“Yellow line.” I pull out a pen and write on her paper R/W to 57th Street. Columbus Circle in tidy capital letters in case she needs to show someone else on her trek.
The woman smiles again as featureless as a fist and nods appreciatively before leaving. She merrily jaywalks at a diagonal, far from the crosswalk.
“Columbus Circle? What the hell is she going there for?”
I shrug.
“I would have put money on East Broadway or Flushing,” June says, shaking her head. “When did I become so racist?”
I turn to my sister, ready to tell her she’s always been racist, when I stop. June has dark smudges under her eyes, and her hair’s stringy. It startles me. I recognize her so essentially that she may as well be an avatar. She’s sick. I hadn’t known that June can be sick. I’m overcome with the urge to touch her.
“You know, I’ve never seen a recycling lady on a train before,” she muses, watching the woman go. I stand next to her, nudging her shoulder slightly with mine.
“Me neither.”
The observation reminds me of all the times I’ve wanted to call her over the past two years. The list of things in my phone that I know June would love to weigh in on.
“You think the churros lady at Union Square takes the train?” I’ve never seen her haul the cart downstairs.
“No way. Her man drives her. He has to help with the stairs. She gets up at four in the morning to make them, and she sells them, too, because he bitches too much about all that standing. He has to make up for it by driving.”
We keep watching as the recycling lady gets small. “I’ve never seen a recycling lady at night,” I tell her.
“Really?” My sister turns to me. “I’ve never seen one during the day.”
I imagine the woman on the train, clutching the subway pole because no one will give up their seat for her. I want to fight them all.
“Don’t you kinda want to go with her? Make sure she gets where she’s going.”
“Yeah.”
The canner seems so small yet certain. She turns the corner. I’d hoped she’d look over and wave.
“How are you gonna keep all this from Mom?” I ask June finally. I haven’t seen them in over two years, but June talks to her every day.
June smacks my chest with the back of her hand, laughing. I turn in surprise. “Mom would be so fucking pissed that you thought of her because of that old-ass woman.”
I shove her back, smiling.
It’s true.
chapter 6
I stare at the other passengers in our shared jaundiced lighting. There’s no equalizer greater than the F train. There’s a heavyset blond dude in a lime-green rugby shirt across from me.
Next to him, with her legs stretched way out, is a youngish girl in an enormous hoodie and platform sneakers. Her teen-spreading is so surly, I can’t help but smile at her. I wonder what their deals are. It’s absurd that there are so many people walking around who aren’t sick.
And still so many others who are. I googled it. There are seventeen million new cancer cases every year. I don’t know how to conceptualize that number. I don’t even know what one million looks like. The teen rolls her eyes at me behind her stringy bangs. I shift focus to outside the window.
Several bluish skyscrapers dot the horizon. If I’m honest and if I had the money, I’d probably live in one too. I’ve always felt safer off the ground.
I unlock the metal gate at my apartment. My knees throb from the boots and my back aches from sucking in my stomach. I can’t wait to get out of these fucking jeans. All I want to do is peel off this costume, step into the shower, eat the world, and go to bed.
Something tells me to listen for noise before I insert my keys.
Quiet.
Good.
When I open the door, all the lights are on.
Fuck.
I was so certain he’d stay out. He being Jeremy.
There are two glasses on the kitchen counter with inky remnants of red wine and an unfamiliar orange leather tote. It has a blue-and-white ribbon stripe running up the center of it.
I check for her shoes by the door but spy only his New Balances and my sandals. I can’t believe he’s letting this bitch wear shoes in my house. I’ll bet they’re expensive, too.
My keys dig into my palm as I tiptoe to the bedroom. The mattress is just about flush on all four walls. And it’s only a twin. Before I can press my ear to the door, I hear it. Laughter. Rage clutches my throat tight. I taste bile.
For the record: I know that Jeremy has never been my real boyfriend. We were hooking up and then we weren’t. But he still lives here. If you ask him, he’d tell you that we found each other on Craigslist. That he’d answered my ad for a roommate.
That’s not exactly true.
I’d seen him before. The summer I moved to New York, I knew no one. June loaned me money for the mattress and I’d found an airless room in a three-bedroom apartment with two other girls, Megan and Hillary, who’d been best friends since high school. It felt as though they were locked in a contest to see who could be less interested in me. It was a dead heat. I’d seen Jeremy outside of a coffee shop in Bushwick with his cream-colored bike. And when he introduced himself, extending his hand, I was as stunned as if a painting had spoken to me. I’d spent weeks longing for anyone to address me. My roommates went everywhere and did everything together. At first, they were civil. Until I made the mistake of buying the wrong trash can liners and then it was a bonanza of crisp, passive-aggressive Post-it notes remunerating my failings. They’d pointedly ignore me when I dared enter the living room. So, I went everywhere people my age—art students, design students, aspiring musicians, actors—gathered. I’d sit near them with a book and wait to be invited.
He asked me to watch his bike while he grabbed a coffee because he’d forgotten his lock, and I did. When he thanked me and rode away, I was bereft.
He wore this white shirt that billowed behind him like a cape, and I was fascinated that he didn’t seem to carry anything while I lugged around chargers and granola bars and novels that might provoke conversation. All Sally Rooney Everything. A little poetry.
When he rang my buzzer four months ago—almost two years later—and I watched the top of his head ascending the stairs, it felt like kismet.
I was stuck in a kind of constant, rambling bewilderment that life wasn’t perfect in New York. It wasn’t solely my roommates’ chilly dispositions. I’d search every face for any sign of rapport. A knowing eye roll, a bemused smile, but in their absence, I convinced myself I was doing it wrong. College was impenetrable. The dorm kids forged quick loyalties. Design students flocked by major. And the hard-faced girls—real New York natives—with their artfully applied makeup, the ones who knew where the parties were, clung only to each other. I was a marketing major at fashion school living an hour outside of campus. Fashion Avenue, which is what they call Seventh, wasn’t glamorous at all.
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.