The Futures

by Anna Pitoniak

  Then I felt the hand on my shoulder.

  Adam kissed me on the cheek in greeting, the scent of his aftershave something that I’d never realized I’d memorized.

  “Julia. You look amazing.”

  “Thanks.” I tried not to blush.

  We found a small, rickety table next to an open window at the front of the bar, where the breeze from the sidewalk drifted in. It was still warm, the last of an Indian summer. Adam picked out a bottle of wine for us to share. A Friday night, and the bar was full of people laughing off the week with pints of beer and platters of oysters on ice.

  “This place looks great,” I said.

  “It used to be a dive bar. We’d come here sometimes in high school. You could bribe the bouncer to let you in without ID.”

  “Doesn’t seem like that would work anymore.” There were exposed bulbs, framed prints, cocktails, craft beers, the prices high enough to make me wince.

  He lifted his glass. “Then it’s a good thing we’re so old,” he said. “Cheers.”

  It was like days had passed, not years. Adam’s voice had that unchanged quality to it, a baritone depth that made me feel like we were actors on a stage, exchanging lines. Something about the way he leaned forward and cocked his head: it was like a cue, and the words that emerged from my mouth were more eloquent and interesting and right. The evening light came in at a low angle, casting a long shadow behind my wineglass on the table, warming my shoulders. I crossed one leg over the other, and my sandal dangled from my big toe.

  I had a second glass of wine, a third. I’d been nervous and hesitant walking into the bar, but even an hour with Adam put me at ease. I was more relaxed than I’d felt in months. I was flirting, but just a little. I was still waiting for a signal that it was okay to keep going down this road.

  The sun finally slipped behind the building across the street, and Adam’s face sharpened in the dimmed light. In the previous few years, since I’d last seen him, he’d acquired an appealing patina of experience. The conversation lulled, and in that moment I felt the night changing cadences. A deepening, the wine sinking in, the dinner hour upon us. The silence flustered me, and I didn’t know where to direct my gaze. A long second ticked by. When I looked up at Adam, his smile had disappeared.

  This was it.

  “Jules,” he said. He took a breath. “I can’t—I feel like I have to say something.”

  I shook my head. I wanted—needed—this moment to happen, but I wanted the outcome without the procedure. Wake me up when the surgery is over.

  “About last time, I guess. It was a long time ago. But I was a jerk. It was totally inappropriate. I should never have said or done those things. I’d like to think I’m a different person now, and I want to say—”

  “Adam, it’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it.”

  “No, I want to say it. I’m sorry, Julia. It’s been weighing on me, especially since—I guess that’s the real reason I never called. I was worried you wouldn’t want to talk to me again. I wouldn’t blame you for that.”

  “It was just a misunderstanding.”

  He tilted his head and smiled sadly. Apologies didn’t come naturally to Adam. “I’m not sure I deserve to get off so easy.”

  “It’s fine. We’re fine.” A pause—could I say it? “I missed you.”

  We talked about my job, about the last two years of school. Adam was the first person since graduation who actually seemed curious about my life. I didn’t realize how much I’d been holding back until he started asking questions.

  “Well, she sounds like a character,” Adam said after I told him about Laurie’s soap-in-the-coffee bit. “I know the type. Probably spent too many years living alone.”

  “It’s so strange. She’s smart—I can see that. I respect her. I want to like her. But it’s like I’m not there. It’s like she doesn’t even see me as a real person. I don’t get it.”

  “That’s her mistake, Jules. It sounds like you’re too good for that place.”

  I’d forgotten how much I loved the sound of Adam’s voice. “I guess I should stop whining,” I said, reaching to refill my glass. “At least I have a job, right?”

  “What about Evan?” he asked. “What’s he up to these days?”

  “Oh.” I was surprised that Adam had even remembered Evan’s name. “Evan.”

  “You guys are still together?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, he’s working at a hedge fund. Spire Management.”

  “Spire? That’s a tough place to crack. He must be good.”

  Relief washed over me. Back in college, Adam usually dismissed guys like Evan, if he noticed them at all. But now he was genuinely interested in Evan, in what he was working on. There was a warmth to his questions. Adam had changed. He wasn’t the same person he’d been the last time we’d seen each other. Evan was my boyfriend, and Adam respected what I’d chosen. It felt good. This, maybe, was the signal I’d been waiting for. I nodded vigorously when he suggested a second bottle.

  “So you’re a reporter?” I said later. “How long have you been there?”

  “It’s boring. You don’t want to hear about it.”

  “No, I do.” He grimaced, and I laughed. “Come on. It can’t be as bad as my job.”

  “About a year and a half now. I started as a stringer, and then they had an opening on the business desk. The editor said he would move me to politics before the election.”

  “That sounds promising.”

  “He changed his mind. Once the housing bubble started heating up, he decided he needed me to stay where I was. So.” He sipped his wine. “It’s annoying. I don’t like what I’m writing about. It’s the same news everyone else is reporting. I’m putting out feelers for other jobs.” He shrugged, looking resigned. “Not much else to say about it.”

  * * *

  In the following days, this gave me comfort. Even Adam didn’t have everything figured out? Unfathomable, a few years earlier. In college I was certain he was going to be famous. Adam McCard—people would know that name.

  We knew each other from the campus magazine at Yale. In the first weeks of fall, freshman year, I crammed into a musty old office with two dozen other freshmen, lured by the promise of free pizza. The editors of the magazine made their pitch, telling us that joining the magazine would be the best decision we ever made. I thought I’d never go back. Me, the girl who hated English class, the girl who still recoiled from the memory of that bright red C on that stupid essay? But the next week, I returned. Already the people around me were finding their niches: Evan with his hockey, Abby with her volunteer work. I knew that I needed to hurry up and find my thing. I was assigned to write a short profile of the new football coach. I didn’t know the first thing about football. “I’m sorry. This is probably awful. I’m a terrible writer,” I told my editor, an older girl named Viv, when I turned in that assignment. “That’s okay,” Viv said. “That’s what I’m here for.”

  My next assignment was to review a new show at the campus art gallery. “Julia,” Viv said as she read my draft. “This is really nice. Your descriptions are great. You must know a lot about this stuff.” The rest of my assignments from Viv were, thankfully, in that vein. I wrote several more pieces for the magazine that year. I wasn’t gung-ho about it, wasn’t angling to be an editor. But I liked walking into the office and feeling that I belonged. I liked the satisfaction that came from Viv telling me I had done a good job.

  As a sophomore, I wrote more. I had a regular beat by then, on the arts and culture desk, and I was getting ready to declare an art history major. Those moments when I was starting a new piece—blank document, blinking cursor—were a rare reliable pleasure in my life. Writing for the magazine was one of the only things I had control over. Sophomore year was proving to be strange. Bad strange. Compared to freshman year, everything felt precarious. The landscape of friendships had shifted, thrown off by different dorms and new roommates. Classes seemed harder. Parties seemed duller. Everyone was sinkin
g deeper into their own worlds. Evan was consumed by hockey and didn’t have much time for me. When we were together, we bickered frequently. Our relationship didn’t seem so fated or so satisfying anymore. I felt restless, in search of something new.

  “I’ve noticed you around a lot,” Adam said, dropping into the chair next to mine one midwinter afternoon. He extended his hand. “Remind me of your name.”

  “Julia Edwards.”

  “Nice to meet you, Julia Edwards. Adam McCard.”

  I knew who he was, of course. He was the editor in chief, a senior. Adam had never before paid attention to me.

  “Are you new?” he asked.

  “I’m a sophomore. I wrote a few pieces last year. I’m doing more this year.”

  “What are you working on?” He peered at my computer.

  “Oh,” I said, tempted to cover the screen with my hands. “It’s just a little thing. It’s stupid. A review of a new show at the Center for British Art.”

  “Aha. Julia. Of course. You’re the genius art critic. I love your stuff.” Someone called his name, and he stood up. The issue was about to close, and the editors would work well into the morning hours. Before he walked away, Adam put his hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Julia. Let’s grab coffee this week. Get to know each other. Sound good?”

  A few months later, in the spring, I arrived at the magazine offices one night, ready to go over an article with Viv. But I was told she was sick, at home in bed. We still had a few days before the issue closed, so I put my laptop back in my bag. Adam spotted me just as I was about to leave. We had been having coffee every week. I’d admitted to Abby that I was developing a little crush on him, but it was innocent. It was nothing compared to what I felt for Evan, obviously.

  “Julia. Leaving already?”

  “Yeah. Viv’s out sick.”

  “I have half an hour until my next meeting. Why don’t we give Viv a pass on this one? I’ll edit it for you.”

  My hands were shaking as I pulled out my laptop and opened the file. This was a terrible development. I had written this piece quickly, to meet Viv’s deadline, and it was full of holes. Viv was exacting, finding the flaws in my work with merciless rigor, but she actually made me feel okay about that. It was never going to be right the first time; I knew that by now. I was fine with Viv seeing a rough draft of my work, but not Adam. I liked Adam, I liked spending time with Adam, but I wasn’t ready for him to see an unedited version of my thoughts. This was going to be a disaster.

  “Let’s see,” he said, squinting as he read. A few minutes later, he looked up from the laptop. “This is great.”

  “Really?” I thought he was joking, but then he nodded. “Wait, really? Do you think so? I know I need a better opening, and—”

  “No, it’s great. Yeah, the lede could be punchier, but once you’ve nailed that I think you’re basically done.” He leaned back in his chair, hands folded behind his head. “So. What should we do for the next twenty-four minutes?”

  I laughed, closing my computer. “Did you turn in your thesis? Or theses, I guess?” Adam was a double major in English and history. He’d spent the previous year writing about the Weimar Republic for the history department and working on a novel to fulfill the requirements for his writing concentration in English. His novel was also about the Weimar Republic. I’m not sure the English and history departments were, respectively, aware of this.

  “I handed in history last week. And I’ll hand in the novel next week.”

  “And that’s it, right? You’re done? I’m so jealous.”

  “Don’t be. You’re the lucky one. Two years left until shit gets real.”

  I rolled my eyes. He knew my complaints. Adam often took the train into the city on weekends, forgoing campus parties for the more glamorous options of New York, where he’d grown up. I was envious. Did he not get how constricted, how stifling this life felt? Class, study, party, Evan. Over and over and over.

  He smiled. “You know I’d take you with me if I could. Start our own magazine or something.”

  “Ha. I’d just be deadweight.”

  “No way. I’m going to miss you, Jules.”

  “Shucks.”

  “I mean it.” He nudged my foot with his. “I really like you. You’re special.”

  That was the thing about Adam. You believed everything he said. He said that he was going to be a writer after he graduated. I never imagined that he wouldn’t succeed. He would go to New York after graduation and find a job at the New Yorker or Harper’s or the Paris Review. In a few years he would have published his novel, and his picture would be gracing the cover of the arts section in the Times. There was no question about it. Adam would succeed at whatever he chose to do.

  * * *

  I took the subway home that night, after Adam and I said good-bye. The man sitting next to me on the uptown train was flipping through a copy of that morning’s Observer, scanning each page for a few seconds before moving on. Until he stopped and pulled the paper a little closer. Adam’s byline. The man read Adam’s article slowly, nodding to himself. The train reached Grand Central. The man stayed in his seat, eyes glued to the page. It wasn’t until the car had emptied and refilled that he looked up and jumped to his feet, elbowing his way out before the doors closed, sprinting to catch the late train back to Rye or Greenwich.

  I’d wanted to lean over and tell him: I know Adam McCard. More than that: he’s my friend. He’d liked me, once upon a time. He told me I was special. That night was the very first time, that year in New York, that I felt like I knew something that the people around me didn’t. That I felt like I had a reason to be there. I sat back in my seat, flooded with a warm feeling of satisfaction.

  He called me again the next week and the week after. October dawned chilly and clean. The whole planet was tilting on its axis in a new direction, a better direction.

  The New York I’d been living in went from dull sepia to vibrant color. As Adam and I spent more time together, I felt a distant pity for Evan, for the narrow constraints of his world. In Chinatown Adam and I ate strange, spicy food in fluorescent-lit dives. We drank wine at sidewalk tables in SoHo. We went to gallery openings, to readings, to jazz shows in West Village basements. Adam took me to secret bookstores; he lent me his favorite novels. He was so confident, so comfortable. He wasn’t running around in search of an identity, the way so many of my classmates were. He already knew who he was, and that was intoxicating. Adam would sometimes slip his arm through mine as we walked, or place a hand on my shoulder as he stood behind me at the museum, or brush a stray leaf from the sleeve of my jacket when we sat in the park. Women looked at him with envy. I craved the intimacy, every little touch. I so badly wanted more.

  One night, at a French bistro in the West Village, the remains of steak frites on the table between us, he asked me the exact question I’d avoided asking myself.

  “So what does Evan think of us spending all this time together?”

  I toyed with my napkin. “He doesn’t mind. He’s working on this deal all the time, anyway.”

  He sipped his wine, watching me. He must have realized the truth, that I hadn’t said a word about this to Evan. Adam always knew how to read me.

  Evan was still a factor in this equation, much as I wished otherwise. We kept up the charade at our weekly dinners, when he talked in a monologue about work. He’d seemed tired lately, worn down by the demands of the deal. For some reason, Michael wouldn’t staff anyone else on it. It was Evan and Evan alone. “But,” he said in early October, his voice straining with a forced optimism, “it’s really starting to come together. Michael had me run a model this week. The numbers are dynamite. You wouldn’t believe how huge the upside is.”

  Evan’s hours only grew more extreme as the fall progressed, and our date nights became rarer and rarer, until eventually I was left with the life of a single woman. The turning point came when I started taking advantage of this instead of resenting it. It was a new stage in our relationship,
that was all; a phase where I could be more independent than ever before. A weight had lifted from my shoulders. I was free. There was a different kind of sadness in my life now, but it was a sweeter kind of sadness, easier to bear, because I had never accepted that falling for Adam was in fact such a hopeless mistake.

  “What did you do?” Abby squinted at me. “Did you change something? Your hair?”

  I shook my head. Nothing had happened between Adam and me, but still, I didn’t know what to say about it. Even Abby’s sympathy only went so far. For the time being, I kept my mouth shut.

  It was a Saturday night in October, and we were at her apartment in Harlem, a run-down and homey old railroad setup she shared with a friend. Her super had turned on the radiators early, so Abby kept the windows open to let out the heat. She used the gas burner on her stove to light the end of a joint. We smoked it sitting cross-legged on the living room floor while we waited for our Chinese food.

  “Don’t you miss this?” she said, exhaling. “It’s almost like we’re back in school.”

  “You never told me who you’ve been getting this from.”

  “Why? Are you in the market for some? Evan need something to take the edge off?”

  “It just seems so real. Buying weed from a real drug dealer.”

  “A drug dealer!” She yelped in laughter, collapsing to the floor. “You sound like Mister Rogers. No. No. Actually, I just got it from another teacher.”

  “That is terrible.”

  “Where the hell is our food?” She stood up and wandered into the kitchen, opening and shutting all the cabinets. “I’m starving.”

  The end of the joint smoldered like a jewel. I slipped a bobby pin from my hair to hold the burned nub. “You’re done?” I asked Abby. She waved, and I pulled the last of it into my lungs. It was pungent and stronger than what we had smoked in college.

  “How were your parents?” I said. They had visited her the week before. Abby wandered back in, eating Froot Loops from the box. “You know dinner’s going to be here in, like, five minutes.”