My vision collapses, pinwheels. I can see only the woman near us overturning a lunch bag into a trash can. My heart tries to leap farther than my rib cage.
Calmly explain to her that you are having a heart attack.
“I’m having a heart attack,” I say.
“One of your spells. Even the thought of your brother can bring one on. This is what I mean.” She flattens the back of her hand against my forehead. “It’s your imagination.”
The buildings that hover over the trees wobble, they will morph into malevolent shapes and descend on us faster than my ability to explain. I can only close my eyes and wait, as she guides my body to a supine position on the bench where pigeons shit. No living thing has a problem living today. The joggers in their bright trunks. A man chuckles into a phone. The crumbs hopping in the breeze, even. Even the crumbs. Meanwhile, my heart and mind are collapsing. Rose traces the length of my arm.
“Maybe loosen your coat,” she says.
“I need it to be the way it is.”
“Breathe then. Pay as much attention to what is leaving your body as what is entering.”
Focus, brain. The sound I make when I inhale is metal falling into other metal, and it relents for only a moment before my chest sucks whatever it can back in. My breath serrates.
“In and out.” Rose is penitent. I realize how much she wanted to leave, that my time had been allotted. “You’re having a panic attack. Breathe.” Rose says I’m fine to a stranger asking, “Is she okay?”
“Who was that?” It’s coming, my brain says. Only you can see it.
“No one,” Rose says. “It’s in your head. Imagine your breath as a fishing line cast out slowly. Let it go as far as it wants. I knew you should have taken time off.”
“I have to work.” I don’t say, I’m not like you who can afford anything she wants, but we both hear the unspoken irritant through the magic of best friends.
“Right,” she says. “Your clients need you. In and out.”
“Try loosening her coat,” says another stranger. I’m being observed, as if I am a plastic can drummer or a woman painted gold who only moves one millimeter a minute.
Racked with guilt for delaying her, for making what sounds like a handful of strangers worry, for occupying a bench during a busy weekday, I want to make her laugh. “I am a woman painted in gold who only moves one millimeter a minute,” I say.
“Sure.” She sounds distant, as if looking in a different direction.
My heart steadies. My brain calls on the other parts of my body.
“She’s fine,” Rose says. “She’s about to get up.” Then to me, “You’re causing quite a scene. But now you’re telling jokes. Maybe you’re okay?” She pulls me to a seated position. I open my eyes. Two or three people stand nearby, gaping. One of them takes a picture. “Nice,” he tells himself. He walks off, fiddling with filters and platforms.
I’m exhausted and sweating but have regained control of my heartbeat. I assume Rose will wait until I trust my body again. “I need to tell you about a bird.”
“Ugh,” she says. “Birds.” Her gaze is fixed on the stoplight where she will cross to her office. Her entire body points away.
“I’m fine,” I lie. “Go.”
“If you’re sure.” She dusts my cheek with a kiss. A waft of vanilla bean before she moves away. “I’ll check up on you later today.”
“Be safe,” I say. “You always cross on the red. If you do that and get hit—”
“—I won’t be able to sue,” she finishes. “I know. Don’t worry about me.” She hits the word me in a way that will annoy me for months.
My phone rings. The florist informs me that I am half an hour late and asks if I know how many days there are until my wedding. I only have to say yes to her final design, but she’d prefer me to be there.
“We’re not coming,” I say. “Ever.”
“Ever?”
Rose allows a group of tourists to pass, then tees up at a curb. The stoplight is red. I watch her wait.
“I mean today,” I say. “We’re not coming ever today.”
“There are five days until your wedding,” the florist says. “Long Island is far away. The longer you wait, the less chance you’ll have to veto the design. Already this is an unusually late final appointment.”
“I know time is passing,” I say. “I know Long Island is far away.”
“Tomorrow?” she says.
“Tomorrow,” I agree.
We hang up. The light is still red. Everything is taking an unusually long time. Through weddings and showers and stoplights. Poor Rose waits.
Around this time, maybe even this day, a man Rose met through the groom will call. Maybe they talk about a leftover remark from a gathering, a kernel of conversation he’s been nursing like the kitten I found in the backyard and fed with droppers and it yowled so much I feared it was some other wild thing. He asks her out. They arrange to meet at a neighborhood bistro. She’ll tell me that part. Nancy and Rose will travel to Houston on business. Rose will tell Nancy about the neon phone she had as a girl and Nancy will tell her about the woman who stalked her in college, the reason she can’t wear shorts. Nancy’s trust in Rose will bloom and she’ll put Rose in charge of Texas distributors. It will be travel and a few unclarified family obligations that she’ll use as excuses the first few times she ignores my messages. Weeks will go by and I will glow for her job and this new boy. If she’s happy I’m happy. Is she happy? I’ll call again. I’ll e-mail. I’ll catch fractions of conversations at parties, mentions of her like glimpses in a store window. Other friends will hear from her, but I’ll blame unfortunate timing. I won’t ask anyone how she is, because our friendship has never needed outside sources. She and her new boyfriend will spend a long weekend at a mountain house. I’ll see photos online. Only then will I acknowledge a disturbance in our wire. The logical part of me will advise staying calm, and I will, even when I see more photos of her and the boy and new people who wear the statement necklaces we hate. Our mutual friends will act like shuddering horses when I ask if anyone’s heard from her. Antonia will return from a trip to Vietnam where she spent the entire time arguing with her girlfriend. We’ll stay on the phone for hours. The most painful thing was spending a month watching her fall out of love with me. Rose will roll her wheeled suitcase through the airport. Stand in line, wait for coffee. Airports are scrubbed from particulars, you can forget a friend or a family while, from a list of tantalizing options, selecting a sandwich. One day on the phone my mother will say, “She ghosted you,” but I’ll protest: You don’t have friends, Mother, so you don’t know this is merely one of those times in a friendship when you’re the kind of out of touch that dissipates with one visit. Further, she can’t be a ghost because ghosts are present, avian, ghosts have unfinished business and Rose will seem finished with me. The subtraction of her will leave me feeling like the remainder. My entrance into rooms will trigger an easily detectable sealing of conversation. What Rose and I are to each other is the combination to my high school locker, indelible in the muscle memory of my hands. I’ll remember that even though she never joined the girls who made fun of my skin color, she never intervened. That in high school she yearned for a boyfriend so much she’d ditch anyone. My irreversible idea of our friendship will flicker. The times I rescued her will occur to me on nights I will not sleep or eat or read. And then. Antonia, long over the breakup in Vietnam, will call and say, “Have you heard?” Never anything more wonderful or terrible than Have you heard? Something in me will fall from floor to floor to floor to floor to floor to floor to floor to floor to floor to floor to floor to floor to floor to floor to floor to floor to floor to floor. The boy proposed, Rose and he will marry soon. I want you to hear from someone who cares about you, Antonia will say. Everyone is thrilled. Everyone loves the Rose she is with him. Everyone is invited, almost. I’ll list friendship infractions. I’ll want credit for every canceled dinner, for the affection I failed to receive. Two times around to the right, eight, one full time to the left, thirty-four, one time around to the right, eleven. I thought interest had been accruing. Like Skee-Ball machine tickets several arms long we traded in for a spider ring. The quarters don’t buy you the spider but the time spent trying for it. Eight. Thirty-four. Eleven.