Modern Lovers (20 page)

R
uby spent her evenings at Hyacinth pondering the future. It was a slow night, with only a few tables lingering over dessert in the garden. It was almost ten. Neither of her mothers had been around, which was nice, because it meant she could be terrible and lazy at her job. It was a cool night for the end of July, and she wished she'd brought a sweater. She stole Jorge's hoodie from behind the bar and put it on, knowing that he wouldn't mind. It didn't exactly look professional, but it was deep Brooklyn on a Wednesday night, and so who really cared?

The way Ruby saw it, she had a few different choices: she could stay at home and apply for school again in a year; she could go on one of those intense semi-abusive programs where you hike through the desert for three months with no toilet paper; she could move to New Orleans and shuck oysters for tourists. At this point, she could do any of it—it was just a matter of deciding what she wanted. Harry would be in Brooklyn for another year, which was something, but not if they couldn't be seen together without his parents losing their minds. Ruby wandered over to the door and pressed her nose to the glass.

Her pocket buzzed. She pulled out her phone:
PARTY @ NICO HOUSE WHEN UR DUN WORKIN.

Dust had no plan, and he seemed fine with it. When they were
dating, he had told Ruby that he never wanted to have a job that paid him more than fifteen dollars an hour, and that he never wanted to work more than ten hours a week. His only jobs had been at a skate shop and at a skate park, neither of which he'd done for more than a few months, and so he seemed to be doing a pretty good job of accomplishing his goals thus far.

If Ruby went into the garden to reclean already clean tables, which she sometimes did to try to hurry along customers, she might have been able to hear the party. Nico's house was only a quarter of the block down, and when it was nice outside and people were in the yard, voices carried. Tonight, though, she wasn't interested. She'd seen Sarah Dinnerstein traipsing down the street earlier that afternoon, wearing shorts that even Ruby would have thought twice about, and she really didn't need to see how a few hours of sun and booze had added to the effect.

One of the couples from the back was chatting behind her, drunk on mediocre wine. “Sorry,” they said, squeezing past Ruby to get out the door.

“Come back soon,” she said, as monotone as possible. By the time she walked back to her post, the other couple was finally paying and, after a few long, wet kisses, up on their feet and walking to the door. The server on duty, a tall guy named Leon, rolled his eyes at Ruby as he ran their credit card.

“Let's get the fuck out of here,” he said. “No offense.”

“None remotely taken,” Ruby said. She organized the menus and started piling the chairs on the tables, and Leon grabbed the broom. They got the garden cleaned up, as they'd already done everything else. She could hear the party, or what sounded like it, and the whole garden smelled like weed and Sarah Dinnerstein's Rastafarian essential-oil perfume that she bought from a guy with a card table set up outside the Union Square subway station. Jorge and Leon closed the two registers while Ruby waited outside with the keys for the
roll-down security gate. Once all three of them were outside, Ruby locked the padlocks. She would text Harry when she was closer, check and see if he was still awake. It was kind of cool that Elizabeth hadn't turned them in, but it was also weird and sort of freaky. Ruby's parents had always been relaxed, too relaxed, and she had always thought of Elizabeth as the Good Mom, the one who always knew where her kid was, and who had regular food in the fridge, and who knew all the best bedtime songs. Elizabeth was not supposed to be drinking a glass of water on Ruby's beanbag chair, her eyes all crazy.

In the very back of the restaurant, something flickered. A firefly, probably. Ruby squinted through the gate. There was something red in the corner, along the wooden fence, but she couldn't quite see what it was. It was probably nothing. It was late, and Ruby was tired. “Okay, guys,” she said to Jorge and Leon, giving each of them a high five. “See you later.” They walked toward the corner together, but instead of turning left, to go home, Ruby turned right and walked toward Nico's house. When she was a few car lengths away, she crossed the street and slowed down. There were a few people on the porch, but she couldn't tell who it was. The party seemed to have died down, at least out front.

Ruby squatted down in between two cars and leaned against a bumper. She could see the porch, and the little floating red dots of people's cigarettes in the air. Chloe had texted her that morning—Paris was in some other time zone, and Ruby had no idea if Chloe knew that she was writing at six a.m., or cared. It just said
HIIIIIII
I MISS YOU!
with a long string of hearts. It was bullshit. Everything was bullshit. All of Ruby's friends were about to leave her forever. Who was actually friends with people from high school? Everyone loved to say that people who peaked in high school were stupid and lame, and didn't that mean that by holding on to those people, you were also stupid and lame? Wasn't everyone trying to trade up? Chloe would join a sorority and live in a house with a gaudy chandelier, and then
she'd go to law school, and then she'd get married, and then she'd have three kids, and then she'd move to Connecticut, and then they'd see each other at their twentieth Whitman reunion, and they'd hug and kiss and pretend that one of them was going to get on Metro-North so they could see each other. Paloma was the same but worse—she might be interesting. At least Dust and Nico were going to stay the same forever. It made Ruby feel less pathetic about her own life choices, or lack thereof.

People on the porch were laughing. A few months ago, Ruby would have sauntered up the steps, pulling a cigarette out of someone's mouth and sticking it in her own, the queen of the goddamn place. Now what was she? She was a hostess. She recommended the crostini and the house-made aioli for the french fries. Her boyfriend was a recent de-virgin who took practice SATs for fun. Ruby imagined crossing the street and getting run over by a truck. Ruby imagined crossing the street and having a giant gate come down right in front of Nico's front steps. She imagined her friends—her former friends—ignoring her while she walked through the house like she was invisible. Ruby imagined seeing Dust fucking Sarah Dinnerstein on Nico's invisible parents' bed. “This is so stupid,” she said. Her knees hurt from pressing against somebody's bumper. She got up slowly, like an old lady, and stooped over to walk back down the block. The breeze was even smokier than before—it no longer smelled just like weed, or patchouli, or Marlboros—now it truly smelled like fire. “What the shit,” Ruby said. When she got to the corner, there were a few people standing in front of Hyacinth, staring in the windows, all of them on their cell phones. She started to run.

THE Q AT CORTELYOU: DITMAS PARK'S NEIGHBORHOOD BLOG

Posted at 11:37 p.m.

J
ane's phone rang, then Zoe's. Their phones were both sitting in the car's cup holders, in between the front seats, but Jane and Zoe were in the backseat. Zoe's underwear was slung around one ankle, and Jane's right hand had vanished up her dress. They had bellies full of dumplings and mouths full of each other. The cloth seats in the Subaru had seen worse.

“Who the hell keeps calling?” Jane said, into Zoe's neck. It was probably Elizabeth, calling Zoe to ask her which side she should fall asleep on, which hand she should use to hold her toothbrush. She didn't care, let the phone ring.

Food was always the way back in. Why hadn't she thought of it? Jane liked fine dining as much as the next girl, but really she always wanted something salty and fried that could be eaten with chopsticks. Zoe's skin was as delicious as a bowlful of MSG, and Jane was trying to lick her from top to bottom, every inch she could reach without pulling a muscle. It had been a solid decade—if not more—since they'd fooled around in the backseat of a car. There was one long late-night cab ride from Union Square to Ditmas Park that Jane could remember, with at least three orgasms apiece, but man, it had been a long time. Her body pulsed, and so did Zoe's. They were breathing in unison, the air thick and shared.

“I just hope it's not the police again,” said Zoe. She laughed a little but then paused. She scooted out of Jane's reach. Jane rolled back against the seat while Zoe squeezed through the front seats to grab her phone. “It was Ruby,” she said. “And Leon. Oh, my God.” Zoe reached down and stuck her other leg into her underwear and climbed into the front seat, giving Jane a glorious view, a single moment of pure pleasure, like looking at a Renoir in person. “It's Hyacinth.”

•   •   •

T
hey double-parked in front, right behind the fire engine. The firehouse was only two blocks away, so they'd arrived fast—Ruby hadn't even called, she'd just run over and banged on the door until someone opened up. Ruby, Leon, and Jorge were still out front, the three of them sitting on a little silver bench one storefront away, taking turns popping up and smoking on the corner. Ruby had a cigarette in her mouth when her mothers got there, and Jane plucked it out and threw it on the ground.

“What happened?”

Ruby started to blubber, and Leon put his arm around her.

Jane shook her head. “Goddamn it, will someone tell me what is going on?” She craned her neck to see past all the firemen into the restaurant.

One of the firefighters came over, slow in his enormous suit. “Ma'am, are you the owner?”

“Yes, we are,” Jane said, pulling Zoe close. “What happened?” There was smoke in the air.

“It seems there was a fire in the backyard behind the restaurant, and it spread into your building. Luckily, your daughter was here before the fire had reached all the way through—there is heavy damage, but the building is salvageable. Come and see.”

Jane and Zoe stepped gingerly through the open doorway—the glass had been shattered and covered the entrance, shards reaching
nearly to the hostess stand. Inside, the smoke still felt thick, and the air smelled like a wet campfire. The floor, where it wasn't covered with broken glass, was slick with water from the sprinklers and the firefighters. Jane pulled the neck of her T-shirt up over her nose and mouth and held it there. There was a large black shadow printed all the way along the wall of the dining room. The ceiling was in pieces, flaking off like a sunburn, and the glass doors out to the garden were broken, too. Jane clenched her fist, ready to hand someone, anyone else, the bill. But when she looked outside, she knew the answer: in any game of rock-paper-scissors, fire beat everything.

The wooden tables in the garden were all ruined and would have to be replaced. The chairs were gone, too. The back wall, a wooden fence, looked like it had been eaten by an angry shark.

“Shit,” Jane said.

“Shit,” Zoe said, coming up behind her. She rested a hand flat against Jane's back.

The firefighter shrugged. “At least it didn't get all the way inside. You're really lucky that your daughter was here—another few minutes and the whole place would have been up, gone.”

“Thank you,” Jane said, and shook the firefighter's hand. After he walked away, she turned to Zoe. “Seems like we're really making the rounds lately, huh? What's next, the coast guard?”

“Don't even joke,” Zoe said. “How long before we can open again, you think?”

“A month? Two? God, I don't know. Oh, man.” The power was off—everything in the walk-in would be ruined. There was gorgeous fish, beautiful marbled steaks. All those stupid tomatoes. Enough fresh mozzarella for three days of caprese salads. Everything would go to waste. She should take home what they could eat now, while anything was still good,
if
anything was still good. “Shit.” She hadn't even checked the damage in the kitchen yet. That's where the sprinklers would have gone off first, no matter what, but Jane made a
mental list of all her beautiful equipment, all her jars, all her fucking salt—everything.

“It's okay,” Zoe said. “It's just money.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and started taking photos. “Go check on Ruby.”

Jane made her way back to the street, glass crunching under her sneakers. Ruby had lit up another cigarette and was pacing back and forth in front of the health-food store on the corner. She was wearing someone else's sweatshirt, with the hood pulled tight around her face, her purple hair hanging out the sides like a psychedelic waterfall. Jane approached her slowly.

“Mom,” Ruby said. Her voice cracked. “I'm so sorry. It was my fault, I should have caught it sooner. I thought I saw something when I was locking the gate.” Ruby's eyes were red. She took a long drag of her cigarette and bounced nervously on her toes. “I'm sorry that I'm smoking, too, but I can't help it. Otherwise I'm going to start pulling all my hair out.”

Jane reached over and took the cigarette out of Ruby's hand. Instead of dropping it on the sidewalk, she put it to her own lips and took a drag. “Don't tell your mum.”

Ruby exhaled loudly and fell into her mother's arms.

E
lizabeth was groggy. She'd slept terribly, rolling around all night. Andrew had fallen asleep upon impact, as usual, and watching him sleep while they were fighting was ten times worse than watching him sleep when they were getting along. The window was open, and at midnight some drunk person had been yelling on the sidewalk. At three, a car alarm went off, over and over. There were the usual sirens, backdrop to the city life, insistent and wailing. Elizabeth had finally fallen asleep around four, she thought, but it was equally possible that she'd been awake until just before six and finally conked out for an hour, until Andrew woke her up with a cough. When she opened her eyes, he was standing on his side of the bed, looking at her. Her cell phone was in his hands.

“What?” she said. “What is it?”

•   •   •

H
arry was sitting on the couch hunched over a bowl of cereal. Elizabeth pulled her robe tight around her waist and sat down next to him. “Honey,” she said, “I just heard from Zoe. There was a fire at the restaurant last night. Everyone is fine, but I thought you should know.”

“I know,” Harry said. “Ruby texted me last night. Like, when the
firemen were going in. She said they broke the door with axes, even though the fire wasn't even near the door.” He slurped up a spoonful of milk.

“You
knew
? How could you not wake me up?” Elizabeth stretched her fingers toward Harry's neck and pretended to strangle him. “God! Harry!”

“What were you going to do? Run down there with a bucket of water?” He raised the bowl in front of his face as a barrier when Elizabeth glared at him. “Sorry! I should have told you, fine!”

“I'm going to pop down there and see if they need anything. You stay here and out of trouble, okay?”

Harry waved good-bye with his spoon.

•   •   •

T
he front door was open, and Elizabeth poked her head in, knocking on the doorframe. Zoe was sitting at the dining table, her phone to her ear, a stack of paper in front of her. Ruby and Jane were both in the kitchen, with their backs to the door. The whole house smelled like pancakes and bacon.

“Hey,” Elizabeth said. “Can I come in? I just heard.”

Zoe glanced up and waved her in, but a look passed over her face that made Elizabeth stop just inside the door. “I can come back, if now isn't good,” she said, half-whispering. Zoe waved her in again, more vigorously.

“I'm on hold, endless hold,” she said. “It's shocking, I know—insurance companies are surprisingly hard to get on the telephone when a place burns down.”

Jane muttered something, and Ruby laughed. “Oh, hi, Elizabeth,” Ruby said, swiveling around in a clumsy pirouette. She winked.

Elizabeth scuttled over to Zoe and gave her a quick hug before gently lowering herself onto the next chair over. “I can't believe it,” she said. “Are you okay? Can I help?”

Zoe raised a finger. “Hang on, I think I have an actual person now. Hello?” she said into the phone. “Yes, hello, hold on, thank you so much.” She mouthed,
Sorry
, and then covered her left ear with her hand and walked up the stairs.

Jane set an enormous platter of pancakes—thick, fluffy, generously studded with blueberries—in front of Elizabeth. “Stay,” she said. “I always make too many.”

Ruby threw herself into the chair opposite Elizabeth and forked four huge pancakes onto her plate.

“Oh, I shouldn't impose,” Elizabeth said. The pancakes smelled like Hyacinth on a Sunday morning. Her stomach growled.

“Really,” Jane said. “You know Zo never eats more than two. Better you than Bingo.” She smiled and handed Elizabeth a plate.

“Okay,” Elizabeth said. For someone whose restaurant had just been knocked out of commission for an unknown period of time, Jane seemed remarkably upbeat. Elizabeth edged off a small bite of pancake with the side of her fork. “Oh, my God,” she said. “These are insane.”

“I know,” Jane said, and smiled even more broadly, like the cat who had eaten not only the canary but the nest, too. “No hard feelings about the other night, right?”

“Sure,” Elizabeth said. “Of course not.”

“I forgot the syrup!” Jane said. “What are we even doing?” She hustled back over to the kitchen and came back brandishing an oversized bottle of syrup. Jane poured giant puddles onto everyone's plate.

“You are extra goofy today, Mom. Is there Prozac in these?” Ruby said.

“Ha-ha,” said Jane. “Maybe.” She stuck a quarter of a pancake into her mouth. “Tastes good, doesn't it? Nice and medicinal.”

Ruby rolled her eyes but was looking at her mother with affection. Elizabeth was tempted to back away slowly and open the door again, just in case she'd accidentally walked into an alternate universe.

Zoe thumped back down the stairs, as quick on her feet as Ruby.
“Hey!” she said. “Sorry about that! I think we have a good guy over there, Jane. Shouldn't be too bad. I mean, it'll be terrible, and God knows how long it'll take us to fix everything, but we're covered, and they know it, so at least all we're losing is time and money, you know?”

“Right,” said Jane. “Great. You hungry?”

“Always,” said Zoe. Instead of scooting behind Ruby, which would have been the most direct route to her chair, Zoe walked the long way around. Elizabeth pretended not to notice the way Zoe gave Jane's earlobe a gentle tug as she scooted behind her, and then she pretended not to hear the low little noise Jane made in response.

“Did you make these with ricotta or yogurt or melted butter or all three?” Elizabeth said, instead of what she wanted to say. When Zoe finally sat down again, Elizabeth widened her eyes and gave her a look, but Zoe only smiled, beatific and sweet and full of it.