“Oh yes, the cliché of getting up at an open mic and treating it like a big group therapy moment.”
“Exactly. You can die onstage tonight and it’ll probably be the worst set you’ve ever done. With that out of the way, you’ll feel one percent better. And then you’ll get up next week and embarrass yourself again.” He sets down his empty beer. “You have to start somewhere.”
“No, wait.” Ari grabs his forearm. “I don’t have anything to say.”
“You’re an improviser. Ask for a suggestion from the audience.”
She glances around the half-empty crowd. “They’ll just say ‘penis.’?”
“If anyone knows how to work with a ‘penis,’ it’s you.” Gabe leads some tepid applause and jogs up to the mic. “And now, a special surprise.” Ari chugs the rest of the beer and looks for an escape route or hiding place. “Please give a slightly better-than-average welcome to”—he pauses and Ari recognizes the look on his face when he’s trying to generate a ridiculous character name—“Freckles McCloud.”
She puts the beer bottle down and takes her time weaving through the tables up to the mic. There are maybe five people watching and ten people clearly not watching and Ari makes the mistake of scanning their faces. Her knees shake.
“Hi, I’m…Freckles.” It’s been years since she felt this specific brand of nervous on any kind of stage. “This is where you say ‘Hi, Freckles.’?” There’s still some chatter, which is almost more disrespectful than absolute silence. “No addicts in here tonight? Surprising. Okay.” She looks longingly at the bright red exit sign and the clump of smokers outside the front door. She keeps her feet planted, anyway. “Well, hi, my name is Freckles and it’s been…approximately ten months since I sent a tasteful nude to my ex-wife.”
* * *
—
ARI BEGRUDGINGLY ADMITS TO HERSELF that doing a terribly uneven open mic had imbued her with some sense of excitement. A little touch of the old electricity zipping up and down her limbs, swirling around her chest. The comedy holy spirit.
It gives her just enough of the necessary push to haul her ass onto the train, despite the late hour, and see the person she’s been missing terribly and avoiding for months.
Ari still has the key to Radhya’s but it feels wrong to knock and enter this time. She knocks and waits, staring at the nondescript door, with its familiar scuffs and smudges. After twenty seconds that feel like long minutes, Ari hears footsteps. Radhya undoes the dead bolt and opens the door three inches.
“I’m not okay,” Ari says immediately, before Rad can shut the door again. “Not fine.”
There’s a pause and then the door opens wider. “Grilled cheese?”
Ari follows Radhya inside and curls up on the couch under a fleece blanket. The TV is on, tuned to one of those stations for old people that only plays nineties sitcoms. They stare at an episode of That ’70s Show while crunching into buttery grilled cheese sandwiches.
“I feel like human garbage,” Ari says between bites. “Our last few conversations have been so…”
“Terrible?” Radhya suggests. “Fraught? Passive-aggressive dumpster fires?”
“I miss you.” There’s a tightness in Ari’s throat. She’s gotten used to the sensation over the past few months. “I’m sorry I shut you out. I’m a mess and you’re the capable person with all the answers. And I was worried we had finally hit the moment where you asked yourself, ‘Why am I friends with this person? Was it proximity?’?”
Radhya takes a big breath in. “Are you frustrating sometimes? Yes. Have you made extremely questionable decisions? Also, yes.”
“And did you judge me for those decisions?”
“Yeah,” Radhya says. “I’m both imperfect and judgmental.” She takes another bite of grilled cheese. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” She sits forward. “Starting my own business is incredibly risky. My stomach hurts all the time. I have stress dreams where I’m surrounded by ticket printers that won’t stop.” She pauses. “When Brodsky’s sells, I have to figure out a new venue. And Josh might not want to keep doing the pop-ups.”
Ari stops chewing. “Why not?”
“He’s been talking about cooking somewhere else. California, maybe. Fresh start.”
Ari tries and fails to picture Josh in any other location. He feels so rooted to the city, like he and Manhattan are in a co-dependent relationship.
“Do you need a sassy, charming waitress?” Ari asks, trying to push Josh out of her mind.
“No. I need a sassy, charming best friend. Preferably one who lets me give fantastic advice and then ignores it.”
Ari snorts, making Radhya laugh.
“In that case…” Ari stares at the TV, waiting for her throat to loosen up a bit. “I need to tell you about this guy I knew.”
“Okay.” Radhya doesn’t move a muscle, like she’s afraid that the slightest flinch will send Ari fleeing into the night.
“We hated each other for a long time. And then we didn’t. We became friends. And that’s the hardest kind of connection for me. Obviously.” She takes a breath. “He’s one of those people who never has to smell items in their refrigerator before consuming them. Crumbs and misplaced apostrophes are his mortal enemies. He knows exactly how smart he is but doesn’t realize he’s funny. If I could get him to laugh or just, like, hrmph or look exasperated, it made my entire day. Which, I guess, wasn’t hard because I’ve been miserable.” It’s painful to say it all in past tense. “He just got me. He saw me in this way that other people never do. We’re really different, but I could talk to him about anything—all the stuff I tried really hard to hide from everyone else because I felt so”—she swallows—“ashamed of how much I was hurting. Even though I was at my lowest point, he just accepted me. But then we…you know.” Her eyes well up again. “And I convinced myself it was this huge mistake because I couldn’t deal with what it actually meant. But I—I miss him, Rad. I r-really—”
This time she doesn’t try to hold back the big, ugly sobs.
Rad wraps her arms around Ari’s shoulders, getting them both tangled in the blanket.
“Hey,” Radhya says softly. “Breathe?” Ari swallows and takes a gasping inhale, like she’s finally coming up for air. “Start from the beginning.”
* * *
JOSH WALKS SOUTH on Avenue A, across the west boundary of Tompkins Square Park, past a stupid new expensive kefir bar, a Starbucks, a bodega, and whatever the Pyramid Club is now.
Everything else on the block may have changed, but despite his cursed attempt at transforming Brodsky’s into The Brod, his mother had taken it upon herself to revert the place back to its old form. The checkered floor has been mopped thousands of times, but the white squares have been beige forever. As a kid, Josh would volunteer to wipe down the tables, scour the sinks—anything to put chaotic things in order.
More than that, the place has a specific scent. No matter how many spice blends Radhya grinds in the kitchen, he’ll forever detect the smell of stale cigarette smoke from the days of smoking sections separated by nothing but a warped panel of plexiglass. The sweet-and-sour sauce that accompanied every serving of stuffed cabbage. Frankfurters sizzling on the flattop. Containers of coleslaw, macaroni salad, egg salad, and some concoction his dad called “health salad” that only one regular ever ordered.