Nostos algos—home pain, the pain at the utter core of me.
So, very quickly, as you can see, in no more than a matter of weeks, she was my best friend. I was the first person, she told me, whose brain moved as quickly as hers, who got the weird things she said, her jokes, her vile, made-up swears, and could sharpen them with my own. A best friend is a magic thing, like finding a stump full of water that will make you live forever, or wandering into a field overrun by unicorns, or standing in a wardrobe one minute and a snowy forest the next. I wasn’t about to take it for granted, with its strange coincidences and the passionate promises—spoken and unspoken—required for its upkeep. Day by day I made sacrifices, though they didn’t feel like sacrifices at the time, redefining myself according to who she was, until we became the perfect team—her impulsive and brave; me calculating and watchful; her dangerous, me trustworthy; her pretty, me sweet; her high, me drunk; and so on, et cetera. I asked the cashier for directions while she stole rings, hardcover books, a pair of men’s shoes; and then, after the shift change, I returned it all for cash. I drank lattes because mochas were her favorite. She sang the melody, I provided backup. Her blond and rail-thin, me brunette and almost chubby. Us two, one perfect girl.
Sometimes I was afraid—when I noticed a camera spying from the boutique ceiling, when the cop car circled the park while we hid inside the gazebo, the pot in Marlena’s pockets so dank I was sure that the police knew even with their windows up. When she met Bolt at the marina and told me to take a walk, come back in thirty minutes, an hour, and especially when I crept back early and saw her straddling his lap, her entire face a big, fake smile, how she’d be quiet for the rest of the day, curled up into herself, fingering the new baggie of pills in her pocket, gone no matter how I tried to get her to come back. Half the time, when Bolt came up, her entire body shut down, a computer going to sleep; a few hours later, she’d swat his name out of conversation like it was no more than an insect. Now I think she really just couldn’t decide. Bolt was one thing when she felt in control; when she used him to get her pills, how he’d do anything she said in return for favors, a kiss here and there, more sometimes, mostly when she was so high it didn’t feel real. But alone, or with me, I think when she thought about Bolt she was scared out of her mind, and—worse than that, for Marlena, a girl who knew how to live with fear—humiliated. That’s why I think she couldn’t tell me. She didn’t want me to think less of her, and somewhere along the way, one of the things I screwed up the most, was giving her the impression that if I knew, I would.
I never said no, or stopped, or pushed her to tell me what was really going on, or even thought twice about going back to school, especially once I realized that no one was ever going to notice whether I went or not. Those days were so big and electric that they swallowed the future and the past. I’d look at her out of the corner of my eye, a half step ahead of me, her cheeks red, the laughing curve of her mouth, and know. If I gave Marlena up, I’d be leaving something important with her forever, something of mine that I’d never get back.
I believed that then, and look how it’s turned out to be true.
New York
My third martini was gone, and the lounge was full. Happy-hour drinkers. I’d had a small lunch. A banana. A cup of vegetable soup. I did order another drink, when the waiter came around. The check at the same time; if I paid, it’d be harder to say yes to another. The martini didn’t taste like anything anymore.
I finished it and most of the bowl of nuts that had appeared, at some point, while I’d been sitting there. My couch was still empty, though all the others were packed. A group of twenty-something women had descended, sitting on every available surface except for the one I’d claimed. Maybe they were trying to be polite. Or they thought I was waiting for someone. They wore their hair long and loose, and most of them had on jeans, hip-length button-downs, expensive silk T-shirts. I was close enough to hear them. I’m sorry, but, the tallest one said whenever she started to speak. The one slumped against the armrest was pissed at her husband, and told everyone why twice, three times, adding a detail to each version. One kept waving the waitress down, outpacing the others; another had nursed the same half-full glass of white since they arrived. Its steady, unchanging level made me anxious. The thin one picked up the triangle of white cheese with her fingers; her right-side neighbor speared the translucent slice of green apple with the tine of her fork. They touched their phones a lot. “Crap,” the prettiest one said to her glass, glancing up at the others after the conversation moved on, asking with her eyes for something she couldn’t say.
“It’s like she’s literally possessed,” said one woman to another, about some pregnant acquaintance, and I laughed so loud, staring right at them, that all of a sudden they became fully aware of me. They exchanged little horrified smiles.
“It’s true, though,” I said, but the words came out wrong. One of them tittered—a kindness. I verified that I’d signed the shocking check and written in a tip, and then put on my coat.