I got a job temping. I wasn’t a fast enough typist for the plum gigs, so I was only called in when they needed a receptionist. My first job was at a law office. I answered the phone and tried to look alertly competent (or at least like I wasn’t falling asleep) and was tasked with ordering partners’ lunches, taking it out of the containers it came in, and serving it to them on china and with ice water. They didn’t talk to me, except one who said, “You’re not Denise,” and I answered that Denise had a head cold.
Janice spent most nights at Meredith’s by then. I visited her at the bar from time to time, but she rarely had more than a minute to talk. I sometimes went to gay bars, but, like in my first New York months, banter escaped me, so I returned to the woods, the wordless interactions there a relief. One night, leaving after a man had wanted to have sex without a condom and I’d refused, the two of us jerking each other off instead, his rough, squeezing hand making difficult work of it, I remembered my mother telling me that she also didn’t know how to be with people. She’d be sincere and they’d think she was joking. They told her she was angry when she didn’t feel angry at all. I lit a cigarette, thought of the times she and I used to smoke leaning on a windowsill, or in a backyard filled with mismatched lawn furniture.
Winter wound down. The money I’d saved from working for Nicola and Philip dwindled fast with rent and the credit card bills that came back to haunt me. I got another receptionist temp job at a place with a tank of tropical fish in the lobby and a kitchen filled with snacks and drinks I took liberally from until the office manager told me I was taking too much. I was surprised he noticed me at all.
On days I wasn’t temping, I took long runs or opened all the windows and cleaned, hoping that running and scrubbing would bring about some sea change. Emails and voice mails from my dad continued from time to time. He mentioned how he’d gone back to his job at an office building in Milwaukee, making people sign in and show IDs. More about the endless snow, his slow recovery. His messages wandered into recollections: him and Mom and me at some park with a river to swim in, though I never went in past my knees. You stood so still I had to say your name from time to time just to watch you turn around, to make sure you were still with us.
One night, I visited the bar. Since I’d been fired, Janice and I had reconciled, though we never talked about the way I’d hurt her. She kissed my cheek, told me she was glad to see me. I missed the two of us before Philip and Nicola, our apartment the only place I slept, how each time she came home and found me there, neither of us could hide our excitement. I peeled the label off my beer bottle. Janice leaned close and said she had something to tell me.
“You’re pregnant,” I guessed.
“Wouldn’t that be the thing,” she said, then asked if I wanted another drink.
I shook my head, sensing a jolt I wasn’t prepared for.
“Meredith got a fancy new job in L.A. Some show where nobodies try to become singers.”
“Meredith wants to be a singer?” I asked.
“Hush,” Janice said. She put her hand on mine, kept it there as she talked about the ridiculous money Meredith would get, enough to rent a small house, maybe get chickens. A customer appeared. Janice served him, returned.
“You’re going with her,” I said.
Her expression said that she was, even though going might be a terrible idea. She loved Meredith, doubted it would last, wanted to push past that doubt to see what was on the other side. I squeezed her hand. She’d mostly been at Meredith’s for the last month. When I saw her, she often talked about being tired of New York. None of this should have been surprising. But I was surprised. I waited for my tears. Instead I felt tired.
“That’s great, honey,” I said, and kissed her.
“I thought you’d be mad.”
“Why would I be mad?”
“Don’t be dumb, sugar. Mad because I’m leaving you.”
“But you can always come back,” I said.
I went to the bathroom, sat in a stall where people had written phone numbers of exes or friends turned to enemies. Janice wouldn’t come back. Or if she did, the world would have shifted so that, even if we ended up in the same place again, this heat between us would have dissolved, too diffuse to warm anything.
“I’ll miss you terribly,” I said back at my stool, wondering if, had I remembered to ask her more questions, had I noticed when she was struggling and told her as much, had I chosen her over Philip and Nicola, she might have stayed. Or if at least it would have felt less like she was leaving me.
That night, lying next to her in bed, sharing a joint and listening to the call and response of sirens outside, Janice asked, “What will you do?”
Alan had asked me the same thing a year before. I hadn’t known then either.
I shrugged, the question of where I might go next a dark, unfamiliar room. Part of me wanted to join them in L.A., but I hadn’t been invited. I pinched the joint between my fingers, then my lips, “what next” too squirmy to hold. Bay Ridge would bring back more of my sadness. Minnesota wasn’t an option either, as I’d lost touch with most friends there. One had emailed recently, called me selfish, told me I was someone who took what I needed then moved on. You always treated me like I was important to you, now it seems I was just convenient, the friend had written, and I wondered if there was a way out of selfishness, or if turning that idea over and over was just another way to keep staring at my own reflection.
“I don’t want to be those people who were only friends for a time,” I said.
“Never, hot ass,” Janice answered.
I wanted to become a person who wrote long emails and made time to call, hoped I’d be able to rearrange the way I moved through my days to make that happen. As we lay there, not knowing what came next pressing against me, I said, “Pavel told me I could visit him for a bit.”
“What does ‘a bit’ mean?” Janice asked.
“Great question,” I said.
I knew I’d go, probably outstay my welcome, though the excitement of seeing Pavel, the smells of flowers I’d never heard of floating through open windows, sitting in his studio while he painted more versions of me made whatever would come after too negligible to matter. Janice fell asleep. As traffic sounded through the window, I tried to remind myself that Pavel wasn’t a solution.
“Pavel who lives in a hovel,” I whispered.
Janice rolled to her side; her breasts pressed to my shoulder. I let them stay there, thinking of the violent pleasure of being smothered.
When I emailed Pavel the next morning and he answered right away that I was more than welcome, possibility solidified in my hand. I raced to one of the student travel offices that polluted the city then and booked a one-way ticket.
“Return date?” the agent asked.
Other agents sat close, keyboards clicking. Posters showed beaches and ancient cities, what I guessed was a temple.
“To be determined,” I answered, and handed her my credit card.