“What do you suggest?” she asks. “This Week in Tech?”
“Not if you want to fall asleep. Apparently.” There’s a luxurious fifteen seconds of quiet that Josh feels no pressure to fill. Just Ari breathing and the occasional sound of tires bumping along the cobblestone street five stories below.
“You know, every night,” she says, “I lie here by myself and think, ‘Tomorrow is the day I’ll wake up and feel okay about this.’ There has to be a tipping point, right? Do you ever feel like you’re living a depressing ending, but you never get to the last page? There’s no pithy final line? It just keeps going.”
Fragments of thoughts and observations and painful experiences offer themselves up in his head but nothing comes out of his mouth. She probably needs comfort—not exactly part of his repertoire.
“God, I should hang up.” She laughs in a way that sounds forced and then, “Sorry for the cringe…I’m just—yeah…”
If landlines were still a thing, there would be a dial tone, but there’s no sense of finality when she ends the call before he can respond.
9
“WHO ARE YOU TEXTING?” GABE asks, craning his neck to glance at Ari’s chiming phone as they reach the fourth-floor landing of Radhya’s apartment.
“Get off.” She swats at his chest as they walk down the hall.
Tues, Nov 22, 9:23 p.m.
Josh: I actually slept last night.
Midnight to 6 a.m. according to my tracker.
Ari hesitates for a half-second before rapping on the door. “Are you decent?” she calls. “It’s not a dealbreaker if you aren’t.”
Ari’s had a key for five years, but the courtesy knock has been a habit since they’d shared the railroad apartment.
Ari: ooh nice of you to let me win at insomnia
Rad’s door flies open with a loud groan. A tall man with floppy, sandy hair and a beakish nose ducks past Ari and Gabe with a tiny acknowledging nod. He’s clutching his coat and a light blue button-down shirt that’s unmistakably part of a server’s uniform at Radhya’s current restaurant.
Gabe’s gaze follows him down the hallway. “Radhya’s celebrating early.”
NoFucksgiving is a sloppy gathering of wannabe entertainers and people with master’s degrees who realized they could double their arts nonprofit salaries by waiting tables and bartending during “the most magical time of the year.” For the next month and a half, they’ll be working overtime while tourists descend on the city and office workers put on their finest cocktail attire for a slew of awkward annual holiday parties.
Ari hangs up her plaid peacoat. It’s been weeks since she’s trekked out to Brooklyn. Not because she doesn’t want to see Radhya. But maybe there’d been a bit of an overdose of advice and tough love in the immediate aftermath of Cass moving out. In the past month, Ari hadn’t quite figured out how to integrate her best friend back into her life once the shock had worn off. And Rad can’t stop asking questions like, “Did you call my divorce lawyer?”
Josh: Have your recent…purchases helped at all?
Ah yes, her radical acts of self-care are currently plugged into her spiderweb-like network of charging cables—each one unique, for some reason—on the floor where her nightstand used to be.
Ari: I’ve been trying a new thing where I use them in the morning.
supposedly it improves your math skills.
Josh: At least you have a reason to wake up.
“Who was that?” Ari calls out.
“Back waiter,” Radhya answers from the bedroom. “Cute, right? Hey, can you call my phone? I can’t find it.”
Ari taps on her contact name. A robotic British accent declares “Calling Rah-dee-yah Am-bah-nee Woman Cook Medium Skin Tone” through Radhya’s Bluetooth speakers.
She nudges Gabe. “Do you know how to stop my phone from announcing every single call like there’s a tiny aristocratic butler in there? I changed the settings one time to play DJ during a party and now it automatically connects every time I’m in this apartment. What if some accidental porn popped up on my phone?”
“Since when is porn ‘accidental’ to you?”
Radhya walks out of the bedroom, heeled boots under her arm. “I don’t want to know the context of this conversation.” She lifts the couch cushions, searching for the device. A muffled buzz sounds from the floor beside her armchair. Radhya lifts up a pair of jeans, the back pocket glowing. “Aha!”