dappled sunlight on the grassy terrace, me in a long white sheath, and Luke looking so handsome and debonair in an open-collared white shirt and black tuxedo pants. Like a prince is how he’ll look, really…
I just have to figure out how I’m going to handle this next part, and I’m home free.
“Okay,” Shari says, opening up the copy of the Village Voice she’s just snagged, and turning it to the classifieds. “Basically, there’s nothing out there that’s worth looking at that isn’t listed by a broker.”
The thing is, this is going to take finesse. Not to mention subtlety.
“Which means we’re just going to have to bite the bullet and pay one. It sucks,” Shari goes on, “but in the long run, I think it’s going to be worth it.”
I can’t just blurt it out. I have to lead up to it, slowly.
“I know you’re short on cash,” Shari says. “So Chaz says he can loan us what we need to pay the broker. We can pay him back when we get on our feet. Well, when you get on your feet.” Because Shari has already landed a job at a small nonprofit, based on an interview she had last summer, before she left for France. She starts work tomorrow. “I mean, unless Luke is willing to front you. Is he? I know you probably hate to ask, but come on, the guy is loaded.”
I can’t just spring it on her out of nowhere.
“Lizzie? Are you even listening to me?”
“Luke asked me to move in with him,” I blurt out before I can stop myself.
Shari stares at me across the booth’s sticky tabletop. “And you were going to tell me this… when?” she asks.
Great. I’ve already blown it. She’s mad. I knew she was going to get mad. Why can’t I ever keep my big mouth closed.Why?
“Shari, he just asked me this morning,” I say. “Just now, before I left to come meet you. I didn’t say yes. I said I had to talk to you about it.”
Shari blinks at me. “Which means you want to,” she says. There’s a definite edge to her voice. “You want to move in with him, or you’d have said no right away.”
“Shari! No! I mean, well… yes. But think about it. I mean, face it, you’re always going to be over at Chaz’s place anyway—”
“Spending the night at Chaz’s,” Shari says acidly, “isn’t the same as living with him.”
“But you know he’d love you to,” I say. “Think about it, Shari. If I move in with Luke, and you move in with Chaz, then we don’t have to waste time looking for apartments anymore… or waste money on a broker and first and last month’s rent. It will save us about five grand. Each!”
“Don’t do that,” Shari says sharply.
I blink at her. “Do what?”
“Make it about money,” she says. “It’s not about money. You know if you needed money, you could get money. Your parents would send you money.”
I feel a spurt of irritation with Shari. I love her to death. I really do. But my parents have three kids, all of whom need money all the time. Supervisors at the cyclotron, which is what my dad is, make a comfortable living. But not enough to support their adult children in perpetuity.
Shari, on the other hand, is the only child of a prominent Ann Arbor surgeon. All she ever has to do when she needs money is ask her parents for some, and they fork over however much she wants, no questions asked.I’m the one who’s been working in retail—and before that, babysitting every Friday and Saturday night throughout my teens, thus denying me anything resembling a proper social life—for the past seven years, scraping by on minimum wage, and denying myself life’s more expensive pleasures (movies, eating out, shampoo other than Suave, a car, et cetera) in order to save enough to one day escape to New York, and pursue my dream.
I’m not complaining. I know my parents did the best they could by me. But it’s annoying how Shari doesn’t understand that not everyone’s parents are as forthcoming with cash as hers are. Even though I’ve tried to explain it to her.
“We can’t let ourselves become slaves of New York,” Shari goes on. “We can’t make major life decisions— like moving in with a boyfriend—be about the cost of rent. If we start doing that, we’re lost.”
I just look at her. Seriously, I don’t know where she gets this stuff.
“If it’s just about money,” she says, “and you don’t want to go to your parents, Chaz will float you a loan. You know that.”
Chaz, who comes from a long line of fiscally thrifty lawyers, is loaded. Not just because his relatives keep dropping dead and leaving their financial assets to him, but because in addition to their cash, he’s also inherited their frugality, and invests conservatively while living quite modestly—at least in comparison to his net worth, which is allegedly even more than Luke’s. Not that Chaz has a château in France to show for it.
“Shari,” I say. “Chaz is YOUR boyfriend. I’m not taking money from YOUR boyfriend. How is that any different than moving in with Luke?”
“Because you aren’t having sex with Chaz,” Shari points out with her usual asperity. “It would be a business arrangement, strictly impersonal.”
But for some reason, the idea of asking Chaz for a loan—even though I know he’d think nothing of it, and say yes in an instant—isn’t working for me.
Besides, it’s not really about the money. It never was.
“The thing is,” I say slowly. “It’s not just about the money, Share.”
Shari lets out a moan, and drops her face into her hands.
“Oh, God,” she says to her lap. “I knew this was going to happen.”
“What?” I don’t understand what she’s so upset about. I mean, I know Chaz is no prince and all, with his turned-around Michigan baseball hats and perpetual razor stubble. But he’s really funny and sweet. When he isn’t going on about Kierkegaard or Roth IRAs. “I’m sorry. But can’t we make this work? I mean, what’s the problem, exactly? Is it the triple stabbing? You don’t want to live in Chaz’s place because of the neighborhood? But the police told you, it was a domestic dispute. That will never happen again. I mean, unless they let Julio’s dad out of Rikers—”
“It has nothing to do with that,” Shari snaps. In the glow from the neon Pabst Blue Ribbon sign on the wall beside our booth, her wildly curling black hair has a bluish sheen. “Lizzie, you’ve known Luke a month. And you’re going to move in with him?”
“Two months,” I correct her, hurt. “And he’s Chaz’s best friend. And we’ve known Chaz for years.Lived with Chaz for years. Well, in the dorm, anyway. So it’s not like Luke’s this complete stranger, like Andrew was—”
“Exactly. What about Andrew?” Shari demands. “Lizzie, you just got out of a relationship. A completely fucked one, but a relationship, nonetheless. And look at Luke. Two months ago, he was living with someone else! And now he’s just going to rush right in to live with someone new? Don’t you think maybe you guys need to take it a little more slowly?”
“We’re not getting married, Share,” I say to her. “We’re just talking about living together.”
“Luke might be,” Shari says. “But Lizzie, I know you. You’re already secretly fantasizing about marrying Luke. Don’t deny it.”
“I am not!” I cry, wondering how she could possibly know the truth. And okay, she’s known me for my whole life, practically. But come on. That’s spooky.
She narrows her eyes at me. “Lizzie,” she says, in a warning voice.
“Oh, all right,” I say, slumping back against the blood-red vinyl booth. We’re at Honey’s, a seedy Midtown karaoke bar halfway between Chaz’s apartment, where Shari is staying on East Thirteenth between First and Second Avenues, and Luke’s mom’s place, on East Eighty-first and Fifth Avenue, so it’s equally difficult (or easy, depending on how you want to look at it) for us to get to.
Honey’s may be a dive, but at least it’s usually empty—at least before nine at night, when the serious karaoke practitioners show up—so we can talk, and the diet Cokes are only a dollar. Plus, the bartender—a punky Korean-American in her early twenties—doesn’t seem to care if we order something or not. She’s too busy fighting with her boyfriend over her cell phone.
“So I want to marry him,” I say dejectedly, as the bartender yells,“You know what? You know what? You suck,” into her pink Razor. “I love him.”
“It’s fine that you love him, Lizzie,” Shari says. “It’s perfectly natural. But I’m still not convinced moving in with him is the best idea.” Oh, great. Now she’s chewing her lower lip. “I just… ”
