“It’s thirty-six degrees in New York right now. Thirty-six!” Meredith looks at her joyously.
“Yeah.” There is no other obvious answer.
“I tell you what, I could stay here for another week, two, three, whatever.” Meredith unfolds the menu, which is comically oversized, though much of it is just white space. She must have it memorized at this point, they’ve had breakfast here every morning. “What about you, Lauren?”
“It’ll be hard to go back to reality,” Lauren says, though she doesn’t mean it and misses her reality, her mornings alone: opening her eyes seconds before the alarm clock rings, dressing while watching the newscaster on the local channel who does that segment where he highlights interesting stories in the day’s local newspapers.
“We have been spoiled,” Meredith says. “All these amenities.” She pauses. “Sometimes I think I should run away, you know? Start over. Like seriously.”
“Everyone thinks that sometimes. Or all the time. I don’t know.” Lauren studies the dining room even though she knows he’s not working.
Meredith waves over the waitress, asks for a cappuccino and a mixed-berry muffin. “I just don’t even know what I have to go back to, to be honest,” Meredith says. An audible sigh.
Meredith is so deeply within her own agony she doesn’t even have it in her to properly tease/needle/blackmail Lauren about what she’s witnessed.
Lauren pokes at the flesh of the papaya with her fork and feels ill. “It’s that time of year,” she says gamely.
Meredith looks puzzled. “What time of year?”
“Oh, the holidays, you know.” Lauren gestures helplessly. “That time of year. The bad time of year. Family. Office parties, presents, money, Christmas music, tourists, love and joy, all that shit.”
“Oh, you mean it’s hard to be alone this time of year.” Meredith nods. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”
In fact, that’s not what she meant. What she meant is what she said, general as it was. The warm air outside means she feels disconnected from the time of year, but the awareness lingers: It is that time of canned love and joy and peace and it’s irritating. Even as a girl, well, not a girl, but a sullen preteen maybe, she disliked Christmas. The sight of mangled wrapping paper across plush carpeting makes her heart sink. All the meaningless giving, all the mindless getting, all the nothing. Her mother, as mothers do, loves Christmas. Lauren doesn’t want to think about it at the moment.
Meredith has more to say. Lauren can see it, in the tense hunch of her shoulders, the expectant gleam in her eye, which is trying to fix on Lauren, hold her, as a magnet might. Meredith is lonely. Lauren has been lonely, of course, everyone has been lonely. But she’s not sure she’s been lonely in the way that Meredith is lonely, in this public, ravenous way. Her loneliness is like a smell, it’s there, you’re aware of it. Lauren is relieved by her own imperviousness to this kind of loneliness. It afflicts so many women it seems like it’s the normal way to be.
Sarah and Fiona come into the restaurant, join them at the table, beckon for the waitress, exchange their good mornings. They, too, are dressed for the beach—they’re enjoying every last minute of this.
“I’ve forgotten about every part of my real life,” Fiona says, dreamily. “I guess that means this has been a very successful vacation.”
“Yeah.” Sarah studies Lauren’s face, then turns over her shoulder to consider the sea. “It’s nice to leave reality behind. Get away, drink. Misbehave.” She pauses, looks back at Lauren. “Don’t you think?”
So Meredith has told her. This is not surprising. Meredith doesn’t seem like the secret-keeping sort. “I guess so,” Lauren says. “No hangover, at least.” She taps her temple. “I hydrated.”
“You’re so smart, Lauren. I’m in awe.” Sarah smiles, not a real smile. It’s not a rebuke. It’s something else. Discomfort, embarrassment.
Lauren knows how Sarah feels about sex. Her embarrassment, that hint of awe, they don’t mask a curiosity—they are symptoms of a disinterest. Lauren knows, she’s fairly certain, every guy Sarah’s ever fucked: Alex Heard and Dan Burton, yes, as well as the two in between them. Only those four, fewer than a handful. Lauren’s not being teased, she’s being scolded. Sarah’s so reluctant to talk about sex that this is how it will come out: oblique conversational jabs that would sound odd to Meredith and Fiona were either of them listening.
“You know what?” Lauren slides away from the table. “I think I’m going to head to my room and pack up before the beach. So I don’t have to later. I’ll meet you out there?”
She’s wrong: Sarah is capable of more than veiled verbal sparring. She knocks on her door only ten minutes later. Lauren knows it’s her before even opening it.
“What’s up?” Lauren’s already packed, so she’s just been lying on the bed, half reading an issue of The New Yorker from several months ago. She’s very far behind in her reading.