THOSE WHO GROW up there often roll their eyes when seeing movies about New York City. Without the accompanying smell of trash fermenting on the sidewalks on trash day, or the stench of the crowded subway, a cross between disinfectant and armpit sweat, the movies seem like they’re filmed on a set even if they weren’t. Even if the director went to the trouble of filing permits and closing down street parking for two days to depict the entropy of the streets, it couldn’t really be captured.
Thalia engaged in heavy mockery of these films with Maddy and Sam, her high school best friends, who were also natural-born New Yorkers. In these films, all bridge views and buildings, the great engineering feats of New York, were something she took for granted and could not get swept up in, regardless of how the movie soundtrack swelled. Thalia preferred the older films, the black and white ones, even. Her favorite by far was The Apartment, which, though set in New York City, really only showed four views: a sidewalk, an office building, a restaurant and, of course, an apartment in a brownstone carved up into two units per floor—everything within in the same couple of blocks of midtown.
A guy she dated briefly right after high school, a film studies major at NYU, introduced her to the film. She went out with him only for a few months and didn’t remember much about him except that he always wore a baseball cap. When he kissed her, he would have to turn his head sharply to avoid the cap’s brim crashing into her forehead.
They watched The Apartment in a special screening room in the film studies department with a few other undergrads. It had won a bunch of Academy Awards in 1961. The premise of the film was ridiculous: a bachelor, hoping to climb the corporate ladder, loans out his apartment for his bosses to use for their extramarital affairs. Along the way, he even more improbably falls for an elevator girl in his building and later discovers she is one of the extramarital affairs being secreted away in his own apartment.
The events of the movie slid over Thalia as she watched; nothing seemed to stick until the end of the second act. The elevator girl, dumped by her boss, seeking consolation from the also-exploited apartment owner, says, “some people take, some people get took. And they know they’re getting took, and there’s nothing they can do about it.” Thalia’s eyes drifted away from the frame to the short clusters of young people dotting the small screening room every couple of rows. Her date was slouched beside her, his baseball cap low, his feet in worn-out sneakers kicked up to the seat in front of him. She could smell pot from somewhere behind her, and someone giggled. She wondered where in those two columns she belonged: take or get took.
Mr. Baseball Cap was too apathetic to take, so maybe she was the one taking. She was always the one agreeing to go places with guys like this one. It was almost a formula: she’d catch them staring at some part of her body, or they’d linger behind when whatever group they were a part of dispersed. Then, there would be some sort of invitation—maybe to continue hanging out right then, maybe for something they thought she’d think was cool, like this film showing. She had never asked any follow-up questions about themselves and would answer their questions with few details. She was what they called “slow to open up,” and some guys liked that. Some of them didn’t believe in easy and somehow thought that if they worked for it, it was more real. Those clung on a bit longer. But, unlike the elevator girl, she wasn’t in the mindset of “there’s nothing they can do about it.” She felt strength in staying unattached. She wasn’t like her friends, constantly checking her phone when the intervals between texts lengthened and then they stopped coming altogether.
“So, do you like this guy or what?” Maddy asked her the next day as they waited in line for their table at the Clinton Street Baking Company. There was always a line, ever since they’d been voted best pancake in New York.
“I don’t mind him,” Thalia said.
“High praise.” Maddy was busy double-tapping a bunch of instagram photos of latte art and eye makeup looks.
“What about you? How’s the Tinder pile?”
“Fair to moderate. Though I’m still waiting for the guy from Sunday to text.” She then switched over to her text app. “It’s been three days already.”
“You know what I always say …” Thalia cleared her throat. “Some people take, some people get took.” Trying out the words, they seemed both foreign and at home in her mouth at the same time.
Maddy stopped thumb-typing and glanced up at her from her phone. “What the hell is that about?”
“Nothing. Just something from an old movie I watched last night.”
Maddy put her phone in her back pocket. “You think I’m being taken advantage of or something?”
“I just don’t know why you get so worked up about these guys. They aren’t worth it.”
A woman with a white apron and a notable number of facial piercings—even for New York—stepped out to the sidewalk and called out, “Maddy for two.”
“Well, I don’t know how you don’t get worked up about it.” Maddy’s eyes were getting a bit glassy, and Thalia could feel a heaviness in her ribs that she never felt when one of her dates didn’t pan out.
“Look, I just mean, it’s their loss, right? I’m unconvinced that any of them is worthy of you.”
“MADDY for two,” the aproned woman called again.
“Let’s just sit and order. I’m starving,” Maddy said, moving forward to the restaurant door.
One month later, Maddy would be in tears about the latest guy that ghosted her after three dates. Sam and Thalia would console her in a back booth of a dingy bar, ordering shot and beer combos. Over Maddy’s head, Sam motioned that she needed to go home. Thalia would be in charge of getting Maddy past the last call and into an Uber. It was a chore, hearing Maddy go on about how she had envisioned some sort of future with this recent guy, how they had so much in common, how they even were the same sign, grew up only one stop away on the same subway line. Thalia supposed she was “getting took,” since this wasn’t the first last call she’d nursed Maddy through. But, seeing her friend still checking her phone, Thalia knew that she was better off not letting anyone have this kind of pull over her. The next day she texted Mr. Baseball Cap to let him know she was ending it. In response, he went through a cycle that was predictable to her: confusion, self-doubt, anger. She stopped responding after a few “it’s me, not you” texts.