21

Now that the knell had sounded, there was a certain relief to a doom that was settled rather than living in uncertainty. The House of Mirth and their future had splintered into an array of possible, implausible alternatives. Ava was done at the Lazarus Club, that was certain—fired as their librarian and consequently dismissed from her apartment, as well. She and Stephanie were going to try and keep having events at different locations to retain their members while they raised money and scouted a new space. Through all of the upheaval, satisfaction at having insisted at last on an event of her choosing, the reading for Constance, acted as a prophylactic, insulating Ava against the despondency of owing almost ten thousand dollars to the Lazarus Club and her credit card company combined. They were going all out on their last night because as Stephanie said, “Fuck them, what are they going to do, evict us?” Ava received two weeks of severance pay, which under the circumstances, she considered rather chivalrous.

It fell to Ava and George to pack up the remains of their enterprise. To secure as much of their stuff from possible impoundment by the Lazarus Club, they had been sneaking things out at night, ferrying the boxes in taxis to Stephanie’s apartment. Stephanie had been missing, engaged on a mysterious project about which she kept sending them cryptic but encouraging text messages. Ava, floating in a constant, buzzing cloud of anxiety, was also slowly packing up her apartment, but since she hadn’t decided where to go, she was sort of hoping that once Stephanie was gone, she might be able to linger, unnoticed in the quiet for an extra week or two before they threw her out. Being busy kept her from succumbing to the panic that welled up when she considered her future, and she concentrated on planning their event, a single-mindedness in the face of disaster that she had learned from watching Stephanie, and which she now acknowledged was pretty effective.

Balancing a stack of books in one hand, Ava leaned toward George and almost managed to pass them to him. Instead, they fell with a clatter on a pile of already packed boxes.

“Take care.” He picked one up. “I don’t know that we could replace An Illustrated Guide to the Holy Land or Sex and Sex Worship. Although I believe you should take Hunting in Zambia. I feel it belongs with you.” He handed her the volume.

She held it to her chest in a wave of nostalgia. “Maybe I will. It’s a Lazarus Club volume, though, not one of ours.”

“You’ve earned it. I bet they wouldn’t miss it.”

“Not you, too. Stephanie’s been joking that we deserve to steal everything that isn’t nailed down. Let’s keep some honor in all this.” But she put the book aside. She climbed another shelf, noticing, now that they were almost empty, just how poor a job of staining and finishing they had done. “How did this get up here?” She tossed down a brassiere.

“This place has seen all varieties of high jinks.” Packing tape roared out of the dispenser, and George pushed a closed box aside with his foot. “I won’t say I’ll be sorry to see the last of that freight elevator, though. The things I have managed to unload into this building.” He started taping another box. “Speaking of, did we take the peacock?”

She nodded guiltily. “We’ve been very grateful for your resourcefulness, George.”

“I know. I’ve been promoted. I’m now your director of members and operations.”

“So you’re sticking around?” She tried to jump down from the shelves as gently as she could, landing with a loud thump of Chuck Taylors on hardwood.

“I might as well. Careful. Wouldn’t it be funny if, after all of this, the liability insurance we never bought went to your medical bills?”

Ava stayed in a crouch, drumming her fingers on the floor. Wearing sneakers and jeans with wide cuffs made her feel uniquely spry, a little like a five-year-old. “Still, you’re young and free. Isn’t there something else you would like to do that actually pays?”

George crossed his arms over his chest. “Since I was a kid I was always fascinated by all those great New York gadabouts, Styron and Wilson and Vidal and Kazin all crashing through each other’s cocktail parties: a suit and tie, a fifth of scotch, and a head full of big ideas; it seemed to me the very pinnacle of living. Somehow in this moribund day and age you two managed to make that happen again. It was a gift, really. So yeah, I’ll stick around.” He shrugged. “I’ve got the rest of my life to be an orthodontist or a certified accountant.”

He bent down for the next box, the hair sneaking out from under his cap curling like soft little feathers, and from the slipping of his waistband it looked like he had put his underwear on inside out, and Ava felt such a rush of sympathetic understanding that she found she had to wait a minute before she said anything. “You know, George. You might have been the best part of all this.”

He ducked away from her with an expression of such desperate self-deprecation that, to spare him further embarrassment, she left to pack the last of their teacups from the bar.

Trying to imagine what it would look like to start this process all over again somewhere new filled her with dread, and to chase it away, she consoled herself again that in planning their last event, she would have finally made her mark on this mess of a project, impressing upon it, at last what she, and maybe George, wanted it to be.

* * *

The night of the event, Ava got dressed with an unusual amount of care. Her regular skirts and cardigans seemed boring and lackluster, but maybe it was just the unaccustomed disorder of her room that made it feel so odd to be putting on her usual clothes, as if she should physically reflect the change in her circumstances. Just for once she wanted to stand next to Stephanie and not suffer in the comparison. While packing, she had found the dress she and Stephanie had bought together so long ago, forgotten ever since, and now she decided to try it on. It felt different this time. She looked in the mirror, touching the soft underside of her arms with a caress that made her skin prickle. The dress skimmed her body, dark fabric revealing the outline of a figure she usually kept hidden, and she was surprised by a sudden desire to be seen. She looked good, after all, the pale skin of her chest and arms glowing, exposed. She looked like Natasha from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. She decided to wear it; although to ameliorate its effect just a little, she put on her glasses.

When she arrived at the library, George started a little. “You look—” he paused “—different.”

“Get me a drink before I lose my nerve and put on a sweater.” A helpful volunteer ran into the bar and returned with a glass of wine, which he offered, standing too close.

Ava stepped a little farther away and looked around. Empty of all their things—the tufted couch, the extra books, the broken printer and the card table George used as a desk—the room expressed a melancholy grandeur. The shelves once again stood bare except for fluttering candles. Strangely, in this moment of dissolution, the space had regained the aura of limitless possibility, and the impression it made was curiously hopeful. “What we did here was really special, wasn’t it, George?”

Before he could answer, Stephanie arrived with a large rectangle wrapped in brown paper and a flimsy easel under her arm. “Wait until I show you guys,” she said, setting the easel down. “Not to brag, but I’m fucking amazing.” She grinned and unwrapped the package. “I got Richard Denkins to donate a bunch of paintings. We’re having a silent auction for our new place.” She set the painting on the easel. “Isn’t he a genius?”

It was an oil painting of a woman in red panties, legs spread, painted in such hyper-realistic detail that every tuft of pubic hair was discernable under the thin red satin. She sneered down at them over pendulous breasts. “No,” said Ava.

“Don’t be ridiculous. These are so hot right now. They sell for like twenty grand. George, I left some more paintings down in the lobby. Go get them.”

“It has an appeal,” he said, glancing at the image as he left the room.

“Stephanie, I’m not going to ask Constance to read in front of a bunch of up-skirt pictures.”

“Why not? Everyone knows she’s a huge dyke. She’ll probably love them.”

“She’s not like that,” Ava said, defensive, before she could stop herself.

“Oh, spare me, Ava. She’s just a midlist, midlife nobody that you are for some reason obsessed with. I’m just trying to add some dazzle to this event. I’m off to Richard’s loft to pick up one more. Also you won’t believe this, but I got Joe Reed to come, too. It’s insane. Check your email. Tonight is going to be off the hook. Be back in like an hour.” She waved triumphantly.

“Wait, this is Constance’s event,” Ava said, but Stephanie was already gone.

George came back with a large painting, a pair of glossy red lips tonguing a melting popsicle. “They have a certain je ne sais quoi,” he said, propping it up.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Ava shook her head. “Did you get an email from Stephanie today?”

“You mean you haven’t seen it?” George ran for his laptop and held it open for her. “She sent this out a couple of hours ago. I thought I was accustomed to her abilities,” he said philosophically. “But even now, she manages to awe.”

“Does she mean Joe Reed the rock star?”

George nodded. “I have no idea how she did it, but yeah. I guess he’s reading some of his poetry.”

“But this is not the event we planned. What is she doing?”

“I guess she’s making good on her threat to fund our move.”

Just then a young couple wearing Joe Reed and The Velvet Revolution T-shirts wandered in. “Excuse me, is this where we buy the Joe Reed tickets?”

More people started to trickle in, bunching up behind the original couple, now claiming their spot with an aggressive immobility. “But my event. Constance. This was not supposed to be like this. How can she do this to me?”

George was looking toward the door. “We might want to get set up. I’m guessing this could get a little out of hand.”

Struggling against a mounting panic, Ava grabbed the nearest volunteer and set him to tearing open packages of plastic wineglasses and stacking them on the bar. “Is Joe Reed really going to be here?” he asked, a wayward curl slipping down over one eye.

“No idea.” People started arriving, and Ava began handing out wine.

“You guys are so cool,” he said. She glanced at the young man, and his admiration seemed to bounce off her, leaving no mark. She was a brittle, reflective surface, a million years old. The noise had increased quickly. People soon lined up four deep, those at the bar fighting to hold their place. The event wasn’t due to start for an hour. The thought of Constance Berger arriving to this chaos made Ava’s heart sink. She needed to find her first and explain. She would wait for her outside.

“Do the best you can,” she told the young man who paused every so often to rearrange his drooping curl with tentative, self-conscious fingers.

The next room was just as full. Looking for Stephanie, she struggled to the door where George, the patch pockets of his blazer bulging with money, stood cheerfully accepting twenty-dollar bills. He leaned close, and his breath smelled of marshmallow and juniper. “We are making so much money. I don’t even know where to put it all.” He bent down and took a large gulp of the drink at his feet. “Of the many difficulties I have learned to weather while working here, this is a new one.”

A line of people stretched the length of the hallway and down the main stairs of the club. “Jesus!”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

The Lazarus portraits looked especially put out as Ava followed the trail of impatient humanity. Two girls, their hair the same expensive shade of yellow, sat comparing manicures. A well-known writer asserted his prestige, asking loudly for Stephanie. A small white dog in a white leather bag let out an urgent yip every few minutes. Rodney caught up with her at the top of the stairs. He was carrying a large box.

“This is crazy.” He cocked his head at the line. “Is it true? Is Joe Reed really playing at your place?”

“I don’t know. He’s supposed to read poetry or something. I had nothing to do with it. Has Aloysius seen this yet?”

“I don’t think so. Last I saw him, he was bug-eyed and slurring—a sure sign he’s been awake for too many days, so maybe he’ll sleep through it all. I saw a few board members, and they looked pretty sore. But what else can they do, right? It’s not like they’re going to call the cops. At this point, I think bad publicity might be the only thing these guys hate worse than you.”

“I think that’s Stephanie’s attitude, at least. What’s in the box?”

“I figured you gals might not be prepared for these kinds of crowds.” He dropped it against his hip and reached in to show her a bottle of Southern Ease whiskey. “They never drink this stuff downstairs. It’s a little better than that bubble gum gin you ladies serve.” Rodney raised the box over his head and weaseled through the crowd with a professional grace.

“Thanks.”

Downstairs, Castor was writing in his notebook with a small gold pencil, ignoring the press in front of his desk. Ava snuck past into the balmy night. A few smokers had abandoned the queue, and Ava overheard much excited speculation about Joe Reed. She wondered if Stephanie had in fact succeeded in getting him to come or whether someone, likely herself, would have to inform all these soon-to-be-drunks that they should just go home. Maybe she should start telling them that now. She anxiously drummed her fingers against one of the brass poles of the awning. She had no idea what she would say to Constance, or how to apologize. She was straining to see into the shadowy back seats of passing taxis, heart fluttering in her throat, when she was startled by a voice at her elbow. “Hey, stranger,” said Ben.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I wanted to say goodbye to my bar. I worked pretty hard on that thing. Should I not have come?” he asked testily.

“You did and you made something beautiful. I’m glad you came. You deserve to be here.”

“It was a cool thing you guys tried to do with this place. I’m glad I got to be a part of it.” He shrugged. “And I like Joe Reed.”

Ava felt the gentleness of this overture, and she remembered all the reasons she liked him. “Thanks. Look, I’m sorry,” she began.

Ben stopped her. “Not everyone is meant to date, and that’s fine, but if you wanted to chat about the Franco-Prussian War or something sometime...”

“I would love to,” Ava said. They smiled at each other for a minute.

A taxi pulled up, and Constance Berger unfolded herself from the back seat with the spindly precision of an egret alighting. “Constance!” Ava waved an arm.

Constance’s gaze climbed the Lazarus facade. “They really should fix this up. It’s criminal to let all that lovely stonework just crumble like that.” She glanced at Ava. “You look very sophisticated.” Ava hoped this was a compliment. “Is this your young man?” She extended a hand in Ben’s direction.

“No,” Ava said too quickly. “This is Ben Wheeler. He did some work for us.”

Ben shook Constance’s hand with a curious look toward Ava. “Nice to meet you.”

“Quite a crowd.” Constance discreetly turned her attention from the two young people.

“We had a last-minute addition to the evening,” Ava apologized. “Joe Reed will also be reading. He has a lot of fans. We’re having a sort of fund-raiser. I’m so sorry about all this. I was organizing a much quieter event and then things got a little out of hand.” She held the door for Constance. Three old ladies in pearls were yelling their objections to everything at Castor, who was listening with a polite lack of interest.

“I remember Joe. We used to hang around the same clubs sometimes, but then everyone did. That was New York in the seventies.”

“Really?” Ava tried to clear a path through the crowd. “I didn’t think that was your type of thing, I mean. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I mean.”

“Well, we all have hidden depths,” Constance said with a laugh.

Ben was watching them. Then he kind of laughed.

“What?” asked Ava.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it. It actually makes me feel better about everything.” He patted her on the back. “I’m getting a drink.”

“I think I’ll get one, too,” Constance said with a sympathetic tilt of the head. She gave Ava an encouraging squeeze of the elbow, that sent an electric shock down her bare skin, and left for the bar.

Felicitously, Rodney appeared at her side. She nodded and held the back of his shirt for guidance as they pushed through to the edge of the room where the crowd was a little thinner. Ava sat heavily on a radiator beneath an open window while Rodney stood next to her, loosening his Lazarus bow tie and scanning the crowd. “I’m pretty sure this is illegal,” he said, handing her a bottle. “Fire codes.”

Ava opened the bottle to the ripping sound of the plastic cap and took a big swig. Alcohol and a thick coating of indeterminate sweetness burned her tongue. She drank deeply, trying not to gag at the powerful notes of grape soda and dishwasher fluid. She indicated the room with the bottle. “Why are you so nice to us, Rodney? This. Us. We’re everything you hate.”

He looked at the floor. “I don’t know. It’s just going to be awfully dull around here without you two, you especially.”

Just then Ava caught sight of a familiar shade of blond in the crowd. “We’re colorful. I’ll give you that. Hold this.” She gave him the bottle and started toward the glint of yellow. Rodney took her place on the radiator with a sigh and raised the bottle to his lips.

It wasn’t Stephanie. Ava let herself be jostled by strangers for a few minutes. She didn’t find her business partner until they had all gathered near the microphone, Stephanie waving her over above the crowd. Joe Reed leaned his head back, contemplating her through nearly closed eyes. “So you’re the other chick.” Ava ignored him. “Hey, Connie, I haven’t seen you since the Cock closed down in ’82.”

Constance laughed. “Times change, don’t they? And now we’re elder statesmen.”

He nodded. “That’s the truth of it. I hear you’re working the uptown beat, selling your soul for a cushy, faculty appointment.”

Ava was indignant, but Constance answered with the indulgent tone reserved for naughty children. “I teach a few classes.”

“We’re so lucky to have both of you to make our last night in the Lazarus Club so special,” Stephanie interrupted. “It means so much to Ava and myself.”

“Is this going to be okay?” Ava asked Constance.

“Oh, his sort is always very keen on integrity.” Constance brushed off her concern. “That sort of thing stopped bothering me once I realized I like to pay my electric bills.”

When Ava stood to introduce Constance, looking out into the crowd crammed into the large room that now felt so small, she once again had an ache for what this project might have been. Constance waited beside her, poised and enigmatic, keeping her place in the book she was about to read from with a finger that bore a huge jet ring. The audience sipped their drinks in wary anticipation. Even bereft of trimmings, this room had that ineffable feeling of enchantment that pervaded the Lazarus Club. These people would ask themselves, years from now, did we actually go see a reading in some derelict mansion where we drank alcohol that tasted like bubble gum and smoked illegal cigarettes with abandon? Or was it just a dream? That quality of unreality had felt so comforting to Ava, so welcoming, when so much of her life had been lived in that fluid space of daydreams and imagination. But now the sense of promises unfulfilled pressed in on her with the heat of so many bodies, and Ava wanted to apologize, for not knowing what she wanted, for having failed to enact it. She took a deep breath and then, despite having two full crumpled pages of introductory notes in her hand, Ava realized she had nothing to say. This was not her medium. This was not how she wanted to express herself. She had so many ideas and feelings, and she wanted to cover page after page after page with them, lovingly constructed and put together into sentences in the silence of her room. But here, beneath the expectant gaze of so many faces, all she wanted was to slip quietly onto the sidelines. She motioned to Stephanie, who accepted her place at the front of the crowd with some surprise and then a blinding smile of gratitude, which she then turned on the audience. “Let’s give a round of applause for my beautiful, fantastic partner, Ava Gallanter,” she said. “Now, what can we say about this magical journey we’ve all been on here at the House of Mirth? This journey that has only just begun as we leave our nest here at the Lazarus Club and prepare to spread our wings.” Stephanie quickly warmed to her own eloquence, and it was quite a while before she let Constance finally take the stage, after many exhortations to everyone to be generous at the silent auction later that evening.

The next twenty minutes were as bad as Ava had been afraid they might be. No one listened, instead shuffling, fidgeting, spilling drinks, shouting impatiently for Joe Reed. Constance read on, unflustered and at ease, her figure a dark gash against the huge painting behind her—a woman in pink panties bent over a bicycle seat. Constance’s reading glasses were black and round, and as she turned another page, she blinked, a sparrow amused by some secret joke. The magnificent amour of her self-possession hung around her casually, absently, without effort, and Ava wondered enviously at this imperturbability. Eventually, Constance finished and sat down to a resounding cheer, which was less appreciation than an enthusiastic farewell.

Mortified, Ava hid with a bottle of liquor, cross-legged on the floor next to the fireplace, surrounded by a thicket of calves and feet. Since they had unthinkingly packed their microphone, and since Joe Reed apparently talked like his jaw had been wired shut, his poetry was interrupted every few minutes by some yelling from the back to “speak louder.” Reading from a small lined notebook, the shades of his large sunglasses flipped up, but with no lenses underneath, he grew more irritated at each outburst, and seemed to lower his voice out of spite. To curry favor, the audience at the front began yelling at the people at the back to “shut the fuck up.” Through it all, Mr. Joe Reed mumbled on, refusing to pause for the disturbances. Now that everyone realized that they were not going to be able to hear, a dissatisfied murmur rose, causing even more people to demand that everyone shut up. Stephanie, standing at his elbow, listened rapturously, swaying just a little on her heels like a buoy in a strong current.

Eventually the reading ended, and everyone began moving about with purpose. A tall woman with high cheekbones and sad eyes looked at Ava curiously. A handbag bumped against her head. Ava joined the throng, milling aimlessly. After a moment she realized she was standing next to the coat closet, empty because she had just cleaned it out, and she slipped inside. She couldn’t face Constance after that embarrassment of a reading, and the dark, enclosed space felt forgiving. She sat on the smooth bare floorboards and, feeling the need for a desperate courage to get through the rest of the evening, drank with intent.

When she emerged, the first thing she saw was Stephanie, nearly naked. She had shed her dress during the evening, and now clad in underwear and a rugby scarf, a rakishly tilted mortarboard on her head, she was swigging champagne, a pinup sprung from the fervid dreams of some university provost. “Amazing, isn’t it?” she called to Ava. “Someone just gave it to me.” She laughed and swung the tassel to the other side of her hat. “We’re graduating to bigger things.”

Her lack of self-consciousness almost transfigured her into something, if not quite innocent, somehow resplendent, but Ava grabbed her narrow wrist, and dragged her through an appreciative audience into the bathroom. “Why aren’t you wearing any clothes?” Ava asked once they were inside.

Stephanie pressed her back against the closed door with an elated expression. “I think we’ve outdone ourselves tonight.” She kicked off her shoes, sighing with the relief of feeling her feet flat on the floor. “I think this party is going to make it a cinch to find a donor with a new space. The world loves a rock star.” Then, she added seriously, “He wants to use me on his new album. Can you imagine? Me and Joe Reed.”

“You can’t sing.”

“That’s not the point.” She held Ava’s hand for a moment, her drunken smile transfigured by joy. Then, she took a lipstick out of her bra and turned to the mirror. “Whatever. At least I’ll be able to use him for more fund-raising.” The lid of the lipstick case snapped open, abrupt in the tiled room. “I’m always looking out for us. Want some?”

Ava shook her head. “Tonight was a disaster. You ruined everything.”

“No, I saved everything,” Stephanie said sternly. “It was you who wanted to ruin everything by planning our last event around some boring old lady.” She looked at Ava in the mirror. “This was supposed to be about us. It’s our event. Our project and all of the sudden you’re acting like all you care about is this woman just because she wrote some books and wants to talk about Proust or something.”

“It’s not my fault no one ever wants to talk about Proust with me.” Ava stopped. Stephanie was avoiding her eyes, and a slow realization began to dawn on her. “You’re jealous. You sabotaged this whole thing on purpose. You ruined my event for Constance because you’re mad that someone likes me better than you.”

“I would never,” Stephanie protested, but with less conviction than usual.

“After all the loyalty I’ve given you, following you around like some subaltern.” Stephanie glanced up, but Ava didn’t feel like stopping to explain. “All these years of it always being about you, and finally I found one person, just one, who thinks I’m cool, too, and you can’t handle it.”

“Oh my god, Ava, you act like you’re in love with her. Ever since you met her, ‘Constance writes books, Constance is so smart.’ I mean, seriously, can you even hear yourself?”

“That’s just not true,” Ava objected. “And I’ve spent all my time since I met her running around with you trying to save this hopeless business. For you.” Ava found herself spurred by the injustice of it all. “Practically everything I do is for you. And has been forever. Since I’ve known you.” The years unfurled in Ava’s mind, so many passing moments in the company of Stephanie, prey to the whims and schemes of her imperious friend. Staying up nights to help her write papers in college, following her to New York after graduation, being dragged to parties and events she hated, covering their rent when she needed to, deferring to Stephanie’s wild impracticalities, a series of endless choices made against Ava’s better judgment. Viewed in concert, this proof of her relentless flow of devotion seemed almost absurd. “No wonder my mom hates you and thinks I’m crazy. At this point she probably thinks I’m in love with you.”

Ava happened to look over, and stopped short at Stephanie’s distinctly unsurprised expression. “Wait a second.” She spoke slowly, considering. “Do you think I’m in love with you?” Stephanie didn’t respond, waiting. “Oh my god.” Ava closed the lid and sat down heavily on the toilet, trying to think through this new information. “You’ve been taking advantage of me all these years because you think I’m in love with you?”

Someone opened the door, and they both yelled, “Occupied!” The door was quickly shut with apologies.

“You’re kind of weird sometimes, and you were always really bad with guys,” Stephanie started halfheartedly and then stopped in the face of Ava’s stricken expression. “I don’t know, I just figured. I don’t know what I thought.”

They were both silent as Ava tried to process what Stephanie seemed to be implying: a friendship that had taken up most of her adult life could have a totally different narrative than the one she knew. Her past, her very memories seemed to dissolve, acquiring a nebulous film of uncertainty. Had she really been so unaware of what had actually been passing between the two of them? Had all those years been a lie? Viewed in this light, a love and faithfulness that Ava had given so freely now appeared ridiculous in the light of Stephanie’s cold self-interest. And it was this loss, the sudden theft of the integrity of her own experience that Ava felt most keenly. Over the course of their friendship, Stephanie had betrayed her in all kinds of little ways, a casual profligacy that Ava barely paid attention to, but this was different. This dissimulation shattered a friendship she had built her life around. This felt unforgivable.

Stephanie had set her mouth in a frown, but it was starting to wobble, and she chewed on her lip. “What?” she finally exploded. “What’s so wrong if I did think that? Why don’t I deserve to have one person, just one person in this whole dirty stinking world that actually cares about me? That actually thinks I’m more than just some dumb blonde tramp? You were the only one, Ava. The only one in my whole life.” She looked at her feet, her hair slid down and covered her face, and she didn’t push it back. “I needed you.”

Behind Stephanie’s head, Ava noticed another place where they had messed up the wallpaper. A white crack almost two inches wide ran down the wall, spreading and then narrowing, a slick of plaster cutting across a field of red that brought Ava back to the present. “You never wanted a literary salon. You’ve been taking advantage of me, and now we owe thousands of dollars because you don’t care who you drag down with you.”

“We don’t,” Stephanie said.

“Excuse me?”

“We don’t owe thousands of dollars. I went back and had dinner with that lawyer and brought a copy of the lease with me. We signed as an LLC. That means we can dissolve the company, and we aren’t liable for its debts.”

Ava was just about done with Stephanie’s revelations. “What are you talking about?”

“I was going to surprise you.” Stephanie sadly played with her lipstick. “At the end of the night. I made George get champagne for us and everything.”

“What about my credit card?”

“Oh, you still have to pay that. It’s in your name. But we can make that back in two seconds once we reopen.”

“So I’m still in debt, but you aren’t?”

“Yeah, but we will pay it off. Once we get our own town house, and start attracting the real money, that debt is going to be nothing.”

“I’m done.” Ava stood, and walked quickly out of the bathroom. She was half listening for Stephanie to call her back, and when she didn’t, Ava was a little surprised at the relief she felt.

The exasperated person waiting outside spoke irritably. “Could you have taken any longer?” He walked into the bathroom and saw Stephanie motionless in the center of the room. “Goddamn it.”

The crowd was sparser and drunker. Guests sat on the hardwood floor, laughing and ashing the cigarettes that they shouldn’t have been smoking into plastic cups. An effete young man lay, one leg crossed over the other, pointing at the painting just above him. “It’s the curve of the pudenda that makes it such a devastating indictment.” He tried to sip from a cup without raising his head, and alcohol splashed over his upturned collar, while another young man nodded in grave agreement.

Ava stepped over them; she was done. She was free of them and their ilk. She was done with Stephanie and the years of affection she had wasted. A heady mix of freedom and sadness, terror and relief poured over her—was this what divorce felt like? Was she really free of this union that she had contorted herself into so many unlikely shapes to accommodate? Could it just be renounced like that, so easily, and would she continue to bear its shape like a tree root that has grown into and around a crack in a sidewalk? Who was she without her best friend?

In the bar, she saw Constance wedged between the broad backs of young men facing other conversations and Ava squeezed in next to her, nodding to the intern to pour her a drink. One of the men frowned before moving away to give her room. “He was having the most amazing conversation,” Constance said, folding a cocktail napkin into a small triangle. “Did you know there is a Bulgarian bar somewhere on the Lower East Side where people dress like forest animals and dance all night? This city never ceases to amaze.”

“I didn’t.” Ava picked a napkin up from the bar and started fiddling with it, too. “But I never hear about those kinds of things.” The lights around the bar had grown halos, an extra aura of sparkle that was making Ava squint a little.

“We seem to be in the middle of something not that far off right now.” Constance looked around. “It’s so much more satisfying that this is all happening in the Lazarus Club. I always thought of it as such a pearls and dentures kind of place.”

“I think they would agree with you. We are currently less than welcome around here—not that I really blame them.” She accepted the drink and took a large sip. “I want to apologize for tonight. I’m so sorry. I wanted it to be different.” Again, Ava was struck by the nebulousness of her expectations when her disappointment felt so acute. Strange that she could be so sure she didn’t have what she wanted, and yet so unclear as to what exactly that might have been. Maybe that was why Stephanie was always so frustrated with her. “My salon is all assholes.”

“Aren’t they always?”

“But they always seemed so amazing in all those novels.”

Constance sighed. “I know. I love them, too. But they’re not really for us.”

Distracted by the inclusion, Ava lost her train of thought. “Us? What is for us?”

“A million things that have yet to be written. But I don’t want to sound too radical. I like tea lights and velvet curtains and stodgy old men, too.” She waved an arm at the room, indicating the club around them. “But I would take Edith Wharton over Henry James any day.” She spoke with a conspiratorial tone that warmed Ava like a furnace. “As I assume you would too, judging by the name of this thing.”

On the bar next to her, a tea light guttered its last and sank into a pool of wax. The heady collision of newfound freedom and unconsidered horizons rushed toward her, tremendous, exciting. What if Stephanie was right? Without thinking, Ava surged forward and kissed Constance once, lightly on her lips. As if she had shattered all the previous days and hours of her life, tiny shards of the unthinkable erupted at her wild and wayward daring. Without the hard, large pressure of a masculine jaw, Ava felt like she was falling forward, a descent into softness that yielded at her touch and smelled of gardenia and smoke. Constance neither resisted nor pursued the kiss further, but her lower lip parted just enough for Ava to feel the smooth, wet crest of it, a possible invitation, and Ava pulled back, terrified, but ringing with a tremulous exhilaration. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s one way to make up for a mess of a reading.” Constance smiled.

“I’m so sorry.” Ava needed to escape, to run from the audacity she had just committed, and pressed backward until the crowd behind her yielded enough to let her slip away. “Excuse me. I’m so sorry.”

Constance watched her kindly. “No need to apologize, my pretty thing. We’ve all got to start somewhere.”

* * *

The library stank of the end of a party. The noise had died to a slurred rumble over which laughter, high and shrill, burst forward and then crept slowly away. Candles flickered out amid the smell of hot wax and smoke. An empty wine bottle rolled in circles around the floor, kicked by unsteady feet. Across the room, Stephanie was tearfully explaining something to an older man, who listened, a hand consolingly brushing the elastic of her underwear.

George stood near the door, resting an elbow on an empty shelf, humming “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” Seeing her, he set down his drink and held out his blazer. “Observe these pockets. For the first time ever, I am so flush, I couldn’t even think where to store this lucre.”

Ava reached into one of the patch pockets on his hip and withdrew a wad of crumpled bills. “I’m going to take this.” Then, suddenly sentimental, she hugged him. Her arms wrapped around his narrow frame to the elbows. He was as slim as a lizard, all sinew and bones. “You’re the best, George,” she said into his damp shirtfront.

“Goodbye, Piccadilly. Farewell, Leicester Square,” he sang.

The trip back to her apartment was difficult. The ground tilted under her feet, the gentle rocking of a ship at sea, and she found the act of directing herself in a straight line to require more concentration than usual. In the endless hallway to the elevator, she had to stop a few times, leaning against the wall until the wallpaper, a terrible pattern of black arabesques on a yellow background, stopped spinning. She wouldn’t be sad to see the last of it. If she kept a low profile, it would undoubtedly be a few days before anyone remembered to kick her out of her apartment. Maybe this handful was enough for a month’s storage. She desperately needed a job, but New York was big, full of restaurants and temp agencies. The elevator bell dinged at her floor, and she stumbled a little as she left, knocking over one of her neighbor’s cats. She shrugged as the shattered remains went careening loudly down the garbage chute. One couldn’t take everything to heart.

She looked around at the piles of boxes in her apartment—no job, no home, no Lazarus Club—the uncertainty of it all, normally so terrifying, felt like a gift, like she had escaped a fate, the true peril of which she hadn’t even realized. She wasn’t tired. The nervous energy that had been bubbling quietly inside her since her moment with Constance rose up again, insistent. She wanted to dance or sing, to set the whole world on fire. This prompted the echo of a thought still rattling around her brain—rags, petrol, matches—and she crossed to her old black phone, not yet packed up, and dialed. When information picked up she asked if there was a hotline for the inspections department of the NYC Landmarks and Historic Buildings Commission. She wrote it down and hung up with a smile. To hell with the Lazarus Club, she thought. Let it blaze for we are done with this education. And she gave Mycroft a kiss on his small pink nose.