Kate sips her diet Cuba Libre, weary from her day teaching seventh-grade life science at a charter school in Harlem. She attempts to penetrate the force field of distraction that surrounds her boyfriend by leaning on his shoulder, but Devor shucks her off with a jerk of the remote, switching from CNN to MSNBC and back, then stirring his spoon in his empty bowl, trying to scrape a final bite of quinoa.
“Can I ask you something? says Kate. “And I swear that this is the last time I’ll ask.”
She makes her way to the kitchenette and begins doing dishes, hoping Devor will get the message and join. He stays seated, so she yells, in part because the room’s loud with running water and dish clatter, but also because it feels good to project, to let her irritation manifest in volume.
“I’m just going to ask one more time,” yells Kate. “Why didn’t you tell me you went to Sophia’s after the rally? I mean, I get why you did, I think. I’m not accusing. I’m just asking why you didn’t tell me.”
They’ve been over this a dozen times.
“I forgot,” says Devor at regular volume, meaning Kate can’t hear over the noise.
“What?”
“I said I forgot,” yells Devor.
Kate turns off the faucet. She walks back to the couch and grabs the bowl from which Devor still scrapes, despite it being empty. She gets up close to his face and says, “Seems like something you wouldn’t forget.”
“Other things on my mind,” says Devor. His eyes continually dart toward the window, as if the cops might arrive at any moment, having changed their minds about letting him go.
Or maybe Kate’s the one being paranoid. The job has her down at the moment, its endless hours, low pay, and sorry benefits; the parents who get worse every year, either in negligent absence or unemployed over-involvement; the bright kids bounding into this bleak future; the school shooting statistics that scare her despite Devor’s reminders that it’s only ever white kids who shoot up their schools (he’s right, but she still worries); the paper-bag lunches; the matronly cardigans and functional flats she has to wear every day while women like Sophia strut around in belly shirts, demanding attention.
Kate brings the bowl back into the kitchen. In the early months of their relationship, she’d solved problems like this one by reading Devor’s email—he never logged out—but that had to end when Kate found something she’d rather not have seen—an exchange with Sophia that referenced nude photos they’d taken and that Devor presumably still had in his possession—and couldn’t stop herself from bringing it up, causing a conversation that ended with her promising never to read his email again and mostly keeping to that promise.
Kate makes her way to the bedroom, having left the dishes on the off chance that Devor will scrub them clean before coming in. She takes out her contacts and puts on a nightgown and slips under the comforter, propping herself on a pillow, browsing for a new couch that Devor doesn’t want, he being perfectly content with his old bachelor futon. But oh, it would be so nice to watch the plastic wrap fall to the floor. To screw in the rubber stoppers. To sit on fresh upholstery, turn the TV off, and fall into his arms.
16.
Wendy’s at a barstool, sipping beer, watching Penny from behind, the bartender’s clamped butt cheeks hardened by hundreds of SoulCycle sessions, as Wendy knows from stalking her Instagram. Penny presses a button and music plays, a caterwauling white man over drums and guitar. The bar is empty, which Penny explains is due to student migration to a new place on Columbus with a hundred beers on tap and a vape license. For a while, 420 was the only green-friendly establishment in Morningside, but others have opened since. The problem is not competition, however, so much as a wane in public vaping since the laws banning outside herb that encouraged bars to serve their own strains at markup. Smokers have gone back to buying street weed and toking at home out of plastic bongs, which are enjoying a moment of retro-popularity. The place still fills sometimes, but tonight it’s only Wendy and some guys watching the game.
Wendy was surprised to see Penny still pouring and Penny was surprised to see Wendy, period. Wendy’s still the ginger beauty she was in college, though her face now contains a heaviness that suits her, gives her a sultry, been-through-shit, badass vibe. Penny says she’s sorry about Ricky, that it’s horrible. She asks how Wendy and Michael are doing? Wendy says Michael’s a mess. She doesn’t answer in regards to herself.
“And how are you?” Wendy asks.
Penny says, “Still working on the old PhD if you can believe that,” which Wendy cannot.
Penny knows how pathetic she must sound to a woman like Wendy, Bloomingdale’s bag draped from her barstool, while Penny parades in a halter that shows off full-sleeve zebra stripe tattoos. She explains that she put her research on pause to have a baby about ten years ago with an asshole who’s no longer around, though it was all for the best because Sean, her son, is the light of her life.
Wendy’s face does not betray it, but something inside her shifts at the word baby. While Penny speaks of her son, who’s in third grade, loves soccer, and wants to be an ROS developer, Wendy is elsewhere. She’s in the hospital room as the
