by Kate Russo
You can’t hold me accountable for what I say when I’ve been drinking, Liz typed back. Plus, I don’t want to spend my vacation watching you pine after your dickhead ex, she added.
That’s not why I’m going.
Please. You have terrible taste in men, Alicia.
* * *
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She rolls onto her side and looks out the window. The shed that Bennett now calls home is at the end of the garden. His curtains are pulled back, but she can’t see him, only a few paintings propped up against the wall. She wonders what he’s sleeping on in there and if the place has heat. She knows she’s paid for his house, four hundred dollars a night, but still, she feels guilty for relegating him to a glorified hut, especially with all these free bedrooms. She’s got to stop feeling sorry for men who can’t get their shit together, but she liked Bennett when she met him yesterday, even if he is, for reasons beyond her comprehension, living in a potting shed. He was kind, eager not to be in her way. She thinks she wouldn’t mind sharing the house with him. When he came home last night, she swears he was staring through the window like a sad puppy left out in the rain, though he was quick to disappear when she spotted him. Since then, she’s concocted a fantasy where she and Bennett share a bottle of red wine, talk about art, cook a roast, and settle in to watch the box set of Sherlock together. In this fantasy, Bennett isn’t annoying like most of the guys she knows. First, he’ll ask her what she thinks about online sales trends versus brick and mortar, then how she likes her beef cooked (mid-rare). He won’t solve the Sherlock mysteries out loud and he won’t call her his “Watson” the way William did.
You won’t notice I’m here, Bennett promised her at check-in. Relieved as she should have been to hear him say that—the men she works with are always vying for the spotlight—she was actually disappointed. After all, if she isn’t meant to notice him, that means he won’t be noticing her. That’s the thing about men wanting her attention; she always gives it to them, because at least by wanting her attention, they have to admit she exists.
* * *
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Showered and dressed, Alicia stands in front of the bathroom mirror wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. She ties her wispy, shoulder-length hair back in a ponytail and attempts to flatten the flyaways around her temples with some spit. She pulls her yellow cardigan on over her black T-shirt. Yellow is her favorite color. She fears that might be the most interesting thing about her. Nobody likes yellow. Just her.
For the rest of the morning, she sits at the kitchen island, perusing the Facebook pages of her favorite LSE classmates. So far as she can tell, four of them are still living in London. Judging by their profiles, they are all happy, smiley, successful people with life partners and children. By all accounts that year at LSE is long gone for them. It’s been buried by newer, happier memories—milestones, accomplishments, and stupidly happy babies—cataloged, chronologically, on virtual timelines. They’ve all bought houses in London neighborhoods Alicia’s never heard of: Bruce Grove, Leytonstone, Abbey Wood, Hither Green, where the fuck? She pulls down the London A-Z from Bennett’s bookshelf and looks up Hither Green. It’s east and south of the Thames and she is north and west of it. She turns at least twenty pages in the book before finding the map of Chiswick, where Bennett has diligently marked: “You are here!” She would never have booked a house this far west if she had known she was coming on her own. During her year abroad, she lived in Camden Town and loved the punks and goths who wandered around the neighborhood as though it was 1979, listening to “London Calling” pumping out of market stall stereos.
Growing up, she would have liked to have been a punk, if she’d had the courage, but it was hard to rebel the way the other kids did, especially when it was just her and her mother. Once her dad left them for Jesus, everything was about survival, nothing about choice. Annette was an administrative assistant at the university, making almost nothing. Alicia’s clothes were the cheapest that her mom could find at Walmart or Goodwill. If Alicia had cut holes into her clothes, splattered paint on them, or pierced safety pins through them, she would have been punished.
Resolved to cheer herself up by spending the afternoon in Camden Town, she rises from her stool and looks around the kitchen for all the things she’ll need to take with her. She tosses her wallet and Bennett’s A-Z into her purse and slings it over her shoulder, then she grabs the keys from the kitchen island before looking out the back window at Bennett’s studio. In the bright midday light, she can see a large propped-up blank canvas. Bennett stands next to it, holding up several fabric swatches to the light. Lost in her own narrative, she doesn’t immediately notice when Bennett spots her through the window. He waves at her like he did last night, as though he has something to apologize for. He’s handsome in that unfair way that only happens to men of a certain age, where all the wrinkles, scars, and barren hair follicles only add to the attraction. Bennett looks lived-in, Alicia thinks, like an old T-shirt you can’t stop wearing, even though it’s falling apart.
When she waves back, he opens the door to the studio and comes out into the yard.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she says loudly from the back door as he comes toward her.
“That’s alright,” he says, smiling. His button-down shirt and jeans are both covered in paint. Hands in his pockets, he stops several feet short of the door. “Everything alright?”
“Yeah, fine. Sorry, I was in my own little world.”
“Not to worry.” He stays put, apparently happy to chat. “Little warmer today, thankfully.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll head out in a bit. Hoping to meet a friend in Camden.” Why is she lying to him? She’ll only have to back that up later.
“Well, enjoy your day. Do you know how to get to the station?” He strokes his hair and then points, she presumes, in the direction of the station, before stuffing his hand back in his pocket.
“I think so. I’ve borrowed your A-Z, I hope you don’t mind. I prefer it to the map on my phone.”
This seems to please him. “I prefer it, too, but I’m an old dog.”
“Oh.” Easily mortified, she rifles through her bag to retrieve the map. “Do you need it?” She holds it out to him. “I can use my phone.”
“Please, it’s all yours.” His smile grows. “I’ll be here all day staring down that blank canvas.” His fingers fidget in his pocket, like he’s found a ball of lint.
“How do you decide what to paint?” she asks, then quickly wonders if it was a weird question. She can tell by his expression, utter dread, that he didn’t sign up for this interrogation. “That’s a terrible thing to ask. Sorry.”
“No. That’s alright. I have a fabric collection. I work from that.”
“Wow, cool.” It is cool, but she can’t help worrying if the tone of her voice suggests sarcasm.
“You can come and have a look, if you like.”
“No, no, thank you, I should get going.” Going nowhere, of course.
“Well, another time, if you want.” He starts back to the studio, then turns around. His eyes linger on her shoulder before he speaks, long enough that she looks down at her cardigan, expecting to find a stain. “You can always pop round for a cup of tea,” he says, finally, “if you’re at a loose end.”
He knows, she thinks. He knows she’s a mess of loose ends, culminating in a giant knot, like the clump of necklaces that sits in the bottom of the jewelry box. The ones not worth untangling.
“Thanks. Maybe I will.”
* * *
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Camden Town hasn’t changed much in five years. Stepping out of the station and onto the high street comes with a rush of déjà vu. The pubs, coffee shops, and restaurants all look the same, including The World’s End on the corner—a pub that only signifies the end of the world, if the end of the world st
arts with a slowly decaying pub carpet. Alicia doesn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed at how familiar everything is. Looking around, she weighs her options: she could continue up the high street to Camden Lock or go in the other direction to Central London. Kentish Town Road would take her out of the chaos and into leafy North London or she could go up to Royal College Street and look at her old flat. Instead, nostalgia pulls her across Camden High Street to Parkway and plants her at the front door of the Jazz Cafe. She looks over the posters of upcoming acts. She hates jazz, but she doesn’t want to ignore the place. If she walked, briskly, past every place in London that held memories, she’d be in a constant sprint. It had been the site of her and William’s first date. Beforehand, he’d taken her for staggeringly expensive dim sum down the road at Gilgamesh. Throughout their relationship, he took her out for fancy meals all over London, but they never ate at Café Chartreuse because the food was, to his mind, “shit.” He enjoyed spoiling her—it was so easy, considering she’d never been spoiled before. For William, Alicia was six months of fun. He knew she’d be heading back to America after the academic year, which gave him an excuse to never truly take the relationship seriously. She realized that too late. Two weeks before she was due to fly back to America, she asked him, “Would you like it if I stayed?” He answered quickly that, of course, he’d love it if she stayed, adding unconvincingly, “Too bad it’s not possible.”
The next weekend, lying naked next to him in his sun-filled bedroom in Islington, she said, “Maybe I could leave and come back. Apply for jobs in London from home?”
“Sure,” he responded, pulling her in for a kiss. “Only if it’s for you, though. Don’t do it if it’s for me.”
He married some girl called Pippa two years ago—a tall brunette, perpetually in sunglasses. Alicia’s been stalking her on Instagram.
* * *
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The sushi place, a couple doors down from the Jazz Cafe, is still in business, but it’s quiet today, just a couple of tables are occupied when Alicia enters. She smiles at the waiter, an older man, who gives her a swift nod. He, like his restaurant, is just the same as five years ago—disheveled and tragically unhip. Back then he was curt, bordering on unfriendly, and perpetually disappointed in his customers’ taste. There’s nothing to indicate any of that has changed. His face and his maroon shirt (the same shirt after all these years!) are wrinkly in equal measure.
“He’s Korean, not Japanese,” William used to say. “All the Asians that work in sushi restaurants are Korean.” He always said this kind of thing with an authority that felt pointless to question.
“Just me,” she says to the, apparently, Korean man.
Wordless, he points to a table by the window. He shows no recognition of having seen her before, which is understandable—it’s been five years—but still, it makes her a little sad. She likes to think she is a memorable customer, the kind that restaurant staff want to return. Still, no heartwarming reunions happening today at Sushi Bento; this guy doesn’t give a fuck. She sits down, uncomfortably, on the vinyl-coated chair at a table that is really meant for four. She puts her coat on one chair and her bag on another in the hopes of making her oneness less obvious. She opens the thick laminated menu, where every item is listed by number, both in English and Japanese; if you’re still confused, there’s a picture. She checks her watch to see if it’s still a respectable time to order a bento box. According to William, ordering a bento box past three p.m. is as culinarily unacceptable as ordering a Bloody Mary with dinner. “Amateur hour,” he would say. With William she was never an amateur. She was always in “the know,” a rare and powerful feeling, the kind that subsequently led her to believe she was more important and deserving than she really was. A feeling previously unknown to her and one that disappeared like a puff of smoke several months later, after a long flight from London to Chicago, when her mother picked her up at the Carbondale Greyhound stop and announced, keys in hand, “Hurry up, the meter is running.”
“Mixed sashimi bento box, please,” Alicia states as confidently as she can for a loner at a table for four.
The maroon-shirted man bears down on her. “Drink?!” Somewhere between a question and a command.
“I’m fine with water,” she says, losing confidence.
He takes the menu from her hands before she’s had the chance to close it, then he gives her order to the chef, saying something in Japanese. Korean? She’s ashamed she doesn’t know. With just a little research, all of William’s theories would be so easy to prove or disprove, but no one, including Alicia, ever bothered.
* * *
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She’s on Kiera Michaels’s Facebook page when her bento box arrives. She and Kiera were never very close at LSE, but they shared a quiet respect for one another. At least Alicia thinks they did. Kiera was shy, too, and they clung to one another for the first few days of classes, sharing nervous glances as their classmates shouted over each other for attention. Eventually, Alicia started to branch out socially, but Kiera continued to focus on academics. Kiera wasn’t a big drinker, so she didn’t join the post-lecture crowd that gathered at the pubs in Lincoln’s Inn Fields most nights. She was very smart and driven, and though soft-spoken, she gradually found her voice. She owned her opinions and worked hard to defend them, often arguing for business models that put inclusivity at the forefront. Alicia, alas, never really found her voice. She agreed with most of what Kiera said in class about ethical and feminist business models, but she rarely spoke up. William would, though. “That’s all well and good, Kiera,” he’d say, “but at the end of the day, business is just business. It’s not personal.”
One afternoon at the pub, William said, conspiratorially, “Kiera’s too competitive.” His sweetness was often eroded by a few beers and an audience. “That’s why she doesn’t come to the pub with us. Because she sees us as threats.” He’d chugged half of his pint in thirty seconds. “She should lighten up. It’s not like we’re competing for the same job. My dad isn’t going to hire her instead of me.”
To Alicia, Kiera never seemed threatened or threatening. In fact, she seemed surprisingly empathetic for a business student. “Companies with a compassionate business model do better,” she argued in class, pointing out that fashion brands with charitable one-for-one models were some of the fastest-growing new businesses. She was right, Alicia thinks, realizing the glasses she’s wearing are from one such company.
These days, it seems the two of them are on similar career paths. According to her info page, Kiera is the chief financial officer at Printed Palette, an art poster brand that sells through museum gift shops. In her profile picture, Kiera looks much the same, still a big woman with cropped hair and giant breasts that are tethered by a turtleneck sweater. She’s standing next to a Picasso, one of the cubist pieces where the woman is crying into a handkerchief. In the photo, Kiera neither smiles nor frowns, as if the shot is for posterity only.
Dipping her tuna sashimi in soy sauce, Alicia peruses the Printed Palette website. It seems Kiera is practicing what she preached in school—a one-for-one business model—donating one poster to a British school for every one sold. Alicia zooms in on the map she finds on the company website. Southwark Street, it says, right behind Tate Modern. Maybe she’ll head to the museum this afternoon, maybe even try to locate Kiera’s office when she’s there.
Back on Facebook, Alicia’s thumb hovers over Messenger’s text box before setting down her chopsticks on the rest provided so she can type two-handed: Hi Kiera. It’s Alicia from LSE. I hope you’re well. She pauses. That’s the easy part. I’m back in London for a few days and was thinking of you. Thinking of you sounds vaguely romantic. She continues, It looks like we’re doing a lot of the same things. Working for art companies. Maybe you’d like to get a coffee sometime this week? I know it’s short notice, so I totally understand if you’re busy. Best, Alici
a.
