3
In order to explain the coincidence to Boots, I would have to reveal that I had not told him about Amos. Which would be making a big deal out of a medium deal. This is why the pact was in place. The bones of the concept were solid. No one has the power to control how an ex blooms in one’s partner’s imagination. Every breakup becomes the wrong size in the retelling. You can keep your food from touching all you want, it all winds up in the same place. Besides, there were maybe five people in the world who had met both Amos and Willis, who would understand the peculiarity of the past forty-eight hours. And then one of them invited herself over.
Vadis was in the neighborhood because she had a Victorian lampshade in need of repair and, unbeknownst to me, our apartment is in the lampshade district.
“Row,” she corrected herself, panting into the phone as she cut through street traffic. “It’s more of a row.”
“I feel like I would have noticed.”
“They’re not storefronts,” she said, disgusted at my ignorance. “They’re ateliers that specialize in refurbishing lampshades.”
“Only you.”
“Well, no, not only me or they wouldn’t be in business. Anyway, I’m here.”
The buzzer rang. Boots poked his head out of the bathroom, letting a front of steam into the apartment. His hair was plastered to his head, a streak of shaving cream on his cheek.
“Vadis,” I said, leaning on the buzzer.
“Who drops by unannounced? Is she Mr. Rogers?”
“Was that the premise of Mr. Rogers?”
“You know what I mean.”
I leaned on the buzzer once more, letting her through the second door. Boots scrambled for a shirt. He and Vadis got along so long as I was there to translate. I’d let them gang up on me, tease me about inconsequential things like how long it took me to leave the house or my low alcohol tolerance or how attached I was to little things, like matchbooks and birthday cards. These were easy sacrifices for the sight of my best friend and my fiancé enjoying each other’s company. But whenever I walked in on just the two of them talking, it was like watching a daisy and a stapler trying to hold down a conversation.
Vadis came flying through the apartment with a bushel of pussy willows. The ailing lampshade had already been dropped off at the lampshade hospital and she’d gone on a pussy-willow-buying rampage.
“I live in the flower district, too?”
“You need to leave the house more,” she chided.
Vadis lived the kind of ultra-rural life that, because it took place in New York, was considered hip. She owned a car. She composted. She knew the name of her butcher. She had a butcher.
“You’re wet,” she announced, hugging Boots with her free arm.
“You’re observant,” he said.
He put her pussy willows in a jug on the floor.
“Like a bull in the glass shop,” he murmured.
I could sense his pride in a bad joke setting in. I gave him a simpering smile to keep it from going airborne once more.
“Why are you taking a shower?” she asked, sniffing around him in circles. “Have you killed a man?”
“Because I came from the gym and I’m going to get a beer with my friends. Is this satisfactory to you?”
“Oh,” she said, “well, that’s reasonable. Lola, you have a man who goes to the gym and drinks beer. It’s like a catalog. Hold on to this one.”
Deciding this comment was within an acceptable range of sarcasm, Boots gave her a “ha” and retreated into our bedroom. Vadis and I sat on the sofa, where she launched into a story about a guy she’d started sleeping with who was insisting on day dates. I posited that if I were dating Vadis and being siloed into sex, I, too, would inquire about music festivals and walks in the park.
“Maybe,” she said, having lost all interest in her own quandary.
Courtship for her was a simple affair. Vadis: I like your shirt. Suitor: I like your bone structure. Anyone who wanted more was deemed a nuisance and dismissed.
She yawned and complained her jaw hurt.
“From giving head!” she shouted over her shoulder.
“Why do you have to do that? He doesn’t care who you blow.”
“Maybe that’s why.”
Rocket examined the pussy willows with great interest. Vadis slid out a branch and gave it to her, a gift she accepted with shock followed by reckless abandon. Boots emerged, holding a single shoe, staring down at a pile of shoes by the door.
“Where’s your friend?” he said to the shoe. “Ah-ha!”