Sasha spent two days trying to think of what she could write to Ray about, and then she saw the sphinx behind the back shelves in the storeroom of the market alongside her pyramids and she almost cried.
She almost cried with appreciation of it. In her heart surged a tidal wave that started to trickle out of her eyeballs. That was weird.
But it brought such a rush of the old feelings. The Lego feelings and To Kill a Mockingbird feelings and the little plastic animal feelings. It was nostalgia, but something new and momentous, too: the synthesis of her old Ray and the bewildering stranger Ray she’d met outside Samantha Rubin’s apartment building. Here was a beautiful rendition of nearly the whole of Giza made of cans and boxes stretching across the poorly lit aisle behind the last wall of shelves that led to the defunct fire door.
It brought back an old version of herself that she’d missed, hadn’t really known was gone.
And then Francis came around in back of the shelves and found her.
“What the hell is this?”
She let out her breath. Shit. With her eyes she memorized the last moments of box-and-can Giza.
“Are those pyramids?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you make this?” She couldn’t quite read his voice. If Francis was even a little impressed she wanted to include Ray, but if he was purely annoyed she didn’t.
“Um.”
“Have I been paying you to make a play world out of dry goods?”
She tried to look contrite and not just put out. “I’m sorry. I had a bit of extra time after I finished with the morning shipments and restocking. I thought maybe we could use the images on social media.”
That was complete bullshit, but Francis talked about the value of social media almost as much as he talked about his MBA.
She could see the wheels turning. “You mean, we could post it on Facebook.”
“Sure. Maybe create an Instagram account.”
“Okay.” He nodded, eyebrows raised. “That’s good thinking. You know, that’s why I like to hire you kids.”
“Ray did it too. He really deserves credit.” She smiled. She couldn’t help feeling proud.
“You’re Ray.”
“I mean the other Ray.” Now she knew exactly what she would write to Ray as soon as she got off work. Her heart began thumping irrationally. Her fingers tingled with anticipation.
“He did?”
“Yeah.”
He laughed. “Here I was imagining Ray was an adult. I mean, you’ve seen that gorgeous girlfriend who picks him up after his shift every day.”
Sasha swallowed hard. Her heart kept up, but its rhythm changed. Her smile dangled uncertainly on her face, then fell off.
Gone was her triumph. She could barely speak. She felt a little dizzy. She wouldn’t have thought Francis had the power to injure her, but there were so many things to feel bad about in that one sentence of his she couldn’t sort through them.
Ray was an adult. She was a child. Ray had a girlfriend. His girlfriend was gorgeous. His girlfriend was devoted. Sasha had in fact not seen the gorgeous girlfriend. Not at all. Sasha had not even fathomed her. Sasha had no person, gorgeous or otherwise, picking her up after her shift. Not every day. Not any day.
Now she looked at the dumb can pyramids and just felt stupid. Was Ray making fun of her when he added the sphinx?
Francis turned to go. “It’s cute.” He gestured to the spread. “Really. Did you get pictures already?”
She felt stricken. She tried not to. “No. I will.”
“Good. And then take the whole thing down and put all that stuff back where it goes.”
She nodded, miserable.
“Tonight.”
“I think we should call before we go to Lexi’s,” Jamie suggested.
Now that Jamie’s parents had agreed to fly east for the engagement party, he and Emma had decided it would be good to call them and stage a preliminary introduction before the hubbub in August.
Emma pushed her phone against her ear so she could hear better. “Can you get out of work early?”
“I’ll try. I’ll go back to the office after the dinner if I have to.”
His voice sounded tight. She wished she could see him so she could read his mood.
“Let’s meet at my place at six.”
“That early?” She’d never known him to leave the office before eight on a weeknight.
“Yeah. I think so.”
She arrived in front of his apartment building in Long Island City just as he did. He kissed her like he meant it, but his face was anxious. His feet were tip-tapping the whole ride up in the elevator.
“It’s just a phone call,” she said. “Your folks are the easy ones, right?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Whose parents are easy?”
She was trying to understand. He didn’t talk about his family much. His parents were married. He had one sister who was fifteen and prematurely capable. His dad worked in sales for a chemical company. They lived in a nice airy house in a nice subdivision with a carport.
Was it her he was worried about? She had thought of this before. “They won’t be able to tell I’m Indian over the phone,” she said as he let them into his tiny apartment.
He looked aghast. “What do you mean?”
“I was just worrying that when they meet me, they might be surprised I’m not a bit…whiter.”
He grabbed her and hugged her hard. “Oh, Em, you are so perfectly perfect. I hate that you’re worried about that.” He let her go. “Anyway, I told them all about you—I think I used your description: half-Bengali, half-hippie. They met your dad once for about a tenth of a second when they came to see the office last year.”
So that wasn’t it.
“I’m calling,” he said.
They caught all three Hurns at home. Everyone was warm, polite, full of congratulations, a little awkward. Jamie’s mother effused about the case of champagne Robert had sent.
“I am touched that you are all coming here for the engagement party,” Emma said at the end. “I can’t wait to meet you.”
“See, that wasn’t so bad,” she said after they’d all chimed in about how much they were looking forward to it and hung up.
Jamie nodded.
“They all sound great, in fact.”
Jamie’s eyes looked more guarded than she’d seen them. “My mom is easier sometimes than others,” he said.
“Well, she sounded like a picnic compared to mine.”
Mattie was the only one around, so Mattie was the one Sasha had to ask. Not ideal, but it had to be done.
“Who is the gorgeous girl who picks Ray up from his shift every day?” It was none of Sasha’s business, and not objectively relevant to any aspect of her life, but there it was.
Mattie was painting her toenails on a lounge chair by the pool. Mattie was so distracted these days, Sasha hoped she could excise the information she wanted, like a surgeon in a hurry, without a lot of curiosity or haranguing in return. “You mean Violet?”
Shit. She had to have a cool name like Violet. “I don’t know. Do I?” Were there a lot of these girls?
“I guess you must mean Violet. She’s always turning up. I don’t know about gorgeous.” Mattie considered. “Yeah, maybe she is. Do you know her or something?”
“Manager Francis told me about her.”
Mattie rolled her eyes. “Francis is lascivious. What is he, thirty? Violet is in high school.”
Sasha really did have to wonder about herself. Why was she surprised there was a Violet? Of course there was a Violet. Why did she feel betrayed? Was she completely bananas? What kinds of ideas was she harboring? And yet, her mouth opened again. “Are they serious?”
Mattie was occupied with fixing up a botched toenail and didn’t appear to judge her for asking. That, at least, was nice. “Serious? They’re kids,” Mattie said, as though she herself were a senior citizen. “It’s hard to use ‘serious’ and ‘Violet’ in the same sentence.”
Meanly, Sasha was happy to hear this. “Is that right?” She craved more.
“Violet’s been hanging around Ray since they were in middle school. She goes to Nightingale, I think, where no boy has ever stepped, so Ray’s like the white rhino. You know how that is. She’s your classic bratty East Hampton kid who hangs around Main Street wearing a lot of makeup and trying to spot celebrities.” Mattie raised an eyebrow like she was a justice of the Supreme Court or something.
The pleasure of that damnation was short-lived. Now Sasha was on to the next worry. Was Ray like that? Was that really the kind of girl he went for? That didn’t square with what she imagined. But then again, when it came to Ray, imagination was mostly all she had. “And Ray is into that?” She didn’t even try to stop herself from asking.
Mattie waved the bottle of nail polish around. “I don’t know how much of it is Ray being into her and how much is Ray putting up with her.”
That didn’t sound very romantic, did it?
“Emma calls her ‘Just Violet.’ ”
“Why?” Sasha asked, perhaps a little too eagerly.
“Because whenever she turns up at the house, we all go, ‘Oh, it’s just Violet.’ ”
Sasha laughed. She wondered if it sounded as diabolical outside her brain as it did inside.
Mattie finished the second and final coat on her second and final pinky toe and finally came out with the inevitable. “Anyway, what does it matter to you?”