Upstairs, I found my apartment transformed. A new dining table had been brought in, rectangular and long, with rows of appetizers, crackers, nuts, marinated olives, various-colored dips laid out down its spine, and more cubed cheese than I’d ever seen. This not-mine table ran from the edge of the kitchen to the other side of the living room, right up next to Suede Chair. People I didn’t know were meandering around this table, picking at food. A nightmare? I closed my eyes and rubbed them. When I opened them again, the scene hadn’t changed.
Joan! some elegantly dressed woman shouted from the bay window where she was drawing the blinds. We were going to surprise you but weren’t sure when you would be back. Not everything is prepared yet and not everyone is here.
What’s going on? I asked. Who are you?
Mark’s idea, actually, said the man beside her, in a sweater vest and khakis, cradling a handful of nuts. Been planning it for days, told us all to keep it secret. The man pointed to my tallest book stalagmite and said I had some good ones in there, some of his faves. But he would be interested in my thoughts on them, and why I’d chosen to include certain titles over others, whenever I had a free minute to chat.
For the first time in a while, Mark was nowhere to be found.
My door opened, and in came the same weight and height couple from the elevator where they had been discussing apartment 9B and cultural moments. They handed me a bottle of wine and patted my shoulder. Nice to see you again, they said in unison, keep up the good work.
I took the bottle of wine and asked, What good work? But they had already moseyed on.
The door opened again and in came another stranger with another bottle of wine.
With no free hand left, I had to move away from the door and entryway. I backed myself into the kitchen and bumped into something. I turned, and the something was an Asian. Whoa, I said. I hadn’t met other Asian tenants in the building before and assumed that I was the only one.
You lost? she asked, her lids dusted in a cool electric-blue shadow, her bangs cut on a slant. She introduced herself as the Korean exchange student subletting 4D for the year and studying graphic design at Columbia. Then she introduced herself as a postmillennial.
A what?
Because feeling lost is okay, she went on. I feel lost all the time.
For you, she said, and held out a packet of Chapagetti, or the best instant ramen that I would ever have. She handed me a round bowl of microwaveable rice and a tin of low-sodium Spam. The Spam should be fried and put over the rice in strips, like rays of a pink sun. If I felt adventurous, I could add a fried egg on top and blanched spinach on the side.
I brought my bottle-holding arms together and the cool, postmillennial Asian placed colorfully packaged food items into my embrace.
Let me know what you think about them, she said. Or don’t. Whatever works. The Korean word for snacks is gansik, or “in-between foods,” she told me, and without knowing why, except that there was something open about her, I told her that the Chinese word is líng shí, or “zero foods.”
Friends, she stated, hooking her pinkie onto mine. She tugged and I wobbled, and would have dropped everything had Mark not appeared beside me right then and started taking the things out of my arms.
We have a wine rack, you know, he said.
We do? I said. Since when?
He’d brought one in last week.
Cute, said the postmillennial about us, and sauntered off to join the growing crowd in the living room. The door had been opening and closing intermittently. I took a peek and saw that there were close to ten people, huddled in two separate circles that were slowly merging.
I told Mark I couldn’t go out there. I didn’t know anyone, but somehow everyone seemed to know me. It was a trap.
They know you because I told them, he said.
What would possess you to do that? I asked.
Because this is your moment.
My kitchen counter held a dozen bottles now, and Mark was splitting them up into three groups by color. The sparkling and white he put in the fridge. The reds he started to uncork.
You used to be so busy with work, he said. But now that I was on leave or possibly suspended—which still pissed him off, by the way, and he kept mentioning that I should file a complaint about workplace abuse with HR—he thought I deserved a better, more welcoming experience and a chance to get to know the other tenants, as well as have them get to know me. They were all great people, cultured and easy to talk to. A woman who had recently been to Patagonia on a humanitarian trip to build houses. Another who teaches English to underserved communities. Even an art student from Korea, whom I’d just met and was experiencing her first dose of authentic American life. Mark had been meaning to get this group together for some time. He hoped to make introductions and to have us all connect. In case I wasn’t up-to-date on lingo, he explained that these were like-minded folks, folks who were well informed, self-aware, or, as the kids say, woke.