Just when things were getting interesting, a guy sat down on the next stool and started making calls without the least effort to keep the volume down. First he called his mother to tell her he wouldn’t be able to come by that morning as he had said he might. He was really sorry, but he was just too bogged down with work. Yeah. Uh-huh. The Something Something Case. Huge case. Huge. Boss needed him all day.
There was nothing remotely resembling work in front of this guy. Just a
Daily News
open to the sports page and a book called
Surfing Australia
. After he got off the phone with Mom, he called someone he greeted as “bruh” and made plans to shoot hoops in an hour.
When the lying, surfing, hoops-shooting bruh finally shut up and settled in to reading the sports section, Carly heard Judith say, “You won’t forget about tonight.”
She looked up to see Taylor standing, buttoning up her deep-red sweater. “Of course not. What time are they coming? ”
“Seven thirty. Want me to call and remind you?”
She shrugged. “I’m not going to be able to do anything once the sunlight’s gone.” She walked around the table and stood behind her mother with a hand on each shoulder. “But if it makes you feel better, sure, call me.” She leaned down. Judith smiled and closed her eyes as her daughter planted a kiss on her cheek.
Taylor stepped away and held out a hand. Her mother placed the long leather strap of a big, expensive, and complicated-looking camera on it. “Thanks,” Taylor said, slipping the strap over her neck and shoulder so it lay diagonally across the red sweater, between her breasts.
Carly really didn’t want to look at Taylor Deen’s breasts, but she found it impossible not to look, impossible not to compare.
They weren’t huge. Probably a B, same as her. But still they seemed fuller, rounder. Like everything else about this girl and this girl’s life—better than Carly’s.
As she stepped away from the table, her mother held out her coffee mug. “Honey, will you ask Bess to start another one for me on your way out?”
“Sure,” Taylor said, taking the mug. “Don’t forget my mat.” She tilted her head toward the Shakti Yoga bag slung over the back of her chair and headed toward the counter to talk to Bess.
Wait!
Carly wanted to say.
You haven’t finished your croissant. Come on. Hang out a little while longer.
Carly stuffed her notebook in her messenger bag, grabbed her hoodie, and dashed for the door, slipping out while Taylor ordered her mother’s refill.
Oh, she hadn’t forgotten her promise. She still had every intention of walking the other way. To do that, of course, she’d need to know which way Taylor was going. So she stopped on the sidewalk and pretended to fiddle with the clasps on her bag while she waited. When Taylor still hadn’t come out, Carly turned her back to the door and adjusted her ugly hat. Finally, from over her shoulder she heard the swish of the door opening. She took two long, slow breaths before turning back around to see Taylor heading down Fourth Street toward Washington Square. The red of her sweater stood out amidst the mostly-black-wearing denizens of Greenwich Village. She was moving fast, like she had somewhere to be. Like someone was expecting her.
Carly looked down at her feet. She was standing right between two sidewalk lines. If she turned to her left and walked up Fourth Street, she could get on the subway at Sixth Avenue and head uptown. She could spend her Saturday doing normal, healthy, constructive things, like finally tackling that essay she had to write for her one college application. Or she could work on her history paper about the Triangle Factory Fire. She was due at work at five, and work was always fun.
If she chose to turn right, she knew full well she’d be choosing trouble. She’d already spent enough time obsessing about Brian and then, after she heard there was someone new, tracking down every detail she could find about Taylor Deen and her semifamous Greenwich Village family.
It was time to stop. Carly knew that.
She had a life. She had friends.
She raised her head, took a deep breath and a tentative half step left, toward the rest of her life. But then out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of that red sweater, and she went the other way.
2
CARLY HADN’T
set foot in Washington Square Park since the move. She’d walked by and around it a few times, after leaving Jess for her weekends at Nick’s, but hadn’t been able to walk through. Doing so would only increase her feeling of exile. Crossing the patch of trees and grass and asphalt she’d crossed thousands of times would dredge up the happy, irretrievable past. But when Taylor headed into the park, Carly followed.
Taylor walked right up to the fence surrounding the dog run and started snapping pictures. Carly hung back and sidestepped her way over to a bench. She sat down, dug out her notebook, and resumed scribbling. She did her best to look like a homesick NYU student writing poems about loneliness while she watched Taylor snapping away at the happy-to-be-off-leash dogs chasing and charging each other around the fenced-in patch of open space.
Carly recognized one of them, an Australian shepherd named Oz, whose eyes were two different colors. She scanned the benches for Professor and Mrs. Jackson, Oz’s owners. Carly had gotten to know the older English couple years before, when she was so deep into her dog-loving phase that she preferred the dog run to the playground. She’d stay there as long as Nick or her mother would allow, asking owners their dogs’ names, ages, and breeds, petting the ones who’d stand still long enough. Most owners tolerated Carly’s insistent questions, some more grumpily than others. But the Jacksons always seemed happy to see her and eager to share stories about Oz. They always dressed impeccably—Mrs. Jackson in a skirt, stockings, and sensible low-heeled shoes; Professor Jackson in a jacket (tweed or seersucker, depending on the season) and bow tie. They always sat on the same bench, drinking the milky tea they always brought in an old thermos with a tartan plaid exterior.
But only Professor Jackson was on the bench today. He was wearing fall tweed and holding—Carly had to squint to be sure—a blue-and-white take-out cup. Had something happened to Mrs. Jackson since Carly moved away?
Oz gamboled over to where Taylor stood and sniffed at her knees.
Taylor waved to Professor Jackson, who lifted his cup in greeting. Could Taylor know Professor Jackson? Had Carly and Taylor already crossed paths at the dog run or somewhere else in between the ten blocks that once separated them? Could they have played together in the tot lot when they were little?
That would be funny.
Or sad, depending on how you looked at things.
While Taylor talked to Professor Jackson, Carly’s eyes wandered across the path to the playground, where a man was pushing a baby girl on the swing with one hand while reading the folded-up newspaper he held in the other. Carly thought he was pushing a little too hard for that small a baby. It made her nervous to see how the baby bounced when she reached the apex of the upswing. The father wasn’t even watching. He too busy reading football scores or stock prices. The baby liked it just fine, though. She kicked her feet and waved her arms. Carly could hear her delighted squeals all the way over at her out-of-the-way bench.
When one of the baby’s little red shoes fell to the ground, the father didn’t notice. As Carly sat there debating whether she should run over and point out the missing shoe to the negligent father, Taylor swept in, scooped up the shoe from under the swinging baby, and offered it to him. He shoved the newspaper under his arm, stopped the swing, and put the shoe back on the baby’s foot while Taylor took pictures. With the hot girl watching and recording his actions for posterity, the guy suddenly couldn’t get enough of his progeny. He squeezed her thighs, pretended to chomp at her foot. Everything but the
goochy-goo
.
When Taylor waved good-bye, this Father of the Year candidate went right back to his old ways.
Taylor resumed a brisk pace as she headed for the fountain, where three firemen sat on the low concrete wall soaking up the sun, drinking Starbucks and laughing. One of them took his FDNY jacket off just as Taylor approached, conveniently revealing his broad shoulders and seriously hard arms.
When she aimed her camera at them, he elbowed the other guys and they started messing around, throwing their arms around each other’s shoulders, raising their coffee cups like they were toasting someone’s big news.
“No, no, don’t pose.” Taylor laughed. “Pretend I’m not here.”
That cracked them up. “Oh yeah, right. We’ll just pretend you’re not here,” said the buff one.
They kept right on mugging for the girl and her camera. She laughed along with them, took a few more shots, and then showed them the pictures on her camera. As she walked away, the weightlifter said, “Wait. I want a copy of that one. Lemme have your number.”
“Okay,” she said. “Two-one-two . . .”
This took him by surprise. “Whoa. Wait.” He dug in his front pocket, pulled out his phone, and flipped it open. “Okay. Two-one-two . . .”
With a big smile, she said, “Five-five-five—”
The other two got it first. They smirked at each other and watched their friend enter, “Five-five—”
When it dawned on him that she was giving him an obviously fake number, he shrugged, flipped his phone closed, and laughed along with his buddies.
Taylor laughed, too. Then she waved, turned around, and resumed her brisk pace. Carly followed.
When Carly passed the firemen, she heard Mr. Muscles say, “What? It was worth a shot.” Then his eyes lit on Carly. “Hey,” he said. “What’s the rush? There a fire somewhere? ”
She felt herself blush and walked faster, wishing she had Taylor’s quick comeback skills or a sassy friend like Taylor by her side.
Carly followed Taylor all the way to Chinatown, ducking into doorways, pretending to window-shop or faking cell-phone conversations whenever Taylor stopped to take pictures. There were some close calls. She had to jaywalk a few times or risk losing sight of Taylor, and one particularly aggressive cabbie almost ran her down. And once, she was so focused on Taylor’s red sweater that she didn’t see a woman and her two small children until she bumped smack into them, almost knocking the woman to the ground.
She apologized. Profusely. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said. But how sorry could Carly be if she didn’t even come to a complete stop? She slowed down, and faced the woman, humbly accepting the woman’s irate “What is wrong with you?” and “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” as she walked backward. But she never stopped moving. After one more “I know” and “I’m so sorry,” she turned her back on the woman and ran to make up the extra distance the incident had created between her and Taylor. She resolutely ignored the dirty looks she got from people who had witnessed the mishap.
Carly couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in Chinatown. It was just past noon and the place was packed, the sidewalks brimming with people and stuff for sale.
One place sold only slippers. Black canvas slippers, red imitation-silk slippers embroidered in gold, assorted flip-flops bearing unfamiliar cartoon characters.
Then there was a row of fish shops. Everywhere she looked she saw whole, dead fish on ice. One store had a grimy box of half-dead frogs. At first Carly thought they were all-the-way dead, but then she saw their throats expanding like tiny balloons and their beady black eyes blinking in slow motion.
Taylor seemed to know a lot of the vendors. They greeted her with big smiles and nods as she went from store to store, taking pictures of them and their wares. In one shop, she knelt in front of a barrel of oranges; in the next she squatted by a giant ceramic cat; in another she shot an enormous bin full of CDs, all with the face of a beautiful Chinese woman peeking out from behind a bouquet of red roses. Next to the bin was a life-sized cardboard cut-out of the smiling woman, which Taylor also photographed.
As crowded as it was in Chinatown, Carly found it harder to hide. Most of the other non-Chinese people were tourists, busy buying imitation-silk slippers, mini Statues of Liberty, and various items declaring how much they ♥ed NY.
The vendors who greeted Taylor with such friendly smiles had only suspicious looks for Carly. When Taylor stopped in front of a steamy restaurant window and started taking pictures of the headless ducks under orange lights, Carly browsed the offerings of a produce stand next door, where an old woman sitting on a high stool by the cash register watched her every move. When the old woman said something to the young girl stocking shelves with cellophane-wrapped nests of dried noodles, the girl left her task to follow Carly.
Carly thought maybe if she bought something, they’d leave her alone. It would also give her something to do while she waited for Taylor to finish. She reached for a brown paper bag and filled it with a dark leafy thing she thought was bok choy. She wasn’t sure because she’d only seen it cooked—and the sign, in Chinese characters, was no help. Whatever it was cost $1.99 a pound.
As she lifted each stalk into her bag, she’d sneak a peek over at Taylor, who was still with the ducks.
If she and Taylor were friends and on this expedition together, this would be when she would say,
Hey! How many shots of dead ducks can you possibly need?
And Taylor would say something funny back, and together they would laugh at Mean Vegetable Lady.
When the bag was half full, Carly brought it to the old woman, who grunted, looked inside, and practically threw it on the scale. They both watched as the needle registered a measly three quarters of a pound.
Over the old woman’s shoulder, Carly saw Taylor step away from the ducks and point her lens toward a long piece of some other kind of meat glistening in the restaurant window. The old woman turned to see what Carly was looking at and then turned back and said, “You’re right. She has much better boobs. And she’s prettier.”