The YWCA residence for girls of slender means was a large, square building from the turn of the century, solidly functional, although not without its charms, among which were pretty little porcelain sinks in each room and certain quaint, old-fashioned rules—no married ladies, no overnight guests, no male visitors above the second floor. But most important, it was cheap. So cheap that by working a temp job and eating all her meals in the residence cafeteria, Ava was able to slowly, with great satisfaction, winnow a bit of her credit card debt each month.
It was strange living in a world so totally absent of men. Ben, with whom she had resumed a slightly strained friendship, had helped her carry over her boxes. “Looks about right,” he said with a grin, reading the awning. But it had since been weeks. Even Mycroft was gone, boarding with Constance for the moment. Ava found it remarkable the way the young women living here seemed to expand to take up all the extra space. Dancers prowled the hallways, taut and nervous, their thin, hard legs shifting around like cranes about to take off; and actresses hurried to auditions, a contradictory picture in bright, dramatic makeup and casual yoga pants. Older residents carried an air of mystery—why were they still here, in cardigans and orthopedic shoes? Ava delighted in them all. Someone on her hall practiced scales every night, her voice ascending and falling in a weird primeval cry that soothed Ava to sleep in her narrow bed. They were all broke, or they wouldn’t be there, but ambition seemed to float through the dingy hallways like a pheromone, filling the air with the sharp tang of desire.
Ava glanced through an old New York Post while standing in the residential lounge, trying not to watch her ramen turn with agonizing slowness in the rickety communal microwave. She had worked late and missed dinner again. She was updating the files of a huge investment company, a task that agreeably seemed to expand to suit the hours she needed, and she spent entire days alone and content in the quiet climate-controlled archives surrounded by stacks of yellowing paper.
But walking home that night through the warm spring evening, the trees exhaling a scent rich with sap and dirt, for the first time in a long while, Ava felt a sort of restless longing for things she couldn’t quite describe. She wanted to get drunk, to eat something delicious, to shake off the rigorous asceticism of her recent life, to giggle something stupid to a receptive ear. Normally she found comfort in the austere virtue of her solitude, but just tonight the gentle breeze called an ambiguous but seductive invitation to her, and she felt melancholy. Even the prospect of her nightly three pages—she had thrown out her old novel and was happily writing a scandalous autobiography of Irene Adler that the Baker Street Irregulars were going to hate—even that hadn’t been enough to console her today.
The microwave whirred interminably, and Ava turned another page. She had been regularly reading the gossip columns as they gleefully reported each descending step in the Lazarus Club’s upheaval. They had received a surprising amount of bad press for kicking Ava and Stephanie out. “The Lazarus Club Eats Its Young” was Ava’s favorite headline, and their departure started a trail of dominoes falling as years of malfeasance came to light, most of which was tangled up with Aloysius. The board tried to kick him out, a bunch of lawsuits followed, accusations of hoarding and misuse of funds, some scandal involving a bunch of dead finches. Eventually they all settled out of court, and Aloysius was outed from his apartments and temporarily banished from the establishment. Following all this had become one of Ava’s few indulgences. She chuckled in anticipation and turned to Page Six.
She almost dropped the paper. There, immediately recognizable, even with her head slightly turned from the camera, was a picture of Stephanie getting out of a car, maybe a limousine, Ava couldn’t tell. A male hand was extended toward her, and from the angle of the shot, it almost looked as if she were crouching away from it, although maybe she was just hiding from the blast of flashbulbs. Her short skirt had ridden up even higher, and a small strip of bare thigh was visible. The caption only listed her name and whatever party she was going to. Ava held the paper closer, trying to coax from the blurry newsprint any further information, some small clue as to what her friend was doing now, whom she spent her time with, whether she was happy, but closer inspection only revealed the thick pixels of the photograph, a refusal to betray deeper secrets. With a slight ache, Ava recognized the specific strap of her bra.
She had tried calling once. In her new happiness, the expansive air of possibility in which she now lived, Ava found she was becoming nostalgic. Stephanie couldn’t help who she was. And Ava had noticed a funny thing: as she wrote her book, she found she was giving Irene Adler more and more of Stephanie’s characteristics, and as she crafted this portrait of her friend on the page, the sting of betrayal had started to fade a little and she was left with a complicated admiration for her friend’s strange, dynamic personality. She missed her. Stephanie had answered in what sounded like a crowded restaurant. “Who?” she asked, though she had clearly heard the name. “Oh, sorry, Ava, I can’t talk now, I’m very busy.” Ava managed to give her phone number and address just in case. Then a few days later she had received five pages of hand-scrawled vitriol, hysterical self-defense and character assassination, which Ava folded and put away in a drawer. She decided to give up on getting back in touch with Stephanie for a while.
Ava walked back to her room, slurping noodles, still intent on the picture when she almost bumped into her neighbor, a tall brunette she often exchanged shy smiles with while they fumbled with their respective keys.
“Oh, don’t eat that stuff,” said the neighbor with a laugh. “I do it all the time too, but it’s too depressing. Instant ramen is, like, the taste of sadness. I have a toaster. I could make you a slice of toast.” She paused and blushed, looking at her sneakers. “If you wanted.”
Her faded blue T-shirt had the name of a band Ava had never heard of and freckles burst across her nose when she smiled and Ava tried to bite free from the noodles dangling from her chin. “I love toast,” she said and then thought it sounded silly.
“Okay, I’ll come over in a little while. Do you like lemon curd?”
Ava could only nod.
The neighbor smiled and disappeared back into her room.
* * *
Safely behind her own door, Ava set aside her noodles and paced, trying hard not to listen for sounds from the next room, because it seemed too eager and a little creepy. From the mailboxes she knew her neighbor’s name was Kate, and this sounded like such a wonderfully prim name. After a while, she sat down at her typewriter, hoping that a distraction might make the time pass; it felt like the last five minutes had taken forever. At one point she even got up to check, but when she picked it up, her old alarm clock ticked quietly, humming against her ear, and Ava sat back down, scrolled in a blank page, and started a new chapter.
* * * * *