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The moment you realized that you weren’t going to be the best of the best was one of the strangest in the world. I mean, I knew there wasn’t room at the top for everyone.
But I thought there would be room for me.
Mostly, I stayed at home and taught SAT classes at the local high school and worked part-time at the local newspaper. I freelanced a bit and applied to other things, but searching for jobs was exhausting when you already had one. I applied for the dream jobs, the one I’d give my right arm to have, but never expected to hear back from.
Like the one I’d just landed in New York.
Conglomerates like the Today Media network didn’t usually hire journalists with small-town clippings, no matter how many college awards they’d won. I used to think being the managing editor at the Berkley newspaper meant something, but that was before I realized most writers had journalism school credentials or had unpaid interned their way in.
But I lucked out; I freelanced a piece on withdrawing the salaries of coaches that got picked up by one of the major online news sites, and within two weeks garnered hundreds of comments. Okay, most of them were angry with me, but it still looked impressive in my résumé.
In a second serendipitous stroke, Tanya Jones, editor of Sports Today, received my application, read my piece and lost one of her writers to New Today, the media group’s mainstream news source, all on the same day. She had her assistant call me up and asked where I lived. I lied and said New York, giving my aunt’s address. They asked me to come in for an interview; after some wrangling, I got it scheduled for a week later, when I’d be in town for my aunt’s birthday. Twenty-four hours after the interview, they offered me the position with a low salary and few benefits. I jumped at it.
I’d pushed off starting the job until Rosh Hashanah, but it seemed silly to ask them to let me have an additional week for Yom Kippur, especially when we really just went to some Temple friends’ house and chilled. I’d start on the twenty-fifth, and arrive on the twenty-second, giving me several days to get used to the city and unpack before jumping straight into a new job.
Mrs. Krasner leaned forward and caught my hand, her own warm and papery. “Give him another chance, Tamar.”
“He’s not even interested.”
She shook her head and didn’t let go. “When he realizes he is. Promise to give him another chance.”
And how could I refuse, despite knowing full well how uninterested her grandson was in me? “Of course.”
New York
My plane circled JFK five times before landing due to storm winds. When we finally plowed through the clouds, the turbulence caused the three children behind me to burst into a high-pitched rendition of Mozart’s “Haffner Serenade.” The eight-month-old did a particularly impressive tribute to the violin solo. Beside me, the fifty-something man cursed quietly as he continued to play solitaire on his iPhone.
I gazed at the gray-black clouds with uneasy contemplation. I’d been nervous when the plane climbed to altitude but fine after it leveled out. Now, though, I was uneasy again, ready for the plane to fall out of the sky any second. I didn’t like when the plane dipped dramatically in one direction, one wing to the ground and one slicing into the sky. It made my stomach swoop and my feet tingle, and my hands clung to the armrests with a slippery grasp.
The entire descent, I breathed shakily and held my body tense, but we finally landed in one piece. Yet then we had to sit on the runway for an extra hour, and then it turned out my luggage had gone to Amsterdam—I swear, my luggage was better traveled than I was—so all in all, it wasn’t the most auspicious arrival to the city where I’d centered all my dreams.
The minute I stepped into the New York air, I could feel moisture percolating through my face to lie in a fine sheen of perspiration upon my skin. My hair lifted away from my head as each follicle seemed to expand and become more susceptible to tangling, forming a massive cloud that hovered on either side of my head.
Ah, humidity.
I’d never actually been to the apartment I was moving into, which I’d acquired through word of mouth. I’d never even been to Astoria, though I’d heard of the neighborhood plenty of times. When I arrived at the three-story building, conveniently located across from a bodega and above a delicious-smelling Greek taverna, I texted the number I’d been given. Jasmine Rivas buzzed me up within seconds. She was small and athletic, her dark hair thrown up in a ponytail. “Hey. How was your trip?”
“Good, thanks.” I tried to shove my frizzing curls off my forehead. How was it possible for my hair to be sticky and frizzy at the same time? “I’m Tamar.” Which she knew, of course, since we’d been emailing and texting, but it still felt weird to act like we’d met when we never had.
“Jasmine. Come on in.” She led me into the narrow hallways beyond the door. “So you’re Kari’s friend’s cousin?”
“Uh, Kari’s cousin’s friend.”
She shrugged, unconcerned by the particulars. “Well, we’re glad you’re here. You wouldn’t believe some of the crazies we’ve had from subletting through Craigslist. One girl did PX-90 like every night. We were like, just join a gym like a normal person.”
I had no idea what PX-90 was. Also, I had no plans to join a gym. Especially after climbing to the fifth floor.
“Okay, so here’s the grand tour.” She walked down the long hall, banging and gesturing on rooms to the left. “Sabeen’s room. She’s from Iraq, just moved in two months ago. Kitchen. Bathroom.”
The kitchen wasn’t bad; maybe five by five, with a tiny window facing into the apartment across the air draft. It fit a full fridge and stove. As we reached the bathroom, the door swung inward and a cloud of steam poured out, along with a tall girl wrapped in a towel. Jasmine gestured at her. “This is Lucy.” The girl waved before ducking into the next room down. “She’s an actress.”
As if on cue, Lucy started belting something from The Last Five Years behind her closed door.
The hallway opened up into the dining room/living room setup, where a table for six was pushed against a wall. A red couch and two chairs took up the rest of the room, and a bookcase filled with novels and textbooks fit in one corner. Light poured in from long windows and streamed across the wooden floorboards. While three of the walls were white, the one with windows had been painted a pale, summery green.
“It looks great.”
Jasmine nodded in acknowledgment. “Thanks. We just repainted the walls last month. Makes it look surprisingly less shitty.” She gestured across the living room at two doors. “I’m on the left, you’re on the right.”
