Still nothing on her phone. A few concerned emails from Eileen after she didn’t show up to work yesterday, a low balance warning from her bank after she insisted on paying for her own plane ticket. In the taxi, she responded to Jackie—Landed. Love you—and glanced at the count of unopened messages from him, growing stale and unmoving. No recent calls, no new voicemails.
Now, in the street, she lights a cigarette, taking a quick drag. Aboveher, she hears the indistinct voices of her friends as they get ready for dinner. Amina’s laugh drifts down. It’s beautiful, the apartment: high ceilings, herringbone floors. A burst of fresh flowers greeted them in the hall, a welcome note from Amina’s parents in a florist’s anonymous handwriting.
Tired, disoriented—remnants of the Ambien—Lili glances down the street: Hausmannian residences, art galleries closing soon, a corner restaurant filling up with neighborhood clientele. When she’d come downstairs, church bells had rung out, eight o’clock. Evening, people in the streets, laughing. It’s hot, the humid air heavy. The city is packed before the August holidays. Summer, a joyous thing.
Lili takes another fast drag, sharp inhale, from her cigarette.
Gitanes. She’d asked for Gitanes at the store.
Closer to him, further from him.
One night: She can get through one night here. She had attempted enthusiasm about their dinner plans, sneaking away for cigarettes to get a handle on the protective numbness she’s trying to maintain. She so badly does not want to be a burden to her friends, a dead weight they carry through these weeks of their vacation.
Lili flicks the last of her cigarette into the gutter, fishes her keys out of her tote. She tries to summon a bit of sunshine. She tries to smile, loosen her posture, prepare to give her friends sweetness, some kindness of her that they more than deserve—
She stumbles, keys almost falling out of her grasp.
At the end of the street, there’s a man. Tall, with dark hair—familiardark hair, just long enough to brush the collar of his linen shirt, broad shoulders, back to her, and he’s on the phone, glancing down the street—
One of the residential doors opens, and a woman steps out: bright blond, a relaxed inhale of evening heat as the early light of sunset falls across her face. The man turns, and a smile breaks across his handsome face as he draws her into his arms, kissing her temple, and the woman laughs as he kisses her cheeks, her lips, such obvious happiness at seeing her, before they walk away, down the street together.
Lili breathes, shaking like she’s run a marathon.
It’s not him.
Another man, waiting for another woman.
She pushes their building door open, nearly runs through the courtyard, races up the stairs—panic at her heels. It takes her a moment to wrench open their apartment door, shutting it hard behind her, leaning back against the heavy wood, trying to breathe,trying to breathe—and she hadn’t realized how tightly she was carrying it, until her heart leapt in the street: the fear and the hope—the stupid fucking hope—that he’d still come after her—and she’d forgotten, she’d fuckingforgotten, in the blur of departure, that this washiscity, the city he’d inhabited in his twenties—her age, his youth, the nineties, in these streets—decades removed, but still, memories he’d shared with her that snap into place, immediate and intimate, just as she’s trying to escape him, outrun them—
“Hey!” It’s James, leaning into the hall. He has a drink in hand, orange glow of Aperol. “You find the corner shop okay?”
She nods, trying to soothe her heartbeat. “Yeah, all good. When—when do we have to leave for dinner?”
“In about thirty?” he says, glancing at his watch. The sunlight streams into the kitchen behind him. “We were thinking we could walk, it’s gorgeous out.”
“Lili!” Amina calls her name from the sunny kitchen. Her face is fresh, washed hair in a tortoiseshell claw clip. She’s wearing a blue dress. “Want a drink?”
“Sure, yeah—give me ten, I’ll just get changed—”
In the bathroom, she splashes cold water on her face. When she brushes her own cheekbone, she stiffens, and grasps the cold porcelain sink.
She can’t even touch herself—innocent touches, brush of hair behind her ears, water on her face—without the flinch of remembering him.
Through doors, and halls, she can hear the click of Amina’s mules, a bit of laughter from James.
Soundless, Lili chokes back sobs. These painful, catching sounds in her throat, this tiny room.
She cannot cry.
Just a moment, she thinks.
Just a moment longer.
She knows how to weather instability. And she does not believe in self-correcting markets, inertia, laissez-faire.
Aggressive intervention, forceful correction: These are tools of economics, in crisis.
The question always is when to intervene.
