East Coast Girls (ARC)
Page 16
a young guy in the corner. He looked about her age, maybe
a little older, a lonely, soulful fisherman she decided, judging by the weathered lines around his eyes. She smiled at him and his whole face lit up with happy surprise. He raised his glass.
“Oh, hello there,” she said under her breath, enjoying the
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way his smile grounded her back into her body. She sat down
next to him, and the lightness in her head became substance
and clarity again. He was exactly who and what she was look-
ing for, a cute boy to have a flirtatious spin with, maybe even make out a little, clear her head of all the drama.
He watched her settle in, his face full of unguarded hope-
fulness, and as they grinned at each other once more, she had the urge to lean over and kiss him, to disappear into that black, thought-free universe where kissing took her. She glanced
back at Renee and Blue slumped at the table, telegraphing
misery like actors playing to the balcony, over to Hannah
pacing outside. She thought of her house in foreclosure, her
dead-end job, her fractured friend-family, everything real and closing in on her. “Save me,” she said.
“Happy to,” he said. He scanned the crowd to locate the
threat, then turned back to her. “From what exactly?”
“Where to begin? Let’s start with sobriety.” To the bar-
tender she said, “Light beer on tap. He’s buying.” She turned back to the guy. “Please tell me you’re having a good night.”
“I am. Sort of. Well, actually…my dog died. I came here
to raise a glass…”
“To your dead dog.”
“Indy. Yeah. He liked Bud.” He gave a little chuckle as if
remembering.
“Interesting,” she said. “It wasn’t a drunk driving accident, was it?”
“Nope, he had his own chauffeur. Paws couldn’t reach the
pedals. Oh, and it gets worse.” He pulled out a small metal
container with a paw print on it.
“That’s not…” She poked it with her finger, leaned in to-
ward it, whispered, “Indy, is that you?”
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“He doesn’t talk so much anymore. Used to be quite the
conversationalist.”
“Well, I should probably leave you to your mourning.”
“He had a good life. Let’s call it celebrating.” He grinned
at her.
“You don’t carry that everywhere, do you?”
“Nope. Not yet anyway. Just picked it up on my way home
from work. I’m planning to…spread them somewhere. But
don’t know where yet. It’ll come to me.”
“This is by far the strangest bar encounter I’ve ever had.
And believe me, that’s saying a lot.”
Her beer appeared on the bar top. She took a sip and raised
her glass. “To Indy,” she said.
He smiled and his gaze fell from her eyes to her lips and
there was a lift in her stomach, like she was taking hills at speed. “To Indy,” he said, raising his glass. “And to the sudden appearance of beauty in unexpected places.”
Cheers erupted from a scatter of patrons watching a ball
game on the TV above the bar.
“I think you just scored,” she said, smiling as she clinked
his glass.
She was not usually such a drinker, but tonight the alcohol
was a wonder, tasted like summer parties and old boyfriends,
tasted like a past worth remembering and a future worth look-
ing forward to. “I’m Maya by the way.”
“Andy.”
“Let me ask you something, Andy. How do you feel about
whales?”
“Whales? I like them.”
“Excellent. You’ll do, then.”
She noticed the helmet beside him.
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“Yours?” she said.
She had never ridden a motorcycle, had never even known
anyone who owned one. Once when she was driving Blue
back to college after a holiday, a guy had pulled up beside them on a bike and performed tricks for them. Blue had laughed at
him, called him a tool, but Maya loved the various ways men
tried to impress her, the humor, the peacocking. Now she
looked at the helmet and imagined the night blowing through
her, the muscle and roar of the engine beneath her, her wor-
ries shrinking to the size of the rearview mirror, disappearing behind her like tailpipe smoke.
“Take me for a ride,” she said suddenly.
“Yeah?”
She glanced over at the girls, her lifelong best friends, her most important people. None of them looked back.
“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.”
He laughed and motioned to the bartender to pay the tab.
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BLUE
Blue was wondering how the hell she wound up alone at a
table with Renee. She’d been so preoccupied with her anger
she barely even noticed Maya leave. Now she and Renee
were stuck inside this stroppy silence that Blue had neither
the desire to sit in nor put an end to by way of conversation.
The waiter was taking too long with her drink. And she was
starving—a gnawing emptiness where her hope of Jack had
lived. She eyed the bread basket. She could eat it all, including the wicker. In fact, she would’ve gone right ahead and done
just that if Renee hadn’t ordered a salad. She didn’t need the judgment. Besides, now that her high was wearing off, she
was pulled back to how she’d felt earlier when she looked in
the mirror…saw the bumps and swells of her body in all the
places society insisted only smooth lines should be. She’d always vowed never to be one of those women who worried
about her weight and yet here she was, because for one fleet-
ing instant the hope of love had beckoned, and like all women, East Coast_9780778309499_TS_txt_277098.indd 162
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she’d been taught that only the beautiful and skinny could
receive the call. And Blue was not either of those things. Oh, she’d learned that lesson in the hardest way possible.
She often thought of the cruel trick society played on women, inundating them with messages that they weren’t enough and
then telling them they could fix it by starving themselves,
knowing that, like Harlow’s monkeys, people needed love and
comfort even more than food. And all along what women
carried, what they perceived as excess weight, was merely the shame they’d been force-fed before they could identify its taste.
It made her angry. It made her hate.
And still some part of her bought into it.
Across from her Renee reapplied her lipstick and then
glanced around at the other diners with that tranquil half
smile that had been her camouflage since they were teenagers.
Blue imagined the curse of beauty was the constant main-
tenance. It was like driving a Mercedes. No point in having
it if you didn’t keep it clean and polished, if you weren’t
ad-vertising it. But who had the time or energy? It could flatten a person. She’d already seen it happening to Renee at the end of high school—how she’d started disappearing into her pretti-ness, making it the centerpiece of who she was, the thing so-
ciety told her she should be and nothing more. It had become
at once her defense and her deepest vulnerability.
Renee shifted uncomfortably, the silence clearly getting to
her. Blue knew it was only a matter of seconds before Renee
broke it. She did a countdown in her head from three.
“It’s so pretty here,” Renee said the instant Blue hit one.
“I’d forgotten.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Blue said. She picked up the list of specials,
pretended to study it.
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“I always loved the nights. They feel so…promising or
something. I don’t know.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“So…can I ask how you are?”
“Great,” Blue said flatly from behind the menu. “Never better.”
“Good,” Renee said. “That’s good. You look good.”
“Thanks.”
The silence stretched. She made no effort to fill it. Renee
sighed, began drumming her fingernails on the table. Any-
thing to fill the void. Over the top of the menu, Blue could
see her desperately scanning the restaurant for rescue.
“So, um…how’re your parents?” Renee said finally. “They
good too?”
“My mother’s in Paris. I assume she’s fine.” Now Blue put
the menu down, looked directly at her. “My father’s been dead for three years, so I wouldn’t know how he is. Hot, probably.”
“Oh.” Renee’s eyes had that wet shock to them, like an
open cut just before it bleeds. “I didn’t know.”
“How would you?” Blue said.
For years after their falling out, Blue had waited for Renee
to reach out to her. All she’d wanted was an apology, acknowledgement of what had happened, a sign that Blue was a loss
that Renee was not willing to incur. She kept hoping. And
was angry at herself for hoping. And still hoped, because so
often the only person who could heal a wound was the one
who caused it. Eventually she burned out her emotions on the
cycle and stopped thinking about it entirely, which in some
ways felt worse—the emptiness where feeling should be. Then
when her father died a few years ago, all that hurt resurfaced.
Who else but the friends you’d grown up with would un-
derstand the complicated feelings around losing a father who
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was, at once, not a good father and also the only one you had?
Renee should have been there. She should have at least known about it. Called. Or sent flowers. Even just a card. Something.
Blue stood abruptly. She couldn’t sit in this anymore. Some
vaporous feeling was swelling, threatening to saturate her like a cloud turning to rain. “I’m getting a drink. The waiter is
taking too long.”
As she headed to the bar, she saw Hannah still outside with
her phone to her ear, her red hair wild as ocean spray, her
white summer dress trembling in the breeze. She made such a
sad portrait. Blue considered going out to her. But then Han-
nah looked up, lifted her free hand to wave and returned her
attention to her call. Blue glanced back at the table, at Renee looking stranded as a shipwreck.
Whatever. Good.
The bar was loud and crowded. She carved a path to the bar-
tender and raised her hand to alert him. He was handsome and
surfer-tousled, looked like a wealthy college kid on summer break.
“Scotch and soda and a shot of tequila, please.”
He rested his forearms on the countertop. “Can I see your
ID, young lady?”
“What? Oh…” She went for her wallet, a pleasant blush
heating her face.
“I’m just joshing ya,” he said, laughing, as he went to pour
her drinks.
The blush turned to a sting. Right. Of course.
He put the drinks on the bar and she slammed down the
shot. Handed him cash with a big tip he didn’t deserve. As soon as the money left her hand, she realized she’d done it to make herself look important and instantly she was sick with herself.
Around her the restaurant was emptying of families with
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children. Now it was mostly couples dining together, first dates and long-term marriages, everyone paired. Blue tried to remember the last time she’d even had a crush on anyone. There
was that one guy at the bar on Fifty-Second who she thought
might like her—he’d chatted her up all night and she was sure he was going to ask for her number. But then he’d followed her into the bathroom and asked her to go down on him. Called
her a fat bitch when she refused. She tried to let herself cry in the taxi home but she couldn’t. By that time all of her tears had solidified into some dense, immovable block in her chest.
Oh, and there had been Patrick at work. He had a sweet-
ness to him, a bit of low self-esteem, but he wasn’t bad looking and sometimes he made her laugh. A coworker had mentioned
that he liked her—though Blue found that hard to believe—
but no door had ever opened to cross over into a relationship.
She didn’t know how to act like anything except a buddy. In
fact, the more she liked a guy, the more inclined she was to
chum it up. She had no clue how to flirt or seduce or even
show mild interest. That was the part that was too hard. To
dare to let herself be seen as a woman, a potential lover, to risk revealing her own want to be seen as that. She always imagined it being met with revulsion. Anyway, the new secretary
had made her move on Patrick. Candy was her name. Jesus,
it was like a bad porno. And maybe that’s what he wanted,
because Blue had attended their wedding last year.
On some level Blue knew she was complicit in her single-
hood, recognized the hardness in herself, knew that it was
people’s softness, their tender spots that made other people
love them, and she had those—it wasn’t that she didn’t have
soft spots, too—only she didn’t know how to show them. If
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a joke or a curse word. She didn’t know how to stop doing
that. It felt like survival.
Instead she’d trained herself to make love not matter. And
while sometimes when she was alone in her apartment she
would lie on her couch in a ball, her arms tucked inside her
knees so the squeezing weight would feel like a hug, for the
most part she’d accepted that there were some things in life
she wouldn’t get to have. But now because of Jack…because
his reappearance online made her remember, made her miss…
I’m such an idiot, she thought, to have let myself dream.
She sighed, headed back to the tab
le hoping Maya and Han-
nah had returned.
She found Renee still alone, fiddling with her engagement
ring. Twisting it to the left. Twisting it to the right. Twisting Blue’s guts right along with it. Not that she wanted to be engaged. God, no. She had no interest in marriage. But she
wanted love. To even know it for a moment, just once in her
adulthood. It seemed so little to ask. But instead Renee had
found exactly the love she always dreamed of while Blue had
spent the last twelve years totally, profoundly deprived of it, her once bright hopes torn down like drapes. And Renee to
blame for it all.
“Look,” Renee said as Blue sat down without speaking,
“can we just start over?”
It was so Renee to want to pretend nothing had happened.
To clear it from the record like a questionable call in a Little League game.
“Hi, I’m Renee.” She smiled, encouraged Blue to play
along.
Blue just stared. Early on in her job she’d learned that si-
lence was often the most powerful response. It shrunk other
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people. Made them squirm with discomfort. She could actu-
ally see the uneasy fidget in Renee’s eyes. She tried to enjoy it, this momentary revenge. Instead, a guilty twinge. Why did acting in anger always make her feel like a bad person? Even
when it was justified. Men probably didn’t feel that way—they weren’t conditioned to always “play nice” and “be soft.” As if denying women their rage made them less likely to be prey.
Just the opposite, in fact. She took another gulp of her scotch.
“Okay…that’s a no then,” Renee said, smile falling. “I
just thought… I mean, we were best friends for like thirteen
years…” Renee shook her head. Looked like she might cry.
“Whatever. Never mind.”
Blue made herself impenetrable. She could do that with
her mind. Erect an invisible shield around herself that no
words—not even “best friend”—could breach. It felt like a
superpower. She wondered if everyone had it. “That was a
long time ago,” she said.
Renee winced. “Not that long ago. I still know the name of every crush you’ve ever had, every teacher you ever hated, every band you ever obsessed over. Yes, even O-Town.”
She was clearly looking for a smile but Blue wouldn’t give
it. She wondered why Renee suddenly cared so much when