Stephanie nodded sagely. “I think you’re right. I think working our way up the ladder isn’t right for us anyway. It’s kind of a sucker’s game.”
Ava took a long sip of the drink that had arrived and noticed the muscles of her shoulders relaxing a little. Whenever Stephanie spoke of them intertwined like this, which she often did, Ava felt a kind of safety in the association. She wasn’t sure that their priorities aligned quite as closely as Stephanie liked to imply, but that assumption felt so validating, smoothing the edges of her quirks and weirdness into something much less shameful. The rigidity of being on guard against a hostile world broke a little at the affectionate tones in Stephanie’s voice, and Ava felt acutely how much she had missed her friend. “So what are you going to do now?” Ava asked. “I’m not moving back in with you. I had to cover our last two months’ rent when you left, and it almost killed me.”
“No, no.” Stephanie dismissed the past with a sweep of her bangs. “But I’m working for myself, that’s for sure. I want to start something of my own, do something meaningful.” Stephanie leaned forward, gold bangles clattering against her folded arms. “You know my love of books, maybe something to do with that.”
Ava had learned that Stephanie often liked to talk about her love of books, but in an abstract sort of way, and that in particular she didn’t like to be interrupted by Ava talking about any specific books. But climbing through the ranks of teen pageant circles of the depressed agricultural towns of the Midwest, she had memorized the whole first chapter of A Tale of Two Cities as her talent, something Ava could never picture without a rush of affection—beautiful Stephanie, teased and lacquered, quoting Dickens with steely intensity to a bunch of bored judges for scholarship money. Although, apparently, she won every title she ever competed for, something she liked to remind Ava of a little too often.
“Or I don’t know, like a bar or something. You can make fierce money with the right kind of club in New York. I’ve worked enough of them to know.”
“Aren’t you broke? How do you open a bar without any money?” Ava fished a pickled green bean from her drink.
Stephanie waved a hand in the air, bored. “You just get investors. You’re missing the point. You remember how 9/11 was the death of irony?” Her pause didn’t really invite questioning, so Ava just waited. “There was a New York magazine article about it a little while ago. People want a place to go where they can be a part of a community, be a part of something classy. All that bottle service stuff is so over. I don’t know, I’m still working on the concept. But I’m done fucking around.” She sat back as a plate of salad was put in front of her. “Also, now that I’m back in the country, those student loan people call me like ten times a day. I would have to work a real job for like forty years before I could pay it off. No thank you. I plan to be debt-free by thirty.”
“I think Little Dorrit takes place in a debtors’ prison,” Ava said as her plate was set down, as well. As she predicted, the dish was so spare that she considered ordering a second entrée, but, fearing Stephanie’s horrified reaction, she ordered a side of bacon instead. Which still earned her a startled look.
Stephanie pointed with her fork. “But tell me about you. You’re working in a private club, right? So you get what I’m talking about.”
Ava laughed. “Everyone at my club is eighty years old, and my boss tried to pay me in expired Bergdorf gift cards the other day, so not really.” A mimosa replaced her empty Bloody Mary glass, and she drank, finding the fizz of it mildly contagious. “You should come see it. You always liked all my old stuff—the Lazarus Club is like the ‘House of Usher.’”
“I remember that story, it’s Edgar Allen Poe,” Stephanie said, a little pointedly. “And if you basically raised yourself in the Glamour Shots storefront of a suburban shopping mall, you would think it’s cool, too.” Ava knew not to interfere with the rage with which Stephanie spoke of her upbringing, the complicated indignities of being poor and almost disastrously pretty. “But I’ve been rambling, and you still haven’t told me anything yet. Like who you were drinking with last night. You’ve probably read a hundred books since I last saw you. Having more fancy, fascinating ‘only Ava’ adventures. I want to know everything.”
Somehow when Stephanie spoke of her like this, her life seemed to rearrange itself, shedding the dull sheen of reality and transforming into something worthy of Stephanie’s attention. “Well, actually...” Ava felt a glow, she was having adventures, and she related the incidents of the night before with more enthusiasm than she had felt in the act.
“What? Finally!” Stephanie’s bracelets rang out in a celebratory jostling. “After all this time. I always figured it would be like a Civil War reenactor or something.”
“You weren’t far off.” As she went into detail, Ava realized how long it had been since she’d actually spoken at length to anyone. The sound of her voice pouring forth in unaccustomed loquaciousness, framing her experience into words and offering it to someone else, soothed the disorder of her feelings that had lingered all morning. She felt lighter, easier, happier than she had in a long time. “It wasn’t such a big deal actually,” Ava said finally as their plates were cleared with the indecorous promptness of New York restaurants. She didn’t quite want to admit just how unpleasant the sensation had been, the sharp residue of disappointment it had left her with, the feeling that she had implicated herself in some terrible failure.
Stephanie yawned. “If men knew how not big of a deal their dicks were, the whole fucking world would collapse.” She paid their check from a wallet that had been duct-taped shut and stood up, taking a large pair of sunglasses from her purse. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”
Ava waited patiently while Stephanie stopped and hugged two more acquaintances on the way to the door.
* * *
They left the restaurant and bought coffee, strolling the busy sidewalks arm in arm. The bilgy tide of Ava’s hangover had receded, leaving the world distinctly less menacing. Stephanie’s skinny arm was light on her own, and this casual pressure reminded Ava of a companionable ease she hadn’t even noticed she had been missing. They instinctively fell into step. There was a simple physical pleasure in being doubled, the proximity of a warm, affectionate female body so close beside her, and it made her realize how alone she usually was. She stopped worrying about the accidental contact of passing strangers, an unwelcome comment or a judgmental gaze. With a friend, the painful alienation of being a body passing through the world was alleviated. She sipped her coffee, hoping that Stephanie wouldn’t notice the intensity of her gratitude. From this new perspective as part of a pair, her previous self seemed so pathetic. “I’m glad you’re back,” she said finally.
“Me, too.” Stephanie got very interested in the window display of a shop they were passing. “No more hiding away, Ava. We’re going to do great things together.”
Ava watched Stephanie’s reflection shimmer, vanishing, then reappearing in the flapping shadow of an awning overhead. She thought of the night long ago, walking the empty corridors of her college dorm, book of poetry in hand on a Saturday night, when she heard the sounds of sobbing, and glancing into an open door, she had found Stephanie, that confident, bikini-clad vision from the main quad, howling with rage and ripping what was clearly a corrected essay into long thin shreds. She had looked up at Ava with such despair that Ava instinctively offered the only consolation she could think of. And so Ava had spent the evening reading Pushkin to the most beautiful girl she had ever seen until her sobs subsided, and she fell asleep, head on Ava’s knee. When Ava had woken with a crick in her neck and got up to leave the next morning, Stephanie scowled. “You can’t imagine what it feels like to have everyone think you’re dumb,” she’d said, then turned away, pulling the covers over her head and leaving Ava to show herself out. They had never spoken of that night since.
Stephanie was already pushing open the door of the sho
p, and not wanting to be alone on the sidewalk, Ava hurried after her. Clothes hung on a tangle of welded iron branches, and three bored salesgirls draped their willowy bodies against the racks. She waited while Stephanie flipped through the tiny dresses on display. A salesgirl frowned and demanded her coffee, which Ava immediately relinquished.
“I think you’re the only person I’ve ever shopped with,” Stephanie was saying. “It’s way too intimate for anybody else. You should try this on. It was on sale a while ago.”
“I thought you just got back. How long have you been in town?” Ava picked at a smudge on her collar that she couldn’t help noticing in the lights of the store. “I don’t wear short things.”
Ignoring the salesgirl’s efforts to relieve her of her coffee cup, Stephanie shoved a dress into Ava’s arms and pushed her toward the dressing room. “You should, you’ve got great legs.” She pulled the curtain closed. “I basically just got back. It’s been a little hectic.”
Ava looked at the dress in her hands and decided to try it. It was a comfort to hear Stephanie’s voice out there, arguing with the salesgirl for a discount on a blouse she had found with a missing button. When she had the dress on, tight, black, barely falling to her knees, she opened the curtain. “You don’t think this is too slatternly?” A stranger looked back from the mirror. “Like a Balkan trophy wife?”
Stephanie flung the blouse dismissively toward the cash register. “I don’t know what slatternly means, but I’ve seen those wives and no. You should get it. You look hot, but smart, like a sexy young author on a book tour or something.”
The strange weightless feeling she used to get around Stephanie was coming back to her, the sense of previously inconsiderable courses of action unfolding all around, the tight self-imposed boundaries of her life expanding in an infinite array, and she was left free of herself and fearless. Not alone. It felt wonderful.
By the time they left the store, Ava’s world was shrinking back to her accustomed limits, and she was glad to be in her scuffed oxfords and dowdy skirt, but still, she didn’t quite regret the dress that was wrapped in plastic and slung over her arm. Maybe she’d never wear it, but the rustling weight murmured with possibilities and tickled her arm as she waited to cross a street. What did she need those scruffy old men in the Baker Street Irregulars for anyway?
3
And so, as if she had never left, Stephanie poured back into Ava’s life, filling up space that Ava only now recognized as empty. Having been so accustomed to being alone as a kid, it was only in the bright Technicolor warmth of companionship that her previous state of existence acquired the cool chill of loneliness. She began to look forward to the regular phone calls, the quick comparing of insignificant daily events. A funny anecdote about her neighbors or Aloysius’s latest absurdity now sat awkwardly within her, waiting to be released, their rough edges smoothed by the easy laugh or commiserating disgust that Stephanie was always so ready with. The first time she came to visit Ava, she walked into the large marble foyer, her mouth a perfect O, and turned to Ava with shining eyes. “This is the most amazing place I’ve ever seen. I feel like Montgomery Burns.” And after, she came over as often as she could.
On Sunday afternoons, she liked to lay around in Ava’s striped silk pajamas spinning plans for her future, while the quiet mortar of friendship rehardened stealthily and silently, holding Ava in an easy grip she barely even noticed.
“How can you stand it?” Ava turned another page, fruitlessly attempting to read, while Stephanie banged around her kitchen corner.
While deciding on her next venture, Stephanie had gotten a temporary job cocktail waitressing. Each weekend, she took a bus to Long Island to work Friday nights, came home in the morning, slept for a few hours, showered, then did it all over again on Saturday. She made the commute with the other working girls, young and beautiful, waiting for the jitney as the sun rose over the manicured lawns of East Hampton.
Stephanie crawled into Ava’s bed with a pint of mint ice cream, rubbing her eyes through the leftover accretion of last night’s mascara. “I’m making a lot of good connections for my project. The guys there are loaded.”
“Are those the kinds of people you want to be in business with? Isn’t your whole concept substance and sincerity or something?”
“The place is crawling with artists and publishers and movie people. Seriously, you meet everyone. Bartenders are like the secret masters of the universe. Anyway, can’t have art without commerce.” The bed sank under her weight as Stephanie shifted closer, digging in to the ice cream and sighing with a guttural satisfaction as she closed her mouth around the spoon, shutting her eyes against the full measure of the pleasure. The fan by the bed spun, and strands of blond hair waved in the breeze and tickled Ava’s shoulder. “Read to me.” Stephanie’s voice was thick with melting cream.
“It’s Vanity Fair. I’m right in the middle,” Ava cautioned.
“Don’t care.”
Ava had read it before anyway. Thinking Stephanie might profit from the moral example of a young woman a trifle too determined to make her way in the world at any cost, she flipped back to the first page and began to read out loud. But Stephanie was asleep in minutes, the ice-cream carton tilting dangerously from her limp hands. Ava removed it carefully, and Stephanie’s hands curled around the empty space in a protective knot.
* * *
The next time Ava sat down to write, she felt unusually optimistic. Things felt like they were happening and Stephanie’s conviction that success was easy, inevitable and theirs for the taking made Ava feel unusually intrepid. The library was silent, a cup of Earl Grey steamed on the desk, a single ray of sunshine painting its blushing porcelain almost translucent. Her quills were clean, composition book open, she was ready to start again. The pens and nibs she had to buy from an art supply store didn’t last; after a few pages she always switched to whatever other pens were lying around. But it seemed an important ritual, a declaration of principles. A writing teacher in college had scolded her for her ornate style—“You can’t write an eighteenth-century novel in the twentieth century.” She had immediately dropped the class in tears, but now, determined to do just that, she started out each time scratching the sharp nib out of spite. When in the end it turned out that she could and had written a grand old-fashioned novel, full of beautiful words and long elegant sentences, she would send a copy to him with a sharp note.
It wasn’t industry that she lacked. She had composition books already filled with sketches of her dashing hero, Agustin, and the run-down mansion where he lit candles and stared out of windows. She seemed to get stuck, however, when she needed him to do anything else. She had recently thought up a love interest, Anastasia, who was already displaying a similar dispiriting tendency to sit in chairs and look sadly at the floor. The situation was getting dire. Reading and writing were the only things that Ava had ever been any good at, and if she didn’t figure out how to make things start to happen soon, she was going to have to come to some hard understandings about herself.
She wasn’t trying to write historical fiction; rather she liked to think of it as timeless, a reflection of the veil of old books through which she saw the world, and which colored her impressions after their own image. But really, what else could she do? New books, she assumed, were about people that had friends and boyfriends, that went to parties or dated, a well of common experience that she always was skirting the edge of. But from the distance of another time, obscured by cravats and bustles, people seemed at once more familiar, because of the books she read, and also more abstract, and therefore easier to identify with. Or maybe it was just that Ava had sort of continued to associate the deepest, most private aspects of her emotional life with high button boots, and codes of honor and rattling cabriolets, and she struggled to articulate her feelings in the only language she knew.
* * *
With her weekdays free, Stephanie h
ung around the Lazarus Club nearly every day. At first, Ava had been worried that someone would object, but she soon learned just how porous and poorly enforced any sort of rules were around the place; no one seemed to really notice or care. And then somewhere along the line Stephanie had acquired a remarkable ability to look rich. She had always dressed well, but recently she had perfected many of the subtle cues, the kind of handbag, the right shoes, that when coupled with her brazen self-possession, no one even questioned her right to be there. Ava knew her purses came from the sidewalk vendors on Canal Street and her shoes from consignment shops, the glittering facade was just paint and moxie, but it didn’t seem to matter. Even Aloysius had fallen for her when she told him his whole look was “very Cary Grant” and offered to put him in touch with some young designers who were doing great things with pocket squares. “It’s so good for the club to have young people around,” he had fluttered and asked Stephanie to sit closer to the windows so that all those journalists writing nasty articles about the encroaching end of the establishment could see that the Lazarus Club had plenty of young, new members and was doing just fine thank you very much.
Currently, this breath of fresh air was sitting in a leather club chair, long legs pressed against her chest, absorbed in a biography of Nadia Comaneci she had found on the shelves. High heels abandoned on the floor next to her, she absentmindedly cupped her toes in her hand while she read.
The Little Clan Page 4
