Virtuous(8)

It also occurs to me on the walk home that preparing for this evening is going to occupy my entire day. By the time I reach the three-story brownstone where I live with my roommate, Leah, I’m wishing I never agreed to go.

Fluff and I dash up the stairs to the front door and up one flight to our second-floor apartment. Inside, it takes me a full five minutes to remove all the layers I’ve worn for my walk. By then, Fluff is dancing around my feet, wanting her lunch.

I feed her and stand in the kitchen for a minute, feeling stunned and numb as I relive the events of the last hour. Reaching for my phone, I read and reread his text: So nice to meet you, Natalie. Look forward to seeing you later. Flynn.

Leah comes in, carrying a huge basket of laundry and bitching about the stink in the laundry room that seems to get worse with every passing day. She is tall and stick thin with long brown hair and blue eyes. I envy her ability to eat anything she wants. She envies my curves. Except for a couple of fundamental differences in philosophy, we get along well.

“Tell me the truth,” she says, dropping the basket and coming over to me. “Do I smell like the laundry room?”

I lean in and take a whiff of her hair, but all I smell is the salon shampoo she’s gotten me addicted to, even though neither of us can afford it. “You smell fine.”

“Remember that episode of Seinfeld? When he picks up his car from the detailer and it smells like BO? Then he starts to smell like BO, and Elaine starts to smell, too, because she’s been in the car?”

I wasn’t allowed to watch TV growing up and I was too busy trying to survive in college, so I’ve gorged on television since moving to the city. Leah’s obsession with Seinfeld reruns has worn off on me. “I love that episode.”

“That’s going to be us if they don’t figure out what the f*ck stinks in that laundry room. No one will want to be around us.”

She swears like a sailor when she’s home, getting it out of her system, she says, after a week on best behavior in the classroom with fourth-graders. She encourages me to swear, too, but the few times I tried resulted in hilarity on both our parts. Leah says if I live with her long enough, she’ll eventually wear off on me.

“How was the walk?” she asks from the sofa where she’s set up shop to fold the mountain of clean clothes.

“It was… You won’t believe what happened.” The story bursts out of me in a flurry of words and hand motions. When I’m done, Leah stares at me as if I’ve just told her I saw aliens in the park.

“You’re making this up. You’re f*cking with me.”

“No, I’m not. I swear to God it’s true.”

“You smashed into Flynn Godfrey in the park, Fluff bit his arm, you had coffee with him, and he asked you to dinner?”

“Yep.”

“You’re f*cking lying.”

“Leah,” I say, beginning to feel exasperated, “why would I make that up?”

“You really met Flynn Godfrey.”

“I really met Flynn Godfrey.”

“Holymotherf*ckingshit!” She’s off the sofa and grabbing me. “Tell me everything. Don’t leave out one single detail.”

I go through the whole thing again, slowly this time, with as many details as I can recall—which is all of them, of course—and she hangs on my every word.

“And he’s coming here? Tonight?”

I show her the text he sent me. “Seven o’clock.”

“I’m calling in sick to work.” She moonlights at a bar down the street and makes almost as much working Saturday night as she does in a full week at school.

“No, you’re not. You can’t afford to call in sick.” I tutor nearly every day after school to supplement my income. Since Leah can’t stand to spend one extra minute with her kids, she works at the bar on weekends.

“I’m not missing the chance to meet Flynn Godfrey.”

“I’ll bring him by the bar to meet you before we go wherever we’re going.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

She waves a hand frantically in front of her face. “I feel like I’m hyperventilating. Am I hyperventilating?”

Since she’s still able to form sentences, I say, “I don’t think so.”

“You’re really going out to dinner with Flynn Godfrey.”