by Gwen Cooper
Nevertheless, Laura’s memories made Josh smile. And nothing had ever made her feel like a whole person—had given her the same sense of belonging that the intimidating, shiny-haired women she worked with clearly felt—the way making Josh smile always did.
It wasn’t until he insisted on doubling back to drive down Stanton, where Laura and Sarah had lived, that Laura felt her throat tighten. “My mom used to pick me up after school every day and bring me back to the record store to do my homework,” she told him, “and I was fourteen when we moved away. I really don’t know this neighborhood as well as you think I do.”
Josh’s interest in all this was to be expected. He was chief marketing officer for a magazine publishing group whose flagship publication was a music-industry glossy, and the Lower East Side had once been ground zero for seminal movements in rock and pop. Of course Laura’s old neighborhood would seem like a theme park called Punk World or Disco Land, where tastefully “distressed” buildings re-created a semblance of the grittiness of yesteryear, and if you squinted hard enough you could almost see Joey Ramone or Wayne County lugging their gear down the Bowery after a set at CBGB. Laura herself had thought for a fleeting moment that she’d seen Adam Purple, an old man now, pushing a battered grocery cart filled with compost up Avenue B.
Josh hadn’t been one of the people in the meeting that day when Laura had gone to his offices with Perry for the first time, but he’d seen her struggling outside the conference room with two oversized briefcases while Perry lingered behind to schmooze. Josh had hurried to her side and said, “Let me help you with those,” taking the briefcases over Laura’s protests and walking toward the elevator with them. This had embarrassed her; it was an associate’s job to carry the briefcases when she went to a meeting, or to court, with a partner.
When he’d called her at her office four days later, she was even more embarrassed. He must have asked someone who’d been in the meeting what her name was and where she worked. She’d refused the first time he asked her out, not wanting to be that girl who got hit on at the first meeting she went to. But the second time Josh called, inviting her to a party his company was throwing to celebrate their April Latin Music issue, she’d said yes. She didn’t plan on being an associate forever, she reasoned. It couldn’t hurt to start showing her face at client events. Most associates who considered themselves partner-track made a point of doing so.
Josh’s magazine had taken over SOB’s, a Brazilian nightclub in the West Village, and hired a live salsa band. The swoop and swirl of strobes overhead transformed the women’s dresses and flowing blouses into shimmering beacons of iridescent light. Laura felt like an undertaker in the black pantsuit she’d worn to work that day. Trays of mojitos crossed the floor and she drank three in quick succession near the bar, then felt so light-headed she had to sit down. Gratefully accepting an empanada from a passing waiter, she looked around the room for Josh.
He was in a corner near the back, conferring with underlings in headsets. Laura hadn’t remembered, perhaps hadn’t realized, how good-looking he was. His hands gestured as he spoke, his long fingers blunt at the tips. Laura ran her own fingers through her hair, trying to remember if she’d styled it that morning or simply let it hang loose to air-dry. She thought, What am I doing here? Josh looked up then and saw her. She watched him give a final instruction to the people wearing headsets, then lope across the room toward her. “You made it!” He smiled warmly and lightly bussed her cheek, the crowd behind Laura preventing her from backing up and offering her hand instead for a more decorous handshake. Shouting to be heard over the band, Josh asked, “Do you dance? Latin dancing is easier than it looks—promise!”
Perhaps it was the implied assumption that somebody who looked like her, an island of suit in a sea of business casual, wouldn’t know how to dance that propelled her onto the floor when normally she would have refused. At nearly five foot ten Laura was taller than a lot of men, but Josh was just tall enough to make her feel feminine. She found herself acutely aware of the smooth skin of his palm pressed against her own, of his breath on the top of her head whenever he twirled her in before releasing her. It had been fifteen years and at least six inches of height since Laura had last danced like this. She was pleasantly surprised to discover that her hips still remembered how to find the rhythm, that her movements still felt as fluid as if she’d done this only last week. The only difference was that she didn’t remember feeling quite this dizzy or short of breath dancing when she was younger. It’s the mojitos, Laura thought, and then she stopped thinking.
They danced through four straight numbers, Josh’s questioning look at the end of each (did she need a rest?) met with a reassuring squeeze of her hand (no, no she didn’t). She was surprised at what a strong partner he was. Laura knew her own dancing must look as good as it felt, because people were actually standing back to watch the two of them bevel their way across the dance floor.
Maybe if she hadn’t already been doing so many things that felt unlike her regular self (and yet, conversely, more like her genuine self than any other self she’d allowed herself to be in years), maybe then the rest of the night would have turned out differently. Maybe she wouldn’t have been so quick to tell Josh things she worked to keep hidden from her colleagues who, when they heard she’d been raised in Manhattan, assumed she meant one of the wealthier uptown enclaves around Park Avenue. Maybe she wouldn’t even be married to Josh now. Could a life truly turn on such things? On the electricity of fingertips on the small of her back, or a moment of swift elation that came from knowing a crowd of strangers admired her on a dance floor?
When they eventually collapsed, breathless, into a banquette, Josh’s blue eyes glowed. “You’re amazing. Where’d you learn to dance like that?”
“I grew up on the Lower East Side, and there was a huge Puerto Rican community,” she answered. “There’d be these enormous block parties with music and food. My mother says the first time she brought me to one, I was three years old and I slipped away from her in the crowd. It was an hour before she found me, in the middle of a group of older kids teaching me the steps. Everybody would dance, from little kids to grandmothers.” She smiled. “It was nice, seeing different generations dancing the same dances and enjoying the same music like that.”
Josh had been impressed. “When I was a kid, I would’ve given anything to grow up in the city,” he told her. “Living here was all I ever wanted. I had it all planned out. I was going to write music reviews for an alt-weekly and live in one of those shabby old downtown tenements with a futon on the floor and milk crates for furniture.”
His self-deprecation had made her laugh. “Somehow it doesn’t seem like that’s how things turned out for you.”
“No,” Josh agreed, in a way that struck Laura as a touch rueful. “I don’t even know if those ratty little apartments I was so excited to live in still existed by the time I got here.”
“I grew up in one of those ratty little tenement apartments. Believe me, there’s nothing romantic about poverty. Or bad plumbing, for that matter.”
Josh’s eyes took in Laura’s suit, which—for all its staid propriety—was clearly expensive. “Were you very poor?”
“Poor enough. Although I didn’t realize it until we … until I was fourteen.”
“What happened when you were fourteen?”
“Oh, you know.” Laura made a vague gesture and felt her cheeks grow warm. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she just chatter and flirt like any other woman talking to an attractive man in a nightclub? “One day you have to grow up and understand how the world really works.”
The band, having launched into a Celia Cruz number, sounded louder in the momentary silence that fell between them. Laura smiled in recognition and, wanting to dispel the solemn mood that had sprung up, said, “I love Celia Cruz. The family that lived on the top floor of our building used to play her records all the time.”
Josh’s face caught Laura’s smile. “So it wasn’t
all terrible.”
“Of course not.” She was relieved that the conversation had resumed on a lighter note. “I mean, the heat and the plumbing never quite worked the way they were supposed to. Our building went up at the turn of the century, so things were always breaking, but there was also always this sense of how many people had lived in our apartment before we did. My mother and I would find things from time to time, like a scorch mark on the floor from an old flatiron. Or once when we were scraping off wallpaper, we found out that one room had been papered in nineteenth-century sheet music. My mother was very into music, and she was a bit of a romantic like you are, so she forgave a lot of what was sometimes uncomfortable about living there.”
“And you didn’t feel the same way?” he asked.
“I liked the people,” Laura said. “I think that part of it was actually a lot like what you used to imagine. We had a few performance artists as neighbors. The family upstairs had five kids, and their daughter who was my age was my best friend. And then there were the Mandelbaums in the apartment right above ours. They used to watch me sometimes when my mother was busy.” Laura’s smile held a hint of sadness. “They were married for over fifty years, and they were madly in love right up until the end.”
“True love!” Josh exclaimed. “Was it love at first sight?”
“Oh no.” Laura laughed. “They met through a mutual friend one summer at Rockaway Beach. Mr. Mandelbaum was short and already balding, but very hairy everywhere else. Although supposedly he had quite a way with the ladies.” Laura found herself slipping into the cadence and phrasing that Mrs. Mandelbaum had always used when telling the story. Max used to go with Rockettes before he met me, she would say, still proud some fifty years later of having vanquished these statuesque rivals for Mr. Mandelbaum’s affections. “Mrs. Mandelbaum was only eighteen and eight years younger than he was. So when their friend tried to fix them up, Mr. Mandelbaum said, I’m not going out with that child! And Mrs. Mandelbaum said, I’m not going out with that hairy baboon! But somehow they let themselves get talked into it, and they had an awful time. He took her to a roadhouse and left her sitting by herself in a corner while he danced with every other woman there. But later, when he was walking her home, he felt so sorry for the way he’d treated her that he started talking to her. They didn’t stop talking until they got to her door. Mrs. Mandelbaum used to say, And that’s when the love bug bit us both!”
Laura fell silent. She was inexplicably happy to talk about them now, with Josh, but lingering beneath the memories was always the pain she felt when she thought of the Mandelbaums. She was lost so far in the past that she was almost startled when Josh asked, “Did they have any children?”
“A son, Joseph. He was killed in Vietnam. They had a picture of him in his army uniform that they kept next to his Purple Heart in their living room. When I was little I used to think he looked so handsome, just like a movie star.” Laura looked down at Josh’s hands. “He looked a little like you, actually.”
The corners of Josh’s mouth turned upward in a way that accepted the compliment while also turning it aside. “Do any of the people you knew still live there?”
“No.” Laura would have given anything to sound less abrupt, but she couldn’t help it. “The building was condemned and we all had to move.”
Another silence fell. Josh lifted his drink to his lips, and Laura blushed deeply as she realized she was wondering what his mouth would taste like, or how it would feel to have him press her back against the plush of the banquette and put his hands on her. He slung his arm casually across the top of the banquette, and to Laura he smelled like rum and shampoo, like the warmth of dancing in a crowded room and freshly laundered clothes that could bear the strain. Laura’s nose even caught something that reminded her of the spikenard flowers Sarah had once tried unsuccessfully to cultivate in a small box hung from their apartment window. She found herself leaning subtly closer to him, the edge of his sleeve brushing against the back of her neck.
He looked at her then, and their eyes held. “Why don’t we grab some food?” Josh asked. “Raoul’s is somewhere around here.” And when Laura started to protest, thinking decorum demanded his presence until the party was over, he added, “I’ve been here long enough. They can wrap things up without me.”
They were together nearly all the time after that first night, whenever they weren’t working. Josh worked as hard as Laura did, although his hours weren’t as long. Since finishing law school and going to work for Neuman Daines, Laura’s first and only commitment had been to the firm. But now she found herself ducking out as early as seven o’clock some nights, because she literally couldn’t wait to see Josh. Life in the office, with its demanding hours and crushing workload, had started to feel like her real life, and everything else was just the blurry stuff around the edges. With Josh, though, her after-hours life suddenly stood out in sparkling relief. She remembered what life had felt like before she’d entered high school, when everything had become about the next test, the next grade, the next accomplishment. Josh had an easygoing charm, a goofiness so at odds with his good looks. His ability to make her laugh felt like a tonic for things she hadn’t even known were wrong with her.
Laura had always struggled to suppress an inner conviction that she was an imposter in this life she’d built for herself. A long time ago, when she’d still lived with Sarah, things had happened to them that would be unthinkable to the people she knew now. Things like the nearly unbearable humiliation and heartbreak of being fourteen and watching your mother pick through a waterlogged mountain of personal belongings flung into the street for the world to gawk at, in the hope of finding something, anything—a pair of underwear, a shredded childhood diary—that had been yours and private only the day before. Was it possible that anything like that could ever happen to Perry? Or to the other fifth-years at her firm? Or even to Mrs. Reeves, the woman who sat behind the firm’s mahogany reception desk where she’d answered phones and greeted clients in undisputed authority for the past thirty-four years?
Sometimes Laura imagined what Sarah’s life would eventually become, shuffling alone among the flotsam and jetsam of her former life crammed into that small, overheated apartment. The sadness she saw in Sarah’s face, whenever she brought herself to make one of her increasingly rare visits, made her feel both guilty and terrified. She felt like yelling at Sarah, It’s not my fault that you’re sad now, that you’re lonely. You made your choices. It took both of us to make our relationship what it is.
But the things Laura imagined might someday happen to herself, or to Sarah, were things that would never happen to Josh. One only had to look at him, to spend five minutes in his presence, to know that he was one of the anointed—him and all those belonging to him. Meeting Josh’s parents and sister for the first time in New Jersey over Sunday brunch, Laura had said politely, It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Broder. And Zelda Broder, formidable in chunky diamonds and frosted hair, had grasped Laura’s hand and exclaimed in her raspy voice, Josh, she’s lovely! Laura had looked around at the comfortable faces, listened to the loud conversations about work or eager exchanges of gossip that weren’t about the quixotic sorts of things that had formed the background of her early life with Sarah—discussions about the meaning of art in music, or painting banners for rallies that proclaimed HOUSING IS A HUMAN RIGHT—and she’d thought, This is where I belong.
Josh was simply a person who enjoyed his life and his work. He was passionate about music and books, the way Sarah had been, but he viewed them as smaller gifts that made everything else better rather than ends in themselves. He could make something as minor as a spontaneous afternoon movie or midnight pizza order seem like a holiday, a treat they’d earned by working so hard. For Laura, the idea of hard work being rewarded with anything other than money and the security of knowing more work and money would follow was so foreign as to come as a revelation.
She would think about him all day, imagining Josh’s hands and Josh’s le
gs wrapped around her own, and her knees would tremble beneath her desk. Innocuous office talk, like, Laura, could you please come in here? or, The meeting is starting now, reminded her of the urgency of a please or now whispered in the dark. In her bed alone on the nights when she didn’t see Josh, her legs contracted and kicked restlessly, keeping her up for hours, as if they were desperate to walk away with or without her, desperate to walk back to him.
To fall in love in New York is to walk, and she and Josh spent hours walking all over the city, although when they were downtown Laura made sure they never went any farther east than Soho or the Village. Their long legs naturally took rapid strides, but they deliberately slowed their pace to save their breath for the conversations that went back and forth and around and around, never ceasing, like an endless game of tetherball.
Once, only a few months into their relationship, they’d walked past a store on the Upper East Side, one of those tiny boutiques whose window mannequins wore heartbreakingly lovely, stunningly expensive gowns. One of the dresses in the window, a floor-length spaghetti-strapped number, was made of silk the exact color of the soft inside of a peach. Laura had stood contemplating it for a moment and said musingly, “I’ve always wanted to wear a dress like this.”
“Then we should go in so you can try it on,” Josh had replied.
Laura had glanced down at her faded jeans and light sweater—her typical nonwork uniform—and laughed. “What’s the point? Where would I even wear something like that?”
“Trying on isn’t buying,” Josh had pointed out, and so the two of them went into the shop.
