In Five Years: A Novel - Rebecca Serle Page 0,56

downtown that is, as Nathaniel tells me, the “best raw space in Manhattan.” What he doesn’t say: Every nice hotel is booked, this is the best we’re going to get. Some couple called their wedding off and we got lucky.

The loft will mean more decisions—everything has to be brought in—but all of the available hotels are bland or too corporate, and we agree to follow Nathaniel’s lead and end up with something that splits the difference.

At first, the chemo goes well. Bella is a champion. “I feel great,” she tells me on her way home from the hospital after her second session. “No nausea, nothing.”

I’ve read, of course, that the beginning is a lie. That there is an air of suspension. Before the chemicals reach your tissues, dig in, and start really doing their damage. But I am hopeful, of course I am. I’m breathing.

I’m reading over the IPO offering for Yahtzee. Aldridge has already been to California to meet with them. If I choose to, I’ll leave in three weeks. It’s the dream case. Young female entrepreneurs, a managing partner overseeing, complete access to the deal.

“Of course, you should do it,” David tells me over a glass of wine and Greek salad takeout.

“I would be in LA for a month,” I say. “What about the wedding? And what about Bella?” What about missing her doctors’ appointments, not being here?

“Bella is doing well,” David says, reaching over the question. “She’d want you to go.”

“Doesn’t mean I should.”

David picks up his glass, drinks. The wine is a red we bought at a tasting on Long Island last fall. It was David’s favorite. I remember liking it fine, which is the way I feel about it tonight. Wine is wine.

“You have to make choices sometimes for yourself. It doesn’t make you a bad friend, it just means you put yourself first, which you should.”

What I don’t tell him, because I suspect, I know, that a lecture would follow, is that I don’t put myself first. I never have. Not when it comes to Bella.

“Nate said that we should go with the tiger’s lily and that no one does roses anymore,” I say, skating to the next subject.

“That’s insane,” David says. “It’s a wedding.”

I shrug. “I don’t care,” I say. “Do you?”

David takes another sip. He appears to be really considering. “No,” he says.

We sit in silence for a few moments.

“What do you want to do for your birthday?” he asks me.

My birthday. Next week. October 21. Thirty-three. “Your magic year,” Bella told me. “Your year of miracles. Same year Jesus died, and was resurrected.”

“Nothing,” I say. “It’s fine.”

“I’ll make a reservation,” David says. He gets up with his plate and goes to the counter, refilling on tzatziki and roasted eggplant. It’s a shame neither one of us cooks. We love to eat so very much.

“Who should we get to marry us?” David asks, and in the same breath: “I’ll ask my parents for Rabbi Shultz’s information.”

“You don’t have it?”

“I don’t,” he says, his back to me.

This is what marriage is, I know. Tiffs and comfortability, miscommunications and long stretches of silence. Years and years of support and care and imperfection. I thought we’d be long married by now. But I find, as I sit there, that a hitch of relief hits me when David still doesn’t have the rabbi’s information. Maybe he’s still a step away, too.

On Saturday, I go to Bella’s chemo appointment with her. She chats amicably to a nurse named Janine, who wears white scrubs with a hand-painted rainbow emblazoned on the back, as she hooks her up to the IV. Chemo is in a center on East One Hundred Second Street, two blocks up from where her surgery was performed. The chairs are wide, and the blankets are soft on the third floor of the Ruttenberg Treatment Center. Bella has a cashmere throw with her. “Janine is letting me store a basket here,” she tells me in a conspiratorial whisper.

Aaron shows up, and the three of us suck on popsicles and pass the time. Two hours later, we’re in an Uber going back downtown when Bella suddenly clutches my arm.

“Can we stop?” she asks. And then, more urgently, “Pull over.”

We do, on the corner of Park Avenue and Thirty-Ninth Street, and she climbs over Aaron to retch in the street. She starts puking with ferocity, the remains of a technicolor popsicle spew out with the bile.

“Hold her hair,” I tell Aaron, who gently rubs her back in small