I moan and burrow back into my pillowcase, the cotton slicked with sweat or drool, probably both.
“What’s going on?” Tara asks groggily from the bottom bunk. “Is there a fire?”
“Something close,” Hal says. “Just foundthisin our mailbox.” She’s waving a sheet of paper, too fast to read even if my eyes were working so soon after waking up. “Aneviction warningfrom the landlord,” she elaborates.
Tara springs up in bed to examine the notice.
“That’s why you shouldn’t check the mail,” I say, still half asleep. “Nothing good comes from it.”
“Then I guess you won’t care about this other one addressed to you,” Hal replies. There’s a small envelope in her other hand. “It’s handwritten.”
“That’s for me?” I ask, blinking my eyes open.
I can’t remember the last time I received mail that wasn’t a bill, a brochure, or a letter from a scammer. This one will probably be a frilly invite for my niece’s first birthday party, planned months in advance. Or maybe a wedding invitation from a college friend, someone who knows I’ll decline but expects me to send a presentanyway, having heard I’m living in New York City and thus jumping to conclusions about my ability to buy the whole registry when I actually can’t afford anything except a toxic rubber spatula, plus two coffee mugs if I’m stretching. “Bushwick” doesn’t mean much back in Michigan. Its antithesis to Manhattan is unknown and unwanted. No one wants the curtain lifted on their glitzy dreams, the gritty truth exposed.
Leaning over my top bunk, I reach out for the letter. Hal doesn’t hand it over.
“Not until we’ve come up with a game plan for the apartment,” she says. “We’ve been short on rent the past three months. Larry’s turning on us, even with the extra weed I got him last month.” She huffs at the injustice of our landlord’s immorality. “EJ, don’t take this personally, but you’re the weak link as far as the finances go. Me and Tara have been covering you for a while now.”
“You haven’t had an actual income in years,” I scowl to Hal.
“True, but I’ve mastered the art of winning entrepreneurship grants,” Hal says. “It’s not much but covers costs.”
“I give you all my profits from driving Uber and working at Kora,” I say. It’s nearly correct, after you deduct the portion I spend on healthcare and gas and food and drinks and subway fare and myriad other costs of keeping yourself alive as an adult in this day and age. “And I nearly always cover the tab at the House of Yes. You’re penalizing my generosity.”
“I don’t want to get into the weeds of it all,” Hal says. “You just need to find a way to contribute your eight hundred per month. Can you do that?”
It feels like a threat. “Or what?”
“Or Astrid will move in to fill the difference,” Hal says swiftly, like this wasn’t a spontaneous ambush at all. Like it was a planned coup. If Tara didn’t look so disoriented, eyes all puffed and wide, I’d think she was in on it too. “Your pick,” Hal says.
“Eviction is expensive for landlords,” I say. “And the law is onthe tenants’ side in New York. His threat is empty. We’ve got a few more months at least.”
“Maybe,” Hal says. “Maybe not.”
“I don’t mind the Astrid idea,” Tara says. She’s operating from fear, imploding too soon. “We’d have four of us again.”
“That’s out of the question,” I say, and then go on to suggest that we start charging Astrid for when she stays over, thirty dollars a night or something like that. “It’s peanuts compared to the billions of dollars that your start-up will be worth.”
Hal bites back, says the business isn’t out of stealth mode yet. “We won’t be revenue-positive for another twelve months at least,” she says. “Empires aren’t built overnight, EJ.”
“I’ll pay the eight hundred,” I say, after a few more arguments that loop around my waist like Hula-Hoops, falling to the ground with a rattle. “I just need a little more time.”
“It’s August nineteenth now,” Hal says, arms folded. “You have until the thirty-first.”
“No problem,” I say. “I’ll speak with my financial advisor about having some funds transferred from my investment accounts.”
“You don’t have a financial advisor,” Hal snaps. “Or investment accounts.”
“Sure I do.” Accidentally, I think about Chris and how I used to think he’d be there to help me with my taxes, my least favorite thing in the world. Loss presses into me again, like it’s leaning on me for balance. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe I need the sorrow to stand, to fill the space that’s been singed. “I just don’t want to liquidate my assets given the current bull market dynamics in US equities,” I say.
Hal appears pleasantly stunned. It’s always insulting how she thinks I don’t know anything about money and business. Even if I did only learn this much from the financial podcasts she blares in the garden, plus some articles I read back when I was trying to learn more about Chris and what he does all day.
“Look, I’m sorry for being harsh here,” Hal says. “I just don’t want us to have to move out of the Dunge Inn.”
“Me neither,” I say. The thought of having to relocate terrifies me. The Inn is where the Redstockings belong. It’s our headquarters.
“Good,” Hal says, turning to leave. “Oh, and here’s that letter.” She tosses it up so it lands on my messy sheets.
