a house somewhere outside the city—Win has a collection of antique records, and maybe I learn to cook a dish besides macaroni and frozen peas. I see our wedding—it’s on a beach and he’s wearing a blue seersucker suit and our rings are white gold. I see a dark-haired baby—I call him Leonyd after my father, if it’s a boy, and Alexa, after Win’s sister, if it’s a girl. I see everything and it is so very lovely.
It would be so easy, but I would hate myself. I had a chance to build something, and in the process, to do what my father had never been able to do. I couldn’t let that go, even for this boy. He, alone, was not enough.
So I held my tired neck erect and kept my eyes fixed forward. He was going, and I would let him.
From the balcony, I heard the baby start to cry. My former schoolmates took Felix’s tears as a sign that the party was over. Through the glass door, I watched them as they filed out. I don’t know why, but I tried to make a joke. “Looks like the worst prom ever,” I said. “Maybe the second worst if you count junior year.” I lightly touched Win’s thigh where my cousin had shot him at the worst prom ever. For a second he looked like he might laugh, but then he repositioned his leg so that my hand was no longer on it.
Win pulled me to his chest. “Goodbye,” he whispered in a gentler tone than I’d heard from him in a while. “I hope life gives you everything you want.”
I knew it was over. In contrast with the other times we’d quarreled, he did not sound angry. He sounded resigned. He sounded as if he were already somewhere faraway.
A second later, he released me and then he really did leave.
I turned my back and watched the city as the sun went down. Though I had made my choices, I could not bear to know what he looked like when he was walking away.
I waited about fifteen minutes before I went back into the apartment. By that time, the only people left were Scarlet and Felix. “I love parties,” Scarlet said, “but this was miserable. Don’t say it wasn’t, Annie. You can lie to the priest, but it’s too late for you to start lying to me.”
“I’ll help you clean up,” I said. “Where’s Gable?”
“Out with his brother,” she said. “Then he has to go to work.” Gable had a truly wretched-sounding job as a hospital orderly, which involved changing bedpans and cleaning floors. It was the only work he could find, and I suppose it was noble of him to have taken it. “Do you think it was a mistake to invite the kids from Trinity?”
“I think it was fine,” I said.
“I saw you talking to Win.”
“Nothing has changed.”
“I’m sad to hear that,” she said. We cleaned up the apartment in silence. Scarlet started to vacuum, which is why I didn’t notice right away that she had begun to cry.
I walked over to the vacuum and turned it off. “What is it?”
“I wonder what chance any of the rest of us have if you and Win can’t make it work.”
“Scarlet, it was a high school romance. They aren’t meant to last forever.”
“Unless you’re stupid and get yourself knocked up,” Scarlet said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” Scarlet sighed. “And I know why you’re opening the club, but you’re certain Charles Delacroix is worth the trouble?”
“I am. I’ve explained this to you before.” I turned the vacuum cleaner back on and vacuumed. I was pushing the vacuum in long, mad strokes across the rug: angry-vacuuming. I turned the vacuum off again. “You know, it’s not easy to do what I’m doing. I don’t have any help. No one is supporting me. Not Mr. Kipling. Not my parents or my nana, because they’re dead. Not Natty, because she is a child. Not Leo, because he is in jail. Not the Balanchine family, because they think I’m threatening their business. Certainly not Win. No one. I am alone, Scarlet. I am more alone than I have ever been in my entire life. And I know I chose this. But it hurts my feelings when you take Win’s side over mine. I’m using Mr. Delacroix because he is the connection I have to the city. I need him, Scarlet. He has been part of my plan from the beginning. There is no one else who could replace him. Win is asking me for the one thing I can’t give him. Don’t you think I wish I could?”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“And I can’t be with Win Delacroix just so my best friend doesn’t give up on romance.”
Scarlet’s eyes were tear-filled. “Let’s not argue. I’m an idiot. Ignore me.”
“I hate when you call yourself an idiot. No one thinks that of you.”
“I think it of myself,” Scarlet said. “Look at me. What am I going to do?”
“Well for one, we’re going to finish cleaning this apartment.”
“After that, I meant.”
“Then we’re going to take Felix and go to my club. Lucy, the mixologist, is working late and she has a bunch of cacao drinks for us to sample.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know. You’ll come up with something. But it’s the only way I know how to move forward. You make a list and then you go and do the things on it.”
“Still bitter,” I said to my recently hired mixologist as I handed her the last in a series of shot glasses. Lucy had white-blond hair cropped short, light blue eyes, pale skin, a big bow of a mouth, and a long, athletic body. When she was in her chef’s coat and hat, I thought she looked like a bar of Balanchine White. I always knew when she was working in the kitchen because even from my office down the hall, I could hear her muttering and cursing. The dirty words seemed to be part of her creative process. I liked her very much, by the way. If she hadn’t been my employee, maybe she would have been my friend.
“Do you think it needs more sugar?” Lucy said.
“I think it needs … something. It’s even more bitter than the last one.”
“That’s what cacao tastes like, Anya. I’m starting to think you don’t like the taste of cacao. Scarlet, what do you think?”
Scarlet sipped. “It’s not obviously sweet, but I definitely detect sweetness,” she said.
“Thank you,” Lucy said.
“That’s Scarlet,” I said. “You’re always looking for the sweet.”
“And maybe you’re always looking for the bitter,” Scarlet joked.
“Pretty, smart, and optimistic. I wish you were my boss,” Lucy said.
“She isn’t as sunny as she seems,” I told Lucy. “An hour ago, I found her crying and vacuuming.”
“Everyone cries when they vacuum,” Lucy said.
“I know, right?” Scarlet agreed. “Those vibrations make you emotional.”
“I’m serious, though,” I said. “In Mexico, the drinks weren’t this dark.”
“Maybe you should hire your friend from Mexico to come make them, then?” My mixologist had trained at the Culinary Institute of America and at Le Cordon Bleu, and she could be touchy when it came to criticism.
“Oh Lucy, you know I respect you enormously. But the drinks need to be perfect.”
“Let’s ask the heartbreaker,” Lucy said. “With your permission, Scarlet.”
“I don’t see why not,” Scarlet said. She dipped her pinky into the pot and then held it out for Felix to lick. He tasted tentatively. At first he smiled. Lucy began to look intolerably smug.
“He smiles at everything,” I said.
Suddenly, his mouth crumpled into the shape of a dried-out rose.
“Oh, I’m sorry, baby!” Scarlet said. “I’m a terrible mother.”
“See?” I said.
“I suppose cacao is too sophisticated a flavor for a baby’s palate,” Lucy said. She sighed and dumped the contents of the pot into the sink. “Tomorrow,” she said, “we try again. We fail again. We do better.”
II
I OFFICIALLY BECOME AN ADULT; HAVE A SERIES OF UNKIND THOUGHTS ABOUT MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY; AM COMPARED UNFAVORABLY TO THE ELEMENT ARGON
