After saying goodbye to Caroline’s father, I stepped off a curb right into a mass of black, disgusting drain water. The deep water soaked my dress socks and my entire right shoe. Squish. Squish. The sound followed me the entire walk home. My foot grew cold. I tried not to think about all the substances in the filthy water that now coated my skin. Fuck.
Back in my apartment, I took off my shoes and socks and dumped them in the kitchen trash. The city lights twinkled outside. In the apartment building along the way, the blue glare of television sets lit up a couple of different windows. The modern furniture in my apartment bore an austere quality.
I set my shower to a high temperature and let the water rain down on me until my skin turned pink. After putting on my pajama pants, I lay down in bed. I pressed a button, and the drapes closed on the city outside. I called Poppy. Voicemail picked up, so I hung up.
A quiet filled the apartment. Subtle sounds infiltrated from outside, but with the drapes down, the noises were almost indistinguishable. I lay on my pillow, eyes open. Inside, in my chest, I ached—a physical pain. I picked up the phone to check the time. Hours had passed. I sat up in bed and opened a drawer. I plugged in an old sound machine. I hadn’t used it in a long time. I set it to ocean sounds. The irony was not lost on me. And no, I still didn’t sleep well.
In the morning, I left my apartment to meet my mom at a nearby breakfast place. A homeless woman with a skinny dog leaned against a building. She held a cardboard sign that read “Please help us.” People on the sidewalk sped by her. As I passed, I bent and dropped a twenty in the old, worn blue and white paper cup she held out.
I pushed open the door of Pershing Square Cafe. A younger woman rushed out and knocked right into me. She never looked back and never apologized. Nice.
“Gabriel. Over here.” My mom waved her arm. I stepped through the crowd of people hovering in the wait area. When I reached her, I bent to give her a hug and a kiss on her cheek. “We’re next for a table.”
Twenty-five minutes later, a hostess picked up two menus and asked us to follow her.
Once seated, I quickly scanned the menu, and prepared my order for the server. Mom dug in.
“How’s it feel to be back?”
“Fine.”
“I bet it’s good to be back in your apartment. Back in your bed.” I refrained from telling her about my poor sleep. She’d probably have a doctor friend prescribing sleeping pills within hours. Or she’d suggest a tea.
“How’ve you been?” I asked her.
“Oh, good.” She went on and filled me in about a home in the Hamptons she was decorating. Our food arrived, and I picked at my omelet. You could see butter residue lingering over the outer shell of the extremely thick concoction. They must’ve used eight eggs.
“Is it not good? You can send it back.”
“It’s fine.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Gabriel? What’s going on?”
I knew she wouldn’t let it drop. “Two blocks away, there was a homeless woman. I keep thinking about her.” It wasn’t entirely a lie.
“You’ve lost your city armor.” She sipped her tea and assumed her all-knowing posture.
“What do you mean?”
“You spend enough time here, and the homeless become invisible. You’ve been away so long, they aren’t invisible. Give it enough time, it won’t bother you.”
“Is that a good thing?” I asked, incredulous my mother would even think like that.
“Honey, it is, and it isn’t. We have so many homeless, what are you going to do? You can’t hand out money to everyone you see.” I stared down at the black grout between the white hexagon tiles on the floor. “If it really bothers you, you can find a good charity that gives to the homeless. That’s what your father and I do. I bet if you ask Caroline, she can give you a good idea of the charities she favors.”
That got my attention. “Why would you mention Caroline?”
“Well, you know, dear, she and I spend a lot of time together.”
“Mom…nothing is going on with Caroline and me. You know that, right?”
She strummed two of her thick, squarish nails against her lips and squinted behind her tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses.
“You like the girl on the island. The one we didn’t get to meet. Am I right?”
I thought of Poppy’s tear-streaked face, her hand held high in a vigorous wave. The pain reflected on her face matched the ache ripping my insides to smithereens. I crumpled up a paper napkin then realized my mother waited for my answer.
“I do like her. Why?”
“Is it true, what they said? Is she a prostitute?”
“Wha—who is they?”
“Caroline. And Lauren. They told me about her.”
“How do they know anything at all about her?” Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I knew the answer. Reed.
My mom held her hand up in a defensive gesture, shaking her head to assure me she didn’t know. I exhaled and took the pressure off her.
“It doesn’t matter. They’re wrong. She was a…model. She earned quite a bit from a modeling business, but no, Mom, she was never a prostitute.” She placed her hands in her lap, and her lips did the peculiar puckering thing she did sometimes when she doubted something. “It’s okay. I promise you. She sold her photography business and is now launching her own restaurant. She hopes to build it into a chain.”
“What you call photography, Lauren explained it to me.”
“And?”
“You can do better than her.”
“Why? Because she built a business and a portion of
