Elizabeth reached for a glass of water and sucked the last dregs of ice into her mouth. If it were any other night, and if it weren’t for what her mother might do to her, she would have launched herself out of her chair to tell him exactly what he could do with her middle-of-the-road elevator pitch. Instead, she crunched the ice in the back of her mouth and relished the sting of its cold against her teeth.
Brendan shrugged. “She might try to flirt with you,” he said. “It is a wedding after all.”
“If you are about to join the ranks of every other aunty in this room set on matchmaking me tonight, thank you, but no thank you, I am not on the market, I am not interested, and if I were, I wouldn’t choose the girl whose mother keeps dropping my name as a testimonial to start her own small business.”
And there it was, the real problem—not the dancing or the reception or the buzzing annoyances of a wedding, but them. The Chens and the Hus and their friends and the neighborhood, as welcome and subtle as fermented fish among the roses. Let him say what he would about them and all of the other lessers in the neighborhood, but at least they had better social graces and more pride than to spoil somebody else’s big day with petty complaints. Like she hadn’t been hit on ten times tonight, like she’d liked babysitting her mother and sisters instead of dancing or talking to anyone else, like he could be the only person in the world having a bad time. But people like her didn’t have a place in their circles, except to make sure that nobody pissed on their doormats or colored outside the lines.
And if this spoiled, whining glutinous rice cake thought he could tell her anything, he needed to look in the mirror first. One of the first things she’d ever learned in the city—in her city—was to not dish what you couldn’t take; and if it weren’t Alexa Hu’s wedding and she wasn’t an argument with her mother away from being homeless, she would march over in her bare feet, toss somebody else’s drink in his face, and teach him a lesson. But it was still Alexa’s wedding and she still needed her parents’ apartment—so fuck him very much.
Brendan clicked his tongue. “Fine, you baby. Let’s get you another drink and see if you can’t look a little less . . . you.”
As they disappeared towards the far end of the bar, she threw him a finger underneath the table. So this was the all-important business partner, the real estate expert, the man who ran the show! Leave it to her to run into import-export Mr. Monopoly at a family wedding. A man like that deserved to be laughed at publicly and often by as many people as possible.
It was already funny, if she thought about it. It was hilarious. So what if some patronizing, entitled, silver-spoon, private-school Wall Street jackass didn’t think she was good enough? Any other time, what he said would have been a compliment. Any other time, she would already be laughing. All she needed to do was figure out the right way to tell the story.
6
Nothing that funny or ridiculous could hurt that long; she wouldn’t let it. After twenty-four hours, the sting faded; after forty-eight, she remembered him with a faint twinge of fury; and after a few more days, it became another horse in her stable of party stories. Elizabeth tried it out on her sisters, her mother, her alumni message boards, and anyone passing through Lulu’s who was forced by necessity or circumstance to wait more than five minutes for their food. You think your last date went bad, well, wait until you hear about this . . . Stand-up comedian, she was not, but grade on the curve—it helped pass the time.
Life after the Hu-Wei wedding returned to its usual routines. No more surprise shopping trips, no more salon visits, no more visits to the dry cleaner that did alterations. Elizabeth crashed back into the weekday scramble: sending out a batch of résumés ahead of a shift at the parking garage or at nearby offices, working Lulu’s in the afternoons and evenings, and avoiding her mother at all costs. Weekends were her own time, which usually meant meeting Charlotte—of the Bayard Street Luos—at the rec.
The Luos, being strict and attentive parents and good Christians, allowed their daughters to venture only where there might be scrutinizing adult supervision, preferably under the eye of a judgmental aunty. The Chen girls, bored and stranded at home during summer vacations, didn’t take long to annoy their mother into kicking them out of the apartment so they might cause trouble elsewhere. Enter the rec.
Ten-year-old Charlotte might have tackled advanced summer reading under the wandering eye of student volunteers, but Elizabeth had hustled sixth-grade boys out of pocket money on makeshift handball courts. It was only a matter of time before they collided—literally, in this case—when Elizabeth, wrestling a boy into a headlock after he’d stolen Mary’s Super Ball, rounded a blind corner and knocked her to the ground. Charlotte cried, Elizabeth lied—of course she wasn’t fighting, Aunty, she would never—and a friendship was born out of an apology of peach rings.
In the years since, they turned from the rec’s scheduled activities to ones of their own—goofing off with the boys behind the building, sneaking smokes in the unused locker room showers. It was there they shared their deepest hopes and secrets, and imagined the shape of the rest of their lives. Everything else might need to be shared with nosy sisters or pushy parents, but the rec had felt like theirs alone.
Elizabeth ran late that morning, as usual—slept late, woke late, left late. By the time she made it to the center, Charlotte was waiting with a book propped open in her lap and an extra coffee cup in hand. As ever, she looked serious and studious, her glasses thick and boots even thicker. She wore a fuzzy, hand-me-down Garfield sweatshirt over dark jeans, her thin hair pulled back into a low ponytail. As Elizabeth walked up, she held the cup out in greeting.
“Is that coffee?” Elizabeth said.
“Take it and find out.”
Elizabeth took a seat beside her and pried off the lid, breathing in the steam. She stole a small sip and scalded the tip of her tongue.
“One of these days, you might learn to have more impulse control than a two-year-old.”
“Oh, Char,” Elizabeth replied, trying another small sip. “You give me too much credit.”
“I know. You don’t deserve it.”
“Did you bring breakfast too?”
Charlotte rummaged in her bag and produced a wax paper bag with a pork bun inside.
Elizabeth snatched it out of her hand and tore off a large chunk with her teeth, chewing noisily.
“Don’t eat the paper on the bottom.”
Elizabeth grinned, showing off the red flecks of sauced pork. “You love me.”
Charlotte leaned back and shook her head. “Hurry up,” she said. “Before Geny thinks of more for us to do.”
Geny was of the class of the New York lifers—having survived the Reagan and crack years, she’d abandon the city when the rats did. Years of the rec’s decline had done nothing to change her devotion. Elizabeth didn’t doubt that as long as the place stayed open and Geny stayed standing, they would find her in the small manager’s office with its dim lighting, rubber cement smell, and scattered papers, scrambling for an unpaid invoice. She half expected Geny’s body to fuse with the building after death.
“I’m going, I’m going.” Elizabeth bit off another large chunk of the pork bun and coughed, trying to chew around it.