Chapter 67
I don’t want anyone else, Dana thought miserably. I want her. Dear God, can’t you just make her wake up queer one day and solve all my problems? That isn’t asking too much, is it? Okay, thank you, bye.
Bethany’s job at the Consulate kept her working late most of the week, and Dana needed something to stay busy—the coffee shop and cheap art classes only went so far to take her mind off who Bethany might be talking to so prettily en fran?ais.Three years wasn’t too long after college to think about returning for a master’s degree, was it? January was a good time to start looking, too; Dana could gather information about nearby graduate schools, figure out what sort of degree she wanted to get, then begin applying for the fall semester if it wasn’t too late. Before taking the writing classes, she’d thought she might go for a Master of Fine Arts degree but now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe Library Science. That could be interesting.
Who was she kidding? She still didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life and here she was, almost thirty. If only Bethany was home, she’d have someone to commiserate with her about it over a glass of wine…
Only she knows now what she’s doing, Dana reminded herself. She has a good-paying job—no, a career, excuse me, doing something she loves. I’m the one doing jack shit. Who knows even when she’s going to be home? I’ll just swing by the store on my way home from work and get a bottle of wine and drink it myself. I don’t need her
But she did. And she knew she did. And that was part of the reason she was in such a funk to start with.
Dana was at the coffee shop until seven—she had another fifteen minutes before her shift ended. Maybe I’ll get two bottles. It’s going to be a long night.
* * * *
By the time she returned to the small apartment she shared with Bethany, it was already quarter after eight and dark as sin outside. No matter how long she lived in Manhattan, Dana swore she’d never get used to the sheer volume of people always out and about. She no longer owned a car and walked or took the subway everywhere she went, and had grown used to the jostling crowds and taking longer than normal to get around, but still…it was insane! Even now, as cold as it was outside, as dark, and as late, the sidewalks were packed, the streets jammed, every bodega and shop overflowing. Dana didn’t know where everyone came from, or where they all went. Back in college, she used to think DC was a busy place, but compared to New York? Apples to oranges, man. Apples to oranges.
Dana suspected Bethany wasn’t home from work yet, but she called out to her roommate anyway as she locked the door behind her. “Bethy?” The wine bottles rattled together dangerously in the paper bag she carried under one arm so she set them on the pass-through counter and walked into the living room, turning on lights as she went. “Bethany? You home?”
They were on the sixth floor of a brownstone building with small windows and thin walls. When the radiators turned off, she could hear the neighbors’ television blaring next door and the traffic outside, which never seemed to cease. In DC, she’d had a gorgeous view she had never grown tired of in all the time she’d lived there. Here, she could open the blinds and get an eyeful of the building across the street, a hulking behemoth of epic proportions that took up an entire city block and rose so high, it eclipsed any sunlight they might have otherwise gotten. It looked like the Empire State Building laid on its side.
Dana hated it.
She peeked out of the blinds at the damn thing, as if hoping against hope it might have lumbered away while she was out, found somewhere else to squat and let her building out of the shade for once. But no, there it was, big piece of shit. She didn’t even know what sort of businesses it housed; she just knew she loathed it and everything in it. If she had bothered to look out the windows at the view when they were scoping out apartments, she would never have chosen this one.
Aw, hell, who was she kidding? It’d been next to impossible to find a place to rent in Manhattan that was close enough to the Consulate for Bethany to commute daily and which they could afford. The apartment barely fit the two of them as it was, but it worked for what they needed at the moment. And if things were a little close, Dana didn’t mind. How could she bitch about the view outside the window when she sometimes got a glimpse of Bethany strutting around the tiny apartment in a bra and panties?
Cheap thrills,she thought, letting the blinds fall shut.