Rich and Pretty (13 page)

She met Gabe through Sarah, though Sarah did not know him, not exactly. Huck had been one of the featured speakers in a series of lectures at the Museum of the City of New York, where Gabe worked as a curator. He and Sarah had happened to meet at a reception after one of the talks, and she'd just asked him—it's always easier to ask for a friend—if he was “seeing anyone,” that genteel parlance, and hearing that he was not, insisted she set him up with Lauren. Gabe assented, because that was the sort of guy he is. Easygoing, easily led. Lauren didn't have high hopes for it, figuring first that Sarah didn't exactly know her type and, second, that anyone willing to go out for a drink with a stranger's best friend, sight unseen (though later she learned Sarah had shown him a picture of her, on her phone), would be mentally or in some other capacity deficient. But Gabe was not. He was nice. He'd gone out with her, he explained to her, much later, simply because he'd been asked to, and this was easy to reconcile with the Gabe she came to know, the sort of guy who did what people asked of him. He was unerringly obedient.

Lauren jokes, sometimes, that the relationship lasted four years because that was how long college had lasted, and high school before it. Four years and her mind is set, like a cake after forty-five minutes. Four years and the thing, no matter what that thing is, has run its course. It's true what she says to Fiona—there's no hatred, no spite, no revision. Hadn't they fucked on the floor of her living room, Gabe kissing every bit of her, her neck,
her armpits, which she particularly liked? Hadn't they had brunch with her friends and his? Hadn't they paid those desultory visits to her parents and brothers in New Jersey?

Gabe is big, broad, the body of an athlete despite his near complete devotion to bookishness. Gabe, his glasses always slipping down the bridge of his nose, his distracted air, his terrible seasonal allergies. Gabe, with his big hands, and a penis that curved charmingly to the right, angled so it struck something in her just so. They haven't spoken but a couple of times in the two years since they broke up, broke up because he wanted her to marry him and she didn't, though she's not told anyone, especially not Sarah, especially not her mother, who loved Gabe, thought him just the kind of man she'd imagined her only daughter settling down with. Gabe had wanted for them to marry. She had not. That's all.

“I think I see Amina,” says Fiona. She fiddles with her watch.

They reconvene at the table. Showered, changed, ready for leisure. It seemed so late in the day when they arrived. Now it seems early, because there's nowhere to go, nothing to do. Mutual agreement that they won't bother leaving the grounds of the place tonight—maybe not all weekend! ventures Meredith. She and Fiona reorder drinks while everyone else is on their first. The french fries do not last long.

Within the hour, on the beach: this despite the fact that the sun is setting. Lauren thinks of her book, the way a criminal must his gun: Using it could change everything. It's not all that warm, but they've come all this way to dig pedicured toes into white sand, and so they all are.

Later, she is tired from this residual sun, from the travel, from the dinner, which was fish, but unexpectedly buttery. It makes her
stomach ache, slightly, either it's that or the daring mix of cocktails and wine she's spent the day consuming. At least they are all tired, so there's no peer pressure when she begs off after dinner.

“I'm exhausted, you guys,” she tells them, and there are sympathetic nods.

Meredith actually yawns.

“Let's make a plan for the morning!” Amina likes a plan. She's already booked manicures for all of them.

“Let's relax,” Sarah suggests. It's her party so this suggestion carries a lot of weight.

“Agreed,” Fiona says. “Whoever gets up first, grab a good spot on the beach. Then let's all meet up there.”

“We can have lunch on the beach,” Meredith says, in awe. There's a ten-dollar surcharge per head for this particular extravagance, but who cares. “Doesn't that sound amazing?”

To Lauren, this simply sounds sandy.

“That does sound amazing,” Sarah says. It's settled.

There's more chatter and kisses before Lauren folds up the big cloth napkin, deposits it on the table, and says her final good night. She jabs the plastic key card into the slot above the doorknob. The light flickers red. She tries again, and then again. Finally, it turns green. She's inside. The door falls heavily behind her. The room is quiet. She opens the door to the terrace. The muted sound of the sea. It's almost hard to believe it's out there. This is what people talk about when they talk about a tropical paradise. She slips out of her shoes. The hotel staff has been in for the turndown service. Turndown service has never made much sense to her. The housekeepers have been in to make the room look like no one's ever been there, then they return and leave all this
evidence that someone's been there: a bucket of ice and a sweating plastic bottle of very cold water, a little square of chocolate Lauren unwraps immediately; she cannot not eat chocolate, even though this particular specimen is subpar. She lies on the bed, fully dressed, something she'd never do at home: Fully dressed you're covered with the filth of the city, and her bed, her real bed, is a space she considers almost sacred. This is a stranger's bed. It's belonged to a thousand people before her. In a few hours, someone will come in and fix the sheets, so it doesn't seem to matter if she gets sand on them.

A long time ago,
about a year into their relationship, Gabe had taken Lauren to a hotel. There was no particular special occasion to mark; any occasion becomes special when a romance is that new. They were past the point of brushing their teeth before kissing in the morning but had not reached the point where they'd leave the door open while urinating. The hotel was nice, though the room was surprisingly small.

“Oh,” Gabe said, tossing the overnight bag onto the bed. They'd packed an overnight bag, even. “This is nice.” The
oh
implied that he had expected otherwise.

The bathroom was very near the bed. There was no good place to put their bag. But there was a minibar, eleven-dollar doll-size bottles of vodka kept just a hair below room temperature, because those minibar refrigerators are never all that cold. There was a tray with chocolate bars riddled with almonds, a paper cylinder full of mini chocolate chip cookies, two bags of fancy potato chips with retro-looking logos. Later, after some particularly athletic
fucking, even for them, even for that stage in their relationship—it must have been the hotel, its powerful suggestion of sex—they'd eaten it all: stale chocolate bars, salty chips. They didn't have ice, so mixed the vodkas with a sparkling water. The room was small, but the view was impressive. Lauren had never understood real estate listings that trumpeted their views before that night. The city lights, then the darkness of the park; the choreography of the traffic lights and the pedestrian crosswalk signals. At that height though—not a sound. There was a helicopter in the distance, and even that, its insistent thrum, could not penetrate the room, which felt hot and smelled of their sex, a little animal, borderline unpleasant, or so it would have seemed to someone who just came in. They spilled the crumbs of aged-cheddar-cheese-flavored potato chips across the soft white sheets, and she swept them away with her hand. She lay on her stomach, and his mouth was on her ear, her neck, her spine, her waist, her ass, her thighs, the backs of her knees, the bottoms of her feet. They fucked again. There was a television in the bathroom. She turned it on, a sitcom she hadn't seen in years: four old women sharing a house in Florida. She watched it through the wet glass of the shower door, stayed under the cascade of water for eleven minutes, twelve minutes, maybe fifteen. Gabe had ordered room service while she was in there, and he was in the shower himself when the dinner arrived, the rolling table guided by a smiling, heavyset woman with curly hair. One Caesar salad, a little parcel of bread, two cheeseburgers, a pile of onion rings, a bottle of cabernet. He left his wet towel in a puddle on the carpet, climbed onto the bed naked and started eating the salad with his fingers. They watched a terrible movie, finished their dinner, ordered ice cream sundaes, and fell asleep
at eleven, the room's curtains wide open, so the room filled with sunlight in the early morning, but they were so hungover they slept in, paid the extra money for a late checkout. He fucked her again, in the shower, then they dressed and slipped out into the city, where it was another normal Sunday afternoon.

That first year, they held hands on the sidewalk. Gabe's fellowship ended. He became Doctor Lawrence. He gained twenty pounds. He ran the half marathon. He flirted with vegetarianism. He took a job at the Cooper Hewitt. He decided to give up his apartment, because the commute sucked. He asked her if they could get a place together. She suggested he move in with her. He did. He studied the cookbooks she brought home, learned to make scrambled eggs, very slowly, over a very low flame. He never did start leaving the door open while he peed. She did, sometimes.

He wanted to get married. He wanted to marry her. Lauren listened for it, the voice that would tell her what she was supposed to do, but she never heard anything. That's what you were supposed to do, with big life choices: Listen to your instinct, listen to your inner voice. Hers had gone silent, or she didn't have one after all. Lauren imagined that everyone but her had them, voices, cartoon guardians perched on their shoulders, saying
yes,
or
no,
or
try this,
or
run
. She tried creative visualization, which was something like prayer: a new last name, a child, a station wagon, a move to Riverdale. She wasn't opposed to any of this, strictly speaking, nor, though, was she tempted by it.

She didn't know what to do, but in the end, not knowing what to do is a way of doing something, too. Gabe lost patience. Finally, two years ago, he moved out. His brother helped him carry his things down the two flights of stairs. He called, from time to time,
that first couple of months after. They met once, for a drink, at an unremarkable and dark bar on the Upper East Side, something near the museum, and convenient for him, since he'd moved to Queens. It should have been comfortable, but was not. It was as though they were strangers, or cousins, or their parents had been good friends and they'd been raised together with the assumption that the friendship would continue through the generations. It seemed impossible she'd ever known him, in a way. It seemed impossible that he'd lived in her apartment, that he'd shaken hands with her father, that his tongue had been inside her ass. They had two drinks, and then he stood to leave. He hugged her tightly, and there were tears in the corners of his eyes, and then, horribly, they were spilling onto his cheeks, which were bare. He'd recently shaved that beard. “I don't know why this is happening,” he said, and then “Good-bye,” and then he was gone, so abruptly he forgot to pay the bill or offer to split it. She paid it and left.

There's a knock on the door.
Lauren's eyes were closed, but if she'd fallen asleep, she feels very awake now, almost like it's morning, though it's only been moments. She stands. There's sand on the tile floor. She must have tracked that in this evening. She puts her hand to her hair, touches it, primping by force of habit, trying to look glamorous for the maid, the waiter, come to tell her she's left her phone at the table.

“Hey.” It's Sarah. Cheeks a little red, a dead giveaway that she's been drinking. If her parents had been the type to care about that sort of thing, her adolescence would have been much more difficult.

“Hi.” She pulls the door open wider, and Sarah steps inside. Lauren sits back down on the bed and looks at her. “What's up?”

“Ugh.” Sarah slips out of her shoes and falls onto the bed next to her. “Ugh.”

“Too much to drink?”