Paul looked around. “You know you don’t have to stay here.”
“I love it,” said Lisette. “No, seriously. It’s perfect because I can afford it, and it means I can actually save for a security deposit on a real apartment.”
“Do you want to stay with me in Charlotte’s apartment? I really wouldn’t mind.”
“Nah,” Lisette said. “Charity wears me down. It’s boring.”
“I understand,” I replied. “If it helps any, my first studio apartment had a bathroom so cramped that they had to cut a notch into the door to get it to close around the toilet lid.” She snorted with laughter while I drew her a diagram in the air.
We headed to a shop called HomeSense, which had the blank white cheerfulness of the furniture section at Target, and wandered the aisles pondering painted bits of wood with cozy statements on them.
“When archeologists dig up our homes someday,” I told Lisette, “they will date our sites to the early third millennium A.D. by the swirly script on cocktail glasses saying Wine Mom.”
“I must have it!” Lisette cried, placing the ironic glassware in her shopping cart. “For my dungeon lair.”
“You know,” I told her, “a lot of my childhood, we lived in terrible places. My mother wouldn’t pay the bills, and the electricity would go out. She would find a man and he’d pay the utilities for a few months and then he’d be gone again and so would the heat.”
Lisette nodded. “We were also dirt poor.”
“We were dirt and poor,” I replied. “So whatever else you worry about, don’t worry that I’m looking down on you. You got yourself out of a bad situation. You’re my hero.”
“I mean, yeah. Obviously.”
Lisette glanced behind me, and I saw Paul listening to us, slightly embarrassed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just found this pillow with a porcupine on it, and I thought of you.”
“You asshole!” Lisette cried. “Of course I want the porcupine pillow.”
“I’m buying it for you,” he said. “Housewarming gift.”
When Paul dropped me off at the end of the day, he looked serious for a moment. “That stuff about your mother, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Well, my mother is dead, now. It’s a bit of a relief, which is horrible to say, but…growing up, she wasso funny. She was this force of nature, and I wanted to be exactly like her. The sarcasm, the wit, the way she could hold your attention. But by the time she died, she was so bitter and angry, and I was terrified I would become exactly like her.”
“You’re not. A bitter person wouldn’t have become friends with Lisette.”
“She picked me up like a penny on the sidewalk. I got lucky.”
Paul looked at me, seriously. “You really don’t see yourself very well, do you?”
No, he didn’t get to do that. He didn’t get to be kind and sweet and confusing. I looked away. “So improv practice again on Thursday?”
He hesitated, looking like he wanted to say more. “Sure, Abby.”
My next improvpractice was the one—and Lisette had warned me ahead of time this might happen—where I was really bad. I went in a little more confident, and then I had no good ideas. I found it hard to focus. Everything I did felt forced and stupid.
Our scene assignment was supposed to take place in a high school, and Lisette decided to act like a teacher, while I was her student.
“I am very disappointed in you,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said.
“How could you have thought that bringing a live goat to school was a good idea?”
There were any number of things I could have said at that point. I could have suggested that the goat was intended for a ritual sacrifice. I could have said he was my new boyfriend. I could have explained that I had to give a talk about goat cheese. But no.
What I went with was, “I’m really sorry.”
