multitudes,” Niko observes.
Myla laughs and turns back to August. “So, what brought you to New York?”
August hates this question. It’s too big. What could possess someone like August, a suburban girl with a swimming pool of student loan debt and the social skills of a Pringles can, to move to New York with no friends and no plan?
Truth is, when you spend your whole life alone, it’s incredibly appealing to move somewhere big enough to get lost in, where being alone looks like a choice.
“Always wanted to try it,” August says instead. “New York, it’s … I don’t know, I tried a couple of cities. I went to UNO in New Orleans, then U of M in Memphis, and they all felt … too small, I guess. I wanted somewhere bigger. So I transferred to BC.”
Niko’s looking at her serenely, swilling his coffee. She thinks he’s mostly harmless, but she doesn’t like the way he looks at her like he knows things.
“They weren’t enough of a challenge,” he says. Another gentle observation. “You wanted a better puzzle.”
August folds her arms. “That’s … not completely wrong.”
Winfield appears with their food, and Myla asks him, “Hey, where’s Marty? He’s always on this shift.”
“Quit,” Winfield says, depositing a syrup dispenser on the table.
“No.”
“Moved back to Nebraska.”
“Bleak.”
“Yep.”
“So that means,” Myla says, leaning over her plate, “you’re hiring.”
“Yeah, why? You know somebody?”
“Have you met August?” She gestures dramatically to August like she’s a vowel on Wheel of Fortune.
Winfield turns his attention to August, and she freezes, bottle in her hand still dribbling hot sauce onto her hashbrowns.
“You waited tables before?”
“I—”
“Tons,” Myla cuts in. “Born in an apron.”
Winfield squints at August, looking doubtful.
“You’d have to apply. It’ll be up to Lucie.”
He jerks his chin toward the bar, where a severe-looking young white woman with unnaturally red hair and heavy eyeliner is glaring at the cash register. If she’s the one August has to scam, it looks like she’s more likely to get an acrylic nail to the jugular.
“Lucie loves me,” Myla says.
“She really doesn’t.”
“She loves me as much as she loves anyone else.”
“Not the bar you want to clear.”
“Tell her I can vouch for August.”
“Actually, I—” August attempts, but Myla stomps on her foot. She’s wearing combat boots—it’s hard to miss.
The thing is, August gets the sense that this isn’t exactly a normal diner. There’s something shiny and bright about it that curls, warm and inviting, around the sagging booths and waiters spinning table to table. A busboy brushes past with a tub of dishes and a mug topples from the pile. Winfield reaches blindly behind himself and catches it midair.
It’s something adjacent to magic.
August doesn’t do magic.
“Come on, Win,” Myla says as Winfield smoothly deposits the mug back in the tub. “We’ve been your Thursday nighters for how long? Three years? I wouldn’t bring you someone who couldn’t cut it.”
He rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “I’ll get an app.”
* * *
“I’ve never waited a table in my life,” August says, when they’re walking back to the apartment.
“You’ll be fine,” Myla says. “Niko, tell her she’ll be fine.”
“I’m not a psychic reading ATM.”
“Oh, but you were last week when I wanted Thai, but you were sensing that basil had bad energy for us.…”
August listens to the sound of their voices playing off each other and three sets of footsteps on the sidewalk. The city is darkening, a flat brownish orange almost like a New Orleans night, and familiar enough to make her think that maybe … maybe she’s got a chance.
At the top of the stairs, Myla unlocks the door, and they kick off their shoes into one pile.
Niko gestures toward the kitchen sink and says, “Welcome home.”
And August notices for the first time, beside the faucet: lilies, fresh, stuck in a jar.
Home.
Well. It’s their home, not hers. Those are their childhood photos on the fridge, their smells of paint and soot and lavender threaded through the patchy rugs, their pancake dinner routine, all of it settled years before August even got to New York. But it’s nice to look at. A comforting still life to be enjoyed from across the room.
August has lived in a dozen rooms without ever knowing how to make a space into a home, how to expand to fill it like Niko or Myla or even Wes with his drawings in the windows. She doesn’t know, really, what it would take at this point. It’s been twenty-three years of passing through, touching brick after brick, never once feeling a permanent