“Same as usual,” he says. He’s not unhappy. Dan never seems to find his work especially stressful. “Everything had to happen yesterday. It’s almost the weekend, people are going to be away. No one can handle anything except Bethany and me. It would be funny if it weren’t always the way these things happen.”
Sarah is not the kind of woman to be jealous of his reliance on another woman and is proud of that fact. Besides which, it would never occur to Dan to cheat on her. He’s too busy.
Dan went to Penn with her friend Meredith’s brother Ben. The computer of whoever decides these things selected them to be roommates and did a good job of it: They are great friends still, as she is still good friends with Meredith, whom she’s known since the sixth grade, when Meredith, Ben, and their parents moved to the city from suburban Maryland. Ten years ago, she and Meredith had to drop by a bar in the West Village to leave her keys with her brother, in town for the night and crashing at her place. He was out having drinks with his college roommate, Dan. It wasn’t a setup, an elaborate ruse, though in retrospect it could have seemed like one, and the fact that Meredith was responsible for her knowing Dan at all has forever colored Sarah’s opinion of her friend.
Sarah has a lot of friends. She knows a lot of people. It is important to her to always know and understand precisely how she feels about everyone in her orbit. She maintains a complex ranking system, tracking the last time she’s seen someone, the last time they’ve spoken, the conversation they had, how they felt about each other, how long she’s known someone generally, whether they are similar enough to talk politics, whether she likes their spouse, whether their job or marriage or whatever has changed who they are, fundamentally. This is how she thinks. If she knows someone, if someone is a friend, she has a sense of what that friendship is like, what it’s been historically, what it is now. This helps her understand who other people are. It helps her understand who she is.
She sighs without realizing it.
“What’s tomorrow?” Dan asks.
“Tomorrow, um, Friday. Oh, tomorrow there’s a meeting of that group that Carol is trying to get off the ground.”
“Which one is that?”
“Which group or which Carol?”
“No, Carol Abbott, right, Lulu’s friend? That I remember, but tell me what the group does?”
“Doesn’t do. Will do. Math literacy. Early childhood. Fostering a love of numbers. Minorities, girls particularly.”
“Worthy.” He nods. “Definitely worthy.”
“It’s early stages still; I think it’s just Carol and a partner and maybe an intern, someone at Columbia? Her husband teaches there. I think that’s right. Anyway, it’s about the money at the moment. She thinks I might be able to help her with some of the grant writing.”
“Of course you can,” Dan says. “You’re brilliant.”
“I’m not brilliant.” She yawns. “Should we have a drink?”
“I’d have a drink,” he says.
There’s a bottle of wine in the door of the fridge, stopped up with one of those rubberized corks. It’s so cold it doesn’t actually taste like anything, but it’s the sensation of cold, the comfort of holding a glass and curling up next to Dan, also holding a glass, that she wants now, more than the taste of wine on her tongue.
Friday, Sarah wakes early. There’s a spin class at the gym down the block—the gym down the block is one of the reasons she chose the apartment in the ugly 1980s building—so she does that, then walks home, eats yogurt and frozen blueberries while half watching the morning talk shows, a segment on the season’s new beauty trends, an interview with an actress who’s adopted a baby from Burundi. She checks her e-mail: a message from Willa, a wedding planner who’s come highly recommended by a friend of Lulu’s; a reminder from the store about a staff meeting next week; an invitation from her friend Lexi for brunch Sunday at her new place out in Brooklyn.
She showers. Her hair is a disaster after the class so she has to shampoo it, so then she has to blow it dry, because if she doesn’t it’ll be fine as long as it’s wet, but once it no longer is it’ll dry into a preposterous tangle that’s neither curl nor not curl. Her hair must be tamed. So she does that, dries and brushes it into submission. Better. She brushes her teeth, reminds herself to make a dentist’s appointment, because she’s been wondering about whitening. She fumbles about with lipstick and cream and perfume and a little bit of color on the lids of her eyes. She has to make the effort. It’s part of being an adult.