There’d been so many opportunities to do it over the last two weeks. Like the day after Anne’s birthday, when they’d driven down to Topanga Beach and gone for a long sunset walk together, far enough from the water that the tide wouldn’t get them. They’d walked south, the wind at their backs, toward nothing in particular except more of Anne’s silence. A couple of times, Anne had stumbled on the soft sand, but she wouldn’t take Sadie’s offered arm, wouldn’t get close.
Or Anne could’ve brought it up on Thursday, in the aftermath of Sadie’s sudden migraine. She’d spent the day at Sadie’s side, applying and reapplying cool washcloths to her forehead, pulling down the bedroom shades, and administering the allowed dose of eletriptan with a sip of Diet Coke, since caffeine always helped. And after Sadie had slept a few hours, she’d come back to the land of the living with a stretch and a soft, bleary smile and murmured, “Better. So much better. Strange. I dreamed you told me something. Something that made the whole world stop. But I can’t remember what it was.”
Anne’s questions were dead on her tongue. She couldn’t bring pain back into the room so soon after they’d made it go away.
Two weeks of choking on her own fear and Anne was running out of time. It was Saturday. In just a few days, Sadie was leavingfor New York—for that campus visit she still hadn’t told Anne about.
Today. Today Anne would talk to her. Sadie almost always popped by in the afternoons on days she didn’t teach. They both had keys to each others’ houses; these days, they were in and out so frequently that it didn’t make much sense to waste time knocking.
Until Sadie showed up, Anne would finally go through those minutes for Conserve Malibu’s latest board of directors meeting. Normally, she worked at the desk in her spare bedroom, but the day was so crisp and blue that it seemed a shame to hide away, and so she’d set herself up at the dining room table. Laptop open, with the zoom on her browser at one hundred twenty percent; mimosa to her left, a jaunty little concoction with one part pomegranate-orange juice to four parts champagne; French doors wide open to let in the breeze; and her reading glasses on, along with the resentment Anne couldn’t seem to shake over needing them.
The cursor at the top of the page kept blinking. Anne watched as it left and came back, left and came back, left and came back, like a heartbeat.
It wasn’t just the possibility of Sadie leaving that clawed at Anne. What James had said at Anne’s party, that echoed, too, playing on repeat in Anne’s memory:I can’t be apart from him. I have to be with him. I can’t live without him. Had it really been that uncomplicated for James? Feelings like you’d find in a Hallmark card, the kind with pastel floral designs and the wordforever,like it wasn’t ominous? Anne hated greeting cards.
What would it be like to be with a man she couldn’t live without?
She didn’t know. Steady, reliable James had come along in Anne’s senior year of college, and her dating history before then had been a smattering of unconfident boys who cowered beforeher Navy-captain father. Sure, she’d dated since the divorce, and enjoyed the attention those men gave her, but none of them held her interest for long. Romance was nice; there just didn’t seem to be much room for it in her life these days.
Well, there’d be room now. Time and space, too. If Sadie moved away, there wouldn’t be any more unannounced late-afternoon visits. No trips to the Getty Center to look at Sadie’s favorite painting, Théodore Géricault’s “Three Lovers.” No more cape-sleeve, glitter-dress Queen Esther costumes for Purim. No more getting dragged down to San Diego to help canvas for Adela Ruiz, the progressive congresswoman Sadie adored. No more parties where Anne would meet everyone from eighties LA icon Angelyne to a long-bearded man in denim overalls who called himself “Hat Dan.”
And no more of the worst celebrity impressions anyone had ever attempted. Sadie’s Cary Grant sounded weirdly like Colonel Sanders, so much so that when they’d watchedBringing Up Baby, Anne had been obliged to debut her own carefully rehearsed imitation of Katharine Hepburn ordering a bucket of crispy chicken tenders.
Sadie had laughed so hard, she’d pulled a muscle. Clutching her neck, still giggling, she’d hollered, “Again, again! I can take the pain, just give me another hit; don’t deny me that talent!”
A flare of delight had streaked through Anne, so strong, it might’ve wandered over from someone else’s life.
Lost in thought, she sat back in her chair, still staring at the blinking cursor.
Anne hadn’t had a friend like Sadie in her life since—well, ever, really—but the last person with whom she’d been similarly close was back in high school. Missy Campbell. Beautiful Missy, with those freckles that always darkened in summer and that massive mane of dark hair she’d refused to crimp, even when it was social suicide to have anything but tiny waves and teasedbangs. They’d listened to Kate Bush and Kim Wilde at Missy’s house on weekends. Painted their toenails together. Anne remembered—it was right there, suddenly—Missy’s foot poking her own, leaving an accidental wet streak of Pink Neon Frost on Anne’s skin.
It was the damndest thing. Anne needed calendar reminders for the birthdays of Brooke’s children, but it took only a second of effort to bring back Missy’s laugh, the swell of it like a tidal wave over the last four decades.
Missy Campbell had married Richard Romero right after graduation, moved without warning to Florida, and sent Anne a birth announcement five months later. For a year or two, Anne had written letters, polite perfunctory things with nothing real in them for Missy Romero, noyou never told me aboutorI thought we wereor the simple, stark truth ofI miss you. There was more than one way to leave.
Anne still hadn’t read one single goddamn word on her screen when the front door banged open and Sadie burst in, a glitter bomb inside a hurricane. Her wig was a curly chestnut updo, high enough to reveal sparkling chandelier earrings, and she wore a purple velour men’s suit, complete with a wide cream tie and crisp lapels. She clutched a massive red leather tote bag to her chest with both arms, just below her radiant smile.
“Good morning!” Sadie announced and plopped the tote on the dining room table.
“It’s afternoon for most of us,” Anne pointed out.
“Not me. It’s always morning when I’m in a good mood, and it’s always evening when I’m in a temper. And since I’maprèsViktor Benes”—she pulled a glazed cookie out of the tote, apparently one of the spoils of her bakery trip—“and successfully be-pastried, I get to wish you a very, very good morning, sunshine. Want one?”
“No, thanks.” Lunchtime was over. Anne had already eaten her allotted calories for the afternoon in the form of a chickpea and farro salad. “I’m not—”
“—hungry. I know, I know.” Sadie took a bite and chewed vigorously. “The day you take an offered cookie is the same day I express any regard for Rupi Kaur.”
Anne would not be dragged into a discussion of her eating habits or open the door for Sadie to vent her tremendous hatred of Instapoetry. No more excuses. It was time to talk. “Sadie, I—”
“Oh, that reminds me.” Sadie snapped her cookie-free fingers. “Speaking of poetry. I’ll have to back out of going with you to that Cindy Sherman exhibit at LACMA tomorrow. I need a permit to take over the Santa Monica Pier Carousel.”
“The carousel?” Anne struggled to follow Sadie’s train of thought. “A permit?”
“Manny’s going to help me—you know my friend Manny—”
“—from the airport parking lot, yes, I’m familiar—”
“—he’s just absolutelywonderfulat cutting through bureaucratic red tape, and you know how I am when dealing with anything legal.” Sadie waved one hand from side to side. “Allergic at best. I blame that summer I spent in the early nineties living with black-bloc anarchists.”