The Break(7)

“Then let me get those doors,” he says, back to a smile that’s practiced and professional.

He pushes the doors open for us, and then grimaces dramatically at the cold air.

I keep going, holding Lila tighter, stepping onto the sidewalk. I start to walk along Washington Street and pass my favorite clothing boutique. I lock eyes with the willowy owner behind the glass. She smiles at me and I smile back. I like easy relationships like that, the kind that exist while shopping within a confined glass box of a boutique. Maybe I was lonely before Lila came? Maybe that’s why it’s such a gut punch to have her here now, filling me up. I linger for a moment, admiring the lipsticks like silver bullets lined in a row behind a window. The owner drops her gaze. Lila lets out a small whimper, and it snaps me out of my trance.

I start walking along the sidewalk again. I take out my phone and try my friend Artika, who hasn’t been returning my calls. My writer friends can be like that: understandably wrapped up in their own stuff. At least my college friends respond to the photos I text with emojis and comments about how cute Lila is.

The phone rings and rings. I’m about to hang up when Artika answers. “Rowan,” she says, breathless. “Hang on.” Music hammers in the background, and she must put her phone on mute, because everything goes dead for a few beats. Then she unmutes it, and I can hear another flash of music until a door slams and the music fades. “Rowan,” Artika says again, the word coming out loose, like she’s had a few drinks. “How are you?” she asks, her voice deathly serious. Gabe told her about how I hemorrhaged and nearly died at the birth. He’s friends with her, too. They collaborated on a screenplay once.

“I’m okay,” I say, trying to make my voice confident. “I mean, mostly. I’m getting much better.” What a lie.

Artika goes quiet. She’s a crime writer, and she loves a scene, and I imagine telling her the way my fingertips blazed against June’s bony shoulders as I pushed her toward the open window, or how it felt like I was burning alive as we hurtled toward that freezing cold breeze together, the words like razors edging up my throat: The baby’s gone! What have you done? Push, shove, and then my glance falling to Lila sleeping soundly in her bassinet. Realizing I’d done something very wrong . . .

I clear my throat. I can’t tell Artika any of that, of course, because all my writer friends would know within the hour and I’d much rather they not. I need her to say something on the other end, to pull me from myself, but she doesn’t. She’s so quiet I’m sure I’ve lost her. The cell service is spotty around here. “Tika?” I ask, and I almost disconnect, but then she asks, “How’s little Lila doing?”

I slow my pace a little, passing two women in fur coats and red lipstick.

“Lila’s great,” I say quickly. And then, “She’s perfect, actually.”

A long pause.

“That’s nice,” Artika says. I wonder if this is all boring to her. Usually by this point in any conversation, she’s already told me a juicy piece of writer news, like one of the young writers we’ve mentored getting an agent or a mutual friend switching publishers. We’re quiet again, and I get paranoid that Gabe told Artika what I did to June, and all at once I wish I’d never called her. I stop on the sidewalk, feeling alone, watching New Yorkers pass me with their own private crises.

“I’m so glad you’re on the mend,” Artika says in a careful voice, and I imagine her using what I did to June in a future scene, barely masking my identity and putting it all out there for the world to see. We exchange a few more surface pleasantries, and then I get off the phone quickly and try to shake it off. I pick up my pace again, heading down the street in the darkness toward June’s.





FOUR


Rowan. Monday night. November 7th.


I’m about to cross Attorney Street when I see Gabe’s agent, Harrison, in a knit hat standing outside June’s gray-brick Lower East Side building. We’ve known Harrison for the better part of a decade; he signed Gabe to his agency, WTA, before Gabe had ever written anything really big, which is a rarity. Harrison always says he saw the future in Gabe’s pages, and he was right. And Harrison is how we know June; they’ve been dating since the summer.

Harrison arcs his head back to look up toward the windows like he’s searching for June among the glittering panes of glass, his body illuminated by the milky glow of a streetlight. I’ve been mumbling the whole walk here, not giving strangers on the street a second thought as I practiced my apology to June, but I shut my mouth as soon as I see Harrison, worried he’s going to spot me and call Gabe. Something about the way the lamplight falls on his gray wool hat, chic trench, and brown leather gloves makes him look like something out of a film noir, as if the rain should start pouring down any minute. He rings the bell a few times, and then switches over to his cell, presumably to call June. He’s unguarded in his anguish, his smooth skin drawn into a grim expression I rarely see; he must be very sure that he’s unseen by anyone other than New York strangers who don’t find anything out of the ordinary, because he would never let himself go like this if he knew I was watching. Harrison is nothing if not exquisitely controlled. When I’ve seen him talking on the phone with his writers, it’s a careful performance filled with what sounds like empathy, and when I see him in a conversation with a producer or film exec I see a cold-blooded shark. But maybe he’s truly both of those things; maybe that’s just what it takes in this industry. Maybe it’s too easy being a novelist, the one everybody speaks to in quiet, encouraging tones, coddling the creative process like a newborn.