Cannibals in Love (14 page)

I had met Tad briefly on the first afternoon. The girls had disappeared into the bedroom, leaving us to talk vaguely about sports and the weather as we waited. We could hear the sound of their strained-but-even voices through the closed door. It was important not to rise to the level of shouting yet. Rachel simply wanted to make a point of saying that it was
fine
that Lauren had already broken their plans for dinner. And Lauren, in turn, just needed to say how much she
appreciated
that Rachel cared enough to try and plan the whole weekend to within an inch of its life.

I did my best just to nod in earnest as Tad listed off old friends who lived and worked in Washington, D.C.—congressional aides, and lobbyists, and policy lawyers—curious to see if I might know any of them.

“Maybe, yeah. Definitely sounds familiar,” I said, trying to imagine a world in which I could possibly know a single one of Tad's friends.

*   *   *

I had woken up in the apartment, on Saturday morning, walking on tiptoes, with a desperate desire to keep the floorboards quiet. Lauren smiled at me, from the expensive pull-out couch, announcing at full volume, “Rachel's not here.”

“She isn't?”

“No. She spent the night at Tad's.”

“Oh.” I straightened to my full height again. “Why aren't we sleeping in her room, then?”

Lauren just shook her head.

“C'mon. I wanna do it in Rachel's bed.”

“Gross, no. Absolutely not.”

“At least let me roll around naked.” I was wriggling out of my boxers.

“No!” Lauren laughed, as she leaped up off the couch and caught me at the door. Blocking me with her hips. The whole thing made me a little hard, and I pressed myself into her. But Lauren's body lost its tension immediately. She was looking past me toward the door. It was never going to happen here.

“I'm supposed to go hang out with her this afternoon,” she confessed.

“That's okay.”

“Yeah, for you, maybe.”

*   *   *

“Why are they together?” We were sitting on a bench in the Canal Street station.

“I don't know,” Lauren answered seriously. “Because he has money and she has low self-esteem, I guess.”

We were talking about Tad and Rachel. I was trying to figure out what it was that Lauren's sister did here in the city, to live the way that she was living. Rachel told me she was working as a “brand consultant,” a title she seemed to be inordinately proud and haughty about. It was a thing that sounded made-up to me, or at least highly dubious. But Lauren told me it was real. Rachel had been trying to rebrand her tomboy little sister all weekend.

“How much does she pay to rent that place?” I asked.

“No idea,” Lauren answered, not at all convincingly. I smiled at her as she glanced away from me, before turning back, annoyed. “Fine, I'll tell you, but you can't tell anyone else. Rachel is sort of embarrassed about it.”

“I swear,” I said, putting my hand to my heart.

“Twenty-four-hundred dollars.”

“Oh. My. God.
Lauren!
”

“Yeah.”

“A
month
?”

“Yeah. It's like all the money she makes.”

“Your sister's lost her fucking mind.”

Lauren laughed. “I'm serious. Don't tell her I told you.”

“God,” I said, leaning back against the wall. There was something staggering about this number. It was like being punched in the stomach. It felt invigorating to me.

“Tad basically pays for everything else. That's how she justifies it, at least. I'm pretty sure she's just biding her time until she moves in with him.”

“Right, well…” I said, with nothing more to say about it.

“Why are they together?” Lauren asked me, after a pause. We were watching two middle-aged lesbians strike a pose of laughter and affection across the tracks.

“They just haven't met the right man yet,” I said drolly.

We stood up as the lights of the uptown train appeared along the tile wall, with a whinge of metal and a whoosh of hot air. Lauren was going to the Upper West Side to meet up with her sister. I kissed her goodbye and watched the doors close, as she pressed her palms to the glass like a captive. And then she was gone.

I went up the stairs to cross the tracks to the Brooklyn-bound side, and ended up going all the way to street-level instead. I decided I would rather walk now. I didn't have much of a plan in mind, anyway. Just some friends across the river. I figured I would point myself in the direction of the bridge and see where it took me.

It was admittedly kind of fun to be back here, after so long. New York wasn't like other cities. There was a kind of dirty magic about the place. There were things to see here: celebratory things and things in dispute. New Yorkers liked to make a fuss. They needed a commotion. They reveled in a scene. The thin air was buffeted with the sustained blast of car horns. Horns all day; horns for no reason, it seemed. These were just the general complaints of a nervous city.

There were fire trucks and garbage trucks and men up on lifts. There were cranes that floated over the skyline on invisible swinging pivots. There were Jersey barriers and metal scaffolding, which appeared in the nighttime, and never really went away. There were cavernous holes in the ground; holes being dug at all hours of the night and day. Roads were ripped up, razed, diverted. Traffic was slowed down, shut down, rerouted. Things could change irrevocably in an instant here. Hence the reason for the horns.

The hot garbage smell of summer was gone now, too, replaced with the bowels-y stench of ginkgo trees in bloom. The air felt cool as it funneled in off the East River. I walked across the Williamsburg Bridge, happy just to watch the people. There were beautiful women everywhere: honest-to-god supermodels with legs running up to your throat, and just the everyday kind, too. There were famous actors walking around, riding the trains like nobodies. And then there were the ones who looked famous—who should've been famous—who weren't famous, and never would be.

*   *   *

The plan was to meet up with Lauren and Cokie at a bar in Williamsburg. I got there first and waited with my beer, watching
Wheel of Fortune
on mute, above the bar. Lauren came in suddenly, flying through the door, alone, and in a state.

“Where's Cokie?” I asked.

“She's not coming.”

“I thought you said you were meeting her?”

“I don't wanna talk about it,” Lauren said, as she dropped her bag on top of the bar and exhaled loudly.

“What happened?” I asked anyway.

“We got into a fight.”

“You and Cokie?”

“No!” Lauren snapped, like I wasn't listening. “Me and Rachel.”

“Right. Okay.”

“And she said this really fucked-up thing to me.”

“What?”

Lauren hesitated and looked away. Looking for the bartender, looking for the stool standing right there in front of her. “Do you have any money? I need a drink.”

“Yeah, of course. Sit down.” I pulled out the stool and she climbed up on top of it. The bartender brought her a whiskey, and she slowly started to breathe.

“It's so stupid,” she said. “It's like she walks around with no cash in her purse, all day, right? And she keeps asking me to pay for things.”

“What things?”

“Everything! And she's not even asking. She's just like,
Hey, can you get this?
like it's this expectation. Money for coffee; money for cigarettes. She loses her MetroCard and she makes me swipe her through. And it's not like
I
have any money, either, you know.”

“Right,” I said, stopping again. “So that was the fight?”

“No. I didn't even wanna
have
that fight. I didn't even really give a shit, you know? But then she started spending all this money on
me
. In this stupid way; charging things and showing off. And, out of nowhere, she tells me that she's gonna take me to some bourgie fucking salon in SoHo so that I can get my hair cut.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And I was like, wow, okay, thanks, but no, I can't. You know? And it's insane. This is like a hundred-and-fifty-dollar haircut.”

“You didn't want it?”

“That's not the point. I was already late. And she was pulling this shit on me on purpose. It's this fucked-up control thing she has. And, seriously, like a hundred other reasons why not. We're right there on the verge of killing each other. I wasn't gonna sit in some salon with her for two more hours.”

“Right.” I nodded.

“And Rachel says, ‘Oh, well, it's easy for you because you don't care about being a woman.'” Lauren's face filled with rage. Trying not to cry.

“She said that to you?”

“Yeah. I mean, like, what the fuck? And I just
went off
on her. Right there on the street, in front of everyone.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.” Lauren stopped again, taking a breath. “And the worst part of everything is that I really wanted that haircut.”

I couldn't help but laugh.

“I'm serious. When am I ever gonna pay a
hundred and fifty dollars
for a haircut? And at this insanely fancy salon. I mean, it's disgusting. And I
really
wanted it.” Lauren allowed herself a smile, finally.

“I just needed to talk to Cokie. You know? That's what pissed me off the most. Rachel can't help herself, fine. But Cokie's not allowed to do this to me.”

“What is her problem?”

“No idea,” Lauren said blankly. She turned to me and put her hand on my leg. “Anyway. That's it. I didn't mean to dump all of this on you, really.” She glanced around the bar absently. “Where are your friends?”

I shrugged. “They're at somebody's house in Gowanus, wherever that is.”

“Sounds far,” Lauren said. “Should we go?”

“No. I don't care. I'm happy just to sit here with you.”

Lauren leaned in sweetly and kissed me.

*   *   *

We were on the train again, going over the bridge. Lauren had her head down, smiling as she read a text message. I could see her rushing to reply before we plunged back into the tunnel and out of service.

“Is it Cokie?”

“No … Rachel. She's staying at Tad's again tonight.”

“Oh,” I said. “Good, then, I guess.”

If I didn't know Rachel Pinkerton, it was because Lauren didn't want me to know her. And that was fine, too. It didn't matter to me who was right or wrong. All of my sympathy was reserved for Lauren this weekend.

“I think she's feeling bad about this afternoon,” Lauren said, looking up at me. “She wants us to meet them for brunch in the morning.”

“Brunch?”

“Stop.”

“Do we have to call it brunch, though?”

“Call it whatever you want. Tad's paying.”

“Oh. Free brunch.”

“Exactly.” Lauren closed her phone and stuffed it back into her bag. She pressed her head to my shoulder as we trundled off the bridge and down into the tunnel.

*   *   *

“Where is Cokie?”

This was the first thing Rachel asked when we sat down at our table the next day.

“I don't know,” Lauren answered, keeping her head down, as she tried to read the menu. But Rachel was insistent.

“Well, is she coming or not?”

“No.”

“I told you to invite her.”

“She's not returning my calls,” Lauren snapped. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Rachel said, in a softer voice then, backing off.

Tad and Rachel pored over their menus, prattling on about carbs. This was a thing that they were suddenly dogmatic about. Lauren had warned me about this. She'd told me how her sister had been shaming her away from carbohydrates the entire weekend. It was the reason that Lauren made a point of asking the waiter about the buckwheat pancakes. She was baiting him into a recommendation.

“Mmm, that sounds delicious. I'll have that,” Lauren said, snapping her menu shut.

We sat back with our Bloody Marys and did our best to honor this minor institution called brunch. Brunch was all about the surface of things. Sitting together; eating together; seeing and being seen. Even the name itself was a surface:
brunch
.

I was made to understand that conversation was more or less determined in advance. Poor Tad was doing his best just to keep things moving along this path.

“So did you fly up or take the train?”

“Neither. We took the Dragon Bus,” Lauren answered simply. It turned out the cocktails here were stronger than expected.

“Don't say that.” Rachel glared at her.

“Why not?”

“Is
Dragon
the name of the bus company?”

“Dragon is a slur, Tad.”

“No, it's not,” Lauren scoffed. “It goes from Chinatown to Chinatown. What else would you call it?”

“The
Chinatown Bus
. Not that that's any better, really.” Rachel turned to her boyfriend with a scowl. “It's some kind of illegal bus line.”

“It's not illegal,” Lauren laughed.

“It's just not really regulated,” I said.

“
Oh
, okay. These are the buses that keep catching fire on I-95.”

“Right. Exactly.”

“I don't understand why anyone would take that bus in the first place,” Rachel said, clearly disappointed at the depths to which we had dragged her brunch.

“It's practically free,” Lauren said.

“And they show you terrible movies,” I added.

“But why do they keep crashing?”

“
Tad
,” Rachel said.

“Well, I mean, they're old buses,” Lauren conceded.

“And the drivers keep falling asleep at the wheel.”