“About a lot of things, probably.”
“Anyway, you know August when he gets a crush.” Abby rolls her eyes and puts out her cigarette in an ashtray on the patio table. Then she reaches into her bag for a flask and takes a sip. She offers me some, but it’s daytime, so I decline, until she explains that it’s kombucha in there and she recently happened to lose all her water bottles. It’s actually very good. “Margot is already on the hunt for new roommates.”
“She is?” I ask. “But did he say he wasn’t coming back?”
“He didn’t say it, no. He also didn’t mention he was coming back. Or send rent money. Which is due soon, in case you forgot.” Abby continues to stare at me, confused. “How do you not know about any of this?” she asks. I don’t have an answer for her. Perhaps I’ve been spending too much time in my head, or too much time talking to Zoya online. In either case Abby doesn’t seem to want to know the answer to her own question. She checks her watch, a cheap gold knockoff she got with me at the Portland Saturday market last summer, when I went with her to check out PSU. She didn’t end up going there, or anywhere. She got to do whatever she wanted, which at the moment involved a late-night radio show for Radio Milwaukee, a ridiculous amount of yoga, and smoking a ton of weed. Her grandparents were really wealthy was what I’d heard; she and her cousins got a monthly stipend of some kind. I didn’t really want to know the details so I could avoid being jealous. I mean sure, my dad covered my rent and food, but it was only a few hundred bucks a month, and anything else I needed I’d had to get jobs for.
“Fuck, I have to go. Stop at Foundation later if you’re up for it, okay?” Abby says. “You look like you need a drink.”
“I always look like I need a drink,” I joke back. She’s already halfway to Bremen St., her high-heeled boots echoing against the sidewalk. I always do need a drink, if I’m honest with myself. Ever since I’d learned about Zoya, I’d been wound up like a toy, waiting for the next shoe to drop. Or anvil, more likely. And yet, I still talked to her several times a week. Not about anything relating to the DNA test, which hadn’t arrived. Just in general. I told her about my life, she told me about hers. It’s apparently in shambles since her mother died, which I find understandable. I don’t know what I’d do if I woke up one day to find myself totally alone. I’ve never had to face a reality so cruel. It is perhaps my guilt of an easy life that keeps me talking to her. She calls, so I answer. She messages, so I reply. Half the time I don’t know what she’s saying to me, since my Russian is so bad, but it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t seem to have many other people to talk to. If I can make her life a little easier, then what harm would it do?
I head inside Fuel to eat lunch. After I drink coffee and study a bit for my Russian Lit exam—we’d just finished Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, which I thought I would hate due to its unnecessarily large size but totally related to—I take out my phone, which shows a notification that I have three voicemails. Two are from my dad, which surely would kill my mood, so I don’t listen to them. One is from my mom, just checking in. I scroll past the number for their house and click on Margot’s name. If we really do have to find a new roommate, I don’t want Margot choosing on her own, or we’d end up with a house full of her tediously dull friends from school. I’d been the one to convince her to allow Abby and August, who I knew from Riverwest parties, to become our roommates. She’d wanted to rent the extra room to a high school friend with zero conversational skills and teeth so perfect they looked fake. Margot was a magnet for uninteresting people, while I was completely drained by them. I’ll take a crazy person over a boring person any day.
“Hey!” Margot chirps, cheerfully, when the phone stops ringing. At least she’s not mad at me; the more I think about it the more I realize how little time we’ve spent together lately. I’m not sure how I didn’t notice. But what do I know about friendships? This is the first time since I was in grade school that I’ve had any. Not like my sister who’s had the same two best friends since she was like thirteen. Well. Had the same two best friends. It’s like the more normal you are the more friends you can have. “What’s going on?”
“Are you coming home soon?”
“Uh, no, I wasn’t planning on it. Why?”
“I feel like I haven’t seen you in a while,” I suggest. Before she can argue the point, I ask, “Can we get a drink later? At Foundation maybe? Abby is working the door.”
I hear some fuzzy noises on the other end of the line, as if Margot is moving around on a couch. I try not to spend too much time wondering who’s couch, if it’s not ours. “How does that girl keep her job when she’s always letting in her underage friends?” Margot asks.
“I don’t know how she keeps any job, honestly.”
“It’s called tits, Anna,” Margot laughs. I hear the clock of a lighter, followed by a deep inhale. “You should know a little about that.”
“Tits or not, you have to show up for work on time, generally speaking. Or like, at all.” Maybe Riverwest didn’t get the customer service memo, because half the time I go to Fuel I have to wait forever for the baristas to stop talking to each other so I can order. I lean back into the hard wood of the booth, and cross my legs out in front of me. It’s nice to talk to Margot again, even on the phone. “Anyway, do you? Want to get a drink?”
A short pause. “I can’t. I’m supposed to go to this party tonight for my friend Julie’s birthday.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want to come?” Margot asks. “It’s not that far. It’s off of Brady Street. Or maybe Oakland? I can get you the address later.”
“Can’t you come out here?” I say, disappointed. “It’s too cold to bike there at night, and I really wanted to talk to you about something.”
“I can’t, I promised I’d go, Anna,” she says. “I know you hate seeing people on the east side because god forbid you hang out with other college students for one second, but it’s not that bad. Just come, we can still hang out and talk there.”
“Okay, fine; I guess I’ll call BOSS,” I tell Margot. The idea fills me with dread but so does staying home, knowing Margot is out there looking for new roommates.
After inhaling another cup of coffee, I hop on August’s bike and head back to my house to get more homework done. Around seven, I call BOSS—that’s UW-Milwaukee’s free taxi service—for a van and take it to the address Margot texted me.
Immediately I realize I’ve made a mistake, that I probably shouldn’t have arrived sober. I never went to them in school, so I am still unsure how to behave at a party. At a Riverwest basement show, I can smoke cigarettes outside with whoever else happens to be as socially anxious as I am, or I can zone out in the basement watching the bands. Not here. Not at a college party that is half potheads in tie-dye beanies and half girls who don’t understand it’s okay to wear pants in winter. I don’t know anyone there besides Margot, and when I find her on an armchair in a back room, legs entwined around a tall, pale soccer player still in uniform, it’s too loud to hear what she says. The music cuts through every attempt at conversation we have until I’m left to stand awkwardly beside a large Big Lebowski poster, tacked crookedly onto a door, like pretty much every door within a mile radius. Margot looks at me sympathetically and hands me one of her Strongbows, which I chug down in a few large gulps, simply to have something to do until she finally tears her face away from the large-lipped man with wavy brown hair and turns to me.
“This is Jake,” she screams over the music, which has only gotten more loud. People start to dance. I’m pretty sure I see a beer pong table in the corner, though I can’t be sure since I have never seen one before. A girl in cutoff shorts is definitely throwing a plastic ball at something. I can’t help but wonder if this is what all those high school parties I missed were like, and if so, then I’m relieved. Maybe I was better off spending my nights at home painting. I kind of wish I could be at home painting now.