Tim Murphy - Christodora

Drew had said this to her many times before. Sure, when you compared Milly with people like Drew and her mother, it was true. But what a pain in the ass it was being the stable, even-keeled one! When do I get to be the mess and have people take care of me? Milly thought.

But she didn’t say that. She just said: “I mean, why take the chance? Why go through the pain of watching someone you brought into this world go through the pain of going through that?”

“Sweetie, look at the pain we’ve both been through,” said Drew. “And we’re not even thirty!” Milly laughed a bit in spite of herself. “Would you rather not have been born than go through it?”

“Hmm,” Milly said. “Now that’s a tough one.”

Later that night, right after midnight, they were at the extremely burnt-orange-looking Rat Pack — era Dresden Room, in a banquette with Christian and a handsome screenwriter friend of his named Fabrice and Fabrice’s girlfriend, Sonya, a handbag designer from St. Louis. Milly, Drew, and Christian drank Pellegrino and Fabrice and Sonya drank martinis. Milly looked around; it was all about trying to look like Pulp Fiction these days, she noticed, the guys in their white spread-collar shirts underneath black jackets, the women with their Uma Thurman blunt cuts. The singing duo, Marty and Elayne, were noodling ridiculously over their synthesizer to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”

Milly, bobbing her head, threw an affectionate look at Drew, as though to say, This is so cheesy, I love it! But she caught Drew’s eyes following the arc of someone’s path in the club, a path that led right to the banquette, and suddenly Drew was exclaiming, “Oh my God! Well, hi, guys!”

Milly turned — and felt the blood drain from her face. There was Jared with his New York high school friends Asa and Jeremy. What on earth was he doing here? Was this some kind of a setup? Had Drew said something to the boys? Would Drew do something like that to her?

But Milly made the snap decision to try to deal with the situation like an adult. “Oh my God,” she exclaimed to Jared, trying to sound cheerful — or at least not dismayed. “I didn’t know you were here this weekend.”

“I didn’t know you were here,” he said. He’d grown his hair out. He looked — older? Just a bit — thicker? Sadder? Milly couldn’t quite determine. He was wearing his dad’s maroon corduroy Pierre Cardin jacket from the 1970s. Milly felt her whole body prop up in the banquette.

“I—” Jared fumbled. “Jeremy just moved out here.”

“I knew that!” Drew said, eyes wide, standing up to kiss hello Jared and the boys. “I’d heard that!”

There was dead silence around the banquette for a moment, then everyone laughed ridiculously to dispel the awkwardness. “Well,” Drew continued. “Are — did you guys just get here? Do you want to join us?” Drew started bumping Christian, Fabrice, and Sonya to the left, opening up the right flank of the banquette. Milly had no choice but to bump to the left as well, and soon Jared was sliding in beside her, right up against her — oh God, she could smell that bacon-y smell of his! — with his boys to his right. Jared didn’t kiss her, didn’t touch her.

“Hi,” he told her. “Uh, I had no idea you were going to be here this weekend.”

“I had no idea, either,” she said. “I mean, I had no idea you’d be here.”

Asa and Jeremy were saying hello to her now, asking about her mom and dad — they’d known her since junior high school, as had Jared. They got talking about New York friends and what they were doing now. She was sort of talking over Jared, who, when he wasn’t talking over her to ask Drew about L.A., was fairly quiet. Their jawlines were in near proximity at a strange angle. She glanced awkwardly at him; their eyes briefly met and she saw that same flash of sadness again, or was it anger? His thigh, pressed against her own in the too-crowded banquette, flooded her with memories of his body, of the different ways their bodies had fit together. Already, she could see Drew settling back into conversation with Fabrice and Sonya, Asa and Jeremy back into each other.

It was just too loud and too difficult to maintain conversations across the banquette. They would have to talk.

“When are you here till?” she asked him.

“Monday. I’m flying back with Asa Monday morning, then I have to go back and work on MFA apps.”

“You’re applying to art school? I didn’t know.” Of course she didn’t know that; they hadn’t been in touch. “Oh, wow. That’s so great. Where?”

“Yale, Columbia, Chicago, NYU. That’s it.”

“That’s it ? That’s a lot!”

“I know. I’ve been crazy pulling it all together.”

“I’m sure!”

Then they instantly fell into a miserable black hole of silence.

“Well,” she continued, “I’m really glad to hear you’re applying.”

“Yeah.” Jared shrugged. “How about you? How’s your work?”

“It’s good, it’s good. I like my new place. The light is great.”

“That’s good.” He sounded severe saying it. He doesn’t want to hear about my new place that I ditched him for, Milly thought. “How’s your mom and dad?”

“They’re good.” She laughed. “They were going to dinner at Blue Ribbon tonight.”

He laughed, too. “So trendy.”

“That’s exactly what I told them! And my mom is — she’s very busy, but she’s good. She’s. . stable.”

“That’s good.”

Milly could feel herself sinking into a miasma of sadness. How many nights had he sat with her, lay with her, while she bitched and cried and anguished over her mom? How many times had he told her that she had to take care of herself and not get caught up in her mom’s madness, while never saying a mean word about Ava? How many times had he chatted amiably with Ava when Ava called and Milly was out, or in the shower?

“How’re your folks?” she asked.

He nodded slowly, as though to say good. “They can’t wait to get back to Long Island when winter’s done.” He meant Montauk, where their summerhouse was. All the days and nights at that house, Milly recalled: the sketching on the beach, the sex on the washing machine in the pantry while his folks went to buy fish and corn for dinner. His hand was lingering not three inches from her own. She desperately wanted to take it — the impulse was overwhelming, maddening; she could feel her own hand twitching to jump, her gaze flicking back hopelessly to the curve of his jaw, the hereditary faint dark circles under his brown eyes that falsely gave him the air of fatigue.

“How’s your work?” he asked her, as though reading her mind.

“Oh! Oh, it’s good,” she said. She actually meant it. She’d been very productive in the past few months; she certainly couldn’t complain about that.

“How’s the big canvas with the — you know, with the impasto — the flowerlike things?”

“Oh, it’s beautiful, thank you!” she said. How weirdly formal this was! But she could remember Jared’s excitement about that painting when she started it. “I finished it; I think it’s going to be in a group show in a few months.”

He smiled with the same tints of melancholy and resentment. “That’s great.”

Under the table, Drew squeezed her knee, a supportive gesture. Marty and Elayne were finishing up “Time after Time.” Then, impossibly, they began “The End of a Love Affair,” a Billie Holiday song Milly had loved on a mix tape Jared had made her.

She and Jared looked at each other helplessly, then started laughing. What else could they do? Jared rubbed his head in his hands.

Milly turned to Drew, who looked — wait, that first instinct had been right — didn’t she look a bit smug and triumphant? Still laughing, but perhaps with some rage seeping in, Milly asked, “Drew, honestly, did you plan this? Did you stage this?”