Page 94 of The Seven Year Slip

Like meeting an old friend seven years later.

37

The Last Goodbye

After I said goodbyeto my parents at the train station, I went home. To my aunt’s apartment.

Tomyapartment.

Change wasn’t always a bad thing, like my aunt had convinced herself to believe. It wasn’t always a good thing, either. It could be neutral—it could be okay.

Things changed,peoplechanged.

I changed, too. I was allowed to. I wanted to. Iwas.

There were some things that stayed the same—the Monroe, for instance. It always sort of took my breath away as I came up to it, looking like it should be the main character in some whimsical children’s book series about a little girl. Maybe her name was Clementine. The building always had a door greeter, an older gentleman named Earl, who knew everyone’s name in the building, and always told them hello. The elevator always smelled like someone’s forgotten lunch, and the mirror on the ceiling always lookedback at you a split second too late, and the Muzak was always awful.

“You’ll be okay,” I told the reflection, and she seemed to believe it.

The elevator let out on the fourth floor. I couldn’t remember how many times I’d rolled my suitcases down this hall, my wheels catching every knot and dent in the carpet. My passport would be in my hand, a flurry of travel guides tucked into my backpack. Seven years ago, I would have been just coming home from our European backpacking trip, tired and in desperate need of a shower, the rest of my life stretched before me like the good parts of a novel that the author had yet to write, and didn’t know how.

I had a degree in art history, something that really didn’t have a single path to take. I had thought about applying to be a curator. I’d mulled over becoming a gallerist. Perhaps try a graduate program. But none of it really ever caught hold of me. I figured nothing would. I had spent all summer painting through a tattered old copy ofThe Quintessential European Travel Guidethat I’d swiped from a secondhand store in London, etching sceneries above recommended tourist traps and restaurants.

I had dropped my aunt off at her apartment, so tired my feet were numb, and hailed a taxi out front, not knowing someone else had just slipped inside. I’d opened the door and slid in, only to find the stranger looking at me with this bewildered expression.

He’d said I could take it, but I said he could, and we ended up finding out that we were both heading down toward NYU anyway, so why not go together and split the fare. The weight of my future had spread out in front of me now that I was on the ground again, in a city where I had to find a job and a future career and—all I could think about wasThe Quintessential European Travel Guide, and the mallet-hammer logo, and an idea began to form. He toldme about the apartment he was about to rent with two of his friends, and how he was excited to be able to stay in the city. And then he asked me—

“How about you?” I couldn’t remember what he looked like—distressed jeans and a plain white shirt—but the day was mostly a blur. I’d met so many faces over the last few months, they all tended to blend together.

Even the ones that’d change my life.

“I think I want to work with books,” I told him, surprising even myself. “Is that weird?” I added with a self-conscious laugh. “I don’t know the first thing about book publishing! I must be crazy.”

And he smiled, and thinking back on it, I could almost remember his face then. The crookedness of his mouth. His kind eyes. And he said, “I don’t think so. I think you’re going to be amazing.”

It was that germ of an idea that, a few weeks later, had me applying to every job I could find in publishing. Everything that I was remotely qualified for. I just needed a foot in the door. I just needed a chance.

The next thing I knew, I was at a preliminary interview in a conference room at Strauss & Adder, sitting across from a woman so sharp and so bold, it was like she was made for red lipstick and leopard-print heels. And I knew instantly then that I wanted to be just like her—exactly like her. Someone who had their life together. Someone successful. Someone who knew themselves.

But in trying to be Rhonda, I’d never stopped to think about what parts of myself I’d shaved away.

I guess, sort of like James.

We had grown up, and grown apart, in different ways.

I came to a stop at apartment B4. My apartment. I took my keys out of my purse and turned the lock. I felt a hush of cool air as it opened—and my heart slammed into my chest. There was thatfeeling again. So slight, almost a figment of my imagination. The tingling of time across my skin as I stepped through the doorway, and into the past.

The apartment was dark, save for the golden afternoon sunlight streaming through the living room windows. Mother and Fucker were preening themselves on the AC. Everything was tidy, blankets folded and pillows puffed.

The blankets weren’t mine. And my aunt’s wingback chair was in the corner.

The apartment had brought me back again.

I quickly checked my phone for the date. Seven years ago, we’d be coming back today. Had I already missed him?

But when I turned into the kitchen, he was sitting at the table. In distressed jeans and a white T-shirt, the neck hole stretched out, and suddenly the man in the taxi came into focus. When he left, I’d meet him outside on the sidewalk. I’d catch a cab with him, and it made my heart ache at the realization that we had crossed each other, time and again, like ships in the night.

He looked up—and recognition lit his gray eyes. “Lemon...”

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