chest. No one had ever reached for me like that, like they just needed me close.

“We never get tired of talking about love, do we?” She was looking at us with a dishcloth over her shoulder. She smiled.

“Sex and food and death,” Jake said. “The only subjects.” He released me and I stood up, tipsy, confused.

“She said ‘love,’ not ‘sex’—you’re such a boy.” I turned. “Simone, that was so good, thank you.”

She pulled out another bottle of wine, and I realized we were going to get drunk. I wondered if I would ever go back to my apartment.