when it comes to her, you know?” He sounded like he was trying very hard to keep his
tone accommodating and nonconfrontational.
“Maybe that’s because I do!” I shot back at him, pissed off at him for not wanting to see
me and not begging me to go out with his friends and for taking Lily’s side even though
she had a point and so did he. “It is my life, you know? My career. Myfuture . What the
hell am I supposed to do? Treat it like a joke?”
“Andy, you’re twisting my words. You know that’s not what I meant.”
But I was already screaming back—I couldn’t help myself. First Lily and now Alex?
Both on top of Miranda, all day, every day? It was too much, and I wanted to cry but all I
could do was yell.
“A big fucking joke, huh? That’s what my job is to both of you!Oh, Andy, you work in
fashion, how hard can it be? ” I mimicked, hating myself more with every passing
second. “Well, excuse me if we can’t all be do-gooders or Ph.D. candidates! Excuse me
if—”
“Call me when you calm down,” he stated. “I’m not going to listen to this anymore.”
And he hung up. Hung up! I waited for him to call back, but he never did, and by the time
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I’d finally fallen asleep, close to three, I hadn’t heard from either Alex or Lily.
Now it was moving day—a full week later—and while neither was still visibly mad,
neither seemed exactly the same either. There hadn’t been time to make amends in person
with either one since we were in the middle of closing an issue, but I figured things
would fall into place when Lily and I moved into our new apartment. Our shared
apartment, where everything would go back to the way it was when we were in college
and life was much more palatable.
The movers finally came at eleven, and it took them all of nine minutes to disassemble
my beloved bed and throw the pieces in back of their van. Mom and I hitched a ride with
them over to my new building, where my dad and Alex were schmoozing with the
doorman—who, bizarrely enough, was a dead ringer for John Galliano—with my boxes
piled against a wall in the lobby.
“Andy, glad you’re here. Mr. Fisher here won’t open the apartment unless there’s a
tenant present,” my dad said with a huge smile on his face. “Which is very smart of him,”
he added, winking at the doorman.
“Oh, is Lily not here yet? She said she’d get here by ten, ten-thirty.”
“Nope, haven’t seen her. Should I call her?” Alex asked.
“Yeah, I guess so. Why don’t I go up with, er, Mr. Fisher so we can start bringing stuff
up. Ask her if she needs any help.”
Mr. Fisher smiled a way that could only be described as lecherous. “Please, we’re like
family now,” he said, looking at my chest. “Call me John.”
I almost choked on the now cold coffee I was holding and wondered if the man revered
the world over for reviving the Dior brand had died without my knowing and been
reincarnated as my doorman.
Alex nodded and wiped his glasses on his T-shirt. I loved it when he did that. “You go
with your parents. I’ll call.”
I wondered if it was a good or bad thing that my father was now best friends with my
(designer) doorman, the man who would inevitably know every detail of my life. The
lobby looked nice, if a little retro. It was done in a light-colored stone of some sort, and
there were a few uncomfortable-looking benches in front of the elevators and behind the
mailroom. Our apartment was number 8C, and it faced southwest, which, from what I’d
heard, was a good thing. John opened the door with his master key and stood back like a
proud papa.
“Here she is,” he announced grandly.
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I walked in first, expecting to be hit with an overpowering smell of sulfur or perhaps see
a few bats winging their way around our ceiling, but it was surprisingly clean and bright.
The kitchen was on the right, a narrow, one-person-wide strip with white tile floors and
reasonably white Formica cabinets. The countertops were some sort of flecked granite
imitation, and there was a microwave built in above the stove.
“This is great,” my mom said, pulling open the refrigerator. “It’s already got ice trays.”
The movers pushed past us, grunting while they lugged my bed.
The kitchen opened to the living room, which had already been divided in two by a
temporary wall to create a second bedroom. Of course, that meant that all the windows
had been cut out of the living room entirely, but that was OK. The bedroom was a decent
size—definitely bigger than the one I’d just left—and the sliding glass door leading to the
balcony made up one whole wall. The bathroom was between the living room and the
real bedroom and was done in Pepto pink tiling and pink paint. Oh well. Could be
kitschy. I walked into the real bedroom, which was significantly bigger than the living
room one and looked around. A tiny closet, a ceiling fan, and a small, dirty window that
looked directly into an apartment in the building next door. Lily had wanted this one and
I’d happily agreed. She preferred having the extra space since she spent so much time in
her bedroom studying, but I’d rather have the light and the balcony entrance.
“Thanks, Lil,” I whispered to myself, knowing that Lily couldn’t possibly hear me.
“What’d you say, honey?” my mom asked, coming up behind me.
“Oh, nothing. Just that Lily did really, really well. I had no idea what to expect, but this
is great, don’t you think?”
She looked like she was trying to find the most tactful way of saying something. “Yes,
for New York, it’s a great apartment. It’s just hard to imagine paying so much and getting
so little. You know your sister and Kyle only pay fourteen hundred a month total for their
condo, and they have central air, marble bathrooms, brand-new dishwasher and washer-
dryer, and three bedrooms and two bathrooms?” she pointed out, as if she were the first to
make this realization. For $2,280 you could get a beachfront townhouse in LA, a three-
story condo on a tree-lined street in Chicago, a four-bedroom split-level in Miami, or a
goddamn castle with a moat in Cleveland. Yes, we knew this.
“And two parking spots, access to the golf course, gym, and pool,” I added helpfully.
“Yeah, I know. But believe it or not, this is a great deal. I think we’ll be very happy
here.”
She hugged me. “I think you will be, too. As long as you don’t work too hard to enjoy
it,” she said lightly.
My dad walked in and opened the duffel bag that he’d been dragging around all day, one
I’d assumed held racquetball clothes for his game later. But he pulled out a maroon box
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emblazoned with “Limited Edition!” across the front. Scrabble. The collector’s edition,
where the board came mounted on its own lazy Susan and the squares had little raised
borders so the letters didn’t slide around. We’d been admiring them together in specialty
game stores for the past ten years, but no occasion had ever warranted purchasing one.
“Oh, Dad. You shouldn’t have!” I knew the board cost well over two hundred dollars.
“Oh! I just love it!”
“Use it in good health,” he said, hugging me back. “Or better yet, to kick your old man’s
ass, as I know you will. I remember when I used to let you win. I had to, or you’d stomp
around the house, sulking all night. And now! Well, now my old brain cells are fried and
I couldn’t beat you if I tried. Not that I won’t,” he added.
I was about to tell him that I’d learned from the best, but Alex had walked in. And he
didn’t look happy.
“What’s wrong?” I immediately asked as he fidgeted with his sneakers.
“Oh, nothing at all,” he lied while glancing in the direction of my parents. He shot me a
“just hold on a sec” look and said, “Here, I brought a box.”
“Let’s go get a few more,” my dad said to my mom, moving toward the door. “Maybe
Mr. Fisher has some sort of cart. We could bring a bunch up at once. Be right back.”
I looked at Alex, and we both waited until we’d heard the elevator open and close.
“So, I just talked to Lily,” he said slowly.
“She’s not still mad at me, is she? She’s been so weird all week.”
“No, I don’t think it’s that.”
“So what is it?”
“Well, she wasn’t at home . . .”
“So where is she? Some guy’s apartment? I can’t believe she’s late for her own moving
day.” I yanked open one of the windows in the converted bedroom to let some of the cold
air dissipate the smell of new paint.
“No, she was actually at a police precinct in midtown.” He looked at his shoes.
“She was where? Is she OK? Ohmigod! Was she mugged or raped? I have to go to her
right away.”
“Andy, she’s fine. She was arrested.” He said it quietly, as if he were breaking the news
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to a parent that their child wasn’t going to pass fourth grade.
“Arrested? She was arrested?” I tried to stay calm, but I realized too late that I was
screaming. My dad walked in, pulling a giant cart that looked ready to topple under the
weight of unevenly stacked boxes.
“Who was arrested?” he asked off-handedly. “Mr. Fisher brought all this stuff up for us.”
I was racking my brain for a lie, but Alex stepped in before I could think of anything
remotely plausible. “Oh, I was just telling Andy that I saw on VH-1 last night that one of
the girls from TLC was arrested on drug charges. And she always seemed like one of the
straighter ones . . .”
My dad shook his head and surveyed the room, only half listening and probably
wondering when exactly Alex or myself had become so interested in female pop stars that
we actually discussed it. “I’m thinking that the only real place your bed can go is with the
head against the far wall,” he said. “Speaking of which, I better go see how they’re
doing.”
I literally flung my body in front of Alex the minute the apartment door closed.
“Quickly! Tell me what happened. What happened?”
“Andy, you’re shrieking. It’s not so bad. Actually, it’s kind of funny.” His eyes crinkled
as he laughed, and for a brief second he looked just like Eduardo. Ew.
“Alex Fineman, you better fucking tell me right now what happened with my best
friend—”
“OK, OK, relax.” He was clearly enjoying this. “She was out with some guy last night
that she referred to as Tongue Ring Boy—do we know who that is?”
I stared at him.
“Anyway, they went out for dinner and Tongue Ring Boy was walking her home, and
she thought it’d be fun to flash him, right there on the street outside the restaurant.
‘Sexy,’ she said. To get him interested.”
I envisioned Lily unwrapping a dinner mint and strolling outside after a romantic meal,
only to pull away and yank up her shirt for a guy who’d paid to have someone ram a post
through his tongue. Jesus.
“Oh no. She didn’t . . .”
Alex nodded somberly, trying not to laugh.
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“You’re telling me my friend got arrested for showing her breasts? That’s ridiculous.
This is New York. I see women every day who are practically topless—and that’s in the
workplace!” I was shrieking again, but I couldn’t help it.
“Her bottom.” He was looking at his shoes again, and his face was so red, I couldn’t tell
if he was embarrassed or hysterical.
“Her what?”
“Not her breasts. Her bottom. Her lower half. Like, all of it. Front and back.” An ear-to
ear grin had finally broken out, and he looked so delighted that I thought he might wet
himself.
“Oh, say it isn’t true,” I moaned, wondering what my friend had gotten herself into now.
“And a cop saw her and arrested her?”
“No, evidently two little kids saw her do it and pointed it out to their mother . . .”
“Oh, god.”
“So, the mother asked her to pull her pants back up, and Lily loudly told her what she
could do with her opinions, and the woman went and found a cop standing on the next
street over.”
“Oh, stop. Oh, please, just stop.”
“It gets better. By the time the woman and the cop came back, Lily and Tongue Ring
Boy were going at it on the street, pretty hot and heavy from what she said.”
“Who is this? This is my friend Lily Goodwin? My sweet, adorable best friend from
eighth grade now gets naked and hooks up on street corners? With guys who have tongue
rings?”
“Andy, calm down. Really, she’s fine. The only reason the cop actually arrested her was
because she gave him the finger when he asked if she had, in fact, pulled her pants down .
. .”
“Oh, my god. I can’t take it anymore. This is what it must feel like to be a mother.”
“. . . but they let her go with just a warning, and she’s going back to her apartment to
recover—sounds like she was pretty drunk. I mean, why else would someone flip off a
police officer? So don’t worry. Let’s get you moved in and then we can go see her if you
want.” He headed toward the cart my dad had left in the middle of the living room and
started unloading boxes.
I couldn’t wait until later; I had to see what had happened. She picked up on the fourth
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ring, right before it clicked into voice mail, as if she’d been debating whether or not to
answer it.
“Are you OK?” I asked her the second I heard her voice.
“Hey, Andy. Hope I’m not screwing up the move at all. You don’t need me, right? Sorry
about all this.”
“No, I don’t care about that, I care about you. Are you OK?” It had just occurred to me
that Lily may have spent the night at the police station, considering that it was early
Saturday morning and she was just leaving. “Did you stay overnight? Injail? ”
“Well, yeah, I guess you could say that. It wasn’t so bad, nothing like TV or anything. I
just slept in this room with one other totally harmless girl who was in for something just
as stupid. The guards were totally cool—it really wasn’t a big deal. No bars or anything.”
She laughed, but it sounded hollow.
I digested this for a moment, tried to reconcile the image of sweet little hippie Lily
getting cornered in a urine-flooded cell by an extremely angry and possessive lesbian.
