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“What else do you do?” She’s leaning slightly forward now, like she really wants to know.
“Uhh. Watch TV. Go out to a show sometimes.” A show, Luca?
“What kind of shows?”
“You know. Plays and shit.” Oh yes. Plays and shit. I take a swallow of the cider stuff.
“Do you go out with Isa?”
Ah, fuck. It takes some effort to keep my face neutral. “Isa’s not around much.”
“Where is she?”
“She travels.”
“She does that for work, right?”
I snort, and then feel like a dick for belittling Isa’s job. “Yeah, it’s work, I guess.”
“She gets paid, right?”
“Oh yeah. Lots of people pay her, plus they send her things in the mail.”
“Sounds like a pretty cool job to me.” Elise looks earnest, like she’s trying to be generous. It would make me smile, except I don’t really want to talk about jobs.
She takes a swallow of her cider, and my hunch was right. It was a good move to be across from her.
“What about you?” she asks. “Do you like what you do? You asked me that.”
Shit, I guess I did—up on the roof that night at the CB.
“Did you answer?” I give her an exaggerated side-eye sort of look, intended to distract.
I can tell I make my mark, because her cheeks flush. “I’m not sure.”
“Is that a ‘no’ from you then?”
“No, I mean—it’s a yes. I do like it. So far. Kind of.”
“That’s a lot of qualifiers, Ms.—O’Hara.”
She laughs, shaking her head.
I got a degree in philosophy, I think of saying. That’s because I want her to see me in a certain light. But…I can’t. I can’t tell her I got started the spring after she stepped into the elevator with me. That Columbia was still happy to take me on—free of charge. I bet she would laugh if she knew I almost went with economics, but it seemed too dry, and also pointless. All that talk about wealth.
I’m worth millions is another thing I’d love to say to Elise. It’s true, after all. Some of it was gifted to me by Lamberto, but isn’t that how wealth is almost always obtained? That old fuck brought me into his ill-begotten line of inheritance, and I didn’t even know till more than a year after he died. I made lots of it myself, too. Investing. Economics, I think with a smirk.
“What are you looking at me like that for?” She touches her mouth with a napkin, and I smile.
“Define ‘like that.’”
“You were smirking.”
“Not at you.”
“I do like my job,” she says, sounding more sure this time. “I don’t like the way it intersects with you, though.”
Oh, so we’re gonna go there. I press my lips together. “If it intersects with me, you probably better not say much. Yeah?”
Her face reddens. “Not you personally. I mean…unless it did.”
“It doesn’t matter, E. And I don’t need to hear about it.”
“That’s a stupid thing to say. Of course it matters. From your vantage point, what matters more?”
“Global warming. The fallibility of democracy. A decline in bees. The widening gap between socioeconomic classes, for-profit healthcare, A.I., poverty and starvation, human trafficking—”
“Matter more to you than your own fate?” she cuts in.
I lift my brows. “Just being objective.”
She gives a hoarse laugh. “From whose point of view?”
“Well…mine.”
“Your point of view is supposed to be pointed toward you.” She gives me a topsy-turvy smile.
“I don’t think that’s always how it works.”
“Not always,” she agrees.
“In this case, it’s pointed toward you.” I arch a brow at her. I’m sort of trying to be funny, but her face goes somber, so I know I fucked that up. Her features soften, her eyes widen, and her mouth does something that I know means she’s caught feels. “Don’t ask me why. Just take it, O’Hara.”
She looks like a deer in headlights.
My foot finds hers underneath the table. “C’mon. Don’t be looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re worried. Or upset.”
“Well, I’m both.” She sounds exasperated.
I come around and take the seat beside her. “I thought you came over to have this off-the-radar night, forget your troubles eating lemon cake and pizza.” I press my leg against hers. Then I can’t resist rubbing my hand down her shoulder. “Don’t get bogged down by that other shit.”
“What other shit?”
“The anything that makes you think too hard shit. Stuff like jobs and worrying and who’s on what team, who would do what if whatever happened. You know what I’d do if whatever happened?”
She blinks at me.
“I don’t know.” I throw my hands up, miming my grandmother. “Who knows, la mia rosa. And who cares?”
Her eyes glisten, and she blinks. “That reminds me of a story,” she says hoarsely.18EliseI’m the kind of person who asks the universe for signs. It’s a secret, of course. No good, self-respecting prosecutor requests signs. That’s like believing in app horoscopes or having lucky socks. But I’m a closet sign-seeker.
