Page 39 of Guy's Girl
So, you do. You stick your fingers down your throat, or push upward on your esophagus, or whatever other method you have to evacuate the disease from your system.
At first, it’s difficult. You are trying to reverse a fundamental process, one developed by millions of years of adaptation and evolution. Food is meant to go down, not come up. Your insides do not sprint willingly up your esophagus. They dig in their heels. They claw with their fingers. They are dragged, against their will, back up and out into the world.
But you don’t give up. You tell your body that it is sick. You tell it over and over again.
And, eventually, your body starts to believe you.
It’s strange for Adrian to climb the stairs to his old apartment. It’s even stranger to be climbing them before eight o’clock at night. He can count on one hand the number of times he made it home while the sun was still out.
Home.
Yet this apartment isn’t his home anymore. It’s Ginny’s.
He doesn’t know how he feels about that.
Where is his home? His studio apartment? Harvard? Indiana? Maybe. He likes Indy enough now, but in the beginning, he was miserable. Learning English was a nightmare. Its slippery consonants and inconsistent vowels felt nothing like Hungarian. For a full month, Adrian’s classmates jabbered excitedly at him in this ugly new language, and all he could do was smile. America was where Adrian started learning how to fake human emotions. How to play at happiness, or anger or joy, when really all he felt was nothing.
And then, of course, there was his stepfather.
Adrian never had to force smiles in Budapest. Hisnagyanyawas stern but tender, hisnagyapaenthusiastic, a hammer or wrench always in hand. They took Adrian exactly as he came—good moods, bad moods, and anywhere in between.
His sister had a far easier transition than he did. Unlike Adrian, Beatrix actually participated in the English lessons that their mother sent them to before they moved. By the time they arrived in Indianapolis, she could name every object in their new backyard. On Saturday mornings, when she and Adrian watchedcartoons on their living room floor, she would translate the dialogue for him, so he could laugh just a second after she did.
No. If he’s being honest, when his airplane touches down at Ferenc Liszt International—that’swhen he feels the strongest sense of coming home.
It’s Budapest. It’s always been Budapest.
Yet, to his Hungarian friends, like Jozsef Borza, Adrian is the boy who left. Who grew up in America. Who went to Harvard. He does not belong there anymore. He does not belong anywhere.
As he knocks on his old door, a bottle of red dangling at his side, Adrian wonders if every twentysomething feels the way he does. Untethered. Searching for a home.
***
Ginny opens the door in a flurry of flour and oven mitts. White powder dusts her cheeks and the bridge of her nose as if she’s been snorting cocaine instead of cooking. Her hair is twisted up into a chaotic bun. She pulls him into a hug, then turns and waves him inside with one mitt.
“Come in, come in.” She tightens the straps of her apron as they walk down the hallway. “You’re just in time for appetizers.”
“Appetizers?”
“Oh, yes. We have a whole feast ahead.”
His stomach growls in approval. He hasn’t eaten since the salad he had at noon.
“Dude!” A mess of red hair leaps into his view first. Clay. As usual, he wraps Adrian in a hug tight enough to squeeze out his insides. Next is Tristan, slapping him once on the back. And then—Finch. He’s seated in his usual armchair, guitar propped up on his legs. He doesn’t stand. Just keeps strumming and nods once. “What’s up, man?”
“Nice to see you.”
It isn’t, actually.
At first, the apartment looks exactly as Adrian remembers. Only upon closer inspection does he notice the small touches of Ginny that have appeared: a fake plant on the windowsill; Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan record sleeves on the shelves; a full chef’s set of knives next to the microwave.
And then, of course, the smell.
The air brims with it—oregano, parsley, sautéed meat, stewing tomatoes. All at once, Adrian is six years old, sitting at the table in hisnagyanya’s kitchen, where something was always simmering on the stove. His grip tightens on the neck of the wine. He’s afraid, suddenly, that he might drop it.
As if reading his mind, Ginny turns away from the stove and eyes the bottle. “You brought wine?”
“I did. I know you’re a beer girl, but I figured it might be nice to switch it up.”
