“Why?” asked Zoe, stifling a yawn.
“To cool it down,” said Cleo.
“To make her laugh,” said Frank.
It felt almost impossible to imagine the severity of the cold now during the heat of August, the same way it’s impossible to think of being hungry when one is full. Frank tried to remember the shallow clouds of smoke his breath made and the feel of heavy snowflakes sinking through the thin skin of his shirt. What he could recall with absolute clarity was the way Cleo had looked sitting in the window, her lovely shining face and honey hair. Everything about her was golden then, the stack of gold rings she was always leaving by his sink, the first surprise of her light, silky pubic hair. She even smelled like honey, some cream she was always lathering herself with, complaining that her skin was too sensitive for the harsh New York winters.
“Can we talk about me again now?” asked Zoe.
But Frank was looking at Cleo. She held his stare. She smiled, and he was forgiven for last night. She was sensitive, he knew that, but she was tough too. He’d yelled to her from the street outside, but she hadn’t heard. Happy? That was what he’d been calling through the window, through the swirling snow. Have I made you happy now?
CHAPTER FIVE
Late August
The Climaxing to Consciousness group met every Friday in a hot-yoga studio on Canal Street above a store advertising $10 aura readings. Zoe had been persuaded to come by her roommate, Tali, who had hair the color of Windex spray and said things like “Your pussy is your power.” She had agreed solely because the class was free, which meant it was the only thing she could afford to do that night.
Until that week, she had been making just enough money as the sole employee of a women’s boutique on Christopher Street. It was a tiny velvet box of a store, owned by a stylist with family money and a fairly obvious drug problem to whom Zoe had lent a tampon at an after-party （she’d used the applicator as a coke straw）。 The clothing sold there catered to the tastes of a particular type of West Village woman, one both wealthy and vaguely bohemian, who worked as … Well, Zoe wasn’t quite sure, but in some career path that meant she was free to shop during the weekday.
Zoe had been instructed to sit in the window and look pretty to attract foot traffic, which suited her inner exhibitionist well. Despite this robust marketing plan, the store was often empty for hours at a time, leaving her free to practice her lines uninhibited. And, since it remained closed between her shifts, Zoe decided that she was free to borrow the clothes with impunity, as long as she was careful not to spill on them, a plan that nipped her own nascent shopping habit in the bud. Best of all, she was paid under the table in cash, which meant she had even been managing to save a tiny bit of money for the first time in her life.
But then she got the medical bill. She’d opened the envelope from Beth Israel carelessly enough, not anticipating that it contained the financial equivalent of a dick slap. Within it she found outlined in clinical detail the substantial costs of the brain scan she’d had at the hospital with Cleo and Frank. She had health insurance （paid for by Frank, of course）， but that only brought the remaining payment down to just over $1,000. Her options for getting funds fast were limited. Since the wedding, Frank had made it clear that the Brother Bank was officially closed. Going to her parents would require telling them that she’d had the seizure in the first place. She had no choice but to pay the bill, and in doing so wiped out her entire measly savings in one go.
And so, her Friday-night plans had been reduced from dinner at Indochine with her Tisch friends to attending a free sex-positive meetup with her slightly unhinged roommate. At nineteen, Zoe was substantially younger than most of the men and women settling into a semicircle on the wooden floor when she arrived. She thought that, if asked to describe the group afterward, she would sum it up by saying there were two people present wearing, for no functional purpose, leg warmers. One pair belonged to the man who was now standing in front of them, slapping his large palms together and asking everyone to take a comfortable cross-legged position.
Zoe sat down next to Tali and studied the group more carefully. She counted two tie-dyed T-shirts （one emblazoned with the slogan “The Motion Is the Lotion”）， a handful of newsboy caps and fedoras, one white woman wearing a bindi, and an assortment of crystal pendants. The only other person near Zoe’s age was a girl sitting directly across from her in a deep V-neck T-shirt that barely contained her pushed-up cleavage. She had a pretty, slightly sulky face that reminded Zoe of a French bulldog.