Seven Days in June(45)

Eva tucked a curl behind her ear, watching hipsters leave Artichoke Basille’s Pizza down on Tenth Avenue. And then, offering Shane a shy smile, she stood up, heading down the bleachers to the glass wall.

Standing there, she leaned forward until her forehead rested against the cool glass. The feeling was incredible, like she was suspended in the air, over the street below. Like the world stopped and started here. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she felt Shane stand next to her.

“I did this with Audre once,” she told him. “Feels like you’re floating, right? Close your eyes.”

They stood there for a beat, or two or three, before she glanced at Shane.

Shane’s eyes weren’t closed at all. He was drinking her in, his expression wide open and mesmerized. In the sun, his eyes shone paler than usual. Eva remembered this color, this gold-flecked honey. She remembered it all. How easy it was, falling into him. One minute she was fine; the next minute she was gone.

“Let’s go,” said Shane, breaking whatever spell they’d fallen under.

Eva blinked. “Where?”

“To find new vices. Undangerous ones.”

“Are they worth it,” asked Eva, “if they aren’t dangerous?”

“Don’t know.” And then, with boyish delight, he said, “Let’s find out.”

*



Shane and Eva found their first safe vice—an artisanal gelato stand on Little West Twelfth. And they went hard, ordering three-scoop cones before heading back out to the shadow-dappled, mazelike West Village streets.

Shane’s cone was brimming over with olive-oil ice cream, and Eva’s was cinnamon-cappuccino gelato. It was delicious. The whole afternoon was delicious—so much so that Shane was already nostalgic for it before it had even ended.

It was like the space-time continuum had hiccupped, and they’d never not known each other. They were light as air, giddy with their rekindled friendship. Shane wouldn’t dare tempt fate by asking for more than this. This moment was perfect enough. Just this. Just Eva. An Aphrodite in Adidas. His distractingly, dizzyingly sexy Eva, who had barely touched her gelato, because she’d spent the last seven blocks deconstructing the feminist subtext in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

Shane, not even a superhero guy, was instantly converted. Eva’s passion was contagious. Her laugh felt weightless. Her delivery was so…bossy. At one point, deep in discourse, she used her glasses as a headband, pulling back her hair—and Shane watched one spiral escape, bouncing onto her forehead. In agonizing slo-mo.

I’d risk it all for that single curl.

Shane was aware that he was going nuts. It was almost too much to walk, talk, and eat ice cream at the same time. Thankfully, Eva plopped down on a bench outside of a nineteenth century apothecary. As she finally dug into her melting gelato, he asked the question that had been on his mind since that morning.

“Subject change,” he said clunkily. “Why’d you say your life’s falling apart?”

After a dramatic groan, Eva explained Audre’s Snapchat scandal.

“…and Audre’s a dream. But she thinks she knows everything about the world. She’s desperate to be grown. It’s scary! Mothering her, I feel so lost sometimes. My only example is my mom, who was many things, but ‘mother’ wasn’t quite one of them.”

Before Shane could answer, he saw that across the street, on the corner, an olive-skinned twenty-something with a pink ponytail was gawking at them. She grinned, typed something into her phone, and then giggled. Thankfully, she wasn’t in Eva’s line of vision.

Motherfuck, he thought, ducking his head. The young fangirls were so wild. The kind with “Eight” inked on eight different body parts.

“You never really told me about your mom,” he said, facing away from the girl.

“Hmm.” Eva licked her gelato. “Let’s see. She was from a tiny town, Belle Fleur. Growing up, people called her Mandy, a nickname for Mantis. ’Cause she was born with her hands in a prayer, like a praying mantis. On the bayou,” she started in her mom’s Louisiana drawl, “your given name is just a suggestion.” She smiled. “Lizette suits her better.”

“Sounds fragile and tragic.”

“That’s my mom,” said Eva, nodding. “Anyway, she wasn’t trained for anything beyond winning pageants. She got all the way to Miss Universe in 1987 but was disqualified.”

“On some Vanessa Williams shit?” asked Shane.

“No, ’cause she couldn’t enter the swimsuit competition with a second-trimester bump.” She chuckled. “After I was born, we moved to LA, but she was too short to model, and her accent was too thick to act. Her saviors were rich men. She became a sort of…professional mistress. Which was lucrative, for a while. The homes, clothes, schools—all top-notch. You know, I don’t remember the inside of any apartments I lived in as a kid? Just the view from my bedroom windows. A man-made lake with marble mermaid fountain in Vegas. The back of a ritzy Persian restaurant in Chicago. In Atlanta, it was a cul-de-sac with a heavy stray-cat population, all of which I named after Wu-Tang members.”

“That’s a lot of cats.”

“After each break up, we’d move. By the time I was a teenager, the cities had gotten seedier, and the men she chose were nightmares. But she never saw trouble coming, you know? She was so childlike,” said Eva. “She slept all day, went out at night, and I was left on my own.” Eva paused, her brow low. “Lizette was a kook. But to be fair, her mom, my grandma Clotilde? Also a confirmed kook.”