Girls in White Dresses

“So you would have someone to be sober with?”

Mary nodded. “Yeah. I’d be happy. If you got knocked up right now, I wouldn’t even feel bad. I’d just be happy for me.”

“You,” Isabel a said, “are a good friend.”

Mary laughed. “Don’t tel anyone, okay? It’s so early. Anything could happen.”

“Okay,” Isabel a said. “And I’l make you a deal. If you wait for me, I’l time my first pregnancy with your third. Then we can be pregnant together.

Deal?”

“Deal.”

They al woke up on Sunday morning with headaches. Mary had to take an early train and was gone by the time Isabel a got up. The house was a mess, and they al walked around in silence, throwing out cans and bottles. Lauren attempted to sweep the floor, but there was so much sand that she gave up after a few minutes.

Beth White came downstairs with her packed bag. Her hair was wet and slicked back in a ponytail. She looked young standing there, like a high school girl who’d just finished swim practice. Abby and Shannon stood a little behind her on either side, like they were her jailers or her bodyguards, ready to step in if needed. “I’m sorry,” Beth said. “I’m sorry I caused such a scene.”

“Don’t apologize,” they al said. “Don’t be sil y.”

Isabel a left to catch her train. “Fun weekend,” she said to Lauren.

“Yeah,” Lauren said. “That’s one word for it. What a way to celebrate our thirties.”

“Everyone says it’s the best decade,” Isabel a said.

“I know,” added Lauren. “But I think it’s just to make you feel better, like when people say it’s good luck that a bird poos on you, or it rains on your wedding day.”

“Maybe,” Isabel a said.

“Maybe not, though.”

“Yeah, maybe not.”

Isabel a fel asleep on the train ride back, and woke up cranky and thirsty as they pul ed into Penn Station. Everyone on the train jostled one another to get out first. Normal y, Isabel a elbowed her way out with the best of them, but now she just let everyone go past. She climbed up the steps to exit Penn Station, and then noticed that the man in front of her had stopped and was taking his pants off.

“Excuse me,” she said and ran past him.

The sun was bright as Isabel a waited for a taxi. She stood and watched al of the people returning to the city. They popped out of Penn Station, one by one, in their wrinkled clothes. Sunburned and sweaty, they raced to get cabs. Girls carried bright paisley-covered bags stuffed ful of wet bathing suits and sandy shirts, and walked quickly in their flip-flops as they typed on their cel phones. Everyone was tired from too much sun and too many drinks, and they al just wanted to get back to their apartments.

They were al scrambling, Isabel a thought. Scrambling, scrambling.

She got in a cab and rol ed down the window. Harrison sent her a message that he was making dinner. Harrison knew how to make exactly two things: Manwiches and fajitas. Her phone buzzed again and she looked down. “It’s fajitas,” Harrison wrote. Isabel a smiled.

The air blew through the window, and she watched al of the people moving like ants outside. She was happy to be sitting stil in a cab, happy to be on her way home. She imagined Harrison and Winston sitting on the couch waiting for her. The cab stopped at the corner of Fifty-ninth and Eighth, and she saw a man standing there wearing al white. He was a tiny man, with a perfectly round face. “Jesus is coming,” she heard him say, and she laughed out loud. The cabdriver looked at her in the rearview mirror. “I know him,” she said. It felt lucky to her. What were the odds? She couldn’t explain it, but she was so happy to see him. She smiled at the man and waved her hand out the window. He looked up and waved back to her as the cab pul ed away, and she leaned her head back and closed her eyes and let the breeze blow over her face.

O n their second date, Mark brought Lauren a goldfish, which made her nervous. Lauren knew that the normal life span of a goldfish was about five days, but growing up she’d had one that lived for five years. And so, it seemed a big commitment when Mark gave her the plastic bag with the fish in it.

“Here,” he said, “I got you this.” He held out the baggie like he had just found it in the hal way before he came into her apartment, like it was a normal thing to do to hand a goldfish to a girl you barely knew.

“Oh,” Lauren said. “Thank you. I guess I should put these in some water.” Mark didn’t laugh. Either he didn’t get the joke or he didn’t think she was funny. She couldn’t decide which was worse.

Mark stood by the door while Lauren looked in her cabinets for an appropriate fish bowl. She final y settled on a glass mixing bowl she never used. Was the water supposed to be lukewarm or cold? She didn’t know. She settled on lukewarm so that the fish wouldn’t be chil ed, and dumped him into the water. It smel ed.

Lauren had won her other fish at the Pumpkin Festival when she was seven, and named her Rudy, after Rudy Huxtable from The Cosby Show.

Her parents were annoyed. “You won a fish?” they asked when she came home. They rol ed their eyes and warned her that it would probably die soon. They dug up an old fishbowl from the basement and bought fish food. “Don’t get too attached,” they told her. But little Rudy raged on. She swam fiercely year after year. When they final y found Rudy floating bel y-up at the top of the bowl, the whole family was shocked. It was as though they’d expected her to live forever; as though they’d forgotten that her dying was even a possibility.

Lauren watched the new fish swim around. He looked weak. Not like Rudy at al . “I guess I’l need to stop and