Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,52
What about you? Why don’t you belong?”
Elisabeth shook her head. “I guess I need to get used to it. Where we lived before, I had friends. Every weekend was something to look forward to. Now I only get excited about new episodes of The Dividers on Sunday nights.”
“I love that show,” Sam said. “We don’t have cable in the dorms, but my mom records it for me and I binge-watch whenever I’m home. My friend Maddie, my best friend from high school, she’s in med school in Manhattan. She got me into it.”
“Do you think about going to the city after graduation?” Elisabeth said.
“I used to, kind of. Maddie and I always talked about it. But I don’t know. It’s cool, but I get overwhelmed there.”
“You’d get used to that. There’s no better place for a young creative person.”
Sam nodded. “But it’s so expensive. I’d probably have to live in a cardboard box.”
“Everyone feels that way in the beginning,” Elisabeth said. “Believe me, if I could figure it out, you can. You’re ten times smarter than I was at your age.” She paused. “I hate thinking about money, don’t you? I prefer to pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“But how did you figure it out?” Sam said.
“I had four roommates at first,” Elisabeth said. “In a two-bedroom across from a fire station. All our furniture was stuff we dragged in from the curb. This was before bed bugs. It was the best.”
“My mom thinks I should go there too, and live with Maddie and work at a museum,” Sam said. “She has no clue how competitive those jobs are. It’s like she believes I could walk in off the street and they’d hire me.”
“I might be able to help you,” Elisabeth said. “I know some people in the art world.”
“Thank you. That’s so nice. But. I know it sounds dumb, but there’s also Clive to consider.”
Elisabeth nodded. “Right. So then, you’d move to London?”
“He’d like me to.”
“What about you? Are you into the idea?”
“In some ways, yes.”
“What would you do over there?”
“My absolute dream job that I’ll never get would be to work at the Matilda Grey gallery.”
“Why do you think you can’t get it?”
“Because I applied and they said no.”
Elisabeth smiled. “How is that possible? How could they not want you?”
“I’m not a UK citizen and I don’t have any special abilities. They were nice about it. The woman said she’d hire me in a minute if it wasn’t for that. But if I want to work in London, it will have to be off the books, as a nanny or something. Unless Clive and I get married.” This last part she said in an almost embarrassed way. “I do hear what you’re saying about New York City. I’m sure it’s great.”
Elisabeth sighed. “Maybe I’m romanticizing. I miss it. I didn’t think I would.”
She was Sam’s age, a college senior, when she first visited Manhattan on her own, without her parents dragging her to Tavern on the Green and Radio City Music Hall. A girl from her dorm, Siobhan something, invited Elisabeth when they ran into each other early one Sunday morning. Siobhan’s art class was taking a three-hour bus ride to the Met and back. There were plenty of empty seats. Elisabeth went along. She and Siobhan ditched the group and spent the afternoon roaming around the Upper East Side. They ended up at a coffee shop on Third Avenue stuffed full of faded couches and antique chairs. People sat reading the paper, chatting across tables. The two girls watched them, finding it all extraordinary.
“Imagine if this was your life,” Siobhan said.
A year later, taking a stroll from her new apartment on Eighty-sixth Street, Elisabeth realized that coffee shop was three blocks from where she lived. It made the city seem intimate, familiar.
She hadn’t thought of Siobhan in years. As you made your way through life, there were people who stuck, the ones who stayed around forever and whom you came to need as much as you needed water or air. Others were meant to keep you company for a time. In the moment, you rarely knew which would be which.
She didn’t want Sam to miss out on the city. But then, the city had changed. When Elisabeth started as an editorial assistant, the world of her bosses was one of expensed lunches and clothes; hired drivers who waited outside the building all day in case an editor should want to go somewhere. Now there was none of