Finally, I am capable of telling her about the bird visit. I explain that the closer the wedding gets, the smaller I feel, as if the world’s rooms are being taken away one by one leaving me alone in my junior one-bedroom apartment.
“I went downstairs to borrow toothpaste from the concierge—”
“You forgot toothpaste?” Her tendency is to leap to the story’s point, though she always guesses wrong.
“Really, I wanted to talk to the concierge. I was putting off writing place cards, come to think of it.”
“What are you even doing in the city? Aren’t you supposed to be taking it easy in Long Island?”
“It’s on Long Island, not in.”
She frowns. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“They’re oddly serious about it,” I say. “I’m here because I have this florist appointment.” This isn’t entirely true. I had been shaky at the Inn and wanted to see her. Her expression, as if I am a pile of laundry she hopes will be put away, makes this sentiment foolish. I keep it to myself. “I don’t think I want to get married.”
She asks, Did he cheat on me, is he abusing me physically? Emotionally? Did I find something out about his finances? When I answer no, she shakes sugar into her coffee, confused. These are the only acceptable reasons for not wanting to be married. “Does this have anything to do with your injury?” I like the way she says it, face-first. Most people mention it as if wincing under a low ceiling.
“It has nothing to do with my injury,” I say. “This insane thing happened—”
“I’m finished.” She pushes her chair away from the table.
“I’m finished, too,” I say. “Shall we walk to the florist?”
“I think I can manage that…” She glances at her phone, which glows with messages. “… but it has to be quick.”
We cross into the park. It’s early November but still warm. People who work in bordering offices scurry across the square holding their wallets.
“If I were to ever get married,” she says, “I like the idea of a destination wedding.”
At any opportunity—a penny hurled into a fountain, 11:11, driving by a graveyard—she’s wished to be married. Our ideas of the institution differ; hers involves immutable contentment, me a roll of the dice. I don’t understand why we are talking about her hypothetical wedding when mine is actual. “… an island,” she says, “or maybe New England.”
“New England is beautiful in the summer.” My voice sounds pinched and alien, as if it’s coming not from me but from the man nearby ridding his sleeve of crumbs.
“I like warm climates,” she says. “Strapless dresses. One of Nancy’s former coworkers went to a wedding in Barbados I think a few months ago. The pictures were incredible.”
My wedding is failing against one that a former coworker of Nancy’s attended in what Rose thinks was Barbados. A man on a bench forks noodles out of a plastic box. A girl walks by, clutching her wallet.
Rose says, “I wish I looked like that in jeans.”
“You look great in jeans,” I say, then, “Nancy is the one who undermined you in that meeting.”
I expect a reward for remembering this friend fact, the meeting that angered her for days, but receive none. Are we going to get back to me? Rose speaks in a professional tone. “Nancy’s been a pal, actually. Last week she put me up for a series about psoriasis that would mean a lot of money. She can’t help the fact that she’s had to be tougher to get where she is. Nice girls don’t get the corner office.” She says the last sentence as if referencing a movie we saw together. Disgust ticks her eyebrow.
My heart thuds then is still for so long I yearn for the thudding.
“I was always so fierce in saying I didn’t think discrimination existed, that everyone was being judged fairly. I’d pitied other women who had to use things like misogyny to cheer themselves up about not being as talented.”
“Talented.” My neck stiffens, shot through with sudden cold. I focus on her hand holding the phone, the black squirrel pausing in its work.
“But recently I’ve seen it—the thing that happens when a less deserving man gets ahead for no reason. It started when Matt was given the article about suicide in Japan to edit when I had been the one who brought the story in. He’d only been there a few weeks. ‘Where’s Kyoto?’ he said, when we first talked about it.”
“He didn’t know where Kyoto was,” I say. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I have to stop. I’m not feeling well.”
I sit on a nearby bench. After studying it, she sits next to me.
“Could we talk about what I mentioned earlier?” I say.
“Your doubts?” She circles the word.
I silence my ringing phone. “My anxiety is high,” I say. “A lot of factors and questions. I’m wondering if I should get in touch with my brother.”
“Tom? Now?”
Put your hand on your heart and see what’s happening there, I tell my brain. My brain delivers the message. My hand moves to my chest. Underneath the chilly skin my heart flutters.
“Is that a smart thing to do before the wedding?” Rose says. “He has such a destructive effect.”
“Maybe not Tom, but Adrian.” Adrian is my brother’s manager and best friend.
“Adrian?”
Rose has become a bird whose particular call is to exclaim the name of people she doesn’t like. Press down on your chest, I tell my brain, the pressure will jump-start your heart. Instead, my heart skitters.
“When was the last time you saw your brother? His wedding? I still can’t get my mind around that catastrophe.” Rose turns as if identifying the source of a bad smell. “What’s going on with you? You look dead.”
There’ve been several times in our friendship when Rose and I reached what I feared was its conclusion, when an important update to our subscription to each other had lapsed, and we either had to renew or face the tenuousness of our connection. Several years before, I had dated a married man whose cruelty put me in bed for months. In the conversations Rose and I had after the breakup, I’d often been accused of misremembering details and being dramatic. If I tell her the truth, she’ll say that’s what I’m doing now, exaggerating my nerves into the shape of a bird, so instead I arrange my features into a lively smile I hope pleases her.
“It’s nothing.” My voice comes from the direction of the carousel where ponies with hard hooves and ears shift by. They don’t even go up and down anymore, I think. Just forward. Be positive, I tell my brain. “You would be great at writing about psoriasis.” I hear the dandruff of trash on the curb of the Forever 21 building. If I can find my ChapStick and apply it, the darkness won’t come. I locate the tube in my bag and swipe at my mouth. I steal a few cleansing breaths.
“I haven’t told you the specifics,” she says.
“You’d be great at anything.” If I can swallow a sip of water, the darkness won’t come. “Do you have water?” I say reasonably.
“You know?” She is annoyed by my sporadic attention. “I should get back to the office.”