and called it “she” at Orla’s six-month checkup. “I’m so sorry,” she had gasped, looking like she might cry. “But how do you feel, now that you know?” She wiped the goo from Orla’s stomach. “A girl is wonderful, isn’t it?” Orla had nodded. But all she felt was fear, and an understanding of why she had delayed this moment. It made everything real.
Randomly, Floss and Aston sent her pink peonies that same afternoon. No message on the card, just their names. Orla shoved the glass cube to one end of the counter and set her laptop down. She thought she might Facebook-message Danny. She was thinking she should tell him the truth. Then she made the mistake of looking at some new pictures he’d posted. Being from Mifflin, she got the logic behind them: it was his penance for spending time in her fancy world, acting this much like a hick. Orla saw that he had bought a pickup truck and raised it high off its tires. The rear windshield had a decal that said, “Jack ’Em Up—Fat Girls Can’t Jump.”
“No,” she said aloud when she saw it. That was the end of telling Danny.
Polly sent her notes on Orla’s book by messenger. Red ink filled the pages—brutal double-circles, incredulous question marks. Orla’s eyes swam. She slid the papers back into their orange envelope. She turned the envelope over and saw that there was another piece of mail stuck in its seam: her rent check for the next month.
Downstairs, the super, Manny, was sitting with his son, Linus, who had just come home from school. Orla watched the boy’s eyes flit down toward her breasts as she asked why her check had been returned.
“Because your roommate bought the apartment.” Manny smirked, his lip twisting up over a graying incisor. “How do you not know this?”
I just didn’t want you to worry about rent and stuff, Floss wrote when Orla asked if it was true. Consider it yours for life. “I,” Orla thought. Not “we.” She had suspected, the minute she stepped onto Pineapple Street, that it was Floss’s money behind this. Renting big houses in Brooklyn, buying dinged-up Chelsea units—Floss had been forcing down free vodka and borrowing dresses for years now, acting like she wasn’t paying any attention to what she was doing. But Floss was always paying attention. She had been saving up for just the right thing.
No matter what you decide, Floss added, when Orla didn’t respond.
OK, Orla finally wrote. She walked down the hall and looked into Floss’s room for the first time since the movers had been there. It was so big, and she had been there before Floss. Why hadn’t she ever thought to take it for herself?
Like Aston said, Floss went on. Your family.
Orla’s thumbs couldn’t help themselves. It’s you’re.
I think its your
It’s IT’S and it’s YOU’RE
I know I’m just fucking with you now
Orla didn’t know what to say next. Floss was starting another thought, her little gray text bubble wavering, disappearing, reappearing. When she couldn’t watch anymore, Orla went back to the lobby. Manny was gone, but Linus was there, spinning slowly on his father’s stool.
“I want to get the wall taken down in my apartment, the one I put up to make it a two-bedroom,” she said to him. “Do you know what your dad tells people for that?”
Linus reached into a slot in the desk. He passed her a business card. “This guy,” he said. “I think it’s twelve hundred dollars.”
“Oh, no.” Orla shook her head. “I paid that up front.”
“Yeah.” Linus smiled ruefully. “They charge you twelve hundred to put it up, twelve hundred to take it back down.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Orla said, then, “Sorry.” She had forgotten for a minute that he was just a kid. “Hey,” she said, changing her tone and leaning over, tipping her cleavage forward. “Completely unrelated—could I borrow your dad’s ax?”
An hour later, the wall was gone. It lay on the floor in pieces that had chimed improbably as they fell. A jagged edge remained along the walls and ceiling, hinting at what had been there. The air was misty with flecks of drywall, bouncing in the sunlight that hit Orla’s living room furniture—her couch, her rug—for the first time ever. Everything was even more worn and cheap-looking than she thought.
Her phone buzzed. Orla pulled down the silk Hermès scarf she had been using as a makeshift mask, wiped her fingers on her sweatpants, and picked it up.