she had a new voice mail, she made herself get up. Her impossibly low-slung stomach rubbed along the tops of her thighs. She thought about the way Floss had danced in the clips from the wedding. She had jumped right off the ground during “Shout.” Had no one found that suspicious, with her presenting as any-moment-now? Had no one at the wedding ever been pregnant before?
Orla’s voice mail was from the bride. Floss spoke over the sound of muffled conversation, Aston talking to someone in the merry voice he used to make service workers think he was like them. “Just thinking of you,” Floss said. “We missed you at the wedding. Did you watch? I’m not sure if you could get it in St. Lucia.” She paused and coughed. “If you did, you might have noticed we went in a different direction.”
Might! Orla thought. Have noticed!
Floss went on. “The network and Mason, I dunno. They got weird at the last minute. They said we needed to do it like this or else it’d look like we exploited you. I didn’t want to do it. I mean, did you see that belly? I cried. Who wants to look fat on their wedding day?” Floss sniffled. “Anyway, I hope you’re not pissed, and I hope you’re having fun at the resort. You’re probably getting a luscious prenatal massage or something. It’s snowing in New York. It’s freezing. We just got to our suite at the St. Reege, and I’m wearing like the biggest sweater. All right. Give Marlow a kiss from Mommy.”
Orla went to her window. Floss was right. It was snowing. The air was thick with lazy flakes. Orla leaned on the windowsill, the edge of the air-conditioning unit pressing into her belly, and watched the people on Eighth Avenue, hustling with their collars up. She caught the sight of her reflection and was startled by all the space behind her. She kept forgetting her old fake wall was gone; she could see all the way back to the kitchen, with its ghoulish overhead light. The apartment felt hollowed out. There had been so much in here, not long ago: people and their shoes and their phones and their cords and their food and their fights and their crying. Floss’s blankets pooled carelessly on the couch. Aston’s strawberry shortcake bars growing frost in the freezer. Craig’s gym bag blocking the door. Melissa’s laptop hogging the counter. The free things from publicists and the wilting bouquets from asskissers and the fridge full of drawings from fans, mailed to the building or passed through the barricade. The television—always on, so often blaring their own voices back at them.
“It’s kind of sad,” Orla said out loud, remembering that she should talk to the baby. “After what she tried to pull, she still thinks she’s gonna be your mommy.”
Tomorrow would be Christmas, a day of clear sidewalks and out-of-office messages. There was no chance that Orla could find a photographer or get a blogger on the phone. But she had decided that, the day after Christmas, she would find someone—she’d throw herself at Ingrid’s feet, if she had to—and she would tell them everything. Due any second! A girl. Marlow. What’s that? I know! I had no idea Floss was pregnant, either! I guess we’ll see how that turns out.
Let them trash and harass her. Let them sic their lawyers. Orla wasn’t afraid. She knew the truth: they were nothing to be afraid of. Just a few people who had mistaken their small dreams for big ones.
She slipped her phone into the pocket of her sweatshirt, lay down on the couch, and closed her eyes.
She never knew how long she slept, exactly. The sound of banging on her door woke her up sometime later, and the first thing she saw, lying on her side, was the faraway microwave clock. The shape of its numbers was off, vaguely unsettling. Her first thought was that there had been some sort of outage. But the lights were still on.
She yelled to the person knocking that she’d be right there and waddled over, her bloated feet leaving prints in the drywall dust from when she knocked down the wall. It reminded her of the flour that had been all over 6D that first day of shooting. No matter what she did, it wasn’t coming up.
Before she reached the door, she glanced again at the microwave. The shape of its hard-edged, little green numbers stopped her in her tracks.