She will see Ida, back in the picture, her restlessness quenched by a back tattoo, and a new woman, giggly and pregnant, in her own old seat on Jacqueline’s sofa. She will tune in just in time to hear the woman say “Ellis” in a tone of plush ownership, and she will realize that this person has replaced her elsewhere, too. She will think about trying to find out more: who the new wife is, what flaws of hers Ellis is counting on. But then the sight of Jacqueline shimmying in tights will make her homesick, and she will quickly tell her mind to delete all Constellation Network feeds. She will never go back to where she grew up, not even when Aston dies. She will pay to have his ashes shipped and sift them into the Hudson. When she walks near the water, it’s strange—she will think not of him, but of the baby she once thought might inherit his looks. At first, she will worry she chose wrong, leaving her eggs. But as the years pass, Marlow is certain: she has a good life. And she doesn’t need to share it.
She will become a waitress, hoisting bowls of glossy ziti in an amber-lit cave of a place on Tenth Avenue. She will fall in love with the job—with holding the warm plates and knowing the table numbers by heart and feeling the kitchen’s steamed urgency. She will love the way people’s faces turn toward her as she approaches their tables, then turn away as soon as their business is finished, pleasantly forgetting her. She will feel the least seen, and the most important, she ever has in her life. She will take extra shifts when her friends have auditions, her friends who dream of bigger things and can’t believe she doesn’t. They cannot fathom that this is enough to make her happy; they want so much to be famous.
Honey, one day, will come into the restaurant, seeing instantly past Marlow’s makeover. She will sputter. She will ask how Marlow has been. Marlow will say “fine, thanks” and segue fast into morels and pesto. Honey will tip her enormously, and say that they should grab lunch. But the voice in Marlow’s head, the one she always hears first now, will recommend moving on. So she will, to the table that needs her.
She will never go back on Hysteryl.
She will make the city her own. She will buy a new couch to replace the sun-bleached one. She will discover the building’s roof, with its rotted fencing and rusted bench, and she will convince the building’s management to let her fill it with the grasses and wildflowers that live atop the homes in Constellation. She will learn that the mailboxes still work, downstairs—a postman comes twice a week—and she will find a store on Christopher Street to sell her white sheets with blue-lined envelopes. (She has settled on her favorite color: the sky in New York, in the autumn especially, makes it an easy contest.) She will write to her mothers, both of them, mailing the notes through one of Orla’s sales reps in the UK, and they will write back. The letters from Orla are always longer, and not just because they have catching up to do. Orla is better at telling the stories; Floss is better at being in them.
She will learn to fall asleep in 6D, though not before the Empire State Building’s lights go off at midnight—she will never find a way to close her eyes against those beams. She will drag her bed to the front of her apartment, because she likes that window better and she can do what she wants—she’s alone. She is gloriously alone, except for when Linus and his wife go away once a year and the kids come to stay with her, dragging their sleeping bags. One time, Linus’s daughter will bring a lipstick, too, and offer it to Marlow, saying, “Try it. You could be hot, Auntie M!” Her mother will swat at her, but Marlow will be touched by the girl’s way of seeing her: there is potential. There is still time. She will take the lipstick and wear it and never lose it once.
But none of them—not Marlow, not Orla, not Floss—know any of this yet. They stand on the balcony in Atlantis and lean into the breeze. Orla says she agreed to the place because she loves the view. Marlow nods politely, but doesn’t understand why. The ocean is miles away, out of sight. Orla’s home faces the land she left behind.
The three women gaze at the windmills, at the cars escaping the marsh. They watch a flock of illumidrones find the wall and bounce back toward America. It’s the kind of night when no one misses their man-made glow. The moon stands high and silver white above the little sovereignty. Floss and Orla are thinking the same thing, though neither of them knows it. The light is right on their girl.