My prints of Natalie’s birthday party were ready on New Year’s Day, the same day the Straubs returned from their vacation. I don’t usually frame photos for my clients, but I couldn’t resist in this case. I wanted to see my work in their home right away, and I didn’t want to leave it to Amelia and Fritz, who might or might not get it done.
I framed five pictures and placed the best one—Natalie with her balloon unicorn, chin tilted up, laughing, hands up—in a sterling silver frame. I wrapped all of them in a heavy bronze-colored paper that I thought Amelia would like.
On the second of January, I brought the prints to the Straubs’ house. I was nervous about seeing Amelia, and as I approached the front door, my anxiety escalated. I wondered if she’d missed me as much as I’d missed her.
When she opened the door to greet me, her words and gestures pulled me into the circle of light that surrounded her. “Delta Dawn!” she said. The bells sounded in my head again, but this time they transformed into a full orchestra performing an opera, probably Verdi’s Aida, since that was the only opera I knew.
I handed her the wrapped packages. Would the silver frame strike her as an extravagant gift that wasn’t warranted by our friendship? I feared that her response would be less than I’d imagined it to be. I needed her to recognize my work, the same way I recognized hers.
She unwrapped the one of Natalie with her balloon unicorn. Tears filled her eyes. “Darling Delta. There are no words.” She embraced me.
My cup runneth over. That wasn’t a phrase I’d ever thought about or used before, but right then it seemed apropos.
She placed three of the framed photos on their console table in the front library. And two in the great room. I couldn’t have asked for more prominent placement.
In the New Year, Friday night babysitting at the Straubs became a pattern, and one or two additional nights often came up at the last minute, so I was averaging two nights a week at their house, one night a week with Ian, and found myself busy a great deal.
I got in the habit of picking up the Straubs’ dry cleaning, and other odd errands, because such gestures gave me a reason to make extra visits to their house and because Amelia appreciated it so much. “Delta, you’re a true miracle,” she would say, interlacing her fingers below her chin in a prayerlike gesture.
One evening, as I approached the Straubs’ brownstone to drop off the dry cleaning, I saw the lights on through their garden-level windows. I casually mentioned my observation to Fritz when he greeted me at the door. “Would you like me to shut those lights off?”
“That’s quiet little Gwen who rents from us.” He smiled. “She barely makes a peep. The best kind of tenant doesn’t socialize.”
I didn’t spend a lot of time with Fritz in those early weeks, but I could tell he was attracted to me. I could sense his eyes locked on me when my back was turned. I, too, longed for a connection with him, perhaps because he was a central figure in Amelia’s world.
On Fridays I would frequently arrive early, before Fritz and Natalie were home, because Amelia enjoyed having her own special time with me. The front door was occasionally unlocked in the daytime, so I’d let myself in. Sometimes Amelia didn’t even hear me when I walked into her office. I would stand in the doorway and observe her working—her brow furrowed with concentration. Her beauty was impossible to separate from her dazzling mind.
I entered one afternoon and saw, on her monitor, the elevations of a town house. “Amelia, that’s gorgeous.” I was completely sincere.
“Oh, Delta, do you think so?” She looked like a child—so hopeful, so eager for praise.
“Yes, it’s brilliant.” Her supremely functional designs were always layered with ideas. She wasn’t capable of drawing something commonplace.
Amelia was buoyed by my encouragement. I could tell by the change in her posture and the shift in the angle of her chin. “I get so lost in my work, and sometimes I don’t know what’s good and what isn’t.” She rested her fingers on my shoulder. “I can’t tell you what your support means to me.”
Fritz had probably stopped telling Amelia what she needed to hear. I could see her wilting when she didn’t have sufficient praise. She needed someone to prop up her sense of herself.
After discussing her drawings, we would sit at the kitchen counter and she’d make us each a cup of herbal tea. These were some of my happiest moments. Without fail, I would try to steer the conversation in the direction of the baby that she yearned for. I was looking for the right time to address the subject directly and hadn’t found it yet.
Sometimes she asked me about myself. “So I get reports from Ian but nothing from you,” she said one day, a glimmer of curiosity in her eyes.
I sipped a warm mug of raspberry tea. “I feel so fortunate that you introduced us. How did you know?” I was seeing Ian regularly, but going slow on physical intimacy for as long as possible while still maintaining his interest.
Amelia beamed, clearly relishing the role of matchmaker. “It was intuition!”
“He’s an amazing person,” I said. “I feel like we’ve known each other for years.”
“You’re an amazing person.” She squeezed my hand. “By the way, he showed me the photos of his mother’s place. I hear Paula’s planning the wedding already.” She laughed. “And I don’t blame her.” The notes of her laughter rippled through the air.
R u free Thursday for lunch? It was a text from Amelia the following Monday. I felt light-headed. I didn’t expect this. I’d been hoping that our relationship would extend beyond photography and babysitting, but I thought it would take several months. I didn’t expect that we’d already be socializing, without the pretext of my babysitting Natalie.
Amelia suggested I meet her at a job site on the Upper East Side so she could show me the town house they’d just finished renovating. She wanted to spend time with me—to share her work with me. She’d already shared her drawings with me, but the invitation was an indication of our growing intimacy. It was a significant step forward in our relationship.
Wednesday night, I spent more than an hour choosing an outfit for my lunch with Amelia. I wanted her to be proud of me if she had occasion to introduce me to someone. I wanted to look like I belonged to the same socioeconomic class that she did. She might choose to take me to a fine restaurant, so I needed something slightly elevated but effortless. After trying on most of the clothes in my closet, I ended up choosing a gray cashmere sweater and black slacks. It wasn’t a unique outfit, but Amelia would certainly notice that the pants and sweater were both very expensive.
When I arrived at the job site at noon the following day, three workers were finishing final touches on the house, installing the kitchen cabinetry, hardware, appliances, and light fixtures. I spotted Amelia. She was wearing a stylish brown coat and a silk scarf around her neck. “My beautiful Delta,” she cried. “I’m so happy you’re here!” It was freezing cold, but Amelia’s words heated every inch of my body within seconds.
I noticed how the workers looked at her, the supreme respect they accorded her. They worshipped her. Her eyes darted to every corner of the kitchen, assessing what needed to be done. “Line up the pull and the hinge.” “Center the sconce.” “Raise the lantern two inches.” When she gave a direction, her confidence and expertise were palpable.
She finished speaking to the workers, then led me through the parlor floor, describing the paths of circulation and the use of space. Not only was the renovation finished, the home was almost completely decorated. It appeared that many of the original walls were intact, as opposed to the first floor of the Straubs’ home, which was largely open.
We entered the library in the back of the house. “The clients wanted to keep all the dark wood and the paneling,” she said. “They think they’re respecting history. I tried to tell them it was added in the sixties. And even if it was original, it’s ugly.
“They saw our website,” she said. “And I told them, listen, you say you like our work. Well, it’s not going to look like that if you leave all the heavy wood everywhere.” Amelia was surprisingly practical when speaking about her work. Yes, she was a true artist, and it was this aspect of her, above all else, that drew me to her. But she acknowledged the commercial side of her job without apology. Amelia and I had so much in common.
I found the home handsome—though not in the same league as the Straub house. Amelia led me up the stairs, pointing out details with which she was pleased, such as the design of the black iron newel posts, the steel balusters, and the gracefully curved mahogany handrails. The house didn’t completely represent her aesthetics, but I could tell she was proud of it.
She showed me the master suite on the second floor and the children’s bedrooms on the third floor. “We’re submitting photos of our work for an award we were nominated for,” she said. “The photographer we normally use totally flaked.” We were about to head back down the stairs when she stopped and turned to face me, her eyes bright. “You know, I just had an idea,” she said. “Would you take photos of the house for us?”
It took a minute for me to register what she’d said. When I did, I felt a hollow pit in my stomach. She’d asked me to lunch for this particular reason. I’d believed she was interested in spending time with me.
“We need someone brilliant who can fight against all the dark,” she said. “Of course I’d pay you anything you ask.”
I told myself that the request was flattering. She liked the photos of Ian’s mother’s place. Real friends do favors for each other. Just because Amelia had asked me for a favor, that didn’t necessarily mean anything about our friendship.
But I felt foolish, and at that moment, when I tried to see myself through her eyes, I saw Natalie’s babysitter and a party photographer. Not an artist. Not a peer.
When it came time for the shoot the following week, I overcame my despondency and was able to enjoy myself, largely because I had Amelia’s undivided attention and her admiration. She followed me around like a puppy dog, just as Ian and Paula had done in Paula’s apartment. Occasionally I allowed Amelia to look through the viewfinder. “How do you do it?” she said. “You’re not misrepresenting the space, but you’re interpreting it in the best possible way. You’re a genius.”
I hesitated when she asked what she owed me. If I were to take her money, then I would be solidifying an employer–employee relationship. But if I did not take her money, then I still wouldn’t know if our friendship was purely one of convenience for her.
She’d been paying me to babysit Natalie and she wouldn’t have it any other way. However, I considered the photographs to be in a separate category. For one thing, I typically charged a lot for my photographic skills. And something told me that Amelia was looking for a deal. She would be put off if I said my price was fifteen hundred for the day. But I couldn’t devalue my work. It was all or nothing. I chose nothing.
In early February, Amelia and Fritz had a business trip. They were going to Rome for four days to meet with their biggest client. They asked me to stay with Natalie, and of course I agreed.
For those four days, each morning I made breakfast for Natalie and we walked to school together. Then I’d spend the majority of the day at my apartment, editing, if I didn’t have a shoot. The hours in my apartment were growing difficult, because my body and brain were becoming accustomed to the scale and light in the Straubs’ home, including the design of their windows and glass doors, which allowed the eye to borrow all the space outside their home as well. In the Straubs’ house, I had the freedom to stretch and run, metaphorically speaking, with no constraints, whereas, in my own apartment, I felt myself shrink and compress.
Amelia had told me Natalie was old enough to be in their house alone for a couple of hours in the afternoon, but I didn’t agree, so I made certain to return by four thirty, when Natalie arrived home, and often earlier.
I knew that Gwen, the tenant downstairs, was at work during the day and it was possible to enter the garden apartment without fear of being observed. I felt that someone ought to be keeping tabs on her. I’d noticed several odd patterns of behavior. For instance, at the foot of her bed was a blanket that she always rolled into a tight cylinder—an indication that she was tightly wound and might be a loose cannon.
Sometimes I would arrive as early as 2 P.M. so that I could take a nap in the bed downstairs. I slept so soundly in that bed. It was perfect for me. I’d been repeating the puddle-of-water trick at least once a week, along with rearranging Gwen’s clothing from time to time, just to keep her off-balance.
The garden apartment and the Straubs’ future baby became linked in my thoughts. In my mind, the surrogate or birth mother who carried their baby belonged in the apartment. (It seemed to me that must have been the Straubs’ intention all along.) Gwen was not that person.
Each evening, Natalie and I would do her homework, eat dinner together, and take Itzhak for a walk around the block. When she didn’t have much homework, we stayed up late and played Scrabble. Before she went to sleep, we usually talked about school. Natalie told me various anecdotes about her friends.
“Hailey goes, ‘Piper, remember the doughnuts we had at Madeleine’s house?’ And then she goes, ‘Oh, Natalie, I forgot you weren’t there.’ But she didn’t forget that I wasn’t there. She wanted me to know that I wasn’t invited to something.”
I didn’t offer advice, but I think Natalie felt better because I listened to her. It often took an hour or more for me to quiet her down. I couldn’t have imagined how significant that time would be for me. And how I would long for it to continue.
On the third Friday of February, I was scheduled to babysit yet again, and this time Natalie was having a sleepover with Piper. I remembered her as the girl at Natalie’s party who couldn’t braid hair. I felt mildly hesitant, given what I’d learned of Natalie’s friends. When I arrived, I set my laptop and a small shopping bag on the kitchen counter. Inside was a child’s waterproof camera I’d purchased. It was a present for Jasper. I was hoping that someone would notice it.
I knocked on Natalie’s door and poked my head in. “Hi, you two.” Natalie and Piper were seated on the floor, immersed in painting their fingernails, and barely acknowledged me except for a slight wave. “I’ll be downstairs,” I said.
In the kitchen, I picked up a copy of the Times that was lying on the counter. Amelia and Fritz still subscribed to the paper edition. I sat down to read an article on a gang of counterfeiters from Lima, Peru. I learned that master counterfeiters are artists with a terrific desire for recognition. They’re so hungry for praise that they often give themselves away inadvertently.
When I heard footsteps on the stairs, I refolded the newspaper as I’d found it, and left it on the counter. Fritz appeared in a becoming tuxedo, his face damp with perspiration. “Delta Dawn!” He filled a glass with ice and filtered water and handed it to me, then filled a second glass for himself. “God, I hate this fucking monkey suit.” He sat on the stool opposite me and glanced at the cover of the Times, then at the child’s camera in my shopping bag.
“A little something I picked up for Jasper.” I was pleased that my purchase had paid off.
“Right. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far.” He turned his water glass in a circle on the counter, as if he were inspecting it for a flaw. Then he sighed loudly. “Our clients…” He dropped his head back to look at the ceiling. “They’re buying property in a fucking valley. Trees everywhere and dark as hell. They could buy anything. We told them and told them. They won’t listen. It’s the worst choice they could have made.” He paused. “Man, I should stop talking, right?”
“I love hearing about your work, because it’s all about light and shadow. Mine is too. When I walk into a space, any space, the first thing I see is the light and the shadow. Is that what you see?”
Fritz raised his eyebrows. “Yes!” He assessed me and I felt that his understanding of my abilities was coming into focus.
Backlit by the late-afternoon sun shining through the glass doors, he almost glowed. From behind his tortoiseshell glasses, his green eyes glistened brightly. I stifled a desire to pull out my Canon EOS. He laughed. “Unfortunately, I think that the star-chitects”—he chuckled at his pun—“and we’re not star architects … even they still have to answer to someone. Someone else is paying for everything and making the decisions. Of course, we can walk off a job. But we haven’t ever done that … not yet.
“These days, I come home to have a quick dinner with Natalie,” he continued, “and then I work for another five hours. Amelia’s worse than I am. When Natalie was younger, I was away a lot. Now it’s the reverse. Amelia’s more driven than anyone I’ve ever met.” Fritz looked self-conscious, almost as if he’d forgotten I was sitting there. He studied a bubble in the handblown water glass. “You’ve been awesome to Natalie. It’s just, we’re juggling too much crap. Each year, a new crop of hotshots competes for the business. Anyway. I need to stop talking. And ask about you.”
“I love observing children, discovering their personalities,” I said. “The parents who hire me, some of them lack confidence. My pictures tell them that all of their choices have been the right ones, because their choices have led them to a life with joyful children who are thriving due to their love and care. I’m selling a self-image.”
“Interesting.” His eyes widened.
“You and Amelia too. I imagine a large part of what people buy from you is self-image. Living in a Straub house gives your clients confirmation that they belong to a cultured, sensitive, creative breed of elite.”
I gathered that Fritz was pleased by what I said but didn’t want to acknowledge it.
“They want to be you, don’t they?” I said.
“Hell no.” Fritz shook his head, as if amused by my outlandish idea, but I knew I had approached the core of what he considered to be the truth.
“It’s an intimate act. To create someone’s home,” I said. “Your imagination, your intellect, your creativity, all of those things are funneled into your work. You’re the artist. But the creation belongs to your clients. You give birth, and then you have to give your child up. The home becomes their child.”
Fritz looked into my eyes and I knew we understood each other on a deeper level.
I stifled an urge to caress his face. I wondered what he would do if I took his hand and put it underneath my bra.
It was hard to explain my desire for Fritz. Even hard to explain it to myself. I didn’t want Fritz or Amelia to have a personal life separate from me. The further I burrowed myself into them, both of them, the less likely I’d ever have to return to my own existence. The less likely they could disentangle themselves from me.
I heard footsteps on the stairs. Fritz stood, preparing to leave. Amelia, dressed in an alluring black dress with a long string of beads, entered the kitchen. She turned to face away from me, revealing the ivory skin on her back and a partially unzipped dress. “Delta darling.” She gestured toward the zipper and I obliged.
She turned back around and smiled. “La Divina.”
At 7 P.M., the doorbell rang and the pizza I’d ordered arrived. I called to the girls and they flew down the stairs and past me into the kitchen toward the small media room. Both girls were wearing capri pants and tank tops. Piper’s top revealed her midriff. Natalie grabbed the remote.
“We’re watching Mean Girls while we eat pizza,” Natalie said.
“Yasss!” Piper said as she slid into a full split on the floor. She could do splits easily, and it was clear she wanted those around her to recognize her talent.
“Natalie, your parents OK with that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course.”
I had the sense that Natalie wanted Piper to think she’d seen the movie before when she really hadn’t—that she was trying to impress Piper with her prior knowledge of Mean Girls.
Natalie turned on Showtime and found the movie. Then the girls brought slices of pepperoni pizza on paper plates into the media room and settled into the sectional sofa with Itzhak at their feet.
I sat at the kitchen counter and worked for a while on my laptop, my eyes drifting to Lindsay Lohan on the television screen every few minutes.
Piper recited lines from the movie. “‘What is that smell?’ ‘Oh, Regina gave me some perfume.’ ‘You smell like a baby prostitute!’ Yasss!” She turned to Natalie. “OK, you’re Janis and I’m Cady.” Natalie acted as though she knew the dialogue too, but it was clear she didn’t.
I pulled out my Canon EOS from my backpack; while the girls were engrossed in the movie, it was a good opportunity to take a few photographs of the house. I planned to keep the photos in my archives, in case I wanted to refer to them one day.
Natalie and Piper paused the movie halfway through to microwave popcorn and then resumed. When the credits were rolling at nine, I suggested it was time to brush teeth and change into pajamas. That was when Piper proposed Mean Girls 2. Natalie jumped on the idea.
“You can watch it over breakfast,” I said. “It’s too late to start a movie now.”
“Whatevs,” Piper said, tossing her hair.
“Mom and Dad let me stay up as late as I want when I have a sleepover.” Natalie proceeded to look for Mean Girls 2 on Showtime.
I didn’t think this was exactly true, but I also didn’t want to make her seem immature in front of Piper, who carried herself with a cool sophistication that was extreme for an eleven-year-old.
“I don’t know.” I made eye contact with Natalie, trying to read the situation.
“Please, Delta,” she said quietly with wide, innocent eyes.
I already knew the dynamic with Piper was less than ideal. “OK, Natalie. Fine.”
While the girls were watching the movie, I studied them. Piper had long, shiny black hair and golden skin. Her delineated features, her bone structure and its accompanying shadows and highlights, were unusual for a child. I look at children’s faces for a living, so I know what I’m talking about. It takes a long time for a face to become what it is supposed to be. Some children have baby fat well into their teens. Then life experience forms a character and chisels out the lines of a face. Small children are often cute, but they’re rarely beautiful, because real beauty has specificity.
Natalie hadn’t yet become the person she was going to be, whereas Piper had. Even at eleven, Piper’s face had lines and a form. How does that happen to a child? How does it not happen to a child? I don’t know that I ever became the person I was meant to be.
After half an hour, Piper paused the movie. She stood up and shook her hips from side to side. “Damn, Gina, I need some candy!” She looked at me expectantly.
“There’s none in the house.” I knew that to be true because I checked the kitchen cabinets from time to time. If the Straubs were running low on any staples, I would stop by the market on my way to their house and pick up the items they needed. Amelia was always so grateful for such gestures.
“Skittles.” Piper moved her hips in circles like she had a Hula-Hoop. “Woo-hoo!”
“Skittles!” Natalie chimed in, though she must have known that her parents didn’t have Skittles in the house.
“I haven’t seen any candy here.” I found myself growing irritated by Piper and her demands.
“Ice cream!” Piper high-fived Natalie.
“Girls,” I said. “Finish the movie. It’s almost ten.”
“Ice cream is a necessity,” Piper said. They continued to dance, their arms in the air, their hips bumping each other.
I caved in and gave them coconut gelato, which I’d noticed in the freezer earlier.
After the movie, I followed them upstairs, but Natalie waved me away. “We’re fine.”
“Really?” I asked.
She closed the door behind her.
Later I checked back and the light was off in Natalie’s room. I assumed that they were sleeping.
I straightened up the media room, fluffing the pillows on the sofa where the girls had flattened them down. A charm necklace had fallen in between two pillows. I assumed it was Natalie’s. It appeared that she had made the clay charms herself. One charm resembled Itzhak. One was a little heart with a zigzagged line down the middle, meant to indicate that the heart was broken.
In the kitchen, as I was pouring boiling water over a tea bag, I heard a loud scream from upstairs. I raced up the stairs two at a time and opened the door to Natalie’s room to find Natalie asleep in her bed. The pull-out trundle bed was empty. Piper was standing by the window, screaming. “There was a man! He had a knife! Help me!”
Natalie rustled in her bed, half-asleep. “What happened?”
“Shhh,” I whispered to Piper. “You had a bad dream.”
“What?” Natalie murmured again.
“Shhh.” I patted Natalie’s arm. “Go back to sleep. It’s OK.”
I tried to walk Piper to the door, but she jumped away from me and started screaming again. “No! No!” Even in the dark room, I could see the terror in her face. It wasn’t a show. “I want my mom! You have to take me home!” Piper crouched on the floor, her body in a tight ball.
“Come with me and we’ll call your mom.” I pulled her to her feet and convinced her to follow me down the stairs.
Piper and I sat at the kitchen island. She was wearing a short red nightgown that could have been described as sexy. I’ve read that young children with a heightened sexual awareness have often been abused. In fifth grade I used to sit on top of the monkey bars in a dress and underwear, blocking the path, so that the boys would likely touch my crotch when they came swinging by.
“Do you want some milk?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Do you still want to call your mom?”
She cast her eyes down.
“OK, let’s have some milk,” I said, “and then we can decide what you want to do.”
“And some cereal. Do they have any excellent cereal?”
I looked in the cabinet and found Special K and Lucky Charms, which surprised me. Piper chose Lucky Charms. I poured her a bowl of cereal and milk and placed the bowl and a spoon on the counter in front of her. I sat next to her while she ate.
Her frame of mind had shifted and she appeared to be recovering from her nightmare. “You know, you can buy a box that has only the Lucky Charms marshmallows,” she said, “and none of the cereal.”
“Wow.”
“I remember you from Natalie’s birthday party,” she said. “You were taking pictures.”
“Yeah.”
She was painstakingly collecting only the marshmallows onto her spoon. “You’re a photographer and a babysitter too? How come?”
I chose to view the question as innocent. “I like Natalie. I like her parents.”
“You like babysitting?”
“Yes.”
Piper took another bite of only marshmallows. I was struck by the definition of her lips, like a painted doll. “That’s weird,” she said.
“Why is it weird?” I asked.
“I saw you taking pictures of the house. Why were you taking pictures of the house?”
I didn’t realize that Piper had noticed what I was doing while they were watching the movie. I experienced a familiar sharp tug in my abdomen. I knew my intentions were pure, but others might not understand.
“It’s a beautiful house, right?”
“What are you going to do with the pictures?”
The faint smirk on her face elicited a burning sensation in my chest, similar to heartburn. “Someday when I buy a house,” I said, “I’ll refer to the pictures for ideas on how to decorate.”
“Are you buying a house?”
“Not now.”
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Not everyone gets married.”
“You don’t want to get married?” Piper swished the milk around her bowl with her spoon.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Are you dating anyone?”
I paused. Ian would have described us as dating, but I didn’t consider sharing that information with Piper.
“I’m divorced.” Robert and Jasper were useful as a dam to block her questions.
“Then you were married before.”
“I have a son.”
“A son?”
“He lives with his dad.”
“Oh.” She licked the back of her spoon, like she was licking an ice cream cone. “Seems weird to me. That you’re babysitting. Do you need the money?”
“That’s not your business.” I stood up and returned the box of Lucky Charms to the kitchen cabinet and the milk to the fridge. “You should go back to bed.”
“D’you go out a lot?” she asked.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Where do you go?”
“Wherever.”
“So you have a lot of friends?”
What are friends? I go to three birthday parties a week. That’s more socializing than anyone needs. When I lived in Florida, my best friend got married. She asked me to be her maid of honor and then she changed her mind. We’d had an unusually close bond. I cared for her when she fell and broke several bones. Her fiancé was probably threatened by the strength of our relationship. He couldn’t handle the depth of her affection for me.
I heard the front door open and Amelia’s and Fritz’s footsteps. They appeared in the kitchen and saw me and Piper at the island. Dressed in winter coats and boots, eyes shining bright, faces flushed from the cold, they looked dashing.
“Hi, guys.” Amelia furrowed her brow in confusion. She and Fritz threw their coats on the hall bench and removed their boots.
“Piper had a nightmare,” I said.
“I’m OK.” Piper brought her cereal bowl to the ceramic farmhouse sink. “The radiator in Natalie’s room woke me up. Hashtag Noise. You guys should get it fixed. I don’t know how Natalie sleeps in that room.”
“Sure.” Fritz pursed his lips, perhaps to indicate that he appreciated the gravity of the problem, or perhaps he was trying not to laugh.
Once Piper was safely upstairs, Amelia cut her eyes at me. “That kid is a piece of work.”
I nodded, then gathered my belongings. “Listen, I’m sort of embarrassed to tell you this. I…”
“What?” Fritz asked.
“I took some pictures of your kitchen. It’s exquisite. One day, when I buy a house, I want to have a kitchen that looks like yours.” I gestured toward the cabinetry. “The workmanship on the cabinets. I took some photos so I don’t forget. Is that OK?”
Amelia laughed. “My God, I don’t care if you take pictures of the kitchen!”
Her laughter sounded like music to me, her voice lifting up to a high register, and then descending. In that instant I recognized my love for Amelia. I wasn’t sure how to describe it. My feeling was bigger than any label I could come up with.
I woke to the sound of my cell phone ringing. It was my former colleague, Lana. She hadn’t called me for three months. For a while she’d been calling every day. She found out I’d slept with the man she was dating. I’d had no idea they were in a relationship. I only saw them together twice. One night, about six months earlier, I’d bumped into Christopher at an overpriced bar on Vanderbilt, and we started talking about photography. He wanted to walk me home and he ended up spending the night. I hadn’t talked to him since.
When Lana discovered what had happened, she said some vile things to me. She called me a whore and a parasite. It wasn’t worth my time to fight with someone like her. She projected her own dishonesty and disloyalty onto other people. Years earlier she’d betrayed my trust, so our friendship was already on an inevitable decline. In the last couple of years, I’d barely seen her. It was even a stretch to describe her as a friend.
Lana’s call went to voicemail. She rang again and it went to voicemail again.
I sat down at the kitchen counter with a cup of black coffee and a piece of toast and surveyed the living room and kitchen. I owned three expensive pieces of furniture: a solid rosewood coffee table and two leather chairs. The kitchen cabinets were well made, with high-quality chrome hardware, though I would have preferred polished nickel. My large walnut cutting board, prominently displayed on the kitchen counter, contrasted beautifully with the white Caesarstone countertops. But recently such details that had pleased me in the past failed to lift my spirits. I couldn’t help comparing myself and my apartment to the Straubs and their house. The contrast left me feeling profoundly inadequate. I found it impossible to shut down the voices in my head that shouted out my inferiority.
Lately my brightest moments were derived from my personal photoshopping endeavors, particularly the ones involving the Straubs. I would usually allow myself to devote several hours to those projects later in the day, as soon as I’d finished my work. It was something to look forward to.
After breakfast I took a soothing hot shower and enjoyed the force of the water pounding onto my shoulders and arms. My shower was only thirty inches by thirty inches, though the glass walls on two sides gave the illusion of a larger shower. A small hexagon-shaped glass tile covered the shower floor, and a rose-colored subway tile covered the walls and gave off a warm glow. I should have painted the walls of the apartment the rose color instead of lavender. The lavender walls looked gray and flat in the northern light. Why hadn’t I known that would be the case? If there was one thing I knew about, it was light. What kind of light made people and places shine.