LITMIR.BIZ

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for a little while, but Andy still couldn’t fill that interminable stretch of time between finishing work and going to sleep. She’d gotten drinks a couple of times with her editor, a tiger of a woman who mostly looked over Andy’s shoulder at the recent college graduates milling around the happy-hour bars they frequented, and occasionally she’d see a Brown acquaintance for dinner or a friend visiting New York on business, but mostly Andy was alone. Alex had dropped off the face of the planet. He hadn’t called a single time, and the only contact had been a curt ‘Thanks so much for remembering, hope you’re well’ e-mail in response to a long, emotional, and in hindsight, humiliating voice mail Andy left for his twenty-fourth birthday. Lily was happily settled in Boulder and babbling excitedly about her apartment, her new office, and some yoga class she’d tried and loved. She couldn’t even fake being miserable for Andy’s sake. And Andy’s parents officially separated after agreeing that Mrs Sachs would keep the house and Andy’s father would move to a new condo closer to town. Apparently the papers were filed, they were both in therapy – although separately this time – and each was ‘at peace’ with the decision.

      It was a long, cold winter. A long, cold, lonely winter. And so she did what every young New Yorker before her had done at some point during their first decade in the city and signed up for a ‘How to Boil Water’ cooking class.

      It had seemed like a good idea, considering she only used her oven for storing catalogs and magazines. The only ‘cooking’ she ever did was with a coffeepot or a jar of peanut butter, and ordering in – regardless of how frugal she tried to be – was way too expensive. It would have been a good idea, if New York wasn’t the smallest city in the world at the exact times you needed anonymity: sitting across the test kitchen from Andy on her very first day of class, looking supremely hassled and a lot intimidating, was none other than Runway first assistant extraordinaire Emily Charlton.

      Eight million people in New York City and Andy couldn’t avoid her only known enemy? She desperately wished for a baseball cap, oversize sunglasses, anything at all that could shield her from the imminent blaze-eyed glare that still haunted Andy’s nightmares. Should she leave? Withdraw? See about attending another night? As she debated her options, the instructor read the class roster; at the sound of Andy’s name, Emily jolted a bit but recovered well. They managed to avoid eye contact and came to an unspoken agreement to pretend they didn’t recognize each other. Emily was absent the second class, and Andy was hopeful she had bailed on the course altogether; Andy missed the third one because of work. Each was displeased to see the other at the fourth class, but there was some subtle shift making it too difficult for them to ignore each other entirely, and the girls nodded an icy acknowledgment. By the end of the fifth class, Andy grunted a barely discernible ‘Hey’ in Emily’s general direction and Emily grunted back. Only one more session to go! It was conceivable, even likely, that they could each finish out the course with nothing more than guttural sounds exchanged, and Andy was relieved. But then the unthinkable happened. One minute the instructor was reading the ingredient list for that night’s meal, and the next he was pairing the two sworn enemies together as ‘kitchen partners,’ putting Emily in charge of prep work and instructing Andy to oversee the sautéing. Their eyes met for the first time, but each looked quickly away. One glance and Andy could tell: Emily was dreading this as much as she was.

      They moved wordlessly into position side by side, and when Emily settled into a rhythm of slicing zucchini into matchsticks, Andy forced herself to say, ‘So, how is everything?’

      ‘Everything? It’s fine.’ Emily still excelled at conveying that she found every word Andy uttered extremely distasteful. It was almost comforting to see nothing had changed. Although Andy could tell Emily didn’t want to ask and couldn’t have cared less about the answer, Emily managed to ask, ‘How about you?’

      ‘Oh, me? Fine, everything’s fine. I can’t believe it’s already been a year, can you?’

      Silence.

      ‘You remember Alex, right? Well, he ended up moving to Mississippi, for a teaching job.’ Andy still couldn’t bring herself to admit that he’d broken up with her. She willed herself to stop talking but she couldn’t. ‘And Lily, that friend of mine who was always stopping by the office late at night, after Miranda left, the one who had the accident while I was in Paris? She moved too! To Boulder. I never thought she had it in her, but she’s become a yoga fanatic and a rock climber in, like, under six months. I’m actually writing now for a wedding blog, Happily Ever After. Have you heard of it?’

      Emily smiled, not meanly but not nicely either. ‘Is Happily Ever After affiliated with The New Yorker? Because I remember there was a lot of talk about writing for them …’

      Andy felt her face grow hot. How naïve she’d been! So young and foolish. A couple of years hitting the pavement, interviewing subjects and writing dozens of pieces that would never get published, cold-calling editors and relentlessly pitching story ideas, had set her straight: it was an enormous accomplishment to be published anywhere, writing about anything, in this city.

      ‘Yeah, that was pretty stupid of me,’ Andy said quietly. She stole a quick glance at Emily’s thigh-high boots and buttery leather motorcycle jacket and asked, ‘What about you? Are you still at Runway?’

      She’d inquired merely to be polite since there was no doubt Emily had been promoted to something glamorous, where she would happily remain until she married a billionaire or died, whichever came first.

      Emily doubled down on her zucchini slicing, and Andy prayed she wouldn’t nick off a fingertip. ‘No.’

      The tension was palpable as Andy accepted Emily’s matchsticks and sprinkled them with chopped garlic, salt, and pepper before adding them to the sizzling pan. Immediately it began spitting olive oil.

      ‘Turn down that heat!’ the instructor called from his perch at the front of the kitchen. ‘We’re browning zucchini here, not having a bonfire.’

      Emily adjusted the stovetop flame and rolled her eyes, and with that barely perceptible movement, Andy was transported directly to their anteroom offices at Runway, where Emily had rolled those same, slightly brighter eyes a thousand times each day. Miranda would call out a request for a milkshake or a new SUV or a python tote bag or a pediatrician or a flight to the Dominican Republic; Andy would flounder about, trying to decode what she was saying; Emily would roll her eyes and loudly sigh at Andy’s incompetence. Then they’d rinse and repeat, over and over again.

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