* * *
? ? ?
They settled on a place on the lower level of a much-maligned shopping mall just south of the tunnel. If they were going to do it, why not go all the way? Not only were they going to go somewhere with hot dogs on the menu, but the hot dogs cost twenty dollars. On the way, Alice redownloaded a couple of dating apps and did a little scrolling. The blessing and the curse of the dating app lifestyle was that you could tell the app exactly what you were looking for, and, more or less, that’s all you would see. Men? Women? Under thirty, over forty? All the men and women whose pictures showed up looked fine. They either went to the gym or had cats. They were either snobs about cooking or snobs about music. Alice closed the app and put her phone in her pocket. On the screen, everyone seemed equally unappealing, even the good-looking ones.
When she got off the train, there was a message waiting from Sam—she was running late. Alice wasn’t surprised. When they were in high school, Sam would often show up an hour late, still loitering around her parents’ Columbia faculty housing in Morningside Heights when Alice was waiting by the pay phone outside the Barnes & Noble on Broadway and 82nd Street or holding up a diner table and refusing to order more than one bottomless cup of coffee. Hudson Yards, the giant mall that held the restaurant, was still open, and so Alice wasted time by wandering in and out of empty shops. She nodded at salespeople, who looked back at her hungry for interaction, and then Alice pointed to her phone, pretending that she was listening to someone talk. Emily texted; Melinda sent an email. Alice took a photo of her hands making a peace sign and posted it with the caption 4-0. Four-zero. Was that four wins, zero losses, or zero wins and four losses? Alice wasn’t sure. One store full of beautiful sweaters was having a sale, and Alice tried one on in the aisle. It was two hundred dollars—on sale—but she bought it anyway, because it was her birthday. Sam texted, finally, to say that she had found a parking spot, and that she’d meet her in ten minutes.
* * *
? ? ?
Alice had already gotten a table when Sam hurried in, holding an enormous shopping bag. Sam always looked beautiful, even when she was exhausted and wearing sweatpants. Her hair, which had been relaxed in high school, she now wore naturally, and her enormous head of curls surrounded her face like a halo. Sometimes, when Alice complained about the lines around her eyes or her thin, flat hair, Sam would laugh gently and say that aging well was a Black woman’s legacy, and that she was sorry for Alice’s trouble.
“Hi hi hi,” Sam said, throwing her arms around Alice’s neck. “I’m so sorry, I know that this is a nightmare, and that this is never in a million years where you would want to come for your birthday, and I’m sorry. Also, hi! I miss you! Tell me everything.” Sam crashed into the opposite side of the booth and started taking off layers of clothing.
“Hi hi,” Alice said. “Oh, you know, nothing much. Broke up with Matt, didn’t get a promotion that I didn’t know was even a possibility at work, my dad is still dying. Everything is great.”
“Yes, okay, but,” Sam said, “look at what I got you for your birthday.” She reached into the shopping bag and pulled out a pretty box with a wide silk ribbon wrapped around it. Sam had always been crafty. On the table, Sam’s phone vibrated. “Shit,” she said, and picked it up. “I swear, Leroy is our third baby, and sometimes I feel like Josh is worse than a teenage babysitter. He just texted me to ask where we keep the baby Tylenol, as if it would be somewhere weird, you know, like the garage, or in my underwear drawer.”
Alice slid the box closer to her. “Can I open it?”
“Yes, open, open!” Sam said. “Also, I need a very large drink, but just one, or two at the most, so I can pump and dump when I get home.” She looked around for a waiter and flagged down the first one she saw.
Alice slid the ribbon off the box and pulled off the lid. Inside was a tornado of tissue paper, and nestled inside the paper was a tiara. The diamonds weren’t real, but it was heavy, not some plastic bridal shower nonsense. “Keep going,” Sam said, and so Alice set the tiara on her head and took out another crumpled sheet of tissue paper. At the bottom of the box was a framed photograph. She lifted it out carefully. In the photo, Alice and Sam were both wearing tiaras and slips and dark lipstick. Sam had a beer bottle in her hand, and Alice was taking a drag off a cigarette. They were both staring at the camera, eyes like knives.
“We were so grunge,” Alice said.