“I miss you.” There’s a tightness in Ari’s throat. She’s gotten used to the sensation over the past few months. “I’m sorry I shut you out. I’m a mess and you’re the capable person with all the answers. And I was worried we had finally hit the moment where you asked yourself, ‘Why am I friends with this person? Was it proximity?’？”
Radhya takes a big breath in. “Are you frustrating sometimes? Yes. Have you made extremely questionable decisions? Also, yes.”
“And did you judge me for those decisions?”
“Yeah,” Radhya says. “I’m both imperfect and judgmental.” She takes another bite of grilled cheese. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” She sits forward. “Starting my own business is incredibly risky. My stomach hurts all the time. I have stress dreams where I’m surrounded by ticket printers that won’t stop.” She pauses. “When Brodsky’s sells, I have to figure out a new venue. And Josh might not want to keep doing the pop-ups.”
Ari stops chewing. “Why not?”
“He’s been talking about cooking somewhere else. California, maybe. Fresh start.”
Ari tries and fails to picture Josh in any other location. He feels so rooted to the city, like he and Manhattan are in a co-dependent relationship.
“Do you need a sassy, charming waitress?” Ari asks, trying to push Josh out of her mind.
“No. I need a sassy, charming best friend. Preferably one who lets me give fantastic advice and then ignores it.”
Ari snorts, making Radhya laugh.
“In that case…” Ari stares at the TV, waiting for her throat to loosen up a bit. “I need to tell you about this guy I knew.”
“Okay.” Radhya doesn’t move a muscle, like she’s afraid that the slightest flinch will send Ari fleeing into the night.
“We hated each other for a long time. And then we didn’t. We became friends. And that’s the hardest kind of connection for me. Obviously.” She takes a breath. “He’s one of those people who never has to smell items in their refrigerator before consuming them. Crumbs and misplaced apostrophes are his mortal enemies. He knows exactly how smart he is but doesn’t realize he’s funny. If I could get him to laugh or just, like, hrmph or look exasperated, it made my entire day. Which, I guess, wasn’t hard because I’ve been miserable.” It’s painful to say it all in past tense. “He just got me. He saw me in this way that other people never do. We’re really different, but I could talk to him about anything—all the stuff I tried really hard to hide from everyone else because I felt so”—she swallows—“ashamed of how much I was hurting. Even though I was at my lowest point, he just accepted me. But then we…you know.” Her eyes well up again. “And I convinced myself it was this huge mistake because I couldn’t deal with what it actually meant. But I—I miss him, Rad. I r-really—”
This time she doesn’t try to hold back the big, ugly sobs.
Rad wraps her arms around Ari’s shoulders, getting them both tangled in the blanket.
“Hey,” Radhya says softly. “Breathe?” Ari swallows and takes a gasping inhale, like she’s finally coming up for air. “Start from the beginning.”
* * *
JOSH WALKS SOUTH on Avenue A, across the west boundary of Tompkins Square Park, past a stupid new expensive kefir bar, a Starbucks, a bodega, and whatever the Pyramid Club is now.
Everything else on the block may have changed, but despite his cursed attempt at transforming Brodsky’s into The Brod, his mother had taken it upon herself to revert the place back to its old form. The checkered floor has been mopped thousands of times, but the white squares have been beige forever. As a kid, Josh would volunteer to wipe down the tables, scour the sinks—anything to put chaotic things in order.
More than that, the place has a specific scent. No matter how many spice blends Radhya grinds in the kitchen, he’ll forever detect the smell of stale cigarette smoke from the days of smoking sections separated by nothing but a warped panel of plexiglass. The sweet-and-sour sauce that accompanied every serving of stuffed cabbage. Frankfurters sizzling on the flattop. Containers of coleslaw, macaroni salad, egg salad, and some concoction his dad called “health salad” that only one regular ever ordered.
Danny’s food was so familiar to Josh, he couldn’t properly evaluate it: the specific tang of Uncle Morrie’s brown mustard, the slightly sweet glaze of brisket, the foamy head of a chocolate egg cream that clung to your upper lip. In the years of preparing absurdly complex dishes for the city’s most discerning diners, Josh isn’t sure he’s ever made people as happy as the regulars at Brodsky’s seemed to be.