Yolk(4)

chapter 3


The city isn’t how I’d left it. The light’s dipped and it’s getting loud. There’s an urgent thrum that crackles. It’s that disorienting feeling as you leave a movie theater in Midtown and the skyscrapers with their LED lights come at you.

New York is an ambush.

Outside feels IMAX.

Plus, drunk New York is the shit. I love drunk New York. It glitters with potential. It feels like gambling.

“June?” asks the driver when he rolls down the window.

“Sure.” I don’t bother correcting him and get in. It’s a black SUV with its own atmosphere. I wonder if I’ve been given an upgrade or if June only commissions Uber Blacks. I hailed one once, on accident, all the way home during a surge, drunk and cross-eyed, treating myself to not-Pool. I felt rich. When the eighty-dollar charge showed up the next morning, I cried.

It’s not fair, I think, as we crawl up First. New York nights are for anyone other than family. Still, my saltiness eases as I lean and stare out the tinted window. It’s a miracle that I get to stay here. This place commands total dedication or it will eject you. I really would rather die than go home.

New York’s never been for lightweights. It takes a tax. Eloise was chill if you related to a six-year-old asshole living at the Plaza, but that was never the romance for me. Give me the Hotel Chelsea any day. Growing up, I’d moon over Tumblr pictures of Debbie Harry, Patti Smith, Basquiat, Daang Goodman, Anna Sui, Madonna hanging out like it was no big deal. Diane Arbus’s haunted children. Tavi, a literal child, front row at New York Fashion Week on her own merit. Max Fish. Lafayette Street. That the cofounder of Opening Ceremony was a Korean girl, Carol Lim.

There were promises here. A young, loose-limbed Chlo? Sevigny plucked from SoHo retail to star in that movie Kids. Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, and Timothée Chalamet all going to the same fucking high school. That’s the energy.

I love it all so hard, but just as much, I love that the guys at my deli know my coffee order. That I know to avoid an empty subway car as confidently as the closed mussel shell in a bowl.

The car stops.

I even love how it takes sixteen minutes to get to June’s house in a taxi and thirteen if I’d just taken the F at Second Avenue. Nothing makes sense and it’s perfect.

I have a vague idea of where June lives, but I’m unprepared for the glass turret. And that her apartment and my school are separated by 1.5 long blocks.

The lobby is as silent as a museum, with recessed lighting, dark walls, and enormous artwork bigger than a life-size floor plan of my entire apartment. There are tasteful sitting areas and hardcover art books on the coffee table that are ripe for stealing by anyone other than the people who can afford to live here.

As I wade out onto the gleaming marble, approaching the front desk, I hold my right heel high to keep the tinny clack of the exposed nail in my worn-down boot sole from ratting me out as poor.

“You sisters?” asks the younger doorman in a pale-gray uniform when I speak her name. Feels racist even if it’s true.

He’s dressed as if manning the bridge of a spaceship. All high collars and embroidered insignias.

There are two door dudes. Both white with brown hair. One young, one old. I wonder if younger door dudes grow up to be older door dudes. Or if you need one of each at all times.

“Can you just tell her I’m here?” I’m annoyed that I’ve been summoned. Annoyed that I’m related to someone so basic they’d live in a testament to architectural phallic inadequacy. Even one with a Chipotle a block over and a grocery store literally inside the building.

They let me by. I pass the mailroom and a mixed-race couple wearing matching puffer vests with a shih tzu. I barely have to glance at their faces to know he’s white and she’s Asian.

My ears pop in the elevator.

June works in hedge funds. Which means she devises high-stakes gambling schemes for despots and oligarchs, and this is what she gets for her soul.

The overheads in the hallway light up when you approach. It’s cool. Also creepy. Like the type of building that tries to kill you when the security system becomes sentient.

Thirty-four F. Two floors shy of the penthouse. It’s petty, but I’m happy that there’s at least something for her to work toward. I stand outside her door for a moment. If she didn’t know I was already here, I’d leave.

I ring the doorbell. Wait. Hear nothing. Wait for another moment. Ring again—nothing. I knock.

“I’m coming,” says June tersely as she unlocks the door.

“Sorry,” I say just as she opens it. We stand there.

“Hey.” Absurdly, she seems surprised to see me. She’s changed. Now she’s wearing a pale-gray silk bathrobe, the diamond of her neck and chest exposed. It’s strangely sexy. A TV booty-call outfit.

“Hey.” I clear my throat to not giggle from the awful awkwardness. “I’m here.”

“Come in,” she says, leading me into the kitchen behind her.

There’s a formalness neither of us can shake. I take forever removing my shoes. I don’t recognize any of hers except the sad clogs I saw her in earlier. There’s a pair of shearling boots similar to ones I’ve been eyeing, but they were over a hundred bucks and I’m willing to bet these are fancier.

“Do you want anything?” she asks, padding over to the brushed-silver fridge. It’s the kind with an ice machine and water right in the door. The cabinets are skinny and white, and there’s a matching kitchen island with two barstools that separates the kitchen from the rest of the living room.