Page 3 of Guy's Girl
“The Twin Cities!” Tristan claps. “You’re lucky to live there. Did you know you can fly to a hundred and sixty-three different cities out of MSP? It’s one of Delta’s primary hubs, and Delta is the best airline in—”
“Tristan.” Finch cuts him off before he can really get going.
Tristan and Finch don’t get along. It’s not that they don’t like each other; it’s more that they are two sides of the same coin. Both are stocky, both have lopsided grins and curly hair—Finch’s shortand blond, Tristan’s long and light brown—both come from money and attended East Coast private schools where they rowed stroke on the varsity crew team. During freshman year at Harvard, they were often mistaken for brothers. As college wore on, however, the two split, as if in direct reaction to this unwanted comparison. They leaned as far into their differences as they could. It’s the same logic behind why neighboring countries are always at war with each other: we despise those who are too similar to us.
For his part, Tristan became the quintessential finance kid: majored in economics, joined Harvard’s consulting club, interned at a bank, dressed in button-downs and Sperry’s. Kept a close shave and an even closer eye on his portfolio.
Finch, on the other hand, shed as much of his upbringing as he could. He grew out his hair, traded slacks for joggers, and spent all his free time either with his guitar on his lap or in the physics lab with a bag of weed in his backpack.
Ginny looks away from Finch, forcing her mind in a different direction. To the final occupant of Sullivan Street. The absent party: Adrian.
Of all the boys living in apartment 5E, Ginny knows Adrian the least. He was a last-minute addition to the boys’ apartment. An outlier. Back in college, in the limited interactions Ginny had with him, he was roughly as friendly as a potted cactus. But if she wants a place to sleep during her visit to New York, she has to put up with him.
Finishing his search in the fridge, Clay pulls out the ingredients for mixed drinks—exactly what Ginny feared he would do.One shot of tequila is 100 calories; 8 ounces of lemonade is 100 more...
She stands, crossing the tiny room to crack open a window. Cool air filters into the room. She inhales deeply before walking back to the couch and sitting down.
Clay pours four cups of tequila and lemonade. Finch lights a cigarette and fiddles with the Bluetooth speaker, setting up a playlist of songs for their pregame. Tristan tries unsuccessfully to steal the aux cord from Finch. All the while, they chatter—about work, about sports, about the girls they’re seeing. Every time Tristan mentions wide-bodied airplanes, Ginny and Finch throw napkins at him.
Their voices wash over her, and she finds that, for just a brief moment, her anxiety dissipates. It feels good not to bethe girlanymore. To just be one of the group. One of the guys.
She inhales, filling her body with cool air and secondhand smoke.
Adrian pushes open the door of 200 West Street, which houses the headquarters of Goldman Sachs, and heads out into the long-since-black night. He can’t remember the last time he left while the sun still shone.
By some miracle, he made it out of the office before midnight. This will be his first chance to go out with his roommates in a long time. His roommates and the girl. Ginny.
Adrian didn’t know Ginny well in college. He saw her around campus—rollerblading down Plympton Street or dancing on a table with Clay in the Delphic—but he didn’tknowher. From what Clay tells him, after graduation, she signed with that big beer company and moved to Minnesota. Normally, he couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to live there, but right now he hates his life in New York so deeply that living alone in the Midwest sounds like a dream.
He would never move there, of course. If he were to go anywhere, it would be back to Budapest, where he was born.
His phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out. It’s his mom, checking in about his week. “Milyen volt a heted?”
“Kiváló,”he responds.Excellent.
His weekly lie.
He tucks his phone away and heads for Sullivan Street.
***
Adrian’s favorite part of the commute is the three blocks he walks down Prince Street. Artists line the block, paintings, jewelry, and woven blankets laid out before them. Tables spill out of restaurants and onto the sidewalk. Diners play footsie underwhite tablecloths. The scene reminds him of Váci Street. Of Budapest.
His years in Hungary were the happiest he can remember. Though his mother had her own apartment—in which Adrian lived with his older sister, Beatrix—she worked constantly, which meant he mostly lived with his grandparents outside Budapest in a house his grandfather built by hand. There were cherry trees in the backyard and cabbage wraps on the stove. They lived near a slew of Adrian’s great-aunts and -uncles, who regularly gathered to celebrate the holiday of some obscure saint. Someone was always too drunk. Someone was always fighting with someone else.
Years later, Adrian would long for those fights.
When Adrian turned eight, his mom put him into English classes. Once a week, he biked to the home of an ancient Hungarian woman and listened to her jabber at him in a language he neither understood nor wanted to understand. He never participated. Never even opened his mouth. Why would he? Everyone in his life spoke Hungarian.
When he turned nine, his mom announced they were moving to America. She told him in the kitchen of her downtown Pest apartment. Adrian never liked that place. He preferred the colorful homes and cobblestoned streets of Szentendre.
That afternoon, his mother sat him down at the wooden table in her kitchen and said, “Távozunk.”We are leaving.
“Hová megyünk?”Where are we going?
“America.”
His mother was remarrying, she said. A man whose name Adrian had never even heard. A man who lived far away, in the foreign land ofIndiana. He didn’t know how she met this man, though he would later overhear Beatrix whispering on her cell phone about some sort of online matching service.
