But then he’ll say something so quintessentially, winsomely New York that I’m scared to let him go. And he knows everyone. From models to door guys. Once we ordered weed to the house and it turned out he played basketball with the delivery dude. When they gave each other a pound, I was so envy-struck I could barely speak. It doesn’t help that on the rare occasion Jeremy introduces me to his friends—their eyes glaze over in disinterest.
Jeremy calls himself a poet. And a performance artist. But, for him, neither of these things particularly mean anything, and combined they mean even less. Mostly he focuses his efforts on a literary magazine that I’ve designed pages for but never seen in real life. In short, he’s a bartender at Clandestino over on East Broadway. I try not to think about how much money he owes me. And how we shared a bed for months and then stopped.
The only time I don’t hate him is when I think he’s mad at me.
“I’d rather die than go home,” I say to no one in particular.
chapter 2
“Be right back.”
I get up, grab my wallet, and thread my body through the crowd by the bar. I swallow hard, guts curdling. I feel callow and gullible and unspeakably sad. I need to forget how, at an earlier point in the day, I’d dressed as though my loose plans with Jeremy were a date.
“Hey, Mike.” I up-nod the bartender, weirdly a near dupe of Jeremy but with a pornstache and more tattoos.
“Hey, baby, what can I get you?” I’m heartened that he seems to remember me without Jeremy as a cue.
“Vodka soda. The cheap kind.” I always get my drinks separately. I’m too poor to split bills at the table. “I’m going to need to see an ID, babe.” I hand it over, and he gives me a heavy pour. “You want to keep the tab open?”
“You can close it out,” I tell him, sliding him my credit card. “Thanks.”
He hands me a sweating glass. Part of me already doesn’t want it. I take a sip right where I stand, ignoring the glares and pointy elbows of couples waiting for their tables. The drink’s strong. And thoroughly disgusting. I feel it work immediately.
I pocket the credit card and fake ID. It’s funny how no one ever notices that the names don’t match. And that the photo isn’t my face. Partly it’s that they don’t expect criminals to look like me, an Asian art student dressed in black, but it also confirms a horrible suspicion: that no one’s ever looking at me. Really looking.
I’m staring at the halo of her before recognition kicks in. There she is, in the mirror behind the bar. Like an apparition. A Japanese horror movie. I want to laugh, I’m in such disbelief. She pushes through the crowd, scanning the clustered bistro tables by the front window, openly searching their faces. When she falls out of frame, I almost turn my head toward her but hesitate—superstitious—thinking that she won’t be there. I lift my hand to my lips, watching my reflected self do the same, confirming my own presence as she double backs toward me. Now we’re both in the mirror, and still I don’t face her. She has different hair—shorter—but it’s ludicrous how enormous her gourd is. Even without our nursery-rhyme names—Jayne and June—you’d see how we belong to each other. Our heads are twinned in bigness.
The joke goes that I practically slid out of Mom after she’d pushed June out. Even after the two-and-change-years between us. Normal-size heads look as though they’d orbit mine, and my sister’s is even huger. The other joke is that June, eleven days late, at eleven pounds and two ounces, hadn’t wanted to come out at all. She’s like one of those parasitic eggs that hatch on a caterpillar, casually eating it for sustenance, using it for shelter without any sense of imposition. If June had her way, she’d have kept growing and worn Mom like a hat.
The last time I saw her, I hid. She’d been transferring for the uptown 4 at Union Square. Her nose was buried in her phone and she was wearing a slate-gray businesswoman’s dress to the knees, looking like someone I’d never be friends with.
It’s only then that I realize: My sister is looking for me.
With my back pressed against the wall, I wait for her to reach me like a Venus flytrap. I steal a glance back to my table. Rae and Jeremy are both on their phones.
She startles when I grab her. “What are you doing here?” I whisper angrily, pulling her behind the hostess section and pinning her, hiding us both. She knows better than to lie. This isn’t her part of town. I quickly assess her appearance. She’s dressed all wrong. The baseball cap on her head reads DARPANA MUTUAL. The putty-colored trench I recognize, but under it is a strange orange shirt, swishy silver workout pants, and ultramarine rubber clogs.
“Why aren’t you in class?” she demands, shaking me off her arm and pulling away. I scoff. It’s so classic. Of course this is the first thing she says to me in almost a year.
“Why aren’t you at work?” I counter. “And what are you wearing?” I haven’t seen her out of a suit in years. Honestly—and this is fucked up—she’s dressed like a rural Chinese person on holiday. I take a step away from her. I want to make clear to anyone observing that we are not together. That this is an intrusion.
“I’ve been calling,” she says. I feel her eyes land judgily on the glass in my hand. I take a long sip, holding her gaze.
“I left, like, three voicemails,” she continues.
“I didn’t see them,” I lie. All of the messages were “Call me.”
“You’re so unreliable.”
“So, you stalked me?”
“I wouldn’t call it stalking,” she says. I need to stop geotagging everything. I forget that my sister’s even on IG. The last thing I saw on her grid was from Halloween, where she’s dressed as a Yu-Gi-Oh! character. It stressed me out so much, I muted her.
She crosses her arms archly. “You know, you could have just gone to San Antonio Community College if you’re hell-bent on being some lush,” she finishes.
I’m tempted to smack her, but we’re mushed against the wall by a party of four inching past us.
“Seriously, what the fuck?” I whisper angrily. “What are you doing here?” For a second we’re back in high school. My adrenaline’s spiked. I slide my left foot back for stability.
But instead of pushing or shoving, she takes a deep breath and refuses my eye.
My heart judders.
“Fuck, is it Mom?” I ask. She’s dead. I’m totally convinced of it. It’s the only thing that would make my sister come see me like this.
“No,” she says. “But we have to talk.”
“So, talk, fuck.” My indignation sounds performative even to me. I realize I’m drunk. The glass in my hand is suddenly empty.
“How are you?” she asks conversationally, doing this little brow-knitting concerned thing.
“You can’t be serious.” Truth is, she’s really beginning to frighten me. This isn’t who we are to each other.
“Fine,” she says quickly. “But I don’t want to tell you here.” She reaches for me. I recoil so fast, her nails scrape my bare forearm. I raise it between us, glaring accusingly even though it doesn’t hurt. We stand there, the radiant resentment between us throbbing.