My mother always told me that to be a girl one must be especially clever.
Before landing at JFK, I had three Bloody Marys and an extra piece of cake that fell apart in my mouth. A person should never take on a city with an empty stomach, and I am always hungry.
Leaving London didn’t bother me much because one should always be making moves. When asked, “What made you come to London?” I would say, “I didn’t want to go home.” That, to me, is always enough.
People think coming to New York is an answer, and that’s where they go wrong. It was Friday night and the sun had already set. At each subway stop, large groups of friends came on the train. Down the car, someone played a disco medley off a phone. I felt my own night stretch out before me.
By then, Gala had landed in Newark; it was only her second time on a plane, so I had asked Nicolas to pick her up from Penn Station. She did not trust her instincts to find Brooklyn. Nicolas is a prince for doing things for us when we have nothing but friendship to offer him. He’s known Gala and me since we were young. It is so gentlemanly of him to take us under his wing. Nicolas answered his phone after a couple of rings and said, yes, he had eventually found Gala, and they’d been sitting on a stoop waiting for me to call.
Gala was thinner, newly blond, and coughed that same dry cough she’s had since high school. Seeing her, I was reminded of all the times we sat in bars we were not legally allowed to be in, saying things like, “Of course I believe in Destiny.” Nicolas was handsome like always, the kind of handsome everyone agrees on. He still swoops his dark hair back before speaking. He has the habit of creasing his forehead when he is listening to someone talk, which gives him a look of discernment. Nicolas and Gala gave me hugs and said things like, “Have you found yourself yet?” which is their idea of teasing. They said my accent was affected. Gala says I sound like I’m always running out of breath.
The station was a straight twelve blocks from our new house. The sidewalk on the way was littered with broken glass and plastic bags. It was dark already. Gala had brought a sizable suitcase. “We could probably live in it if we can’t pay rent,” she quipped. She thinks it’s funny to make jokes about doom. Nicolas said the neighbourhood is fine, but for girls there are certain pockets to avoid. And I said, “Like all neighbourhoods.” Nicolas is in advertising but has more sense than to believe in it. His work transferred him to New York, and he’s been here for six months. “It was about time,” he said. He had grown out of the city we came from and had seen all he wanted to see. Plus, he wanted to succeed as a bachelor, and there are simply more girls in New York.
A couple of boys who looked around our age were smoking on the front steps when we arrived. The house was a pinkish, clay-coloured brownstone with fat hearts engraved above the windows. Bikes were chained all along the railing, and two small lamps lit up the doorway. I was the first to go up the stairs with one of my bags, but none of the boys moved for me. I had to delicately manoeuvre around them saying, “Excuse me, sorry about that.” Gala, on the other hand, pushed right past, hitting their shins with the sides of her suitcase. “Can you get out of the way? We’re moving in.” One of them, who was wearing a Brooklyn Nets jersey, shrugged. “But what are you doing here?” You could tell they thought they’d earned a little clout by living in New York for one or two years. Some people acquire brutishness in the laziest way. I laughed and looked to Nicolas, who was at the bottom of the stairs. He raised his eyebrows. He never thinks it’s necessary to be curt. Gala did not like the Nets guy’s tone and said, “What the hell are you doing here? Do you even live here?”
Apparently our roommates forgot we were moving in that night and had decided to throw a party. Our downstairs neighbours too. A small Rubenesque girl stopped in the hallway and asked Nicolas if he was moving in. I piped up and said, “No, no, that’s us!” She looked a little disappointed and led us through the house for a tour. Her name is Alex. She gave us one cold “welcome” beer each and said, “Don’t get used to this. I don’t really like to share.” She gestured to the collection of items in the fridge marked with her name. She walked us through the party, as though the gathering itself were an impressive feat. I tried to keep an open mind about the crowd. Many of them looked like art-school graduates who had yet to nail down a personal style.
Maybe it was because we were weathered from travel or because of Nicolas’s charismatic good looks, but people eyed us whenever we entered a room. They stared as though it was obvious we were strangers. Gala said she didn’t mind, she didn’t want to be part of this milieu anyway. Music was blasting loudly in the dimly lit basement, where at most twelve people were dancing. Everyone else was either out back smoking or crowding the hallways. I overheard a boy with shaggy blond hair saying, “The Gowanus Canal is so underutilized. I think people exaggerate how polluted it is. Like, you can probably swim in there.”
Our apartment is on the top two floors of the house, while unit B is the ground floor and basement. As we made our way up and down the stairs, people’s eyes still lingered on us. The walls of our room are dark teal, and there is a fireplace that is just for decoration. It smells like old dust that was once settled but now rises through the air with the heat. We have an adjoining bathroom that connects to the hallway. You have to push the door with some force to shut it at all, and even then, it manages to spring open. Nicolas looked at the small double bed. “You guys gonna be okay sleeping next to each other?” Gala put her arm around my neck. “Just like old times. Like sisters!” She was referring to the six months I lived in her bedroom when we were sixteen. She would call me her “boarder” at school. I rolled my eyes and got out from under her grasp. Nicolas gave me a look I interpreted to mean “You can always stay with me.” I am ahead of Gala in Nicolas’s heart. Even chosen families have favourites.
Alex left us to unpack, running downstairs to the party, where the music had grown louder. “She’s kind of odd—not in a good way,” Nicolas said, smoothing down his hair. We looked out our window to the backyard, which was full of people. Pieces of conversation bubbled up so that we could hear “I’m loving cassettes right now,” “Making fun of crystals is so easy,” “Don’t talk to me like I don’t know where Ridgewood stops and Glendale begins!” Alex said we should get to know our downstairs neighbours so they would give us access to what she called “a nice herb garden.” I doubt the people at the party noticed any kind of vegetation.
The girl we rented the room from is called Maggie, and her jewellery box contains only rocks and shells. She is a friend of a friend of a friend. Isn’t everybody? She has an apartment in Rockaway, where she is going to spend the summer surfing. We have never met, but every month I am supposed to leave an envelope with the rent money in the mailbox for her. Gala looked through the closet and let out a sigh. “There’s nothing in here we’d even want to borrow.” Maggie owns quite a lot of faux-bohemian dresses that are long, flowing, and highly flammable. Her shoes were covered in dust, especially in the crevices.
I was beginning to feel tired from the flight. Flying west across the Atlantic is always more difficult than flying east. I lay across the bed, over the thin blankets, and tried to relax. It’s funny how quickly a place can become yours. It never takes much, at least for me.
Gala started to unpack her things. “Don’t you want to take stuff out of your bags? Everything’s gonna get wrinkled.” I kept my eyes closed. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere. I have time.” Luckily it’s summer. I was able to fit at least sixty thin articles of summer clothing in my suitcase. I am an expert at packing, but also at coming and going. Gala and I secured a vendor stall at a street market on the weekends, so most of what I brought could be considered “stock.” Naturally I was worried I’d be inspected at customs because, I guess, I am in fact an importer.
The door to our room not being the most secure, people from the party kept coming in. It became clear I would not be able to rest. Nicolas was getting increasingly concerned about the way guys were coming into our room while we were getting ready for bed. They would burst in saying, “Oh, we thought this was a bathroom,” and loiter in the doorway as though waiting for an invitation. Before he left us for the night, Nicolas said that at this rate we should charge some kind of voyeur fee. Really, he thinks we should get a lock. Directing people to the bathroom next door, Gala rolled her eyes. “We’re so unlucky. Of course we move into a house where not one of the boys who come through is even cute. They look like they’ve never seen the sun.” They seem to find hardship fascinating—dirty hair but suspiciously straight teeth. Because they begrudgingly accept allowance from their parents, they think they’re not upper-middle-class. There are, of course, slummers in every generation.
When I was initially organizing our renting situation, Maggie asked me whether I could pick up a certain type of British shampoo for our other roommate. “He will thank you endlessly.” I unpacked it and put it on the shelf in the bathroom. A boy my height and of a brown complexion similar to mine poked his head around the corner. “You must be the girl who brought my toiletries.” He introduced himself as Lucian (pronounced like Freud) and said he was once a French-literature major but now investigates for the private sector. He asked me about my background because, he said, we could pass for siblings. When I told him, he said, “We’re what they call exotic! That’s good. We can stick together, have each other’s backs and all that. I can trust you. You know,” he leaned into me and whispered, “the girls who live here are nice and all, but I just do not trust white girls. You never can—that’s a security measure.” I had to laugh because I knew Gala was listening from the adjacent bedroom. I opened the door. Lucian crossed his arms and said if she was with me, she was fine. I told him, “Anyway, Gala is former Yugoslavian, so she’s familiar with suffering in ways that other white girls are not.”