The Last Phone Booth in Manhattan(31)

“Ooh, love that. That should be a T-shirt slogan,” Lyla said, coming out of her room to greet us. “Hey, Avery. I was so happy when I saw Charlie’s text yesterday. We’ve been interviewing a lot of randos and one’s literally been weirder than the last.”

“You’re telling me. The last apartment I looked at was advertised as being subterranean. It was more like sub-subterranean. No windows. Just concrete cinder walls. I kept waiting for the guy from The Silence of the Lambs to pop out and offer me some lotion,” I joked.

Lyla, Sevyn, and Oak all looked at me quizzically. Okay, note to self: if I was going to move in here, no pop culture references before the year 2000.

“Anyway, so it’s just the three of you who live here together?” I asked.

“Not quite. We have one other roommate, Ass, who travels a lot for work. She’s hardly ever home, so she has the smallest bedroom in the back,” Oak said.

“Her name is Ass?”

“Aston,” she replied.

“Right . . .”

Oak continued, “She told us that as long as you weren’t sus, she trusted us to give the green light.”

“I . . . I don’t think I’m sus.”

Lyla said, “Great! That’s the vibe I get from you. Actually, I consulted my tarot and crystals about your aura this morning before you arrived, and it seems like you’ll be a decent fit, according to my cards. And the universe, no cap. And my favorite psychic on the Tok.”

“The Tok?”

“TikTok, obvi,” Lyla answered.

“Obvi, right. Well, that’s good news,” I offered, still a bit overwhelmed by the Gen-Z lingo being hurled in my direction. Living with four Gen Zers in Brooklyn was a world away from the life I’d been living on the Upper East Side only a few weeks ago, but compared to the limited options I’d seen, this seemed far and away the best one. Not to mention that there was something comforting about my less than six degrees of separation from Lyla and the fact that Charlie had vouched for her.

Trust wasn’t something I had much of these days, Adam’s cool deceptions still haunting my thoughts and decisions like a looming shadow. If I could be that foolish once, was it out of the realm of possibility to think I could be that oblivious again? I hated him for robbing me of my ability to trust my gut . . . because look at where it got me.

Lyla continued, “Great. We all have pretty crazy schedules, but Oak is the only one that works from home and she usually takes her MacBook to the park or a WeWork a few blocks away. We don’t host crazy parties or anything, but we do love a good night out. The rent is nine hundred dollars. Think you can swing that?”

I did a quick tabulation of the average of what my tips might be and added it to my paltry savings . . . carry the one . . . it was certainly more affordable than the other apartments I’d seen but would still be tight. I definitely would need to increase my big belting numbers at the diner and start working on hitting that high E above middle C pronto. My pulse quickened at the thought of having to possibly drum up a rendition of “Defying Gravity” (which had always been my most lucrative and crowd-pleasing showstopper). But since every time I thought of it, the sound of me mooing made my insides turn into molten lava, I hadn’t been planning on bringing it back into rotation unless I was desperate.

Damn.

I answered, “I can manage the rent. So, I’ll take it, that is, if you’ll have me.” I smiled politely and then remembered I hadn’t even seen which room would be mine. They could be putting me in Harry Potter’s under-the-stairs closet for all I knew. But did it really matter at this point?

“Wonderful,” Lyla answered. “When can you move in?”

“Yesterday. Seriously, though, I need to be out of my apartment ASAP, so the sooner the better. I don’t have much, just a few suitcases of clothes and a couple of boxes.”

Lyla nodded and continued. “Our last roommate moved abroad. All her old furniture’s still in the room, so it might take us a minute to offload it, but then we can prorate the rest of the month. Unless you’d want us to leave it for you?”

The repo men had already come to collect pretty much everything of value from the Upper East Side apartment and Hamptons house, including almost all the furniture. After spending the last few nights in a sleeping bag on a parquet floor, even the Murphy-style kitchen-table bed in the ninth-floor walkup was starting to sound pretty damn good to me. Anything my new roommates were willing to provide would be a total godsend.

“That’s perfect. It would be a real help if you could leave it.”

“Awesome, you can move in tomorrow, then!” Lyla exclaimed.

“That’s great. My shift doesn’t start till four, so I’ll be here in the morning.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked up at Lyla. “I already have your number, should I get the two of yours?” I asked Oak and Sevyn.

“Oh, here.” Oak proffered her hand, her lime-green manicure meticulous.

I stared at her outstretched palm, her fingers kind of dangling there. I took them in an attempt at some kind of awkward limp handshake.

“No, no!” she exclaimed with a laugh and pulled her fingers from mine. She stuck her thumb in the air and said, “My nail. I had a QR code inlaid into the gel polish with all of my socials. If you open your camera, you can scan it and voilà!”