It goes like this: they detach throughout February. Then, in March, James texts: Come over. Minutes later, Tiffany replies: Pick me up.
She tells Stella and Wayne that she is going over to a friend’s house, which is true enough. She might spend the night, she says. They are so pleased by the mention of a friend that they ask no further questions. Tiffany takes a careful shower, pushing a razor against her skin until she feels her shinbone. Honeysuckle shampoo and Stella’s fancy lotion. Wet hair, side braid, no makeup, soft clothes. Quick heart. Hot blood. It’s the first Sunday of spring break, and the slush outside is cruel.
In the car, Tiffany and James act maniacally normal.
As they enter his house through the side door, the awareness that Tiffany is embarking upon a Major Life Event caffeinates her; her body trembles, her senses sharpen, and all the colors saturate. She feels more alive than she thought possible, and she understands that she has finally graduated from an imitation of life. Now, she stands inside her real one for the very first time. In the kitchen, James appears nervous, running his hands through his thick hair and spilling the wine as he pours it. He gives her a glass of pinot noir, like an equal. Drinks his very quickly, then pours himself another. Somehow, without explicitly saying so, he communicates that his kids, his wife, and his in-laws are vacationing in Key West. The desperation with which Tiffany wants to like the wine makes her actually like it, but when she asks for another glass, James says, “Maybe not.” They wander around his house like it’s an Ikea, sitting on various pieces of furniture, chatting about childhood, and imagining alternative lives until they land in the music room.
“Play it,” Tiffany commands when she sees the B?sendorfer.
“Play what?”
“Gaspard de la Nuit.”
He obeys without demurring, grateful for something to do with his hands.
As she listens, Tiffany doesn’t cry. Doesn’t compliment him. Doesn’t pet the cats. These are tough accomplishments, but she accomplishes them nonetheless. When he finishes, his face flushed, she steadies herself by pouring herself another glass—he doesn’t object—and asking a lot of questions about the piano. He explains that the piano has a satin ebony finish. It was crafted from an Austrian high-altitude solid spruce, with a maple and red beech pin block and a walnut veneer top. A traditional cast-iron plate. Hand-wound single-looped strings.
The piano was a wedding gift from his wife’s family, a product of their evergreen wealth, and no one has ever associated it with James as intimately as Tiffany does that night. His wife’s fortune, once so alluring, now repels him like a funhouse reflection. It makes him feel misshapen, carsick, malnourished. Increasingly, he has felt like a tourist in this house. But in Tiffany’s eyes, all of this is his.
“Hand-notched bridges,” James says. Tiffany is standing inches from him, her delicate hand hovering over a B minor chord. She’s examining the B?sendorfer’s open anatomy. Carefully, as though petting a carnivorous bird, he touches her wrist. “Spruce keys,” he mutters. He can feel her holding her breath, can see her whole body react. “You are beautiful,” he says, shocking them both.
Her face turns pink. A sudden dusk. “Fuck you,” she says, punching his arm and backing away. A moment of silence. James wonders if he has shattered everything.
“You make me unlonely,” she finally whispers, her eyes on the piano. “You make me feel real.”
Tiffany and James finish emotionally undressing as the B?sendorfer watches. Then they ascend to the bedroom and take off their clothes.
When dawn arrives, Tiffany stops pretending to sleep. She sits up in bed and unleashes her braid, watching James’s back rise and fall with his breath. Her hair is still wet from the shower she took at Stella and Wayne’s, still fragrant with honeysuckle shampoo, and this bewilders her—a different woman took that shower. Tiffany tiptoes to the bathroom and pees as quietly as possible, humiliated by the fact of her body. When she returns, James is awake, looking a decade older in the glow of his phone. “Hey,” he says, his tone cold. “Better get dressed.”
He throws her clothes to her, and she dresses quickly, sensing that something critical has gone wrong. They descend the stairs and enter his sublime kitchen, foraging for conversation strong enough to chase the shame. He brews espresso for them both using a loud and complex machine but then seems to regret it. As they sip crema from ceramic, they speak of weather, favorite types of oatmeal, the personal histories of his cats. One is black, the other white, both longhaired and agitated. Through narrowed eyes and accusatory body language, they watch Tiffany as though they know exactly what she’s done. When James feeds them rabbit p?té, Tiffany wonders aloud why their interactions are so consistently plagued by the odor of pet food. He doesn’t laugh, doesn’t seem to hear her at all.
She smiles. “What do you think it means?”
“Probably nothing,” he snaps, his attention on his phone. “Not everything means something.”
An hour before Tiffany’s ACT prep class begins, James deposits her at a coffee chain close to school.
“We’ll be in touch,” he says to the windshield. He hasn’t looked her in the eye since last night.
“Sure,” she replies, a sob building in her throat.
When Tiffany vomits her scone into a toilet at St. Philomena’s, what upsets her most is the waste of money.
The evening after the Night, James sends her a text message.
I just want to reiterate my respect for you. You should know that my behavior has always been guided by an investment in your well-being.
Tiffany feels her pulse in her eyes as she stares at the screen. That distressing formality again. She tries to feel indignant, as she’s supposed to feel, but instead she begins to weep. It would be a blinding relief to believe him. She replies: Can we talk?
And then nothing. Absolutely nothing. Each day after the Night, Tiffany stares at her phone, freshes and refreshes her inbox, receives nothing, tells no one, googles his face and zooms in until she can’t tell who it is. She listens to his stupid music with the stupid headphones he gave her. Each listen grants Tiffany a clearer awareness of his narcissism. What’s more, he’s ridiculous. Vu. Ridiculous! In her bed, Tiffany eats an entire jar of cornichons, stares into her laptop, taps pause, loses her grip. She doesn’t sleep for thirty-four hours, then sleeps for fourteen consecutive hours. He never lent her his copy of Gaspard de la Nuit, and now she knows that he never will.
She only leaves the house to work her shifts at the diner. As she bikes through the industrial wasteland of Vacca Vale, she keeps mistaking her setting for the afterlife. This year, Vacca Vale ranked first on Newsweek’s bafflingly heartless list of “Top Ten Dying Cities.” Nobody was surprised. At Ampersand, Tiffany is mean to customers and often forgets to speak altogether. Desiring James has always felt like a mental illness, but this is the first time it’s felt like a crisis. At work, she takes too many bathroom breaks. Ransacks her phone each time.
After the fourth day of no contact, she begins mouthing, FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKER when she checks her empty electronics. Sometimes she addresses this to herself. Eating, sleeping, and breathing become unnatural tasks. Teeth chattering, color draining from her vision, temperature dropping, red cold wind ripping through her body. Nausea oppresses her, sometimes making her throw up. Stella and Wayne conclude, endearingly, that she has the flu. They materialize with cups of ice water, tomato soup, and berry-flavored medicine. She takes the medicine, willing it to treat whatever she has.
“He loves being seen and it shows,” Tiffany tells her Venus flytrap on the fourth night. It hasn’t eaten in a long time because the house is too clean. You’re supposed to feed one of its heads once a month, but Tiffany keeps forgetting. “Only live bugs,” said the lady at the store. “It only likes the live ones.”