The Break(74)
What did we do to her? All of us. What did we do?
FORTY-FOUR
June. Three months ago. August 10th.
On Wednesday night I’m in SoHo about to have dinner right near Harrison’s apartment, at Balthazar. The sky is asleep but SoHo is wide awake. I’m shifting my weight and adjusting my purse, and I’m so insanely excited that my feet feel shaky in my stilettos. I got them at DSW and frankly, they’re amazing: four inches high so I’m clocking in at six feet and feeling it. I’ve got on a chic dress I borrowed from Kai when I went to her apartment for the first time this week, which was a surprise-and-a-half because I turned up to find out Kai lives in an apartment that looks like a museum. Nothing she’d ever said or done before hinted at her being a trust fund kid. She always goes to low-rent places like I do to eat and drink, plus she bemoans our pay at WTA, and I guess it never came up. Or maybe she purposely kept it from me, which kind of feels like a trick, because why act like you have to save money when you don’t?
The dress Kai lent me is a conservative Ralph Lauren number, and I picked it for tonight because I think it’ll be a surprise; I’m sure Rowan and Gabe probably think I’ll show up in something revealing and trying-too-hard-to-be-sexy. But tonight I’m adult, sophisticated June, reader of scripts, haver of things to say.
Even the models who go stalking by have nothing on my style tonight. (Try going into SoHo once without seeing a model: c’est impossible!)
I’m giddy with this night, nervous to double-date with people a decade older than me, but also: kind of ready for it, to try it on for size. And I just feel so good being out in New York beneath the dark sky, like the possibilities are endless. A handsome man in a suit passes me and we catch each other’s eyes; a girl in wide-legged jeans and a white top exposing her stomach takes a video of her friend posing near a fire hydrant. A taxi honks at a boy on a bike who swerves onto the sidewalk; a woman holding a baby tells him to be careful.
Our dinner reservations are for nine o’clock. I pull out my phone to check the time and see a text from Sean.
Cutest dog available! Check him out!
There’s a link to a rescue organization, and I click. A pathetic-looking Chihuahua mix named Boomer lights up my screen.
He’s perfect. We have to get him. Even if we keep killing our fish. I text back with a smiley face. Things have been a little better between Sean and me this week; I can tell he’s making an effort to be less controlling about everything, which seems to completely exhaust him. He’s shutting his door around eight each night and turning off the light by nine, though I can still see the glow of his computer leaking out beneath the door. But I’m starting to think I can stay.
I look back up from our text exchange. Headlights crisscross the dark, and the glow of shops and phones and people light up the sidewalk. There’s just so much living going on here. Each time Balthazar’s front doors open, the smell of fresh bread mixes with car exhaust and the smell of trash from a nearby can, and nothing has ever been this perfect.
I glance across Spring Street and see Rowan. She’s standing all alone at the crosswalk waiting for the light to turn. A streetlight makes her skin look iridescent, and she’s wearing the same pale lip gloss she had on at Gabe’s reading. I take a breath, reminding myself this will all be okay. The dinner was her idea, or at least that’s how Harrison made it sound. But maybe Harrison was just nervous I’d say no. Agents tell white lies all the time; I’ve even seen Louisa do it.
The light changes and Rowan steps off the curb. A warm summer gust catches her black silk pants and makes them ripple as she crosses the street. She’s a natural beauty, with just the swipe of color on her lips and mascara and nothing else. Her skinny fingers are on her rounded belly again just like at the reading.
She looks up and sees me, and when she smiles, it’s a big wide one like she’s happy I’m standing there. Or maybe she just loves nighttime, too: the feeling of being young and alive in New York, each night like starting a film and seeing where it goes.
“Hi, June,” she says. She steps onto my side of the street and comes right up close like we’re old friends.
“Hi,” I say.
“I can’t believe it,” she says with a big exhale. “I’m already so out of breath!” She looks down at her stomach and then back up at me. “Twins,” she says, like it’s a miracle, and I suppose it is.
“That’s amazing,” I say. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks!” she says. “It really is great, it’s just I’m only twenty-nine weeks pregnant and I’m out of breath all the time. It’s so nuts.”
I smile. She doesn’t seem to be telling me so I can commiserate or feel bad for her: she just seems surprised by it all. “You must be really excited,” I say, because now that I’ve spent so much time with Louisa, I get it. This week Louisa only took one more day off after her miscarriage, which I thought was insane, but Louisa told me she’d already taken too many days off for fertility treatments. So we just worked side by side all week, and Louisa was in a daze but not enough that I think anyone but me noticed. And she still managed to get everything done.
“We are so excited,” Rowan says, rubbing her belly clockwise. “We just got the stroller, and we’re setting up their nursery, and it’s all seeming really close. The babies are coming in October if everything goes okay.”