“Yeah,” she laughs at his reaction.
He presses his mouth to her belly, kissing her, kissing her. There’s no bump yet, but he can see what everyone says, that a woman becomes radiant. He holds her braided head against his chest. This is wild.
She’s doing holy work.
And she throws up French toast the next morning, the chartreuse bile floating on the toilet water as he kneels beside her, holding her hair.
“This part sucks,” she says as she wipes her mouth with a shaky hand, sort of embarrassed.
He comes back from the store, wide-eyed from the things the pharmacist told him, a paper bag of the recommended aspirin and hemorrhoid cream and Pepto-Bismol in his arms. He’s going to be a daddy.
Jamey and Elise are giddy, plums hanging on a branch, fat with sun.
The day seems innocent enough. They drip out of bed, shower together, lazy, whistling, shaving. They feel like taking an epic walk.
The East Village is bright—dark—bright with fast clouds.
They head north, see addicts being lured out of boxes and bushes by the big silver drug of hunger. Cats in bodega windows. Block by block by block. Petals like confetti in the seams of cars. They pass parking-lot guards locked into bulletproof stalls. Gold-leaf numbers on glass doors to buildings. The sun turns the fire escape into a sideways shadow.
“Sandwiches?” Jamey asks, swinging her hand.
“Take them to the park?” she answers.
“Sure.”
They walk, the dragon’s roar of a subway under their feet.
Barbers, tailors, delis.
Central Park has a minty flush of new life. The horses drag carriages in endless ovals.
They eat on a bench, wipe mayonnaise off a knuckle, squinting at the lake.
“Check it out,” Elise says.
Swans rise from the water, about to fight, wings raised and necks curved.
“They can be violent,” he says.
A couple with a baby lie on a blanket, speckled in light, sequins on their black skin. Elise and Jamey sneak looks at them.
Back in the day, Jamey wouldn’t lie like that on this ground—it’s the kitchen floor, the toilet, the filthy sheets of New York. Wine and urine saturate the dirt—but now he barely cares.
They watch people eating strawberries out of a Ziploc bag or reading the Post or buying drugs or pushing twins in strollers or talking to themselves.
Elise will always think back to the atlas of this day—the peacefulness and fighting swans and the light-spangled baby—and Matt.
“Holy shit,” Matt says. “Again!”
He has a girl by his side—she’s tiny and hot, coughs like she has emphysema.
“We keep running into you,” Jamey says.
“Destiny.” Matt holds a hand up at Elise. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“You guys, this is Valentina,” Matt says proudly.
“Hallo!” she says in a thick Italian accent, now that she’s unleashed upon them, and she gives hugs and cheek kisses. “I’m so, so happy to meet each of you, okay!”
Her perfume is amber—spicy pollen off a forbidden flower—and it lands on them, coats them. She’s wearing couture clothes too big for her bones, but the way they fall, in conjunction with the chains on her sallow neck, and the sandals slipping off her feet like she’s meant to be barefoot, give her star power. Her hair is tangled down to her ass.
“What-a should we do!” she says.
Matt takes in Jamey’s self-cut hair, secondhand clothes, and fuller mouth, fascinated.
“Yeah, we should all do something,” Matt says.
“We got to get home,” Elise says.
Jamey looks at her. “We do?”
Elise bites her lip. “Yeah.”
Valentina claps her hands. “Dinner at my place, next week? You cannot say no.” She drapes her arm over Matt, squeezes him, steadily unsteady.
Elise and Jamey look at each other.
But Jamey accepts the invite. “Where are you?”
Valentina squeals with pleasure, tells them her Trump Tower address. “Fabulous,” she pronounces.
Jamey and Elise watch them walk away, among hot-dog-cart fumes and kites and pigeons, into a tunnel where someone surely was raped in the last two weeks if not two hours.
“Why on Earth did you say yes?” she asks, in shock.
“Didn’t you say we should get out more?” he kids. He feels invincible.
APRIL 1987
Jamey and Elise have lunch at Paolucci’s: asparagus and burrata and prosciutto.
“Vivien? Jacqueline,” Jamey says. “Or Sandrine.”
“Why do you think it’s a girl?”
“Just a feeling.”
They eat dark-chocolate mousse for dessert, watching Italians saunter outside in weak sun, running errands, greeting one another with generations of familiarity. Two heavyset brothers, or cousins, jaws big with experience, one with gold chains and one without, walk in absolute synchronicity.
“Northern California,” Jamey says. “We could even have a farm.”
“We should move near Disneyland?” she asks. “We could bring our kid there all the time.”
“Disneyland is not that great,” he breaks it to her.
“Um, neither is farming,” she says.
They don’t sound like themselves. They’re acting like they’re not scared shitless, pretending to be lighthearted.
“But seriously. It’s a little fucked up to bring a kid into this world, right?” Jamey says, hanging on to good humor, but the line falls flat. Elise doesn’t answer, because she doesn’t like what she hears in his voice.
They watch two guys unloading a big truck—one has a braid, might be Dominican. The other seems angry, as if freshly sprung from Rikers, but then he giggles, cute as a panda bear.
Dinner at Valentina’s. Elise and Jamey dress in silence as if for a funeral, but there’s something heady about the evening. Jamey barely slept the last few nights, ideas rushing through his mind about where to live, how to make money, unstoppable thoughts that have him seeing stars.
A radio on the street blares KRS-One. Sautéed onions rise from downstairs.
“Trump fucking Towers,” Jamey says.
“It’s just stupid we’re going.”
“I can’t wait to tell them,” he says.
She stops putting on eyeliner and gapes. “Tell them what?”
“That we’re having a kid!”
“I’m seriously not going unless you swear to God you won’t tell them.”
“Why not?” he asks, his eyes wicked in the broad cheekbones.
“Jamey,” she says, getting really upset. “You just never know—”
“Hey, hey,” he soothes her, hugging her. “I’m teasing. I won’t.”
“Don’t tease about that shit,” she says stubbornly, letting him hold her.
“You realize he’s tried to find his own Elise,” he says into her neck. “That’s what Valentina is.”
Elise smirks, reluctantly flattered. “Whatever.”
She wears a tight white dress, and he kisses her belly, makes her smile. “You’re exquisite,” he says.
“Shut up.”
They take a cab, the city flashing by in its grit and radiance.
Pulling up to the monolithic address, the taxi is opened by a doorman.
“Thank you, sir,” Jamey says.