I’d taken to having the news on in the background while I got ready for work to dispel the constant quiet. Since he’d started working on this WestCorp deal, Evan had been out the door before my alarm had even gone off, every day for weeks.
I was clicking through channels while I brushed my teeth and stopped on CNBC as it returned from a commercial. I sat down on the futon, the minty toothpaste tingling in my mouth. It was Monday morning, and a situation that had looked uncertain before the weekend had exploded into full-blown apocalyptic chaos. Weeks earlier, Evan had explained to me how the housing slump would actually help Spire’s position on this WestCorp deal—the further the market sunk, the more Spire eventually stood to gain—but at that moment, even he seemed worried about how fast it was happening. We had watched the news the previous night: Enormous firms shuttering, thousands of people losing their jobs, billions of dollars vanishing overnight. Friends of ours saddled with apartment leases they could no longer afford. I knew I shouldn’t enjoy it too much, but I couldn’t help it: part of me felt a weird thrill at our positions suddenly flipping. I was employed while they were adrift.
Evan had been pacing in front of the TV the previous night, Sunday night, worrying about what might happen. This panic was new; I’d never known him like this. “But Spire’s going to be fine, right?” I said. That’s what he’d been saying to me all along. “They’re not going to fire you. Right?”
“They’re not going to fire you,” I’d said with more conviction earlier that summer, before either of us had started work. We were standing in the Brooks Brothers on Madison Avenue, the afternoon sun flaring through the windows. I was drinking a Pellegrino and watching Evan in the mirror in the fitting area.
He laughed. “I hope not.”
“So why worry whether they’re returnable? You’ll be wearing these for years.”
He adjusted his tie. “Habit, I guess.”
“You look great. I think you should get both.”
He’d never owned a suit before. That morning in early July, he had been looking up the address for a discount retailer downtown. “You still have all of your signing bonus?” I’d asked, and he nodded. “Okay. Come with me.” There was a Brooks Brothers near our apartment. He’d guffawed at the price tag on the suit I pointed out, but I pushed him toward the dressing room. “Could you help us?” I asked a salesman. “He’s probably a forty-two long. He needs one in blue and one in gray. And some shirts and ties.” When the salesman went to get his pincushion, Evan looked at the price again, whistled, and wondered out loud whether he could return them.
But I think he knew, even then, even if they were nicer than what he needed, that he looked too good not to keep them. When he stood on the raised block to let the salesman adjust the hem of his pants, it was like a time-fuzzed image snapping back into focus. I could appreciate just how handsome he was, as I had at the beginning. His sandy brown hair, his light blue eyes. Wearing the trappings of adulthood like a natural. Our gazes met in the mirror, and he smiled at me.
“I’m glad you made me get them,” Evan said. We were walking back to the apartment, a bag with his new shirts and ties swinging from one hand. He’d pick up the altered suits in a few days. He kissed me. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
I was proud of him. Really, I was. He was a boy from the middle of nowhere who had gotten himself to Yale. He was working at the most famous hedge fund in New York, leaving for work every morning in his finely made suits. He’d said it to me more than once that summer. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I knew he meant it as a compliment. But Evan was always better at taking direction from others than he was at taking direction from himself. It could have been anyone prodding him to get a better suit, and his gratitude would have come out sounding the same. My being the prodder was only incidental.
I suppose, at the time, I didn’t understand how rapidly my feelings toward Evan were evolving. Maybe I didn’t want to admit how little it took to dismantle what we’d built. It wasn’t that our relationship had been perfect before. We’d fought in college, but those fights always felt specific: fireworks that faded into smoke as fast as they arrived. But in New York, in the real world, every annoyance and disagreement felt like a referendum on our relationship. The bitterness started to linger. I was seeing growing evidence of why this was never going to work. A sickening suspicion that Evan and I were, in fact, all wrong for each other.
On the surface, my life seemed normal enough. I went to work, I jogged in the park, I saw my friends at crowded bars and brunches. Evan and I would try to have a late dinner on Friday or Saturday, compressing a week’s worth of intimacy into a few hours, but more and more often he didn’t even have time for that. Every night, I came home to a quiet apartment. My brain crackled with excess energy. I’d pace. I’d toss aside books, unable to concentrate. I’d sit in silence, ears pricked, hearing every flush of the toilet and clacking of heels echo through our building. Sometimes I’d try to stay up late for Evan, but those were always the nights I fell asleep with the lamp burning. Or, instead, I’d decide to go to bed early and wake up for a long run before work. Those were inevitably the nights I tossed and turned in our too-hot bedroom, unable to sleep, and when the alarm went off at 6:00 a.m., I’d rise like a zombie and jog through the empty streets.
What had happened? Looking back at those early weeks in New York, as we were wading into the shallows of our new lives, I realized that everything had changed so quickly. Earlier in the summer, things hadn’t been perfect, but they’d been okay: late nights out, long walks home, lingering over the last glass of wine. But something had changed soon after we started working. I was plagued with a new dissatisfaction. Was this it, was this everything? Was this my life from now on? Something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it—until suddenly, it seemed obvious what the problem was.
One August weekend, Evan and I were having a hurried brunch before he went back to the office. He had a new habit of keeping both his phones, flip phone and BlackBerry, on the table while we ate. I was telling a story when his BlackBerry vibrated. He picked it up immediately and started reading the e-mail that had just come in. “Oh, man,” he said loudly. I couldn’t tell whether it was good news or bad. Then he smiled at the screen. A big, wide, face-cracking grin. “Jules, this is awesome. Oh, man. So I was telling you about this WestCorp deal, right? Well…”
And he launched into the details, forgetting entirely that I’d been in the middle of a story. But I wasn’t listening. Instead I was thinking that I was such an idiot. It was so obvious—how had I not seen it before? That night in March, when I’d overhead his conversation with Patrick. That smile, that big grin. It was the exact same grin he was wearing at brunch, chattering away about the WestCorp deal. It was the blossoming of the seed I’d first glimpsed months earlier. Evan was more excited about his future than I was about mine. He had been all along. More alive with energy, with possibility, thinking about a million things other than me. I’d seen it before, how Evan threw himself into something he cared about. It happened in the most intense parts of the hockey season, back in college, and it was happening now, only now it wasn’t finite. This wasn’t just a season. This was real life. Our life—my life.
I had a suspicion. I started administering silent tests. Evan would get home, dropping his briefcase to the floor with a sigh. “You wouldn’t believe what happened at work,” he’d say, flopping down on the futon. He told me everything about Michael Casey, about the WestCorp deal. On and on and on. I’d keep perfectly quiet, waiting for him to finish, to turn his attention to me—to anyone but himself. Waiting for him to ask how my work was going, what I’d eaten for dinner, the people I’d been hanging out with in his absence. Anything. But he never asked, not once.
This new Evan didn’t have anything left for me. Evan needed me to affirm his existence, to nod and smile and say the right thing at the right time. He failed the test, and my suspicion was confirmed. He wasn’t really thinking about me. He never was. I don’t know what I’d do without you. He seemed to forget that it was supposed to be reciprocal.
At work, later that September day, there was nervous chatter in the hallways. I imagine that was true everywhere in New York that afternoon—watercooler speculation about how far it would go, if we were witnessing the end of one era and the beginning of the next—but we had particular reason to be concerned. Organizations like ours formed an appendage to the financial industry, rising and falling along with the market. It was symbiotic, our minnow cleaning the gills of the whale that swam around lower Manhattan. We relied on the largesse of the Fletchers and others like them to keep us alive.
Had I started thinking of the foundation as ours? Had I started thinking of myself as us? I guess I had. I was beginning to understand why people sometimes stayed in jobs they hated. It wasn’t just about the paycheck. It was about the structure, contributing to the hum of civilized society. My own contribution was almost invisible, but I liked the accoutrements. The nameplate on my desk; the security guard in the lobby who knew me by sight. Even if the job wasn’t much, it was something. I’d complain about it to Evan, but all he said was how lucky I was to have such easy hours; cutting, even if true.
I thought of Evan pacing the apartment the night before, of what he must be going through at work. After lunch, I sent him a text. He didn’t respond until hours later, when I was getting ready to leave. All good. Probably gonna be here late.
Can you take a break for dinner? I wrote.
I’ll go out around 6:30 to get something, he replied.
I glanced at my watch—it was approaching 5:30 p.m. I thought of one night from earlier that summer, from better days. This was a chance to get back what we’d lost track of. I walked north from my office and found a deli a few blocks from Evan’s office. His favorite sandwich, the same since college: a chicken cutlet with mozzarella and bacon. I took two sodas from the cooler, draped with strips of dusty plastic that reminded me of tentacles at a car wash.
I thought about calling, but I liked the notion of surprising him. Maybe it was the air of doom making me alert, but I felt optimistic. Renewed with hope. I leaned against the side of his building, my eyes closed against the sun, two sandwiches and two cans of soda in hand. Maybe we both just needed to try a little harder. This was a phase, and it would pass. I checked my watch. It was 6:30, then it was 6:45, then it was almost 7:00 p.m. Well. I couldn’t be upset with him. He didn’t know I was waiting.
A group finally emerged from the building, spit out of the revolving door like pinballs. Evan came out last, jogging to catch up with his coworkers. They all had their jackets off, their sleeves rolled up, and they were laughing about something.
“Evan!” I called, waving at him.
He looked confused when he saw me. The group kept walking, slower now, giving him the chance to catch up. A few of the guys stared at me.
“Hey,” he said, walking over. “What are you doing here?”
“I brought dinner.” I lifted the deli bag. “I thought we could eat together. Like the old days, you know.”
“Oh. That’s nice of you, Jules.”
“I got your favorite. Chicken cutlet with bacon and mozzarella.”
“The thing is,” he said, glancing over his shoulder, “I was going to get dinner with the guys. We’re going to this new Indian place on Ninth. You understand, right?”
I squinted. I couldn’t see. The sun was right in my eyes.
He laughed, then took the sandwich from me. “I can have it for lunch tomorrow, okay? Don’t worry about it.”
“But what about—how was your day? I was watching the news at work.”
“We’re fine. Our CEO had to leave for Washington. He’s joining the government advisory team. So Michael’s in charge now. Acting CEO.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“It’s a great thing. It means the WestCorp deal becomes a top priority. Pretty cool, right? Hey, I should really catch up with the other guys.” He rested his hand on my shoulder for a moment. “Thanks again, Jules.”
“You’re welcome.” I didn’t mean it.
He started to walk away, then paused. “Oh. I forgot to tell you. Guess whose byline I saw today?”
“What?” A truck was rushing past, blaring its horn.
“I said, ‘Adam McCard.’”
My heart sped up. My hands went clammy. I was suddenly glad Evan was already several feet away. My brain couldn’t think up a reply.
“He’s on the business beat at the Observer. He was writing about the crash. Small world.” Evan smiled. This time, he walked away for good.
Was it possible that he knew? Through the rest of that week, I waited for Evan to bring up Adam’s name again. I was certain he was going to test for my reaction, to watch for the fluttering pulse in my neck or the nervous twist of my hands—damning proof of how much that name still meant to me.
But that wasn’t Evan. I was the one who thought like that, not him. I could never decide whether Evan sensed those concealed parts of me and chose to leave them alone, or whether he thought that what he saw was everything there was to see. And the harder problem was—I could never decide which of those possibilities I wanted to be true.
* * *
A memory, from freshman year, from the time when Evan and I were just friends. A few months, that’s all it was, a ratio that diminishes as the years go by. But those days were intense and heady, when our affection was waxing like the moon, when the uncertainty electrified the air between us. In an odd way, those feel like our purest days. When we were truly ourselves, before we started bending and changing to accommodate each other.
But that’s not quite right. Because even then, even before we were together, I was hiding certain aspects of myself from Evan.
That night, in early October, we were on the couch in Evan’s common room. Evan was sitting upright at one end, and I was lying with my head in his lap, the TV low in the background. Evan would occasionally brush a piece of hair from my forehead, but he couldn’t see the expression on my face from where he sat. At the time, I was still dating Rob, my high school boyfriend. Evan didn’t mind talking about Rob, which surprised me. Maybe he knew it was only a matter of time before Rob would cease to be an obstacle.
“So you and Rob,” he said. “Do you ever worry that he might cheat on you?”
“Not really. We have too many friends who could report back to me if he did.”
“Even if he was secretive about it?”
“Rob thinks too highly of himself to cheat. Like, he doesn’t see himself as that kind of guy. He’s too proud.”
“Do you think he worries about you? That you might ever cheat on him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Were you guys always faithful to each other?”
My face must have tightened when Evan asked that last question, but he didn’t notice. He just kept running his fingers through my hair, tracing the ridge of my ear. I thought before answering. This was the second time a chance had arisen to make my confession. The first had been the very first night of school, while we were eating pizza. He’d asked me about my summer, and I’d almost said it—the look on his face had been so warm and trusting, and I wanted to tell him everything. He was just a friend at that point, and there was no reason not to be truthful. But even at that first moment—and at that second moment, too—I wanted Evan to think of me a certain way.
“Yes,” I lied. “I mean, I always was, and he was, too, as far as I know.”
“Mmm,” Evan said. “Did I tell you about what happened at practice? So one of my teammates said…”
It never came up again. He never knew the difference. Perhaps he hadn’t been administering any kind of test, or perhaps he had been, but only unconsciously. As the night wore on I began to feel a certain relief—that I had passed—but there was guilt, too. Did I think it was okay to lie because it was never going to happen again? Or did I know, even then, that it was an error destined to be repeated?
* * *
I tried not to think about Adam. I really tried. Our encounter that summer had lasted barely two minutes, capped with an empty promise to stay in touch. How many times did that happen in a given day in Manhattan? Hello and good-bye, a hundred heartbeats. I did everything to force Adam McCard out of my mind. I focused on whatever was in front of me: Evan, work, friends. But there was too much time in between. Too many empty hours, alone with nothing but my thoughts. I scanned the faces of everyone I passed in the street. I jumped every time my phone rang. While I was waiting for sleep, I found myself thinking about him. Adam McCard, Adam McCard, repeating billboards at the side of the highway. It seemed impossible he wasn’t thinking about me, too.
And then, just as September was about to turn into October, I heard my phone ringing over the weak dribble of our shower. How did I know? But somehow I did: I knew that this time it would be him. His voice on the message was deep and smooth, an answer to an unasked question.
“Julia, gorgeous, it’s me, Adam. If you’re screening my calls, I don’t blame you. God, I was so happy to run into you this summer. My only excuse for not calling is how busy work has been. Original, huh? But let me buy you a drink some night and tell you all about it. Please. I’d love to see you. Call me back. Same number.”
We planned to meet for drinks the next night at a bar downtown. From the outside, it looked like a very Adam place. A wooden door, no visible sign. The kind of place easily passed without notice. I’d dressed carefully, pulling my hair back and putting on lipstick, and earrings that dangled against my neck. My palms were sweaty, and my mind was jumbled. I had to remind myself it didn’t matter. He was the one who called me. There was nothing to lose. I walked into the bar a few minutes late and didn’t see him. Lots of young men with dark hair and deep voices, but no Adam. Maybe he was standing me up. Maybe it was for the best. Maybe it was better to go back to my own life and listen to that instinct flaring in the back of my mind—to stay away.
Then I felt the hand on my shoulder.
Adam kissed me on the cheek in greeting, the scent of his aftershave something that I’d never realized I’d memorized.
“Julia. You look amazing.”
“Thanks.” I tried not to blush.
We found a small, rickety table next to an open window at the front of the bar, where the breeze from the sidewalk drifted in. It was still warm, the last of an Indian summer. Adam picked out a bottle of wine for us to share. A Friday night, and the bar was full of people laughing off the week with pints of beer and platters of oysters on ice.
“This place looks great,” I said.
“It used to be a dive bar. We’d come here sometimes in high school. You could bribe the bouncer to let you in without ID.”
“Doesn’t seem like that would work anymore.” There were exposed bulbs, framed prints, cocktails, craft beers, the prices high enough to make me wince.
He lifted his glass. “Then it’s a good thing we’re so old,” he said. “Cheers.”
It was like days had passed, not years. Adam’s voice had that unchanged quality to it, a baritone depth that made me feel like we were actors on a stage, exchanging lines. Something about the way he leaned forward and cocked his head: it was like a cue, and the words that emerged from my mouth were more eloquent and interesting and right. The evening light came in at a low angle, casting a long shadow behind my wineglass on the table, warming my shoulders. I crossed one leg over the other, and my sandal dangled from my big toe.
I had a second glass of wine, a third. I’d been nervous and hesitant walking into the bar, but even an hour with Adam put me at ease. I was more relaxed than I’d felt in months. I was flirting, but just a little. I was still waiting for a signal that it was okay to keep going down this road.
The sun finally slipped behind the building across the street, and Adam’s face sharpened in the dimmed light. In the previous few years, since I’d last seen him, he’d acquired an appealing patina of experience. The conversation lulled, and in that moment I felt the night changing cadences. A deepening, the wine sinking in, the dinner hour upon us. The silence flustered me, and I didn’t know where to direct my gaze. A long second ticked by. When I looked up at Adam, his smile had disappeared.
This was it.
“Jules,” he said. He took a breath. “I can’t—I feel like I have to say something.”
I shook my head. I wanted—needed—this moment to happen, but I wanted the outcome without the procedure. Wake me up when the surgery is over.
“About last time, I guess. It was a long time ago. But I was a jerk. It was totally inappropriate. I should never have said or done those things. I’d like to think I’m a different person now, and I want to say—”
“Adam, it’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it.”
“No, I want to say it. I’m sorry, Julia. It’s been weighing on me, especially since—I guess that’s the real reason I never called. I was worried you wouldn’t want to talk to me again. I wouldn’t blame you for that.”
“It was just a misunderstanding.”
He tilted his head and smiled sadly. Apologies didn’t come naturally to Adam. “I’m not sure I deserve to get off so easy.”
“It’s fine. We’re fine.” A pause—could I say it? “I missed you.”
We talked about my job, about the last two years of school. Adam was the first person since graduation who actually seemed curious about my life. I didn’t realize how much I’d been holding back until he started asking questions.
“Well, she sounds like a character,” Adam said after I told him about Laurie’s soap-in-the-coffee bit. “I know the type. Probably spent too many years living alone.”
“It’s so strange. She’s smart—I can see that. I respect her. I want to like her. But it’s like I’m not there. It’s like she doesn’t even see me as a real person. I don’t get it.”
“That’s her mistake, Jules. It sounds like you’re too good for that place.”
I’d forgotten how much I loved the sound of Adam’s voice. “I guess I should stop whining,” I said, reaching to refill my glass. “At least I have a job, right?”
“What about Evan?” he asked. “What’s he up to these days?”
“Oh.” I was surprised that Adam had even remembered Evan’s name. “Evan.”
“You guys are still together?”
“Yeah. Yeah, he’s working at a hedge fund. Spire Management.”
“Spire? That’s a tough place to crack. He must be good.”
Relief washed over me. Back in college, Adam usually dismissed guys like Evan, if he noticed them at all. But now he was genuinely interested in Evan, in what he was working on. There was a warmth to his questions. Adam had changed. He wasn’t the same person he’d been the last time we’d seen each other. Evan was my boyfriend, and Adam respected what I’d chosen. It felt good. This, maybe, was the signal I’d been waiting for. I nodded vigorously when he suggested a second bottle.
“So you’re a reporter?” I said later. “How long have you been there?”
“It’s boring. You don’t want to hear about it.”
“No, I do.” He grimaced, and I laughed. “Come on. It can’t be as bad as my job.”
“About a year and a half now. I started as a stringer, and then they had an opening on the business desk. The editor said he would move me to politics before the election.”
“That sounds promising.”
“He changed his mind. Once the housing bubble started heating up, he decided he needed me to stay where I was. So.” He sipped his wine. “It’s annoying. I don’t like what I’m writing about. It’s the same news everyone else is reporting. I’m putting out feelers for other jobs.” He shrugged, looking resigned. “Not much else to say about it.”
* * *
In the following days, this gave me comfort. Even Adam didn’t have everything figured out? Unfathomable, a few years earlier. In college I was certain he was going to be famous. Adam McCard—people would know that name.
We knew each other from the campus magazine at Yale. In the first weeks of fall, freshman year, I crammed into a musty old office with two dozen other freshmen, lured by the promise of free pizza. The editors of the magazine made their pitch, telling us that joining the magazine would be the best decision we ever made. I thought I’d never go back. Me, the girl who hated English class, the girl who still recoiled from the memory of that bright red C on that stupid essay? But the next week, I returned. Already the people around me were finding their niches: Evan with his hockey, Abby with her volunteer work. I knew that I needed to hurry up and find my thing. I was assigned to write a short profile of the new football coach. I didn’t know the first thing about football. “I’m sorry. This is probably awful. I’m a terrible writer,” I told my editor, an older girl named Viv, when I turned in that assignment. “That’s okay,” Viv said. “That’s what I’m here for.”
My next assignment was to review a new show at the campus art gallery. “Julia,” Viv said as she read my draft. “This is really nice. Your descriptions are great. You must know a lot about this stuff.” The rest of my assignments from Viv were, thankfully, in that vein. I wrote several more pieces for the magazine that year. I wasn’t gung-ho about it, wasn’t angling to be an editor. But I liked walking into the office and feeling that I belonged. I liked the satisfaction that came from Viv telling me I had done a good job.
As a sophomore, I wrote more. I had a regular beat by then, on the arts and culture desk, and I was getting ready to declare an art history major. Those moments when I was starting a new piece—blank document, blinking cursor—were a rare reliable pleasure in my life. Writing for the magazine was one of the only things I had control over. Sophomore year was proving to be strange. Bad strange. Compared to freshman year, everything felt precarious. The landscape of friendships had shifted, thrown off by different dorms and new roommates. Classes seemed harder. Parties seemed duller. Everyone was sinking deeper into their own worlds. Evan was consumed by hockey and didn’t have much time for me. When we were together, we bickered frequently. Our relationship didn’t seem so fated or so satisfying anymore. I felt restless, in search of something new.
“I’ve noticed you around a lot,” Adam said, dropping into the chair next to mine one midwinter afternoon. He extended his hand. “Remind me of your name.”
“Julia Edwards.”
“Nice to meet you, Julia Edwards. Adam McCard.”
I knew who he was, of course. He was the editor in chief, a senior. Adam had never before paid attention to me.
“Are you new?” he asked.
“I’m a sophomore. I wrote a few pieces last year. I’m doing more this year.”
“What are you working on?” He peered at my computer.
“Oh,” I said, tempted to cover the screen with my hands. “It’s just a little thing. It’s stupid. A review of a new show at the Center for British Art.”
“Aha. Julia. Of course. You’re the genius art critic. I love your stuff.” Someone called his name, and he stood up. The issue was about to close, and the editors would work well into the morning hours. Before he walked away, Adam put his hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Julia. Let’s grab coffee this week. Get to know each other. Sound good?”
A few months later, in the spring, I arrived at the magazine offices one night, ready to go over an article with Viv. But I was told she was sick, at home in bed. We still had a few days before the issue closed, so I put my laptop back in my bag. Adam spotted me just as I was about to leave. We had been having coffee every week. I’d admitted to Abby that I was developing a little crush on him, but it was innocent. It was nothing compared to what I felt for Evan, obviously.
“Julia. Leaving already?”
“Yeah. Viv’s out sick.”
“I have half an hour until my next meeting. Why don’t we give Viv a pass on this one? I’ll edit it for you.”
My hands were shaking as I pulled out my laptop and opened the file. This was a terrible development. I had written this piece quickly, to meet Viv’s deadline, and it was full of holes. Viv was exacting, finding the flaws in my work with merciless rigor, but she actually made me feel okay about that. It was never going to be right the first time; I knew that by now. I was fine with Viv seeing a rough draft of my work, but not Adam. I liked Adam, I liked spending time with Adam, but I wasn’t ready for him to see an unedited version of my thoughts. This was going to be a disaster.
“Let’s see,” he said, squinting as he read. A few minutes later, he looked up from the laptop. “This is great.”
“Really?” I thought he was joking, but then he nodded. “Wait, really? Do you think so? I know I need a better opening, and—”
“No, it’s great. Yeah, the lede could be punchier, but once you’ve nailed that I think you’re basically done.” He leaned back in his chair, hands folded behind his head. “So. What should we do for the next twenty-four minutes?”
I laughed, closing my computer. “Did you turn in your thesis? Or theses, I guess?” Adam was a double major in English and history. He’d spent the previous year writing about the Weimar Republic for the history department and working on a novel to fulfill the requirements for his writing concentration in English. His novel was also about the Weimar Republic. I’m not sure the English and history departments were, respectively, aware of this.
“I handed in history last week. And I’ll hand in the novel next week.”
“And that’s it, right? You’re done? I’m so jealous.”
“Don’t be. You’re the lucky one. Two years left until shit gets real.”
I rolled my eyes. He knew my complaints. Adam often took the train into the city on weekends, forgoing campus parties for the more glamorous options of New York, where he’d grown up. I was envious. Did he not get how constricted, how stifling this life felt? Class, study, party, Evan. Over and over and over.
He smiled. “You know I’d take you with me if I could. Start our own magazine or something.”
“Ha. I’d just be deadweight.”
“No way. I’m going to miss you, Jules.”
“Shucks.”
“I mean it.” He nudged my foot with his. “I really like you. You’re special.”
That was the thing about Adam. You believed everything he said. He said that he was going to be a writer after he graduated. I never imagined that he wouldn’t succeed. He would go to New York after graduation and find a job at the New Yorker or Harper’s or the Paris Review. In a few years he would have published his novel, and his picture would be gracing the cover of the arts section in the Times. There was no question about it. Adam would succeed at whatever he chose to do.
* * *
I took the subway home that night, after Adam and I said good-bye. The man sitting next to me on the uptown train was flipping through a copy of that morning’s Observer, scanning each page for a few seconds before moving on. Until he stopped and pulled the paper a little closer. Adam’s byline. The man read Adam’s article slowly, nodding to himself. The train reached Grand Central. The man stayed in his seat, eyes glued to the page. It wasn’t until the car had emptied and refilled that he looked up and jumped to his feet, elbowing his way out before the doors closed, sprinting to catch the late train back to Rye or Greenwich.
I’d wanted to lean over and tell him: I know Adam McCard. More than that: he’s my friend. He’d liked me, once upon a time. He told me I was special. That night was the very first time, that year in New York, that I felt like I knew something that the people around me didn’t. That I felt like I had a reason to be there. I sat back in my seat, flooded with a warm feeling of satisfaction.
He called me again the next week and the week after. October dawned chilly and clean. The whole planet was tilting on its axis in a new direction, a better direction.
The New York I’d been living in went from dull sepia to vibrant color. As Adam and I spent more time together, I felt a distant pity for Evan, for the narrow constraints of his world. In Chinatown Adam and I ate strange, spicy food in fluorescent-lit dives. We drank wine at sidewalk tables in SoHo. We went to gallery openings, to readings, to jazz shows in West Village basements. Adam took me to secret bookstores; he lent me his favorite novels. He was so confident, so comfortable. He wasn’t running around in search of an identity, the way so many of my classmates were. He already knew who he was, and that was intoxicating. Adam would sometimes slip his arm through mine as we walked, or place a hand on my shoulder as he stood behind me at the museum, or brush a stray leaf from the sleeve of my jacket when we sat in the park. Women looked at him with envy. I craved the intimacy, every little touch. I so badly wanted more.
One night, at a French bistro in the West Village, the remains of steak frites on the table between us, he asked me the exact question I’d avoided asking myself.
“So what does Evan think of us spending all this time together?”
I toyed with my napkin. “He doesn’t mind. He’s working on this deal all the time, anyway.”
He sipped his wine, watching me. He must have realized the truth, that I hadn’t said a word about this to Evan. Adam always knew how to read me.
Evan was still a factor in this equation, much as I wished otherwise. We kept up the charade at our weekly dinners, when he talked in a monologue about work. He’d seemed tired lately, worn down by the demands of the deal. For some reason, Michael wouldn’t staff anyone else on it. It was Evan and Evan alone. “But,” he said in early October, his voice straining with a forced optimism, “it’s really starting to come together. Michael had me run a model this week. The numbers are dynamite. You wouldn’t believe how huge the upside is.”
Evan’s hours only grew more extreme as the fall progressed, and our date nights became rarer and rarer, until eventually I was left with the life of a single woman. The turning point came when I started taking advantage of this instead of resenting it. It was a new stage in our relationship, that was all; a phase where I could be more independent than ever before. A weight had lifted from my shoulders. I was free. There was a different kind of sadness in my life now, but it was a sweeter kind of sadness, easier to bear, because I had never accepted that falling for Adam was in fact such a hopeless mistake.
“What did you do?” Abby squinted at me. “Did you change something? Your hair?”
I shook my head. Nothing had happened between Adam and me, but still, I didn’t know what to say about it. Even Abby’s sympathy only went so far. For the time being, I kept my mouth shut.
It was a Saturday night in October, and we were at her apartment in Harlem, a run-down and homey old railroad setup she shared with a friend. Her super had turned on the radiators early, so Abby kept the windows open to let out the heat. She used the gas burner on her stove to light the end of a joint. We smoked it sitting cross-legged on the living room floor while we waited for our Chinese food.
“Don’t you miss this?” she said, exhaling. “It’s almost like we’re back in school.”
“You never told me who you’ve been getting this from.”
“Why? Are you in the market for some? Evan need something to take the edge off?”
“It just seems so real. Buying weed from a real drug dealer.”
“A drug dealer!” She yelped in laughter, collapsing to the floor. “You sound like Mister Rogers. No. No. Actually, I just got it from another teacher.”
“That is terrible.”
“Where the hell is our food?” She stood up and wandered into the kitchen, opening and shutting all the cabinets. “I’m starving.”
The end of the joint smoldered like a jewel. I slipped a bobby pin from my hair to hold the burned nub. “You’re done?” I asked Abby. She waved, and I pulled the last of it into my lungs. It was pungent and stronger than what we had smoked in college.
“How were your parents?” I said. They had visited her the week before. Abby wandered back in, eating Froot Loops from the box. “You know dinner’s going to be here in, like, five minutes.”
“Appetizer. They were good. We went to Ikea, and I talked them into buying me a nightstand, so success.”
“Had they seen your apartment yet? Did they like it?”
“They did.” Abby paused, her hand full of brightly colored cereal, and tilted her head in contemplation. “They did, except my mom got sort of teary. I don’t know. I think it was too real for her. Seeing me all grown up and everything.”
I threw a pillow at her. “You are not that grown up.”
“Well, my mom cries at everything.” It was true. I’d taken a picture of them at graduation, Abby and her parents, and her mother had been sobbing before I even turned on the camera. She was sentimental. Their other four kids were already grown and scattered, with careers and marriages and children and at least one divorce. But Abby had always been the baby, and suddenly she was gone, too.
After dinner, when we had devoured the sesame beef and kung pao shrimp and cold noodles, I felt myself sliding into a familiar jelly-limbed mellowness. Our thoughts were moving slowly enough for us to observe them, like glassy orbs in the air.
“Do you know that feeling?” Abby said, her voice thin and distant. “When you wake up in the middle of the night and don’t recognize the room you’re in? Like, the shadows on the ceiling are all weird, and you’re like, where the fuck am I?”
“Yeah.”
“I hate it.”
She was lying on her back, arms and legs splayed out, gazing up at the ceiling. She was quieter than usual. I nudged her with my foot.
“You okay?”
She rolled to her side and curled into a fetal ball. “It was sort of weird. When my parents visited. I couldn’t figure it out. And then my mom told me, on their last night, when the two of us went to get ice cream after dinner. It’s my dad’s job.”
When I got high, my emotions always felt slow to catch up, thickened like honey left in the fridge. “What happened?” I said, belatedly registering the heaviness in Abby’s voice.
“Nothing. Nothing yet. But you know, he works at a bank. This year has been brutal. He thinks he’s going to be laid off soon. Which explains—well, like, every time we went out to eat, he’d sigh and roll his eyes at the prices. He and my mom got in a big fight, I guess, and he told her she needs to go back to work. But I mean, who the hell is going to hire her right now?”
“Oh, Abby. That sucks.”
“The whole thing is a disaster.”
A few days earlier, the president had signed a massive bailout into law. A few weeks before that, the Republican nominee had suspended his campaign, announcing that he had to return to Washington to address the crisis. I followed the developments with a shallow curiosity, but lately I’d been caring less about all of it. Maybe this was going to be the headline for the era when the historians had their turn. Maybe the market crash would emerge as the defining moment of the year, of the decade. But I’d been thinking about other things. I’d been thinking about Adam, the sound of his voice, the color of his eyes. Talk of the NASDAQ and the Dow was so abstract. The world still looked the same. The sun still set and rose; the moon still pulled the tides in patterns around the globe. My mind was aloft, scattered among the stars. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to snap out of it. Other people were hurting, even if I wasn’t.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“At least I’m off the dole, right? Last kid. No more tuition.” She tried to smile. “I don’t know. I mean, maybe he won’t even lose his job. Maybe everything will be fine. But it’s so weird. These are my parents. It’s weird to have to worry about them. Aren’t they supposed to worry about me?”
I lowered myself to the floor and curled up behind Abby, a big spoon to her little one. It was rare for me in our friendship, offering comfort to her. To Abby, who always knew what to do. “You want to sleep over?” she said. I had started spending the night occasionally, when the quiet of my apartment was too much. I texted Evan to tell him. We lay in her bed, talking until late, when we finally drifted off.
The next morning, we went to the diner on the corner for breakfast. I emptied the tiny plastic cup of cream into my coffee, watching it swirl into spidery threads. I still felt a little high. Abby scrolled through her phone while eating a piece of buttered toast. She had cheered up considerably.
“Guess who texted me last night,” she said. “Jake Fletcher.”
“You guys know each other?”
“Remember? You introduced us at his party. I’ve bumped into him a few times. He asked for my number last week.”
“Wow. Small world.”
“I think I’m gonna do it. I have gone way too long without any action.”
I laughed weakly, signaling to the waiter for more coffee. Abby looked at me.
“Wait. Wait—what is it? Do you guys have a history?”
“No! God, no. I’ve just known him since forever. I still think of him as, like, the bratty five-year-old he once was. That’s all.”
She raised an eyebrow. I wasn’t sure whether she bought it. But that was the nice thing about us. Abby knew the difference between big lies and little ones. She might guess at what I was leaving out: a game of spin the bottle in middle school, or maybe a tipsy kiss in the backyard during one of his parents’ big parties in Boston. A stupid kid thing that wasn’t even worth the energy to mention. Something you could skate past because you were so certain it was meaningless, that it had nothing to do with what you were actually talking about.