1
Leverage
“Get dressed,” Jackie announces, leaning against her open bedroom door. “We’re going out.”
Lili glances at the time on her computer screen.
Catching the look, her roommate groans. “Come on, it’s barely nine. We haven’t seen you in days, it’s never fun without you.”
Lili fidgets with her septum piercing, calculating hours of productive work left tonight. “Kerr wants this draft soon.”
It hurts to refuse. She wants to go out; she so badly wants the familiar freedom and exhilaration of a night out: summer in the city, the rasp of mezcal, cigarette smoke on crowded sidewalks, shared laughter with her friends, relief of responsibility lifted for a few hours. She wants to step away from work, set aside her phone that she keeps checking—still no response. She’d like to take a deep inhale, push aside the restless burn of ambition and insufficiency that eats at her as she writes, the tension of striving. But she’s so close—one more good look, then it’d be done: a full first draft of her thesis, ready for her adviser’s review. The ground will be steady underneath her for a moment.
Jackie doesn’t let up. “Come on,” she insists. She’s still wearing makeup from work today, a lookbook shoot. Her bright red hair is freshly washed, and she looks beautiful. Behind her, Lili can hear their friend Amina talking on the phone, the clack of her heels in their tinyWilliamsburg kitchen. “We can go out, drink, dance, and have you back by midnight—”
Lili snorts, toying with her phone. “When have you ever gotten home by midnight?”
“Look who’s talking—”
“One hour,” Amina implores, joining in. There is dried oil paint on her hands, burnt burgundy; Lili wonders what painting she was working on today. “One hour, please. Consider this an intervention—Jesus, we miss you!”
“Tell her I’m dying,” says a distant male voice, insistent on Amina’s phone. “Tell her it’s terminal.”
Lili rolls her eyes. It’s James: one of her best friends since undergrad, and Amina’s boyfriend. “Jamie, you want me to go out in FiDi,” she retorts, loud enough that he can hear. “It’s almost June, it’ll be crawling with finance interns.”
“You’re telling me? I’m going to be here at the office all night, bloody babysitting them. Did you hear about that Goldman analyst who died from sheer overwork? That’s going to be me, unless I get an hour’s respite with alcohol and pretty girls—”
“Watch yourself,” Amina warns him.
“Isn’t this your socialist praxis?” Jackie teases Lili. “Rejecting labor’s dominance over leisure?”
Lili laughs, shaking her head. “Go, have fun. Next week, I promise.”
Amina sighs. “Fine,” she says, pressing a quick kiss to Lili’s forehead. “But I’m going to drink enough for both of us.”
“What if I meet my husband tonight?” Jackie demands. “What if I meet him, and you aren’t there to see it?”
Lili suppresses a smile. “I say this with affection, but I highly doubt that.”
Her phone buzzes. With overwhelming relief, she grabs it; but it’s only a notification from their group chat with the rest of their friends. Her heart sinks.
In the hall, she hears Jackie chattering, grabbing keys as Amina checks Uber prices.
Gnawing on a hangnail, Lili taps open the text message she sent to her foster parents that morning.
(10:37 a.m.) Hi, hope all’s well! If it’s alright with you, I was thinking I could come home to Marin to visit for a week or so this summer?
Nothing else. No response.
A hot lick of shame rises up her throat. She rarely texts them; she tries so hard not to be a burden.
She glances across her room: stacks of books, dog-eared; her small suitcase peeking out of her closet, in anticipation of maybe visiting home, for the first time in years; disassembled thesis drafts on her desk, cold coffee mugs; her half-full laundry basket, overalls dirty from her morning shift at the urban farm by the East River; the plants overspilling on her windowsill, remnants of incense; the frantic sticky note slapped to her calendar, reminding her to withdraw savings—dwindling life insurance from her parents, carefully rationed money she’s loath to ever use—for rent, her own money running dry before her teaching assistantship starts again in the fall.
Their apartment door screeches open. Jackie laughs at something Amina says.
Lili feels a sudden, clear snap of pain: how easily her foster parents forget her presence, how quickly her friends move past her absence.
If she isn’t needed, at least she can feel wanted, tonight.
