This is the city of her social media posts, of her messages to her mother, and phone calls with her older sister, Cassie, at home with her family in Melbourne.
There is, however, another New York. The New York of staring at the ceiling in painful anticipation, of waiting for that early morning bell, the electronic ding of Ash’s text messages, the scramble for her phone. She sleeps naked, ready, and he has been unfailing in his appreciation so far. Ash, it turns out, is as present in this city as the one she left behind. It’s as if that first week’s silence has made him try harder to reach her, and their conversations feel as urgent as they did when they first discovered each other, what seems like a lifetime ago.
I can’t sleep, Ruby. You’ve got me in a wild state. I was thinking about you all day. Show me your—
‘No,’ she told Cassie last night. ‘We haven’t spoken since I got here.’
She hates the lie, knows how disappointed her sister would be if she knew Ruby was still communicating with Ash. But, as she tells herself each morning, this is just a small lie. One small lie, and three hundred square miles of everything else. Tomorrow, Coney Island. The American Ballet. Cabaret in the Village. Another rooftop bar and another over-priced cocktail. She’s trying to do better. But she never promised to be perfect.
Perfect is something Ruby Jones thinks about a lot.
She assumes Ash’s fiancée is perfect. Ruby will not be the kind of woman who disparages the soon-to-be wife. She will not be a cliché, no more of a cliché than she has already become, at least. Which means she often swings too far the other way, idealises a woman she has never met, never spoken to. Imagines clean teeth and tidy nails. Clear lip gloss and light foundation. Capri pants and a purposeful watch. A ring finger heavy with a single diamond, and long, shiny hair. A double degree earned easily, and a year spent volunteering overseas. One book read at a time, and a signature dish she brings to parties. Requested by the hosts of course, because everyone loves Emma’s—and here, Ruby’s list of imagined credentials falters. It is one thing to create a version of Ash’s fiancée in her head, form the outline of a person based on the little she knows from social media and overheard conversations. It becomes painful to insert that creation into a whole world, a real world this woman shares with Ash, filled with friends, dinner parties, weekends, plans. When she considers this, Ruby understands, her bones aching, that she is just a scrawl across the page, while Ash’s fiancée is a series of fully formed sentences and punctuations; she makes up whole paragraphs of his life.
Ruby would be foolish to dwell on everything she is missing out on.
Better to focus on what she herself brings to Ash. The things she brings out in him.
‘I’m not like this with anyone else,’ he once told her, and Ruby believes this, at least, to be true.
（Are we ever the same person with someone else? And if we’re not, what happens when one of you leaves, where does that version of you go? This is something I have thought about a lot since my mother left me.）
Perhaps it is the weather, Ruby thinks, causing her fever. The way the constant rain evokes memories of long afternoons spent in bed, reminds her of entwined limbs and slow kisses and drowsing in someone’s arms. Exploring the city on her own these past few days has clearly exacerbated her longing, drawn out her desire for connection. It can’t help that most of her memories of long afternoons spent in bed are imagined, not real; since Ash, there has been no one else, and he was seldom available to her for longer than an hour or two, at best. Ruby’s heart twangs at this truth, a guitar string plucked, and it occurs to her, all of a sudden, that what she really needs is to be touched. It has been days since she has experienced any form of human contact. Weeks, even. A person could go crazy from that kind of deprivation.
Two days ago, Ruby ran past a small massage parlour on Amsterdam, sandwiched between a computer repair company and a cheque cashing store. Deep Tissue, 1 hr / $55, mid-week special the handwritten sign in the window said. It’s worth a try, she thinks now, and before she has time to change her mind, she’s back out in the rain, heading east. I’m slowly coming to understand this place, she thinks, crossing this street, then that, until she reaches her destination. A little bell sounds as she enters from the street, and a slight man in what looks like silk pyjamas nods from the front desk. She appears to be his only customer, and he is soon leading her to a small room out back, with just enough space for a bed and a cane basket for her clothes.