Yolk(9)

I remember little of the first year beyond how the cold never left my bones. My second year, I started going out. I met Ivy at a dive bar famous for their free personal pizzas with any order of a drink. She sat by me, promptly complimented my Telfar tote since she had the same one in green, and proceeded to point out all the people in the dark, dank room that she’d slept with. Ivy’s twenty-three. She has bleached blonde hair, brown eyes, and is the kind of pale where the blue tributaries of her veins are so close to the surface that her forehead reminds me of those glowing babies in fetal development pictures. Free pizza is the perfect metaphor for our friendship. It’s an anemic facsimile for the real thing, but when I’m drunk, it’s a miracle.

This is the kind of person Ivy is: under her bed she keeps a trash bag filled with duplicates of crap—bedside lamps, milk frothers, hair dryers—disposable flotsam she scams off Amazon by telling them they sent the wrong thing.

We partied every night. It was easy. I wasn’t even sure she knew my last name. It’s my fault that when my roommates kicked me out, I was surprised that Ivy didn’t text me back for a full week. It’s not my fault that those vicious harpies turned on me so fully. I was stunned by Meg and Hill. Or Mean and Hell as Ivy referred to them when she finally called.

I couldn’t ask for June’s help. By then we hadn’t properly spoken in over a year. The roommates gave me a week and I didn’t fight them, I was so cowed by the hostility that pulsed off them like heat. In a frenzy, I searched Craigslist, Street Easy, and dubious message boards for shared apartments but eventually landed on the cheapest one-bedroom I could find. And even then, I’d need a roommate to occupy the living room. The photos were a grainy Google Earth satellite photo of the entire block and an inset thumbnail of the Pepto-colored bathroom sink. I called the phone number, met a rangy Latino man named Frankie wearing a mesh vest in South Brooklyn with a deposit borrowed from what Mom and Dad had given me for fall tuition. I was told not to make any complaints and that if anyone asked, we were distant cousins.

In hindsight, it’s a miracle that it wasn’t a scam.

Jeremy wore the summery white shirt again that day, and a thin gold chain glinted at his throat. It held a delicate rose pendant, a keepsake I decided on the spot that his grandmother had given him because he was her favorite. He had three brothers, I surmised, and he was the youngest, as I was.

Turns out Jeremy is an only child. An only child who carries nothing because the kindness of strangers never fails him.

He’d found the necklace in the bathroom at the bar where he works and made no effort to return it.

Since late May, Jeremy’s been staying with me in fits and starts. I don’t know where he goes on the nights he’s not here, and I pretend not to have noticed when he returns. Sometimes while he sleeps, I mouth I love you to his closed eyes to see how it feels. We haven’t had sex in a month, but I find myself searching for signs of improvement.

More laughter. Then the smear of a moan. Followed by the insistent, unmistakable thumping of mattress against wall.

I don’t know where the humiliation ends and the rage begins or if those two sentiments are ever unlinked.

I want to hurl myself against the door. Rip it off its hinges. Tear into him and her, kicking them both out of my home. But failing that, I’m too embarrassed to make a sound.

Perversely I keep listening. Who is she? Does she know me? What if she’s someone important? It has to be Rae. The conviction that it’s beautiful, willowy Rae who’d matriculated at Oxford fucking University, bucks at my chest. I’m startled that he’d bring her here. To this dump, where for the past few weeks, we’ve been wearing our coats to bed when the heat fails and the summer brings roaches with wings.

I can’t stand to be in my skin, be behind my eye holes. And I can’t bear to signal my presence. If they catch me, I can’t pretend to be someplace else. Like a bandit in my own home, I mince and scrape and quietly wash my hands and face. Take off my pants. Put on a dirty T-shirt and some shorts. I think of June’s washer and dryer. What she’d think of me if she saw how I live.

I climb onto the couch, folding myself up on my side so I can fit onto the love seat. I don’t know anything about Jeremy’s finances. The first month he lived here I gave him a pass since we immediately fell into bed together. That second month too, since it was agonizing to discuss. Eight weeks ago when I was convinced we’d get evicted, he Venmo’d me seven hundred dollars. His half for August. I was sitting on the floor and he was standing above me with his sunglasses on, halfway out the door. He pushed a few buttons on his phone. No big deal. He may as well have thrown crumpled bills in my face. He sent the flamingo pool-float emoji as the note. Later that night, he brought someone home.

My stomach rumbles. I need to drink water. The orange purse throbs in my sight line. It’s expensive. Probably Clare V. I try to recall if there’d been a bag slung on Rae’s chair. I’m intimidated by this handbag. It’s whimsically hued, which suggests one nice purse among many. A Wednesday tote for eight hundred bucks.

The purse goads me, and without thinking, as if guided by invisible wires, I get up, walk toward it, peer over the rim before grabbing both upright handles and jawing it open.

Predictably, there’s a laptop, the teeny MacBook Air in a purple leather sleeve. Tempting but bad karma. AirPods, sunglasses case, keys with a neon-pink rubber charm that reads GIRL BOSS in white, and a patent-leather Tory Burch wallet. Heart pounding, guts clenched, I glance at the door and flip the billfold open. A freckled brunette with a heart-shaped face squint-smiles at me from her California ID. I’m both relieved that it’s not Rae and affronted that it’s someone else.