“How does a writer make decisions?”
“Yes.”
“Well”—she paused—“I think you have to know what you’re after, and each decision is a step building a staircase toward the truest version of the story. But it’s never that simple. You mostly make a bunch of bad decisions and then have to undo them.” She turned to no one and said, “What I won’t do is smoke in front of a student.” Then she wrestled open the window and started smoking. “Don’t tell my niece.”
“I won’t.” I waited until she was done. “So, about your class, is there anything I could do…”
She eyed me. “I thought I told you to email me.”
I guess it had all come back to her. “Right, but you didn’t tell me what I should say.”
“And so your response to not knowing was to what? Simply not do it?” She seemed truly baffled by this.
“Well, when you say it like that, it sounds bad.”
“I don’t understand Zoomers. What even is aZoomer? Do you know?” She waited for a reply, then kept talking. “Send me your writing. Should we say you’ll get it to me by the end of the week?”
The end of the week was tomorrow. “That’s perfect!”
Her demeanor softened, her eyes resting warm on my face. “I’ve seen the world end many times. It’s never really the end. This is not an argument for complacency, dear. Or for not caring. This is an argument for preparing for what comes after the end because there will be an after.”
Chapter 22
Rah gave me and Milan a ride to the graduate art showcase. It was nearly two weeks after the election and things felt eerily back to normal. Or rather, everyone was holding their breath until the inauguration, carrying on with daily life while daily life still existed.
Milan and I climbed from Rah’s truck onto the cold curb. She cupped her cheeks with gloved hands. The wind flapped my hair like a sailboat as I stared at the glowing arts center. Something was wrong with me for coming after Tristan said we shouldn’t see each other, but I was too curious about Nia’s art to stay away.
I stuck my head back in Rah’s truck thinking if I brought another man, I wouldn’t seem like a stalker. “What are you doing now?”
“Home.” He said “home” like it tasted funny.
“Wanna come to this thing?”
He lugged his eyes up to the sleek spaceship of a building. “I’m not dressed for nothing like that.”
“I’m literally wearing bullshit I pulled from my hamper.” This was an absolute lie. I was wearing a black turtleneck, a leather jacket, knee-high boots. The moment Nia gave me that flyer, I’d agonized over what to wear, ripping every option from my body like a despairing middle schooler angling for their first kiss at the school dance.
He said, somberly, “You look nice.”
“You look nice too,” I told him.
Milan sidled up beside me, poking her head in the car. “You have any gummies?”
Rah seemed unconvinced. He reached into his glove compartment for a Ziploc bag. Milan tongued a sugary worm into her mouth, offeringone to me. I shook my head. I couldn’t afford to mistake Tristan for a coconut again.
Rah sighed. “Lemme park first, aight?”
When he drove off, I knew he wasn’t coming back.
The showcase was on the second floor. Opera music wailed over tapered candles in one studio. In another, the artist formed a mountain of dirt with their hands. Down the hallway, women recited their sexual experiences in hushed voices over a speaker. I stood at this last studio’s threshold, suspended. Only when Milan patted my arm did I remember to move forward.
It was smaller inside than I’d expected, maybe because the recordings drifted through the doorway with the echoey largesse of an airier space. Each recording corresponded with a portrait. Milan and I stood before one, a woman turned to the side, eyes sweeping downward with a look of private shame. The hairs stood on my forearms. The only other time I felt this internal windchill was in the presence of great writing. Or great sex. A feeling that all the mysteries of life bent briefly into the light before retreating into the dark.
“This painting’s making me feel like shit,” Milan said.
We moved through the press of bodies: twenty-somethings in barrel jeans, sneakers destroyed by city sidewalks, puffing vapes indiscreetly before stuffing them into their coat pockets. A hand touched my mid-back. I stuttered forward like I’d been burned.
When I turned around, Nia was in a furry zebra-print bucket hat that somehow didn’t look ridiculous. Every time she appeared it felt like a surprise, like a person whose arrival you could never prepare for.
