Thursday:She’d befriended Mrs. Channing from 4B, who apparently had been “lonely” and “needed someone to talk to about her grandson’s upcoming wedding.” They had tea. For three hours. In my apartment. When I came home, they roped me into looking at fabric swatches.
I was a neurosurgeon.
I didn’t have an opinion on fabric swatches.
Though... the sage green was nice.
Friday:She had reorganized my bookshelf. Not alphabetically, not by subject, but by “the energy of the words.” When I’d asked what that meant, she’d said, “You know, like, some books feel heavy and some books feel light, and you want them to flow together in a way that creates harmony.”
My medical textbooks were now shelved next toThe Alchemist.
There was no harmony.
There was only chaos.
Saturday:She’d convinced me to go to a farmers’ market. At 7 AM. On my day off. We’d bought organic vegetables, artisanal bread, and something called, “activated charcoal lemonade” that tasted like regret.
She’d held my hand the entire time.
I’d let her.
Sunday:I had woken up to find her meditating on my balcony, completely naked except for one of my dress shirts, greeting the sunrise with some kind of chant that involved the words “cosmic mother” and “divine masculine energy.”
My neighbor, Mr. Patterson, a retired accountant with a very rigid morning routine, which I fully respected and now envied, had been watering his plants. He had seen everything, and I received a very pointed email from the building manager about “appropriate balcony attire.”
And now...nowit was Saturday again, and I was supposed to have dinner with my parents.
My parents.
Who didn’t know I had gotten married.
Who didn’t know I had gotten married inVegas.
Who definitely didn’t know I had gotten married to a woman who believed in cosmic energy and rearranged furniture based on chi and wore my dress shirts while chanting at the sun.
I was going to die.
Not metaphorically.
Actually die.
My heart was going to give out from stress, and they would find me collapsed on the floor of my apartment, clutching a lavender sachet, wearing socks with tiny suns on them.
“Julien?” Athena appeared in the doorway of my bedroom, wearing a dress that could only be described as “bohemian chic,” all flowy, floral, with about seventeen different colors that shouldn’t have worked together but somehow did. “Are you ready? We should leave soon if we want to make our reservation.”
“I’m ready,” I lied.
I was not ready.
I would never be ready.
“You look very handsome,” she said, crossing the room to adjust my tie, which I had deliberately chosen because it was my most conservative, my most professional, my mostthis is fine, everything is under control.
She loosened it slightly.
“There. Now you look less like you’re about to perform surgery and more like you’re about to have dinner with your parents.”
“I perform surgery better than I have dinner with my parents.”
