Jennifer DuBois - Cartwheel

“I don’t know,” said Katy. “I bet he’d want to be invited.”

“Eh,” said Lily, and shrugged again. “Maybe it’s time to meet someone new.”

Katy frowned a moment, and Lily saw her sober self—endlessly concerned with feelings and appropriateness, Lily had always thought, though now she had to wonder—shine through for a moment. But then Katy smiled and said, “Well, maybe. You do look hot.”

Lily made herself laugh and wiggle along to the song. “You think so?” She twirled around and then slapped Katy lightly on the arm. “And how about you, missy? Ready to put down your widow’s weeds and have some fun?”

Katy blushed—blushing always made Lily look like she’d just had some kind of fit, but it made Katy look tawny and healthy and shining. “Maybe,” she said.

“Maybe!” squealed Lily. She was not naturally a squealer, and she didn’t much care for the voices she found herself employing when she was trying to be friendly to other women. But this was, like many things in life, a necessary evil. “Listen to you. What, do you like someone?”

Katy blushed even deeper. “Maybe,” she said. “Not yet.”

At Fuego, Lily quickly saw how much she was going to enjoy knowing people that Katy did not know. She found herself waving manically at coworkers she didn’t usually talk to, using first names more than was usual or required, making reference to fairly mundane incidents as though they were in-jokes (“Hopefully no more guys ordering Patrón tonight, right, Roderigo?” she said; Roderigo looked confused). “Oi, Hector!” she shouted at Hector. “Can we get a couple of vodka tonics?” She handed Katy her drink with theatrical magnanimousness, as though Fuego were her home and Katy her guest. Katy accepted her drink happily, then handed it back to Lily almost immediately and went off to find a bathroom.

Lily made her way to an unobtrusive corner and gulped her own drink, nodding her head along to the music. She could feel the beat in her chest, more insistent than her own heart. She nodded at some coworkers, but they were all working. She made small talk with a couple of kids from the program who had wandered into the club in the hopes of free drinks. She began sipping Katy’s drink. She experienced a flush of awkwardness at standing alone, then a surge of liberated spunky indifference, then a second wave of chilling and recalcitrant discomfort. She finished Katy’s drink and headed back to the bar. As she was paying—because it was understood that you didn’t take more than one round for free—she saw Ignacio the Tortoise out of the corner of her eye. He was in the back alcove, near the kitchen, and he was with a woman. Lily squinted. The woman was Katy. The woman was Katy, and Ignacio was grabbing her ass with two hands. Lily did a double take. When she turned back, they were just talking. Did Katy look upset? Did she look traumatized? It was hard to say. Around her, the club was a wavery, hilarious smear, and Lily felt very far away from everything. She grabbed her drink and marched over.

“I need you to come with me,” she said, pulling Katy’s arm. She tried to look distressed so that Ignacio would assume some dull girl problem was at hand, but then she felt actual distress breaking through on her face, and she realized there was no need to pretend.

“What?” said Ignacio. “What are you doing?”

“Come with me,” said Lily. She pointed to the bathroom and spilled her drink a little on the floor. Katy shrugged apologetically at Ignacio the Tortoise and followed Lily to the women’s room. In the tawdry bathroom light, she looked at Lily hard, one hand on her hip.

“Are you okay?” she said.

“Are you okay?” said Lily. “That’s the question.”

“What are you talking about?”

Somehow Lily couldn’t remember exactly why she’d brought Katy into the bathroom, but she knew there was something important they needed to discuss. “We need to talk,” she said.

Katy looked solemn. “Okay,” she said.

“We really need to talk,” Lily said, and then stopped. She careened around her own brain for a moment before tripping on the sharpest object. Suddenly she was filled with the piercing confidence that comes from unraveling a conspiracy. “Why didn’t you defend me?” she said.

“What?”

The toilet flushed and a girl came out, staggering and fawnlike on her high heels, and washed her hands without using soap. Out of a strange retroactive sense of propriety, Lily waited until she left to continue.

“From Beatriz.”

“What? When?”

“When she found me looking at that paper.” Yes, that was what it all came down to. Katy had betrayed her, and now it was time they finally discussed it.

“Defend you? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Beatriz just doesn’t like me,” said Lily. “That’s all. It’s just not fair.”

“Well, Carlos likes you,” said Katy. Lily knew then that Katy was a little drunk too.

“Carlos likes everybody,” said Lily.

“No. He doesn’t like me. He thinks I’m boring because I’m quiet.”

“He doesn’t.”

“Isn’t that what you think, too?”

Lily mulled this. It was so obviously true that she did not know what to say. She’d thought this was the kind of truth that had been so thoroughly tacitly acknowledged as to be well beyond mention—like when a thin girl complains ceaselessly about her body to a fat friend, and the flagrant cruelty of this is both mutually understood and mutually unspeakable.

“Did you ever think about how it might make Beatriz feel that Carlos likes you so much?” said Katy.

Lily felt a blank cotton taste in her mouth. “It’s not like that,” she said.

“I know it’s not. But don’t you think it might feel like that to Beatriz? All the drinking and laughing and debating? And you’re so young and gorgeous?”

Lily shook her head. Katy should really not have said “gorgeous.” She really should have opted for a smaller word. Lily’s mouth was twitching with real heft and persistence now; she kept waiting to lose it entirely and begin crying, and she kept not quite doing this—but neither could she get the twitching under control, and she knew she must look like a waiter trying so comically hard not to drop a platter of dishware that you just wish he’d go ahead and throw the whole thing on the floor.

“I’m not saying she thinks anything’s happening,” said Katy, who was watching Lily’s face with some alarm. “Of course not. I just think that if you want Beatriz to like you better you might think about toning it down some with Carlos.”

“Toning what down?” Lily nearly wailed. She could not figure out what Katy was referring to. It wasn’t how she dressed. It wasn’t what she and Carlos talked about. It certainly wasn’t the way she acted—she did not touch Carlos’s arm, she did not bat her eyelashes coquettishly, she did not tilt her head back and laugh, she did not twirl her hair. She knew she didn’t; she wouldn’t like herself if she did.

“Just,” said Katy. She bit her lip. “Your personality.”

“My personality?”

“Just, you know. The things you do.”

“ What things?”

“Well, like, answering the phone is a perfect example.”

“That was only polite! What are you talking about! You wouldn’t have answered the phone?”

“Well, think about it. They have an answering machine, right? So it’s not like they’re going to miss this once-in-a-lifetime phone call telling them they’ve won the lottery and never find out.”

Lily gaped. Another gaggle of girls—shiny-shirted, shiny-haired—entered the bathroom and spilled together into one stall, where there was shuffling and shushing and sniffing and then, finally, giggling.