Yolk

by Mary H. K. Choi

  Patrick.

  I rear back so violently that I crash into a woman behind me, who exclaims, “Ow-wah,” as if it’s a two-syllable word. I flip around and apologize, lurching forward. As I do, I buck the cart into a South Asian girl in white leggings standing with Patrick. “Ow-wah,” she exclaims, rubbing her ankle. Her perfect sable eyebrows are in a full-tilt snit.

  He’s wearing a beanie and a thick, plaid work shirt. He looks sensational.

  I, on the other hand, am wearing his sweats.

  I grin, chastened, but something in the way his companion turns to him, indicating her injury, looking up with childlike concern, makes the smile die on my lips.

  “Sorry,” I mumble uncertainly at her.

  Patrick’s eyes yield nothing. As cold and resolute as a slammed door.

  “Look who it is!” June’s double-fisting paper cups of samples but still managing to make game-show hands.

  I lose the staring match and blink down at his cart.

  “Hey,” I relent.

  I must have overshot my casual tone because uncertainty flickers across June’s face. “You know who this is, right?”

  I nod and force myself to smile. “Sure. Hey, Patrick.” My tone is pointedly treacly, nearing hostility.

  “Yeah, hey. Jayne.” Patrick waves a little.

  I try to read his tone from the way he says my name. I decide that he seems annoyed.

  “Holy shit,” says June, turning to Patrick but not before shooting me a look. “I must have conjured you.” She elbows him sportingly on his arm. “We were just in Texas and we went to church and I totally said to myself, I wonder what Patrick’s up to, and now here you are. Fuck.”

  She looks at me again, like, Can you believe this?

  “I’m June,” says my sister to the girl beside him.

  It unfolds in slow motion. Patrick’s palm lifts off the red cart handle, ascends, and then lands on the girl’s shoulder. Her glossy tresses shimmer from the contact. I’m clutching the pistachios so hard, my hand cramps.

  “This is…,” begins Patrick falteringly, staring right at me. His eyebrows frown.

  “Aliyah,” says his beautiful friend as she touches her heart meaningfully.

  “Sorry, Aliyah, I’m the worst, but I have to…” June pulls out her phone and throws it in selfie mode. “I have to send this to my mom. She’ll flip. Patrick, we literally just got back today. Jayne, get closer.”

  My heart lurches nauseatingly in my chest. I back into them with my hair dusty from dry shampoo, smelling of airplane exhaust.

  When my sister goes from portrait to landscape so she can fully include Aliyah, I almost ram our cart into her. “June,” I say through clenched teeth.

  “Thanks,” June mumbles, scrolling through the photos. I make a desperate effort to catch Patrick’s eyes, but he’s transfixed by the pounds and pounds of trail mix, snack bags of nuts, dried fruit, candy, and boxes of granola bars in his cart.

  “Camping?” I smile weakly. I’m desperate to pull out my phone, to check if he read my last text.

  “In a sense,” says Patrick.

  Aliyah smiles up at him, the adoration apparent. “Not exactly,” she says, in what I can hear now is a British accent. Fun. I brace myself for when she tells me she went to Oxford, too. Like every other scarily gorgeous woman in New York. “It’s a little more mission-based. I’m in the Peace Corps, so I’m stocking up before I head back.”

  Cool. A genius humanitarian. Even still, the mention of the Peace Corps dislodges something in my memory. “Your sister’s in the Peace Corps too, right?”

  “Oh, you know Kiki?” Aliyah brightens with the intensity of several poreless suns. “That’s how we met,” says Aliyah. “Kirsten and I have been friends for a dog’s age.”

  “Oh my God, your accent is delightful,” says June, who never says things like “delightful.”

  A kind of snort-laugh escapes my throat. “Oh, totally,” I enthuse. “Delightful.” I want to throw a slab of mission figs directly into Patrick’s face.

  “Anyway, we should…” Aliyah nods toward the massive lines.

  “Yeah,” Patrick and I say in unison.

  “What’s your number?” asks June, already tapping his name into her phone. “I’ll message you these.” He leans in close to my sister and carefully recites it. His eyes flicker up to mine so quickly I may have imagined it.

  “Good to see y’all,” he says, smiling benignly and turning around. Aliyah waves.

  “That was nice,” says June, handing me a cup of something gray and wet. “It’s pulled pork; it’s pretty good.” She crushes the pork mash into her mouth without a fork as if it’s a Push Pop. I shake my head. She eats the other one.

  “You know it wouldn’t kill you just to eat it,” she says. “It’s literally a speck of food.”

  I push the cart down the aisle realizing with disorienting numbness that I’m devastated. I feel ridiculous.

  “I’ve always liked Patrick,” says June, oblivious. “But she seems like a nightmare. Like, who owns white leggings? That’s like people who own white couches. Does she dress like that in the Peace Corps? How is she doing her laundry?”

  I toss macadamia nuts and chocolate-covered almonds into the cart. And mini peanut butter cups.

  June looks at the sweets and back at me.

  “What’s happening?”

  My eyes blur with tears. “Why are you constantly making me do things I don’t want to?”

  June does a double take. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  I grab her forearm to move our cart aside so the masochistic woman with a stroller and a cart can get by.

  “I didn’t want the fucking pulled pork. And I didn’t want to pose for fucking pictures in the middle of a store.”

  “Okay,” says June, eyes wide.

  “Can we just go?”

  “Are you serious?”

  I nod. Mute. Tears are fully streaming down my face to comingle with my leaking nose. I check my Trader Joe’s tote for a napkin, a Kleenex, anything, but there’s only a bobby pin and a dusty dime.

  “Yeah, okay, fuck it,” she says, and ditches our cart, steering me out by the elbow.

  We trudge side by side for a block while I blindly search my pockets. My hand closes on the folded sheaf, pulling it out halfway before realizing what it is. I blow my nose on a mile-long CVS receipt.

  A spitefully attractive dark-haired couple crosses the street in front of us. They have a baby. The man’s sipping from a reusable coffee cup. He’s wearing a lean black suit, with a BabyBjörn strapped to his chest. She has a blunt haircut under a blue beanie. And wearing an oversize camel coat, yellow clogs, she’s clutching wildflowers wrapped in butcher paper. “Why do men always go for that type?” asks June, just as I was thinking that she definitely carries tissues in her purse. “The ones that look like they come with the picture frame?”

  “Because men are trash,” I say as we speed up to overtake them.

  “I just don’t get Patrick’s girlfriend,” says June.

  “You think that’s his girlfriend?”

  “Amal fucking Clooney back there?” June snorts. “Of course that’s his girlfriend. Staying together while she’s in the Peace Corps? That’s a sunk-cost move. That’s at least two years deep. Plus, you don’t go to Trader Joe’s unless you’re in it. It’s grocery IKEA. Everybody knows that. You have to be prepared to fight. That’s long relationship territory. Like, we’re talking picking people up from the airport. That’s not even healthy. That’s codependent. You shouldn’t ever go to Trader Joe’s with anyone you plan on having regular sex with. That’s what the Whole Foods hot bar is for.”

  I close my eyes. Watching her talk, cheeks puffed up, the way she orates with that smugness, as if she knows everything about everything. She makes me crazy.

  “I know you and that idiot roommate-boyfriend weren’t going to Trader Joe’s together, am I right?”

  I glare at her. The closest Trader
Joe’s to our apartment was on Court Street. It was a proximity issue, not an intimacy issue.

  “Well, did you?”

  I glare at her.

  “See,” she says triumphantly. “This is why I’m such a beast at my job. I know fucking everything about the human condition.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I shoot back. “Is that why you were fired?”

  The barb pings off her without a mark. “Let’s get Thai food,” she says.

  chapter 38

  I wait until she’s asleep to put on makeup. I watch my lips curl over my teeth as the lipstick glides on. The muscle memory of it is quieting. The placid, faraway place that made the rest of high school bearable. Hours of YouTube makeup tutorials prepared me for the rest of my life. I learned exactly how to appear indestructible. Impenetrable. Paint as armor.

  I’m strangely calm. I’d let my guard down with Patrick, and that was my fault. I should have remembered: Everyone is disappointing.

  June says that however badly people treat me, I treat myself worse. She doesn’t get that there’s a certain logic to it. When I had my wisdom teeth pulled last year, I couldn’t stop rooting in the metallic socket, dislodging the blood clot with my tongue, exposing all the nerves. The pain had been so stunning and clear. It was both precise and expansive. I like that I could control when that zip of agony coursed through my head. It made everything and everyone else so quiet.

  My hands sweep the brush across my skin. I’m looking at myself looking at myself into infinity. I could be anyone. I love how all girls’ mouths look the same in the mirror. The more we put on our faces—highlighter, bronzer, brows, cat’s eye, contoured, carved, concealed, and accentuated—the more we resemble one another.

  I need a certain type of night. It doesn’t matter where. The kind that doesn’t affect you beyond the indescribable relief, the scratching of the itch, the bloodletting because you don’t have to remember any of it. None of it counts. I have no use for consequences.

  I loot the tequila from June’s kitchen cupboard and help myself. It’s golden in my throat. I text the easiest person to see, to talk to. The worst idea. It’s as if I’m watching me from a distance.

  He calls, and I’m thrilled by the immediacy of it. The thrust of intrusion. “What are you doing right now?” he bellows when I pick up. It’s loud where he is and he’s drunk. He always calls when he’s drunk. “Meet us,” he says before I can answer. The restaurant is noisy behind him.

  I could walk there, I tell myself. It will give me plenty of time to change my mind. But in the next moment, I’ve arrived at the neon sign. It’s a tractor beam. Bright Lights, Big City. This Tribeca corner is mythic. It’s on the opening credits of the best seasons of Saturday Night Live. It feels like Christmas in my heart. It’s perfect.

  I glide through the door, unzipping my men’s nylon flight jacket so that it slides off one shoulder. I’m wearing what amounts to lingerie. My earrings are big enough to ward off predators. The interior is a movie. I catch the eye of several people as I walk in, feeling their gazes graze me. I’m grateful for the ambience. It’s easier to be practically naked in dim conditions. The amber glow given off by the globe pendant lamps casts the chatty, upturned faces in a warm, appealing light. Total Toulouse-Lautrec territory.

  A thin, smartly dressed woman with a blunt bob greets me at the hostess stand. Her face is a pearl, set against the strong shoulders of her vintage red dress. The lights from the construction outside pulse against the drawn venetian blinds, casting angled shadows across her face and the room. She reminds me of a replicant, but I feel more like the cyborg as I tell her I’m looking for friends, scanning the bar area before I spot him.

  He’s sitting, clear across the room, tucked behind a beam at a leather-covered banquette in a corner. I wouldn’t have seen him had it not been for the mirrors hanging high on the wall. I’m horrified that he’s seated in such a snug spot. I can’t tell who with. Whoever it is, the shoulders are draped in a dark blazer topped by a leonine head of fair hair. Other than kids dining with their parents, I’m the youngest by a decade.

  There are people on dates bustling behind me as the trim, attractive waitstaff in black and white negotiate their way through with hot plates and limitless patience. I’m desperate to leave, and had the hostess not been quite so coolly beautiful, I might have hidden my face, ducked, and hustled out with a mumbled apology. But instead I smile breezily, matching her sangfroid with my own, and make my way over.

  I can at least say hi.

  The older gentleman with Jeremy turns with his napkin pressed against his face, a flash of irritation disappearing so quickly that I must have imagined it. I reach down for my coat zipper and do it up a bit. There are full dinner plates in front of them, and I’m horrified that I’m interrupting a meal, hanging over them in this awful way. I helplessly gather my jacket around me, so I don’t disturb the couple next to them, who are now watching me as well.

  “You can slide in with Jeremy,” says the man, calling someone over. “Let’s get that coat checked.” He eyes my enormous bomber. I do as I’m told, reluctantly baring my arms.

  I’m basically naked, gritting my teeth so as not to shiver. I feel eyes on me and then realize it has nothing to do with my scant clothes and everything to do with this incredibly famous actor who even my parents would recognize.

  “Hey, you,” says Jeremy, pressing his warm cheek to my cold one. I don’t know where to put my hands, pressed up against him like this, and when he slings his arm over the back of the banquette and around my neck, I don’t protest. Sandalwood cologne wafts over me and fills the sides of my mouth in warning saliva.

  The actor watches us, never breaking eye contact or even blinking. He smiles, seeming on the verge of speech, but a calculation is taking place. I am being appraised. His eyes are a watery cerulean but beady. Set against puckered lips and florid, chubby cheeks, with his glinting cuff links and enormous watch, it dawns on me that I’m talking to a royal class of piglet.

  Anybody really can be made to look like anyone.

  “Have you eaten?” he asks, gesturing to his plate, and when I nod, he nods as well. “I didn’t know we’d be having company. I’d have insisted on another table.”

  “I’m sorry,” I falter. “I thought I was meeting y’all for drinks.” I glance at Jeremy, who refuses my eye. I get it. Every man for himself. This is an entirely new stratosphere of ambition for him. An establishment that outpaces all the cool downtown art kids.

  The actor saws into his fish. “Well, then, let’s get you a drink.” He chews and raises his brows at Jeremy, who springs into action and orders.

  I’m gratified at seeing Jeremy like this. So utterly dominated.

  “Thank you.” I direct it to him, not Jeremy. “I wouldn’t have dreamed of interrupting your dinner.”

  He glances at me just once. He’s done discussing it.

  I clear my throat.

  “You know, this place used to be crawling with celebrities back in the eighties,” he tells me. I have to lean in to hear him. I hold the neckline of my dress against my clavicle with my cold palm. “Marty, Bobby, Keith Haring, Grace Jones. John Belushi used to march straight into the kitchen, into the walk-ins, and make whatever he wanted. Tribeca was obviously different back then. So much cocaine.”

  Jeremy laughs at the cocaine reference. A quick snort that makes the actor stop chewing and shoot a questioning look. As if to ask what’s the matter with him.

  I’m surprised that Jeremy isn’t bothering to show him up. I wonder who this man is to him.

  At no point does the man introduce himself or ask my name.

  “I gather you’re from the South,” he says. I’m astounded.

  “Texas,” I report dutifully.

  He nods as if there’s a correct answer. “You said y’all earlier. What do you do for”—he conducts the air briefly with his knife and fork as if looking for a word—“work?” he finishes.

  “I’m in school.” Our drinks arri
ve in low glasses. “For fashion.”

  “But surely you can see that by how fashionably she’s attired,” says Jeremy. My face burns. I uncross my legs. Under the table, I finger the hem of my short dress. The actor smiles politely.

  He raises his glass, so I raise mine and take a big sip. I could take it down in four healthy gulps and run out.

  “How do you like your old-fashioned?” he asks with a crooked smile teasing at his lips. It’s famous, this particular smile of his. It crinkles his eyes, as if he’s finding humor in something just outside of your perception.

  The cocktail burns a course down my throat and ends in a treacly cherry flavor. I nod appreciatively, licking my lips, turning my face away from him as I do.

  “You know they invented the cosmo here?”

  I take another sip. He tilts his chin up encouragingly while I drink, as if helping me along, and when I dab my mouth with a napkin, I’m rewarded with another curving of his lips. It’s the patronizing smile particular to super-celebrities doing Japanese instant-coffee commercials. The low-rent kind that come in cans.

  I can’t help but stare at the hairs on his wrist, which curl over the metal strap of his huge, incredibly expensive timepiece.

  “I don’t understand fashion, which I’m sure you can guess.” The actor’s eyes twinkle. It’s as if Jeremy isn’t at the table. “I’ve been wearing the same Brioni suits for the past thirty years. Maybe the occasional Loro Piana sweater. My daughter’s in school for the very same thing. She says I dress like a senator she’d never vote for.”

  “At least it’s not Brooks Brothers.” I smile down at my hands.

  “What’s your name?” he finally asks. I glance up. It’s as if there’s a floodlight pouring out of his eyes and into mine. I’m filled with warmth.

  “Jayne.”

  “With a y,” interjects Jeremy, and I hear the insult in it.

  “Like Jayne Mansfield,” says the actor, ignoring him. “It’s a beautiful name.”