“I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s no excuse.”
I don’t know how long it took me to get home. I thought about falling down and waiting for the police to come and take me to the hospital. I thought about screaming out, Someone please take care of me. I pressed against a rolled-down steel gate, spitting onto the concrete. The streets were empty. It was just me. So I said, Fuck, it’s just you. I climbed the stairs cursing, dry heaving. I made the mint tea they had given me. I wrapped an ice pack in paper towels and put it on my forehead and when it got warm I put it back in the freezer. I shook, I sweat, I cried, I held myself, I mumbled in and out of sleep. It went on like that, more or less, for two days.
—
Do you know what I was, how I lived? That refrain ran through my head as I took the train into work. I was a gaunt reflection in the spotty windows, but possessed of a sparkling sense of clarity. That was a line from a poem I couldn’t remember. I don’t know when I’d started quoting poems. I don’t know when I’d started ignoring the flowers as I walked through the Greenmarket.
I stopped in front of the large window on Sixteenth Street, wanting to see if it looked different. Flower-Girl was conducting her botanic orchestra and behind her they were pulling down the chairs. The servers were congregated at the end of the bar, where Parker was making espressos. How much I had taken for granted: being excited to walk through the door every day, making rounds to say hello to everyone, even in the days when no one responded. Flower-Girl singled out a branch of lilac. I had smelled them since I’d come up from the train: cloying, heavy, human—but unripe, like a cold-climate Sauvignon Blanc. That was the full circle, wasn’t it? Learn how to identify the flowers and the fruits so I could talk about the wine. Learn how to smell the wine so I could talk about the flowers. Had I learned anything besides endless reference points? What did I know about the thing itself? Wasn’t it spring? Hadn’t the trees shaken out their greens to applause? Isn’t this what you dreamed of, Tess, when you got in your car and drove? Didn’t you run away to find a world worth falling in love with, saying you wouldn’t care if it loved you back?
The lilacs smelled like brevity. They knew how to arrive, and how to exit.
—
“EVERYONE WAS WORRIED,” Ariel said.
“I came by and rang the buzzer,” Will said.
“I told them we speed-dial police if you don’t show today,” Sasha said.
Whatever changes they had made to the restaurant were barely noticeable. We did have new sinks behind the bar. It was a lunch shift and I didn’t talk much. My head was still in the isolation of my rancid bedroom. I was unshakable.
They did not arrive together, though I suppose they never did. Simone came in first. I went to the locker room and sat on a chair in the corner. I had no plan, but when she came in she was not surprised to see me. We were following a script that I hadn’t seen yet.
“I’m relieved you’re all right,” she said.
“I’m alive.”
She fiddled with her locker combination. I saw her go through it twice.
“I did not receive your texts until much later,” she said, maybe the first time in her life she had been the one to break a silence. “I don’t check my phone at that hour.”
“Of course.”
“I was very worried.”
“Of course. I could tell.”
“I texted you back.”
“My phone is broken.”
“Tess.” She faced me. She buttoned up her stripes and slipped out of her jeans. She looked clownish in that giant shirt.
“There is so much I don’t know. I accepted it. That’s life, right? I mean, what do you guys even really know about me? But I am an honest person. What you see is what you get.”
“Do you think someone has been dishonest?”
“I think you people are so far gone you don’t know what honest means.”
“The idealism of my youth—”
“Stop.” I stood up. “Stop. I see you.”
“Do you?”
“You’re a cripple.” I was surprised at how accurate it felt. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself. You certainly don’t care about him.”
She paused.
“Perhaps,” she said. She went back to dressing.
“Perhaps! You think I’m stupid. I’m not. I was just hopeful.”
She moved to the mirror and took out her cosmetics bag. I watched the concealer go onto the dark circles under her eyes. She pressed the matte paste against her crow’s-feet. She dropped her chin while she put on mascara. How had I never seen how morose her eyes were? She wore the lipstick to distract from them.
“You are blessed with a rare sensitivity,” she said. “It’s what makes people artists, winemakers, poets—this porous nature. However.” She paused and blinked her mascara into place. “You lack self-control. Discipline. And that is what separates art from emotion. I do not think you have the intelligence yet to interpret your feelings. But I do not think you are stupid.”
“Jesus, that’s lovely.”
“It’s the truth. You can take it.”
“You both enjoy saying that. You love the truth as it applies to everyone else.”
“I never lied to you, Tess. I kept him away from you for as long as I could. I was explicit about what you were dealing with.”
“It’s not normal, Simone, you both going away like this, not even bothering to tell me. It’s not right.”
“Jake and I haven’t traveled together in ages, it’s overdue.”
“Was I really so threatening?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Why don’t you just take him?” I said. “Just take him, have him.”
She turned back to me and said, immaculately, “Oh, little one, I don’t want him.”
I pressed my hands into my eyes. Of course. She wanted a Mr. Bensen, Eugene, someone to deliver her to the rarefied world that she had always been entitled to but never able to access permanently. Not Jake, who wore the same underwear for days on end without noticing. She had been seducing and rejecting him since he was a child, and of course she didn’t actually want him. And yet, I realized, looking at her—she swiped her lips, she swiped, and swiped, and I still saw her immovable, sad eyes—those men were gone, and he was all she had.
“I pity you,” I said. My voice had lost its conviction.
“You pity me?” When she turned to me she wore the most antagonizing smile.
“You can have your diligence. And your self-control, and your cynicism disguised as professionalism, and your stunted ambition. I mean, honestly Simone, what the fuck are you going to do? Are you going to get it through your head and leave or are they going to have to retire you? I guess we’ll never know, all of us will be gone.”
Venom rose in her, colliding with mine. I loved it, I could feel her enjoying me, and I was ready for it, for whatever she threw at me because I would have time to revise. She couldn’t really hurt me, I was young, buoyant— Jake opened the door. We both turned to him. He was winded.
“Well, here we are,” I said.
He looked back and forth between us. Simone walked out, the door slammed. I could tell he had just woken up. His eyes were unadjusted to light and had a patina on them that could have been feelings, could have been pills, could have been sleep. He reached for me and I went unthinkingly.
“I looked for you,” he said.
I laid my head on his chest. He smelled like a deeper layer of earth, a secret blue room I kept in Chinatown. He kissed my forehead.
“No,” I said, inhaling him. “No, you didn’t.”