Rich and Pretty

by Rumaan Alam

  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?”

  “I need some water.”

  She reaches over her friend’s body to the bedside table, blessing the faceless women responsible for the turndown service.

  Sarah drinks. “Fucking Christ. Why did I do this?”

  “Drink too much? It’s fun.” Lauren shrugs. “You’re celebrating.”

  “It’s day one and I’m exhausted already.”

  “You just need to sleep it off.” Lauren pats Sarah’s knee.

  “I can’t drink like I used to.” Sarah squirms around on the bed. Their heads are almost touching. “I’m old.”

  “You need to pace yourself, is all,” Lauren says. “We’re not old but we’re not seventeen. God, how many times have we ended up like this? Drinking bottled water, trying to fix what couldn’t be fixed?”

  Lauren remembers: Hannah Cho’s apartment, on Park, in the Nineties, just below where the train escapes from underground, a big bed in an unused bedroom, she and Sarah curled up just like this, after drinking a bottle of the Chos’ red wine out of little porcelain teacups from the china cabinet in the dining room. Hannah was in her bedroom with Tyler Oakes, the rest of the party had drifted away hours before, and Sarah and Lauren were drunk enough that standing was risking vomiting.

  Then, freshman year of college, a house party so crowded they spent the night on the porch, drinking the beers they’d brought themselves to avoid having to stand in line, show stamped hands to one of the guys who lived in the house. They left the party after two beers each, drank their thirds on the walk home, their breath misting in the October air, sat on Lauren’s bed in the outside room of their shared double, windows opened wide, blowing cigarette smoke into the darkness.

  In London, that liberating season in another country, another city, another life, a preview of adulthood, sipping whiskey on ice as a gentleman at a pub—a gentleman, he seemed impossibly old at the time but was probably in his forties—had shown them. He was taken with the two young American girls, had treated them to the good stuff. Falling into bed, laughing hysterically at something, at nothing, at being alive, at drinking like a grown-up, at being wanted by a grown-up, the way that man, that night, had commanded the publican, the way he produced the beautifully colored pound note from his fat wallet, then went home to jerk off to the memory of the two of them, picturing four breasts, two mouths, one tongue timidly meeting an unfamiliar clitoris. Lauren thinks of that guy, sometimes, when she orders a whiskey in a bar.

  “I feel a little better, actually.” Sarah sits up. She yawns. “Are you glad we’re here?”

  “I’m glad,” Lauren says. She is.

  “I knew it.” Sarah, triumphant. “You had your doubts. You were reluctant. But you came, and I was right, and it’s amazing.”

  “I never said I didn’t want to come,” Lauren says. “But yes, it’s amazing here.”

  “I can see what’s on your face, you don’t have to say it.” Sarah laughs.

  “It’s just that.” Lauren sits up now, too. “I was just worried about money. And work. And stuff. I don’t know. I’m not a bachelorette party kind of girl. But it’s not about me. You’re getting married. This is your party!”

  “It wouldn’t have been a party without you here, so I’m glad you came.”

  Lauren’s quiet. She never knows what to say when people say nice things to her. There’s never any response that seems to make sense. “So. Meredith.”

  “I know.” Sarah shakes her head. “She doesn’t mean to be like that, she just . . . is.”

  Meredith had steered the conversation, at the beach, and then over dinner, back to the long, complex saga of her breakup with her boyfriend, Ilan. Her face had grown dark but also more animated, as she gestured wildly with her hands, the pitch of her voice rising as she detailed some slight, the fervor of her words betraying that her feelings for him linger.

  “They broke up, like, a year ago, am I right? I mean, she was explaining something, I was barely listening, and then it was, like—wait, we’re talking about ancient history.”

  “I know.” Sarah shakes her head sadly, then bursts out laughing. “It’s ridiculous, I’m sorry, oh God, I’m a terrible person.”

  “I mean. Months.” Lauren is laughing now, too. “And she’s still, like—talking about the intricacies of some e-mail he sent her in response to some e-mail she sent him in response to, oh my God, I was, like, please shut up.”

  Sarah shushes her, starts laughing more loudly, almost choking.

  “The whole time she’s talking about this, and just going over and over every detail, and I said, and I know I’m such an asshole, I said, ‘Gosh, Meredith, it’s hard to believe he could do this to you,’ and she says ‘I know!’ She’s so deep in herself she can’t even detect sarcasm.”

&nbs
p; “That’s nothing.” Sarah composes herself, suddenly serious. “You know, I wouldn’t even know Dan if not for Meredith. Remember, her brother, blah blah blah.”

  “Right.” Lauren nods.

  “So, like two months ago, we’re talking, about the wedding, about me and Dan and how she and her brother are the ones who introduced us in the first place, and she goes off on this tangent about how her brother loves Dan so much and how he’d always kind of wanted her and Dan to end up together.”

  “No.”

  “It gets better! And how like, in an alternate universe, it should have been her and Dan who ended up together, like even that night, the night we first met, how he was so nice and she felt such an instant connection to him but then of course I did, too, and she saw that and didn’t want to interfere.”

  “Please tell me you’re making this up. How can you be friends with this person?” Lauren is aghast.

  Sarah shakes her head. “She means well. I know, it’s ridiculous, but she’s just like—she’s obsessed with being single. It’s her thing right now.”

  “No man in his right mind would be able to go on a date with her. Maybe we should chip in and get her a hooker while we’re down here. I hear that’s a thing.”

  “God, we’d be doing her a favor.”

  “Fuck, that is such an insane thing to say. And she’s your friend. Your good friend.” Why were they so mean to their friends?

  “I know.” Sarah nods.

  “And it’s like—obviously, Dan and you belong together. You’re crazy about each other. I mean, I can’t see Dan dealing with her, not even in her bizarre alternate reality.”

  “You think so? You know that.” She pauses. “Yeah. He’s good, Dan.”

  “I know that,” Lauren says simply.

  “Sometimes I’m not sure.” Sarah pauses. “I mean, I know you’re not crazy about Dan.”

  “When did I ever say that?” Lauren takes the bottle of water from Sarah.

  “Come on, Lauren.”

  “What come on?”

  “I’m not stupid. It’s okay.”

  Lauren doesn’t say anything.

  “I’m just excited that it’s finally happening, we’re getting married, and my friends are going to be there, even if they’re secretly wishing they were the ones in the ridiculous white dress with everyone looking at them.”

  “Do you want me to be in charge of Meredith? I’ll get her trashed, make sure she doesn’t say a word to you the whole night.”

  “She’s harmless,” Sarah says. “She’s so deep in the pit of her own despair she has no idea what else is going on.”

  “You won’t know what’s going on either. Isn’t that what people are always saying? Like their wedding is just a blur of kissing relatives and posing for pictures and eating terrible cake? That’s what I always hear it’ll feel like.”

  “Posing for pictures.” Sarah’s face darkens. “We need a photographer. I need to add that to the list.”

  “Forget about the list for a minute.” Lauren knows all about Sarah and her lists. “They call them mandingoes. A mandingo?”

  “Who does what?” Sarah is confused.

  “Guys from the islands who fuck old white ladies? Get their groove back.”

  “Christ, is that a thing? That’s terrible. And that word sounds suspiciously racist to me. I wouldn’t mention that in mixed company.”

  “Mixed company is genders, not races,” Lauren says. “Like if we were talking about asshole waxing or something, that’s a non-mixed-company conversation. As in, you can only talk about that with ladies. Boys can’t handle waxed assholes.”

  Sarah doubles over with laughter, or would if she were standing. She bends her body, almost fetal. Her laugh is loud; it’s always loud but louder, significantly, when she’s been drinking. “Fuck,” she says. Catching her breath. “Let’s have another drink.”

  Lauren opens the minibar, weighs the options. “Brown or clear?”

  “Brown, I think? Nightcap. Is there ice?”

  “There is ice.” Lauren fills two of the glasses, which are fitted with little paper sleeves so you know no one’s sipped from them. She drops the emptied miniature bottles onto the table, their tiny metal caps into the trash can, where they land with a ping.

  “Thanks.” Sarah sits up and accepts the tumbler, a half inch of amber inside. “After-party.”

  They clink their glasses together. Lauren gestures over her shoulder at the terrace. “Should we go outside or something? I mean, since we’re in a tropical paradise, et cetera?”

  “Fuck the tropics,” Sarah says. “I’m so comfortable.”

  Lauren shrugs, steps up onto the bed, and sits, legs crossed, in what was once called Indian style but she knows, because of a friend who teaches middle school, is now referred to as crisscross applesauce. Settling down, this feels familiar, that stab of déjà vu. It’s elusive, it slips away. Something then, about this: a room this temperature, a bed once freshly made, a glass of something to drink, even the suggestion of the ocean just beyond because when you are near the ocean it’s always present.

  “Are you tired?” Sarah asks.

  “No.” Lauren shakes her head. “Actually, I feel weirdly, bizarrely awake.”

  “So do I.” Sarah stares up at her. “This feels familiar. I remember this, somehow, the two of us, doing nothing, just sitting somewhere in the middle of the night and the night didn’t seem to matter and we were just wide awake. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Sleep is wasted on the young.” It’s uncanny how this happens, sometimes: how Sarah can seem to see what Lauren is thinking, then give voice to it, then look to Lauren to hear her confirm it, to acknowledge that she’s—what, read her mind? Impossible, but it seems to happen. Lauren resists admitting that they are thinking the same thing. She prefers to think of them as wholly separate people.

  “We were never tired,” Sarah says. A trace of awe.

  “You make it sound like we’re in our fifties,” Lauren says, chiding.

  “Tell me you don’t feel a little bit old these days. Just a little bit. Ever so slightly.” Sarah’s tone is confessional.

  “Maybe.” Lauren considers this for a moment. “Like, if you’re thirty-two and you haven’t yet bought a sofa, a real sofa, there’s something vaguely sad about you.”

  “You’ve bought a sofa,” Sarah says.

  “I don’t feel vaguely sad,” Lauren says.

  “Good.” Sarah pauses. “You probably think this whole thing is stupid.”

  “What whole thing?”

  “This.” Sarah gestures at the room around them. There’s a skill-less painting on the wall to the left of the bed: a sailboat. “Tropical weekend getaway with the girls. Hen party, that’s what they call it in England. Hen party. Hen pecked. There’s something sexist there, isn’t there, women as fowl?”

  “I thought maybe there was some implied double entendre there,” Lauren says. “The opposite of cock, you know. But I don’t hate this. The tropics! What is there to hate? I’ll take this over Thanksgiving. Why did I never consider this before, actually? Destination Thanksgiving. It’s sort of genius.”

  “But I bet your family misses you.”

  “Maybe.” Lauren doesn’t like to discuss her family with Sarah. Lauren knows and understands the nuances of the Thomas familial life. She knows the private language they speak at home. Sarah does not know the Brooks family way of life—even Lauren feels she no longer knows the Brooks family way of life. She prefers it this way.

  Sarah is staring at the ceiling. In profile, Lauren can see a trace of Lulu in her. Something about the way she holds her head, like she’s posing for a photograph, but it comes to her naturally. At her chin, though, she turns back into her father, masculine, decisive, no longer Lulu, without whatever you call that quality that isn’t quite beauty but is something approaching it.

  “My mom wanted to come this weekend,” Sarah says.

  “No.” Lauren shakes her head.


  “She did.”

  Lauren laughs. “Of course she did.”

  “A girls’ weekend, she just kept saying that, over and over again, finally I was like—Mom, you’re not one of the girls,” says Sarah. “I felt bad, but can you imagine if she’d tagged along?”

  Lauren can, actually.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re not hating this. I’m half hating it,” says Sarah. “But this is fun, just lying here like this, away from Meredith’s travails.”

  “Maybe we just need to sleep? Like even though we’re not tired. Tomorrow is another day and all that jazz? We’ll get pedicures and order shrimp cocktail and eat lunch on the beach and do whatever.”

  “Read a book? That’s what I feel like doing, reading a book. I feel like reading a book and thinking about nothing.”

  “Or talking about nothing.” Lauren drains her glass. “That’s what you want. To sit with our feet buried in the sand because it’s cool and the sun is hot, and you want to talk but not about anything. About the weather. About what there is to talk about. About things you saw on the street. About whatever you heard on NPR.”

  “That is what I want.” Sarah nods. “How did you know?”

  “That’s what everyone wants,” Lauren says.

  Chapter 12

  Knowing it all is a condition of being twelve. So it was something (strange, noteworthy, unfamiliar, odd) that at twelve, Lauren realized that she didn’t actually know Sarah, didn’t understand her. She had thought otherwise for some time; they’d been acquainted for a whole year, after all, a long damn stretch no matter how old you are. Sarah was not quite pretty but was quite popular, by whatever alchemy determined popularity. At twelve, popularity is as powerful a force as you can imagine, and it conferred on Sarah something like authority, the province of grown-ups. Sarah spoke; people listened.