Yolk(10)

Someone basic.

Her eyes are dishwater gray, and on the day the photo was taken, she made sure to match her lipstick to her sweater exactly. Her last name is hyphenated, which to me means she’s rich, that she’s a horse girl with vacation homes. My heart sinks. She weighs twelve pounds less than I did this morning even after I went to the bathroom.

I return the purse and spy a slouchy velvet makeup pouch. I unzip it, its belly moving in my palm like a live animal as a feeling of calm bleeds into me. As if easing into a thermal bath. I pluck the half-full bottle of perfume with its steel cap, Flowerbomb by Viktor & Rolf, girly and pink, and return everything else. I drop it into the trash can, where it plummets past the soiled paper towels on the top, and then I return to the couch.

I want to set shit on fire.

I try to count the five things that I see around me. Acknowledging the articles that will ground me in this room, in this time and space.

One: fridge.

Then I fall asleep.





chapter 7


The alarm jolts me awake. My phone is on 15 percent and my mouth tastes furry. Acid clambers up my windpipe. I’m somehow more fatigued than when I went to sleep. I rub my eyes and blearily register that the orange tote is gone and the bedroom door is open.

I stumble over to the bathroom, turn on the hot water for the shower, and sit on the toilet to pee. As the steam builds, an acrid, rancid sourness barely masked by the air freshener hits my nose, jolting me into memory. Shit. Right. I have to take care of a few things before school. Things to replace. Acts to undo.

Somehow it’s always my latest first class that I have the most trouble getting to on time.

I wash my hair. I can’t detangle the knots fast enough and tug impatiently, breaking all the ends. I dry myself hurriedly, throw on a bra and sweatshirt, pull on jeans, jumping up and down to get them over my thighs, and grab the plastic bag I’d shoved under the couch in a haze early this morning, away from prying eyes. I open it, survey its contents to confirm that it’s real, that I did it again, tie the handles up in a double knot, and shove it deep into the garbage.

A pinprick of pleasure weasels its way through my self-loathing as I recall what else is in the trash. The bitch’s perfume.

I wonder what she looked like naked. If she had better boobs, a flatter stomach. I drink water from the tap, promising myself that next time—which there won’t be a next time—I will stay up the requisite enamel-preserving half hour and remember to brush my teeth before passing out.

I smear on liquid liner in case the hot deli guy’s working the register and dash to the far bodega. There’s one on my corner, but they’re dicks, so I leg it across the street and down the block. But of course it’s not the hot guy but the old one. He adds a convenience fee when you charge your groceries to a credit card, which the hot guy doesn’t. I wish I were the type of person to confront him about it, but I’m not.

I tear down the aisles, say hi to the black-and-white deli cat, grab the medium-size box of Cheerios, a jar of Nutella with a regular label—not the seasonal one—English muffins, which I don’t even like, and a thing of turkey cold cuts. It’s the wrong brand, but it’ll have to do. Honestly, he’s lucky that I’m even making the effort. I also grab a cup of coffee, black.

Back in the apartment, I replace everything in the fridge and cupboards, tipping half the bag of Cheerios into a ziplock baggie so that the level will match up, and shove the surplus cereal into my dirty clothes pile.

Before I leave, I grab the shower cleaner from the back of the cupboard. I keep two back there. Jeremy hates the smell of ylang-ylang. He says the floral citrusiness reminds him of getting carsick in his father’s overly air-freshened Volvo. It’s triggering, he tells me. You’re triggering, I want to say back. And your face is triggering.

I spend precious moments dedicating myself to bombing the ever-living shit out of the bathroom far more diligently than I did last night. I pump ylang-ylang deep into the bathmat, grinding it in with my foot and drenching his towel before closing the door firmly behind me.

My hands still smell of flowers on the train. I wipe them on my jacket and stare out the windows. I like the aboveground part of the commute best. They demolished a building just before I moved here, smashing it into a mountain of rubble that they’ve been removing bit by bit. I try not to think about how quickly things change. Whenever people complain about neighborhood businesses shuttering or how their favorite bakery’s now a Citibank, I feel a tremor of panic. As if the ground beneath my feet isn’t reliable. How can I ever get to know a place that changes so quickly? I’m late enough as it is.

I thumb through Instagram. I almost exclusively follow people who make me feel bad about myself.

Models, photographers, influencers, aspirational fitness entrepreneurs, actors.

My heart stops when I see someone I know. Someone I actually know in life. Not even New York life—my real life.

It’s Patrick.

His tattooed arm is flung around a fashion designer who makes animal-print fleeces that cost six hundred bucks. I’m astonished by the happenstance, but it’s him. He looks almost the same as he did when he was fourteen. Slightly less skinny but not by much. He’s pointing at the sky with his mouth wide. He appears to be singing.

His hair is unimpeachably excellent. Not too coiffed. Not fussy and stiff with product or the calculated androgyny of boy band members. Patrick unfailingly wore hats, until he got this transformative haircut that made him hot overnight. He was utterly forgettable until he absolutely wasn’t. Patrick was partial to bucket hats. I’ve never understood the appeal of looking like a giant toddler.