“Jules. She wouldn’t have told you to call unless she actually wanted you to call. Come on! Quit that miserable job of yours. It’s what I keep telling Jake.”
“Things are still bad?”
Abby rolled her eyes. When Lehman went under, Henry Fletcher called in a favor with a friend at Barclays, which was absorbing certain Lehman assets. He ensured that his son would have a place in the new organization. But it had all been a waste. According to Abby, Jake’s grumpy dislike of the work had morphed into outright hatred.
“Poor guy,” she said. “He’s miserable. I mean, he never liked banking to begin with. The Barclays people are assholes, apparently. He wishes he’d just been laid off, like everyone else. He’s going to take the GMAT next year.”
“Wow. Has he told his parents?”
“Hah. You know what they’re like. He can’t talk to them about this stuff.”
She went quiet, staring down at the table. A week earlier, Abby’s father had finally lost his job. She delivered the news with a shrug, a what-can-you-do resignation, but there was a catch in her voice. The value of their house had plummeted by half. Her mom had started looking for work. They were pretending that everything was going to be fine. But Abby, as the youngest, had spent many years learning to decipher the language of her parents. She saw right through them.
“I’m sorry, Abby. That’s really shitty.”
“Oy vey,” she said with a sigh. Then she tried for brightness again. “Hey, could we get two more margaritas? And some more chips?” she said to our waiter as he walked past. She picked up her fork and scooped a bite of guacamole. “This stuff is seriously like crack. So wait a second: How do you know this girl again? This Sara girl?”
“She went to Yale. She was a few years ahead of us.”
“Funny. Her name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Well, actually—I met her through Adam. Recently.”
“Adam?” she raised one eyebrow. “Where was this?”
“Some party. He used to know her from the magazine. We sort of hit it off.”
The waiter arrived with a fresh basket of chips and two new drinks. After he took our order, Abby lifted her margarita toward me.
“I think this is great, Jules. Do it. Call her. To new beginnings.” We clinked our glasses, and I took a sip of my drink—the salty and sweet tang of artificial lime. The restaurant was loud and chaotic, with colorful Christmas lights strung across the mirrored walls and pocked wooden tables. Saturday night in New York City. Moments like this I felt lucky, almost happy.
After dinner, Abby headed toward the subway, and I pretended to walk back to my apartment. But I pulled out my phone and called Adam instead. He was at a dinner party that night hosted by a classmate of his from high school, a downtown party girl who lived in an enormous SoHo loft. “She’s a brat,” he’d said. “Trust fund when she turned eighteen. Never had to lift a finger.” Adam’s critical streak was something I was still learning to navigate. He was suspicious of people who had it too easy, but at the same time he seemed suspicious of people who hustled too hard for their success. That’s what I thought at the time, at least. Although later I realized I was wrong about the latter: it was jealousy, not suspicion.
I did sometimes wonder why he acted so friendly toward the people whom he claimed to dislike. I’d asked him why he was going to the dinner party if he hated this girl, and he shrugged. “She knows a lot of people. Her parties are good for networking.” He grazed his hand along the back of my head. “I’d have more fun with you, though.”
When he picked up the phone, there was a swell of sound in the room behind him, conjuring a picture in my mind: the beautiful people, the expensive clothing, the perfect decor. I felt a sharp pang of loneliness. “Hey, you just finish dinner with Abby?”
“Yeah. You’re still there?”
“They just cleared the main course. Maybe another hour or so?”
I took a cab to his apartment. The happiness of dinner with Abby had vanished, and I was in a maudlin mood. I wandered around Adam’s apartment with an enormous glass of red wine, tempted to let it slosh over the rim onto his pristine carpet. But Adam hadn’t done anything wrong; there was nothing I was allowed to be mad about. At some point I lay down on the couch and later woke to the sound of the front door opening. The glowing readout on the cable box said it was 2:00 a.m. I’d been in his apartment for more than four hours.
“Where were you?” I said, rubbing my eyes.