She pouted, trying, and failing, to look cute.
“What about your fiancé?” I asked. I still fully intended to walk away and never see her again, but she probably took my question as a sign that I was flirting back.
As I said that, we both glanced at her ring finger, which was bare.
“We’re not… It’s complicated. Come on. They have a cellar full of expensive wines. She’s hosting a wake afterward, and I’m sure she’ll put some out. And if not, I’ll get it myself. She owes me. She owes mesomuch.”
I let out a small laugh before I realized that Cassie was suggesting stealing her dead dad’s wine from his grieving widow. Then I grinned openly. That sounded kind of fun.
***
We did just that. I had been so motivated by the work opportunity in New York that I’d perfected my English to the nth degree, always practicing my accent and looking up the meaning of new words I encountered. Still, the pastor’s sermon and the religious verses flew right over my head. They also seemed to go over Cassie’s, who wore a dress too short to be appropriate. She paid little attention to the service and focused instead on casting judgmental looks at the mourners, especially Ms. Crowes, who was flanked by her and Tim’s two sons, in their late teens.
We drank the wine, ate the food, again and again. Cassie asked me questions about France and Paris, but she was also curious about life in “the big city.” I gave her the varnished version New Yorkers feed to out-of-towners: the bright lights, rubbing elbows with celebrities at the latest brunch hot spot, the endless options of amazing things to do at any time of day and night. Cassie lapped it up and it made my heart twitch.
At first, coming to New York had been an exit route, a solution to my desperate urge to get out of France. But now I genuinely loved it here. I was a brand-new me with a real career and a half-decent apartment. I’d even started to make friends with some of my colleagues. I was creating a life for myself here, and losing my job meant losing it, too. I hadn’t even had a real chance to make it in the Big Apple. Hadn’t saved anywhere near enough money. It’s not just that I wasn’t ready to leave. Icouldn’tleave. Or at least, I couldn’t go home.
I didn’t remember how Cassie and I ended up at my place. Correction: I didn’twantto remember. Anytime I did something bad—like sleeping with a girl right after her estranged father’s funeral—I found it easier not to connect the dots in my memory. Did it really matter how Cassie came to straddle me on my couch, her breath thick with booze as she unbuckled my belt?
She was still there the next morning when I woke up. An hour later, she got dressed and left. I figured it was the last I’d see of her.
But she knocked on my door that afternoon—once, twice, three times—until I answered.
“Hey, what’s up?” I hung in the doorframe, blocking the way.
“I think I’ll stay in the city for a while, check out some of these spots you told me about.” Cassie pushed past me and slipped inside.
A few questions popped into my mind: Did she have a job? Even if she wasn’t actually engaged, was anyone waiting for her back home in her country town? But I didn’t care enough to ask—Ireallyshould have cared enough to ask—so I went to fish out my two remaining beers from the fridge. Cassie dragged a dining chair back and sat down, accepting the bottle I handed her like we did this all the time.
She took a swig. “Maybe you could show me around.” Then another one. For a small woman she drank thirstily.
My mind started buzzing, and not only because of the hangover. Since being let go from Bhotel, I’d spent every waking moment trying to figure out how I could stay in the States, and by now I knew two things for sure: the only solution cost too much, and I was running out of time to make it happen.
Still, a sliver of hope gnawed at me. Cassie shouldn’t have come back, but she did. If I could convince her, I’d get another shot at making it here. But how? I had nothing to offer.
“I’m kind of broke.” It wasn’t quite so simple: I’d saved every penny I could since moving here, but it didn’t amount to all that much. A few thousand dollars paled in comparison to the debt I’d racked up back in France. Though it was much easier to ignore it while I was here.
I’d heard about immigrants paying American citizens for a fake marriage, which led to a very real green card. It was the golden ticket to staying in the country legally—to be able to work, and then maybe even start a business. Make real money again.The American way.Many actually gotaway with these marriages. It wasn’t so hard, apparently, but you had to pony up big money to the person who agreed to be part of the scheme. I didn’t have that. I didn’t even have a fraction of that.
Cassie smirked. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”
My prospects for my last few days here amounted to wallowing in self-pity as I wandered the streets—making up stories for what I would tell people back in France. In reality, no one would care about what had happened to me. My parents didn’t speak to me anymore. My brother couldn’t even look me in the eye. And as for the friends I used to have, well…they’d have my head on a stick if they ever saw me again.
I took a long sip of my beer, not wanting to seem too eager. I had nothing else to lose, so I might as well try. “What’s first on your list?”
Chapter 4
Taylor
Now
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The muffled sound comes to me like in a fever-fueled dream. My eyelids feel glued together and I have to force them open to come back to the land of the living, where everything is dark.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I feel around the bed, jogging my memory. Crumpled sheets are twisted around my half-naked body. I’m in a hotel room. I fell asleep. When I was a little girl, I often thought about my bed. How big it was, with plenty of space for me to spread out. How soft the linens were, washed with care on a regular basis. How comfortable. In truth, it wasn’t really any of these things, but any bed is more comfortable than no bed at all. I felt lucky. No, grateful. There was a roof over my head and, for a long while, it was the best I could hope for.
