Chapter Twelve
I leave work at seven on Monday, a full hour before I should, and meet Bella at Snack Taverna in the West Village. It’s this tiny bistro, the best Greek food in the city, and we’ve been going there since we moved to New York—way before I could afford to.
Bella is back to being fifteen minutes late. I order us fava beans drenched in olive oil and garlic—her favorite. They’re on the table when she arrives.
She texted me back this morning and demanded we have dinner tonight.It has been too long,she said.I feel like you’re avoidingme.
I rarely leave work early, if ever. When David and I make dinner reservations they’re always for eight-thirty or nine. But now it’s a little past seven, still light out, and I’m sitting here. Bella has always been the only person in my life who can talk me out of my norm.
“It’s so hot out there,” she says when she arrives. She’s wearing a white brocade-and-lace dress from Zimmermann and gold lace-up sandals. Her hair is up in a topknot, some loose strands dangling down her neck.
“It’s a swamp. Summer always happens so suddenly.” I lean over the table and kiss her on the cheek. I’ve sweated through my silk shirt and pencil skirt. I own basically no summer clothes. Luckily the air conditioning is on full blast in here.
“How was the weekend?” she asks. “Did you sleep at all?”
I smile. “No.”
She shakes her head. “You loved it.”
“Maybe.” I scoop some beans onto her plate. I have to know: “Did you guys hear anything more about the apartment?”
She looks at me and frowns, and then her face dawns recognition. “Oh, right! There’s this other one I think I want. It’s this totally savage place in Meatpacking. I honestly didn’t know they had anything like that left there. Everything is so genericnow.”
“You don’t like the Dumbo loft?”
She shrugs. “I’m just not sure I want to live there. There’s only one grocery store, and it must be freezing in the winter. All of those wide streets that close to the water.? It seems kind of isolated.”
“It’s close to every train,” I say. “And the view is spectacular. There’s so much light, Bella. I can see you painting there.”
Bella squints at me. “What’s going on? You hated that place. You told me I shouldn’t even consider it.”
I wave her off. She’s right, though. What am I doing? The words keep tumbling out, like I have no control over them. “I don’t know,” I say. “What do I know? I’ve lived within ten blocks for the last decade.”
Bella leans forward. Her face splits into a sly smile. “You love that place.”
It’s raw space, but I have to admit it’s beautiful. Somehow industrial and energetic and peaceful, all at once.
“No,” I say. Firm. Definitive. “It’s a pile of plywood. I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”
Bella crosses her arms. “You love it,” she says.
I don’t know why I can’t just condemn it. Tell her she’s right—it’s freezing and too far and absurd—then drop it. I should be thrilled that she has forgotten about it. I want her to forget about it. I want that apartment to disappear into the atmosphere. So far I’m doing a good job at preventing that fateful hour. If the apartment disappears, so does what happened there.
“No, it’s true,” I say. “Dumbo is far. And Aaron said it would need a ton of work.” The last part is a little bit of a lie.
Bella opens her mouth to say something but closes it again.
“So things are good with you guys?” I venture.
Bella sighs. “He said you had a nice time at the apartment. Like maybe you liked him a little better? He said you seemed friendly, which is entirely out of character.”
“Hey.”
“You’re many things,” Bella says. “But friendly never really comes to mind.”
I have a flash of Bella and me, newly minted New Yorkers, in line for some ludicrously expensive club in the Meatpacking District. Bella had lent me one of her dresses, something short and bright, and it was cold, although I don’t remember the season—late fall, early winter? We were without coats, as we usually were in the years surrounding twenty.
In this slice of memory, Bella is flirting with the door guy, a club promoter named Scoot or Hinds, some sound not word, someone who liked when hot girls showed up, liked when Bella did. She’s telling him she just has a few more friends she wants to bring in.
