Read Online How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sloane Crosley
Ads: Link
called “friends” stealing her credit cards and photocopying her passport. Not cool, guys. Not cool. So I delved further, but too deep too fast, uttering more syllables through normal conversation than Sang had released in the past week. The more I detailed Nell’s crimes, the more Sang distanced herself from me.
“So, she wears your stuff without asking? Oh. I guess that can be annoying. I grew up with sisters, so—”
“So did I!” I attempted to sit up straight, but the couch pulled me back. “But this girl isn’t my sister.”
I did a quick mental montage of every time I had attempted to borrow an article of clothing from my sister in high school. Not one image featured her giving it to me of her own volition. Indeed, several featured locked drawers and slammed doors and, in one instance, a thrown Walk-man. I stole from her as a matter of habit. But Sang didn’t need to know this.
What she needed to know was that the first time I laid eyes on Nell was in a broker’s office. We were then chaperoned by a landlord showing us an apartment. Nell kept removing nuts from a plastic bag in her pocket and seemed concerned with installing motion sensors in the grateless windows, but I didn’t mind because I thought, Well, it’s good to snack , and I don’t know why I don’t carry around nuts more often. And New York is a dangerous place. Why should homeowners have a monopoly on protecting their bodies and their valuables with silent alarms? Desperation is a funny thing, I explained to Sang, who seemed never to have experienced the sensation. Rarely does it announce itself. It is instead the silent killer of expectations until you don’t think of yourself as desperate. You think of yourself as a reasonable person who compromises because that’s what living with a roommate is about, compromise....
I was losing her. She was lost in thought, looking me up and down. I strummed my knees to fill the silence.
“I like your picnic table.” I pointed.
“It’s not mine.” She looked with me.
“That’s cool.” I nodded.
When Sang escorted me to the door, I wasn’t sure how to say good-bye. A hug, a handshake, and direct eye contact were equally out of the question. This woman made me feel naked. Luckily, I had clothes on, so I opted to jam my fingers into my pockets and sway. On the street, cars honked in frustration, trying to get to the FDR. Sang leaned against the thick door frame.
“It’s quiet at night,” she said.
“Even with the ghosts?”
“What ghosts?”
“I read somewhere that this place used to be an old brothel. Apparently, a bunch of prostitutes threw themselves out the window.”
“My God.” Sang covered her mouth. “That’s horrible!”
“It’s sad.”
“No.” She wrapped the bones of her hand around my arm. “That’s so horrific.”
“Well”—I didn’t know how to handle this level of alertness—“it’s certainly whore- ific , I’ll give you that.”
Sang was not amused. Figures. The one time I’m cavalier about a subject and I’m underreacting. Certainly throwing oneself out the window is objectively worse than borrowing a bra without asking. But most people tended to have Sang’s reaction to Nell’s tendencies.
“Haven’t you ever noticed the pictures in the stairwell?” I asked Sang.
I knew making her feel foolish was probably not the key to her steely heart, but how could she not know? I didn’t expect her to turn into an Asian Scooby-Doo, but surely there was a baseline level of curiosity all humans shared. Food, shelter, clothing, creepy old shit. New Yorkers in particular are masochists when it comes to obtaining housing information that will only piss them off. We are gluttons for discovering that our twenty-unit apartment building used to be a single-family home. And not even a nice one at that.
“Huh,” she mused. “I thought they were from a thrift shop or something.”
I RETURNED TO MY APARTMENT AND LOOKED AT MY bedroom, which felt
“So, she wears your stuff without asking? Oh. I guess that can be annoying. I grew up with sisters, so—”
“So did I!” I attempted to sit up straight, but the couch pulled me back. “But this girl isn’t my sister.”
I did a quick mental montage of every time I had attempted to borrow an article of clothing from my sister in high school. Not one image featured her giving it to me of her own volition. Indeed, several featured locked drawers and slammed doors and, in one instance, a thrown Walk-man. I stole from her as a matter of habit. But Sang didn’t need to know this.
What she needed to know was that the first time I laid eyes on Nell was in a broker’s office. We were then chaperoned by a landlord showing us an apartment. Nell kept removing nuts from a plastic bag in her pocket and seemed concerned with installing motion sensors in the grateless windows, but I didn’t mind because I thought, Well, it’s good to snack , and I don’t know why I don’t carry around nuts more often. And New York is a dangerous place. Why should homeowners have a monopoly on protecting their bodies and their valuables with silent alarms? Desperation is a funny thing, I explained to Sang, who seemed never to have experienced the sensation. Rarely does it announce itself. It is instead the silent killer of expectations until you don’t think of yourself as desperate. You think of yourself as a reasonable person who compromises because that’s what living with a roommate is about, compromise....
I was losing her. She was lost in thought, looking me up and down. I strummed my knees to fill the silence.
“I like your picnic table.” I pointed.
“It’s not mine.” She looked with me.
“That’s cool.” I nodded.
When Sang escorted me to the door, I wasn’t sure how to say good-bye. A hug, a handshake, and direct eye contact were equally out of the question. This woman made me feel naked. Luckily, I had clothes on, so I opted to jam my fingers into my pockets and sway. On the street, cars honked in frustration, trying to get to the FDR. Sang leaned against the thick door frame.
“It’s quiet at night,” she said.
“Even with the ghosts?”
“What ghosts?”
“I read somewhere that this place used to be an old brothel. Apparently, a bunch of prostitutes threw themselves out the window.”
“My God.” Sang covered her mouth. “That’s horrible!”
“It’s sad.”
“No.” She wrapped the bones of her hand around my arm. “That’s so horrific.”
“Well”—I didn’t know how to handle this level of alertness—“it’s certainly whore- ific , I’ll give you that.”
Sang was not amused. Figures. The one time I’m cavalier about a subject and I’m underreacting. Certainly throwing oneself out the window is objectively worse than borrowing a bra without asking. But most people tended to have Sang’s reaction to Nell’s tendencies.
“Haven’t you ever noticed the pictures in the stairwell?” I asked Sang.
I knew making her feel foolish was probably not the key to her steely heart, but how could she not know? I didn’t expect her to turn into an Asian Scooby-Doo, but surely there was a baseline level of curiosity all humans shared. Food, shelter, clothing, creepy old shit. New Yorkers in particular are masochists when it comes to obtaining housing information that will only piss them off. We are gluttons for discovering that our twenty-unit apartment building used to be a single-family home. And not even a nice one at that.
“Huh,” she mused. “I thought they were from a thrift shop or something.”
I RETURNED TO MY APARTMENT AND LOOKED AT MY bedroom, which felt
Similar Books
