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Iris leaned back on the sofa, taking a sip of her drink. Two more hours until the new year. She watched as Laura’s fingers
traced the rim of her wineglass, her fingers bare except for the silver band on her left hand. Iris wondered what had become
of her other rings— the Irish wedding band with the two hands balancing a crown, the red drop of amber with its gold splinters,
the lime green stone flecked with pink which looked like a turtle’s carapace. It was strange, but Iris felt Laura receding
further away from her the more she concentrated on her bare fingers moving over the glass.

Erik got up to go to the restroom, and Laura asked Iris if she wanted to take his seat.

“All right,” she said. She got up and sat down next to Paul.

“How are you doing?” he asked her.

“I’m okay,” she said. “And you? Are you enjoying yourself?”

“Sure.” Paul lowered his voice. “He doesn’t talk much, does he? He just sits there and doesn’t say a word. Kind of creepy,
if you ask me.” He pointed his head in Laura’s direction. “She’s nice, but she has bad teeth.”

“Bad teeth.” She gave his arm a little shake. She couldn’t help but smile, though.

“What?” he said when she looked at him. “I can’t help it. I notice these things.”

She looked at her friends across the table. Jeremy was showing Laura the sketches he had done while visiting his mother’s
family in Peru. She had already seen them and thought they were bad, but she was oddly touched by his enthusiasm. “What do
you think of Jeremy?” she asked Paul.

“He’s interesting, but he’s a hypocrite.”

“I appreciate him more now,” Iris reflected. “In high school, Laura and I used to call him a monster. He always made us feel
bad about ourselves.”

“Why? What did he do?”

“He was always thinking about the consequences of things. About the larger issues in the world.”

“You mean about things other than himself.”

She looked at him. He was always trapping her. “I guess,” she said. She took hold of his wrist to look at his watch. It was
a little past ten-thirty. “You’re twenty-four now,” she said. “Happy birthday!”

“Yes, that happened about fifteen minutes ago.”

“Oh.” She was silent for a moment. “Is that why Laura was talking about the time before?”

“Yes.”

“How did she know?”

“I told them at the restaurant, remember? I guess she has a better eye for detail than you do.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I forgot.” She grabbed his hand and held it in her lap. “Happy birthday,” she said. She bent
over to kiss his hand.

“Well, thank you,” he said.

“Do you like being born on New Year’s Eve?” she asked.

“No, you always end up feeling ripped off.”

Iris caught a glimpse of the damp, craggy walls of the tunnel before the subway plunged again into darkness, rattling away
as if a piece of it were missing. She liked how the train was moving even though she was sitting still. She was hurtling toward
some kind of void, and there was nothing she could do. She sat back in her chair, blinking, staring at the people around her.
Beside themselves, there were only three others on the subway, two older men and a woman about her age, all of them alone,
spaced out among the empty seats. This moment, this sliver of time, between one year and the next, was so palpable. You were
forced to reflect on all you had and hadn’t done, and there was always a hope that things would change—or more important,
that you would change. What did it all mean? She looked at the strangers’ faces, wondering what each of them was thinking,
sitting here on a train on New Year’s Eve.

“Five more minutes,” Paul said, glancing down at his watch.

“Isn’t it funny that we’re on a train?” she said.

“At least it’s heated.”

“A train?” Jeremy said. “What’s wrong with a train?”

“It’s just not the most exciting place to be.”

“You want something more exciting than this?” Paul said.

“She gets bored easily,” Laura said. “She always likes to be moving about.”

Iris laughed. “Am I the only person who thinks we should be somewhere else?” She looked at Erik, but he only looked back at
her without saying anything.

“Tell us more about your cousin,” Laura said to Jeremy.

“He’s an artist. I don’t know him that well, actually. And I haven’t seen him in two years.”

“What kind of pictures does he paint?”

“Abstract things,” Jeremy said. “Lots of blues and yellows.”

So they were going to a party hosted by a person none of them really knew. At the last minute, they had decided to go to this
party, and now they were stuck on a train as it was approaching midnight. She thought about all the people crammed into Times
Square who were about to watch the ball drop. She herself had never been to Times Square on New Year’s Eve, though she had
seen the countdown numerous times on television. It was funny how people never failed to turn on the television at parties
she went to. It stemmed from the same desire she had now. People wanted validation of what they were feeling, or needed to
absorb some kind of momentum from the crowd, to become part of a current of emotion larger than themselves. It was a way of
marking the moment, of trying to sustain a certain level of euphoria. Iris wondered if she would ever become like her parents,
who were asleep in their beds by ten p.m. She didn’t know which was worse. To be like her parents or the people watching their
television sets as the ball dropped.

She looked up and noticed Erik watching her. They regarded each other for a moment, and then he looked away, clearing his
throat, his hands folded quietly in his lap. Iris couldn’t tell whether his silence was a result of shyness or a feeling of
superiority. He had probably murmured no more than twenty words that night to her. She didn’t understand how Laura could have
fallen in love with him.

“Thirty seconds,” Paul said.

She squeezed his hand. “I won’t forget this,” she told him.

A cigar was perched between their host’s fat fingers, and he held a glass of Scotch in the same hand. “Jeremy,” he said. “The
light of my life. Why are you always materializing out of nowhere? Who are your friends here?” He stared at each of them,
sizing up their proportions. He was not a bit like Jeremy, Iris thought. He was large and ponderous, and he had his own atmosphere.
Everyone’s eyes were on him.

Victor turned to Erik, who was standing next to him. “So what do you do?”

“I kill a lot of rats,” Erik said.

“Magnificent,” Victor said, nodding his head. “This is a nice group of friends you have, Jeremy. Please enter.” He gave a
little bow and flourish of his hand.

They dumped their coats and bags in a corner, leaving Jeremy behind as he talked to his cousin. A woman dressed in a Barbarella
outfit was swirling ribbons in the air. The ribbons undulated like serpents as the woman rippled them about her body, moving
them in circles above her head. In Victor’s studio, people had formed small clusters; dotting the room like constellations
that grew and then disbanded. As they didn’t know anyone, they headed for the food, but they had arrived too late. The table
was littered with olive pits and torn husks of bread, soiled napkins and stray plastic cups holding dregs of wine. A yellow
formless cheese hardened under the glare of the light, coated with a plastic sheen. Paul poked at the remains of a ham bone,
and Erik lifted up empty wine bottles. Iris and Laura abandoned the table, wandering around the studio to look at the people
and the paintings. Haphazard streaks of blue and red paint marred the wood floors. They stopped in front of two huge canvases,
both of them unfinished, leaning against the wall.

“What do you think?” Laura said.

Iris shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never understood modern art.” She looked around the room at Victor’s paintings, all of
them abstract, driven by geometric forms. “I guess they don’t do much for me,” she finally said.

“I like that one the best.” Laura pointed across the room to a layered patchwork of blue and green prisms. “It makes me think
of the glass that you pick up on the beach.”

Iris tilted her head. “I like your image better than the painting.” She turned around to examine the unfinished paintings
leaning against the wall. She could see pencil lines on the sections of blank canvas, and it seemed a miracle the way the
empty spaces metamorphosed into color. “I like these,” she said to Laura. “It makes me see the effort behind it.”

Laura smiled. “I thought the point was not to see the effort.”

Paul and Erik came up to them, handing them plastic cups filled with red wine. Laura turned toward Erik with a smile. Her
fingers grazed the back of his neck and rested against his collar. Paul was looking at Laura, and Iris wondered if he thought
her attractive. She peered over her cup, taking another sip of wine as she studied them. She heard a whir and then a click
and turned to see a white-haired woman lowering her camera. “For Victor,” the woman said with a smile, moving away to take
snapshots of other guests. Iris touched her face, already flushed from the martini. She wondered what Victor would see when
he was given the photograph. The four of them standing there as if for an eternity, when already the scene was dissolving,
about to disappear. Maybe there would be a time when she would remember this moment, and no one in the photograph would be
in her life anymore. It was a possibility.

A young woman with red hair slinked by in a dress that was cut low and plastered to her body. She was thin like Laura, with
delicate bones, one of those waifs who could be glimpsed in advertisements, peering at you with hunger.

“Why don’t you ever wear things like that?” Paul whispered in her ear.

Iris jabbed his elbow, making him spill a little of his wine.

“Hey,” he said, looking down at the floor and then examining his shirt. “You can’t take a joke.”

She didn’t say anything.

“What’s wrong with wearing something like that?”

“You’re annoying me,” she said. She glanced at Laura and Erik, wondering if they could hear, and then she moved away, walking
along the table as if looking for something to eat. Paul followed and cut himself a wedge of melted Brie. He offered it to
her, and she shook her head.

“So why are you afraid to wear something like that?” he asked.

“You never give up, do you?”

“Are you afraid it would be too ‘demeaning’?”

“I wouldn’t feel right.”

“You don’t want people to look at you.”

“No, not like that,” she said. “What if I told you to begin showing some chest hair?”

“I would if you wanted me to.”

“Thanks but no thanks.”

“You see?” he said.

She felt a surge of despair rising in her. “I don’t see why you’re always trying to change me.”

“I just think you’re afraid of certain things.”

“You don’t like who I am,” she said bitterly.

“You said it, not me,” he replied.

She felt her eyes clouding over and blinked as she looked at the woman with red hair laughing across the room. She didn’t
understand why he enjoyed making her doubt herself. It was hopeless. They always ended up arguing about trivial things. “I
don’t know why we’re together,” she said. She felt dizzy moving away from him. A piece of hair hung in her face, and she pulled
it behind her ear. Laura and Erik were talking in the corner, their heads bowed close together. Iris didn’t feel like joining
them and stumbled out of the room. Blood was rushing to her head, and she felt things slowing down, as if her ears were plugged
with cotton and the world was far away.

Someone grabbed her wrist, and she looked up. “Want to dance, Iris?” Jeremy said.

She looked at him dimly. “I can’t dance.”

“No matter,” Jeremy said, and he pulled her to the dance floor.

They were playing rumba music. Jeremy knew the dance, and she tried to follow his steps. He spun her around, and she laughed.
Her arms and legs were loose and formless, as if made of Je11-O. “You’re good at this!” she shouted over the music.

“I love to dance,” he said, smiling. He moved his hips suggestively, and she laughed again.

“You’ve really blossomed,” she told him. Once the words were out of her mouth, she realized she was drunk.

“Blossomed?” he said to her.

“I mean you’ve changed, you’ve found yourself.” She knew she sounded like an idiot. “You know what I mean. It’s a compliment.”

He only smiled at her. The dance was over, and they walked back to Laura and Erik. Paul was there too, but she didn’t look
at him.

“You two looked good up there,” Paul said, taking a sip of his wine.

She stared down at her feet. “I think I need to use the rest-room.”

“I’ll go with you,” Laura said.

They found the bathroom at the end of the hallway, but someone was already waiting by the door. Iris leaned against the wall,
closing her eyes for a second only. When she opened them, she asked Laura what married life was like.

“What do you mean?” Laura said.

“I mean, do you feel like you’ve been transformed? That life is suddenly pulsing with meaning?”

“It’s not that dramatic,” Laura said.

Then what is it? she wanted to say. But she was silent. She hated how Laura didn’t tell her things anymore. Laura’s face had
the bland smoothness of eggshells, perfectly sealed off. She had retreated behind a calmness that spoke of the great change
in her life, a change that did not include Iris.

“I can’t explain it,” Laura said, slowly turning the ring around her finger. “Things are more simple now.”

“How so?”

“It’s just a feeling I have.” Laura looked up, and Iris was struck by the plain color of her eyes. She no longer wore colored
contacts, the ones that gave her eyes a gray-green translu-cence. It was an otherworldly hue, which Iris once resented and
now oddly missed. “I used to feel outside of things,” Laura said. “As if I were waiting for something. But now I wake up in
the mornings, and I’m just there, I’m happy. I don’t want to be anywhere else. I’ve never felt like that before.”