Come in? As in enter the premises? Of Nine Five Four?
Unthinkable.
“Come in!” she says again, and this time she grips my wrist and tugs. All my aforementioned belligerence washes away into meek obedience. Maybe I’m too soaked? Maybe she’s just the right amount of bossy? I stumble through the door and gasp with relief when I step into a warm, dry hallway. The door slams shut behind me.
“Are you Miri?” she asks.
I wipe at my glasses and turn to see my savior. She’s got big brown eyes and a long gray braid spiraled into a crown on her head. She’s wearing a cashmere sweater set and New Balance sneakers.
“Oh. No, I’m Roz.”
“Ah. Well. We’re waiting on Miri.” She cracks the door and sticks her head out, peering through the torrential rain. She ducks back in and shrugs. “They sent me to wait here for participants but with this rain…We always lose a few on the first day anyhow. People sign up but don’t end up showing. Come on, then.”
Her voice is so full of authority that I almost take a step after her. “Sorry, I…I’m not signed up.” I actually don’t know what this is. Isn’t this an apartment building?
She stops and beckons me. “It’s raining. At least come sit. I think there are towels in the classroom.”
As I follow her down the hallway (hardwood floors and a mop bucket off to one side, a cheerily flickering line of lights along the wall, rows of doors with nameplates instead of numbers), I see that this is a mixed-use building. We pass a dermatologist’s office, a therapist, a door that just saysMR. GREGin all caps, and then, finally, on to the only open doorway in the hallway.
She disappears through and I peek in after her. It’s bright and merry in there. Ten or so people chatting and milling. Ah. I see. It’s a figure drawing class. They’re setting up their easels in a circle, sharpening pencils, flipping gigantic sheets of paper to the clean side. In the middle of the circle is a midtwenties man with spiky black hair and a terry-cloth robe to his knees. He’s sitting on a wooden platform, leaning on his palms and yawning hugely.
“Miri? Hi, I’m Daniel. The instructor,” a man says from next to me in the doorway. He’s middle-aged, trim brown beard and friendly eyes, just an inch or two taller than I am.
“No. This is Roz,” calls the older woman as she digs through a big set of drawers in the corner. “I’m calling Miri as a no-show.”
The man smiles fondly at her. “Esther is our registrar.”
“Ah.”
Esther pads back to me, hand towel in tow. “Here you go, love.”
After a moment’s consideration, I pull the packaged frame out from under my sweatshirt, which makes both Esther and the man laugh in surprise. Then I gratefully take the towel and scrunch at my hair, wipe off my soaking wet legs.
“If you wanted to stay and warm up,” Daniel the instructor says, “you could take the class. We’re not at capacity, you know.”
“Oh.” I’m completely befuddled by this suggestion.
Doesn’t he know that I haven’t picked up a pencil to draw since middle school? Doesn’t he see that I’m soaking wet and need to go home and change into my fuzzy slippers? And most importantly, that I’m only here because I’m creeping on my husband’s new address and under no circumstances was I actually supposed toenterthis building?
He’s looking at me expectantly and all I’ve said is “Oh.”
I try again. “Um…”
I attempt to summon all that sauce-making ferocity from earlier this evening. Unfortunately, I’m only coming up with the sort of exhaustion you get when you realize you might be about to start your entire life from scratch.
His eyebrows rise in a friendly way. “Lots of beginners in the class.”
“Right.”
“ ’Scuse me,” says a deep voice at my back.
I jump to the side and a man who, I shit you not, looks exactly like Aladdin, is grinning, dripping wet, peering down at me from under a raincoat.
“Sorry!”
“No worries.” He gives me a lingering, seashell-white smile; he has friendly eyes and floppy black hair. As he walks past me, he pulls his hood down and I get a whiff of his scent. He smells like Louis Vuitton’s rich Gen Z grandson.
“Lauro!”
