Chapter Text
It was possibly the ugliest Saturday morning October had offered up so far. Rory, swaddled in a navy woollen pea coat, squinted up at the bulging grey sky and winced at the singular drop of rain which proceeded to slide down the bridge of her nose. A slightly bitter glance towards the shelter of the station confirmed her suspicions that it was still full, crammed with clusters of middle aged men underdressed for the weather, lone travellers, and funny clusters of undeniable students, trying far too hard to not look so pretentious, an effort undermined by the dogmatic hiss to their voices which hinted some kind of scholarly spat, rolled out of New Haven and onto the streets of New York. She angled herself pointedly away from them and walked along the open platform. The air was beginning to cool from pre-rain humidity to sharp, prematurely wintry bite, and she might have put her leather gloves on (well, her mom’s leather gloves, grabbed on a laundry run by accident and never returned) if it weren’t for the book in her hand. Forster, Room with a View. So, chilly now, she walked and read, aiming to at least get a few pages in before the sky started throwing down its worst. There might have been a time when the few splatters of rain which began now to dot about the pages would have thrown her into a fit, but she didn’t mind so much now. They seemed to her like notes scribbled in the margins, remnants of thoughts or memories, this memory: waiting in New York for Paris, who's supposed to be coming on the nine-fifteen train to make it in time to catch breakfast at a nearby patisserie. (Rory found this hole-in-the-wall diner on her drive here that she’d rather eat at, but Paris was insistent on a fancy breakfast.) It’s the kind of memory which in the moment doesn’t feel like one to savour. But then she might peel open the pages sometime in the future and think of how simple it was to watch the rain start to fall, how embarrassed she was of the students arguing Proust like they were still in a seminar, how she laughed down at her feet imagining Paris on public transport, having to jostle for every inch of space she could get.
But in that moment, the only memory which surfaced as she closed her book – which she was doing, now, as the sky, finally yielding, opened itself up and poured from its cloudless cavity – was that of the last time she was here. New York. In an embarrassingly romantic turn of thought, most likely culled by Forster, she thought: how cliche but how precious – the number of nameless lovers tied to this city. Rory slipped her book into her bag and decided, for a little while at least, to keep the gloves at bay. She cupped her hands, pink fingertip upon pink fingertip, and collected drops of fresh rain which slipped out of her grasp as quickly as they landed. Last time, she thought, last time she was sixteen and was afraid of most things and had realised for the first time that she knew very little. For example, she hadn’t previously known that it wasn’t some character flaw or inconsistency that drives people to abandon logic and let their hearts carry them to do stupid things. She hadn’t known that these things were not always decisions, or even sudden feelings then seized upon with thought, but an innate calling that had to be followed. Last time she was here, then, she was here because everything led her here, to Jess. She was here because it didn’t make sense to be anywhere else.
And then she laughed again, to herself. It was definitely Forster, she thought, infecting her with senselessness. Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity. She slipped her mother’s gloves on and felt the shock of her wet hands against the leather.
Rory cast another glance over her shoulder. Arguments fluttered over in the wet wind. They had jumped, somehow, from classical bildungsroman to whether Hegel held up in the modern political sphere, whatever that meant. With something of a pout Rory marched over to the shelter and wedged herself between the small swathe of people also milling about and waiting. She was grateful, in that moment, for the shrill sound of wheels on rails. In tandem, all the drab faces turned to face the rumbling engine and lit up with expectation. Hollers arose from the Yale boys draped in fleeces and flight jackets. And for all her contempt, Rory couldn’t help but smile at the show. When the train finally squeaked to a stop and the doors shifted open, it was unsurprisingly Paris who was at the helm of the crowd, elbows batting others back. She deposited her brown leather suitcase on the platform and Rory watched as she barked something at a woman who had been pushing up behind her as the rest of the train came spilling out. Rory couldn’t help but smile. She was already walking towards her, coming back out onto the open platform.
“Paris!” she called, hastening her step.
Paris rounded on her as she lugged her suitcase along. “No need for theatrics, Gilmore,” she bit out. There was a fine line between regular Paris and deeply irritated Paris, not in the least because of how easy the latter was to trigger. Both were bitter and acidic. But Rory could read it in the way she was tugging her suitcase open – with impatient violence – that this was not regular Paris. Rory attempted to help her with the zipper, but Paris swatted her hand away. When she finally pried it open, she yanked out a small tube of antibacterial hand gel. “I think I just made a scientific breakthrough,” she spit her words out quickly, maniacally, as she unclasped the lid and poured out more than enough onto her palm. “On one trip on that death-trap, I’ve discovered twelve new forms of bacteria. And two fungi. I believe it’ll take me all the way to my first Nobel.”
“Paris, calm down” Rory insisted between laughter. She had expected her not to acclimate too well to public transport, but not to this extent. Initially they’d planned out every aspect of this weekend meticulously, but couldn’t account for a last-minute assignment for Paris’ chemistry class that worked out to far too much of her grade. Rory should have known when Paris suggested she go ahead that Friday and she would come on Saturday that, somehow, something wouldn’t work out. As usual, she had insisted on her independence. Terrence says public transport is good for someone like me, I can get used to being around various types of people, she’d said, as though she were an animal or an alien from a distant planet learning to acclimate to the human species. And for the strange looks she was getting now, she might well have been. Her scrubbing was so vigorous Rory was afraid she might peel the skin from her palms. She grabbed Paris’ wrists and wrestled her poor hands apart. “I’m pretty sure you’re entirely sterile by now”
“ You try spending two hours wedged next to a little boy who smells like blue cheese and carries two hot dogs in his pockets ‘for safe keeping’. That’s right, I asked him. My bad for expecting a rational answer! Do you know how much I wanted to just wrench those hot dogs right out of his tiny little pockets and–” Rory grabbed her by the shoulders this time, wary of the scandalised eyes of two middle aged women on them.
“You’re clean, Paris. You’re safe.”
“I’m clean. I’m safe,’ she breathed out.
Around them, Rory only just noticed that the platform had sprung to life. It was raining still, but those drab faces which had been at best tentative when the train pulled in were now radiant, propped on shoulders in embraces, lost in kisses, nodding and thrown back in animated conversation. Scarves fluttered in the wind and someone’s chullo hat flipped its way across the platform in the wind. The Yale boys were joined by a few girls Rory recognised from classes, only now she couldn’t hear their conversation now over the chatter and buzz of the station. And, of course, over Paris, who was dragging her away – her suitcase in one hand and Rory’s arm in the other – and firing rapidly at her.
“Why did you make me get on that thing?”
“I didn’t, Paris. If you recall, you volunteered.”
“Well, don’t let me do it again. It drove me to redraft my will.”
“ Re draft?”
“You would give me all of your books?”
“Who the hell else would I give them to? Asher basically has a library fit to serve a whole city in his house, and nanny reads strictly sixties Harlequin novels. You’re the only candidate, don’t be so flattered. Plus, I’d throw in a few Hemingways. You’d be obligated to keep them. People always humour dead people like that.”
Despite the jaded seriousness of Paris’ tone, Rory laughed into her coffee. They’d managed to make it in time for breakfast at the patisserie after being held up by having to load the weight of Paris’ luggage into Rory’s car. They’d already had a back and forth over how excessive it was for a weekend trip, with neither conceding victory to the other, so the argument ended on a food truce, which essentially meant ordering an unnecessary amount of pastries and cakes each and sampling each others’ wares – a true demonstration of friendship, in traditional Gilmore fashion. As it was, Paris had eaten the entirety of Rory’s almond croissant (a failed attempt to be somewhat healthy) in exchange for Rory poaching her tiramisu.
“I’ll treat them well, I promise.” She was sincere: partly out of love for Paris, and partly out of fear of reprisal from Paris’ ghost. Rory had the impression she would make a terrifying vengeful spirit. Paris sent her a mirthless smirk, which only confirmed her suspicions.
Outside, the rain had softened into a trickle and cast the streets in damp, hazy grey. Wind nuzzled against the window panes, which condensation curled around, like outstretched arms. As the waitress came back over to take their plates, Rory took one last sip of her coffee, balancing out the bitterness with the sweetness, before she mouthed a thank you and let her cup be whisked away. When she at last refocused her attention, she found Paris, chin propped on her fist, narrowing her eyes at her. Rory shuffled the napkins into order, fluffing them until the sides aligned, and avoided her omnipotent gaze. “You’re acting strange,” Paris observed, with somewhat detached curiosity, as though Rory’s state of mind was an experiment. Rory herself was unaware she was in any particular state of mind, but the force of Paris’ eyes seemed to cull some truth out of her. She’d been feeling a bit strange – a bit wistful, even – since she drove the way down here. An hour of watching brown leaves smush into fragments against her windscreen, listening to Mirah croon out Archipelago wistfully (and skip over words a few times) from her old cassette. She was wondering then – and she was wondering as she had spooned some of her genoise onto Paris’ plate – what Jess was doing when he was here last. She knew it was irrational in every way; he was in Philly now, he’d called Luke to say so and Luke had mentioned it to her with laughable sensitivity. But at every traffic stop she let herself wonder if he bounced from hostel to hostel, lugged his backpack with him to a day job at a record store, maybe, or some independent bookstore. She could imagine him sleeping on a friend’s floor, curled up like a cat in a thin, scratchy blanket, dreaming to the voice of Malkmus at full blast. And could she imagine herself at his side, like he had asked her to five months ago, tucked beneath his arm, book in hand?
But to Paris, she shook her head and laughed. She began to weave her crochet scarf around her neck, adjusting it against her fast-beating heart. “I’m just wondering how well our itinerary will hold up now we’re an hour behind schedule.”
“Oh, please.” Paris snorted, tucked her hair behind her ears and ruffled the underside. “We constructed an immaculate, well-timetabled plan A and plan B, with allotments of up to two hours left over for any inconveniences which might arise. You’re not wondering about our itinerary.”
Rory buried her smile in her scarf. “Maybe I’m cold. Maybe I’m tired.” She rose and gave a shrug of her shoulders. “Maybe I’m just wondering where I’m going to put all my new books.”
“Understandable. I’m not dead yet, but those germs. Those germs.” Paris shivered.
Outside, Rory dug around for her keys in her bag, her fingers passing through chapstick, tissues, Forster’s pages, deodorant, before finally settling on ridged metal. Part of the concession for dragging her to a PJ Harvey concert for the weekend was not only that they could do things Paris also wanted to do – such as attempting to hit every science museum in the city in two days – but also that music in the car was explicitly forbidden. They drove in silence, save for Paris occasionally sticking her head out of the window to shout at a lumbering taxi cab. “You’re literally paid to drive, so move!”
They’d known when they booked it that the hostel was cheap for a reason. One of the kinder reviews said the room was ‘small, not in an entirely bad way,’ which they found didn’t hold up entirely. When they lay on their respective beds, they had to spend a few moments aligning their knees so that they didn’t bump against each other. The minimal furniture – the two beds and the wardrobe – scarcely fit in the kitschy, green-tinted room, nudging each other for any attempt at space. When Paris began pulling the drawers out, they’d discovered that the two drawers halfway down couldn’t even be opened because they collided with the metal bed frame. On the ceiling, when Rory at last dared to look up, was a series of vintage flower paintings and four individual cobwebs, of which only two were furnished with fly carcasses.
“It’s different,” Rory said, sprawled (or rather, calculatedly manoeuvred into a sprawl-like position in the minimal space she had) across the bed. Every time she inhaled a strange, musty scent washed over her and lingered at the back of her throat. “Is this the ultimate student experience: strange, cheap hotels because you can't afford anything better?”
Paris groans. “You’re doing that annoying thing.”
“What annoying thing?” she says, and immediately regrets it for the scent that comes back again.
“‘I’m Rory Gilmore and I can see the good in anyone and everything, even in the kind of room someone probably boiled a body in, furnished with a bed fit for a seasoned crack smoker to overdose in. Someone probably peed all over these sheets, but it’s okay, I forgive them!’.”
“It’s not that bad, Paris.”
As it was, Paris was dusting her jeans off with one of Rory’s towels after having laid on the bed. “There’s a dead spider in the corner over here, Rory. Even a spider couldn’t bear to live in this pit of death and desolation.”
Sure enough, there it was, a small, furry carcass folded in on itself. It might have looked almost pitiful, if it were not so huge that it sent a quick twinge between Rory’s shoulder blades. “Jesus, Paris,” she got out, backing into the bedframe.
“Don’t hold me back. I’m going to request a better room.”
Instead of a better room, the owner decided to do them one greater – “If you hate this place so much, don’t worry about staying here. Find somewhere that’ll put up with your sorry ass.”
They were tossed out with their bags in hand and the room key revoked. Out on the roadside, Rory debated all the things she would have liked to say to Paris. But Paris turned to her sheepishly before she could arrange them into a real lecture.
“At least we can find a nicer place now?”
After failing in further negotiations with the manager, catching lunch at a street van, and hauling their luggage across the subway, they decided at last to walk the way to the bar where the show was. By eight, the rain had let up, but the streets were still weighed down by the remnants, damp sidewalks glinting slick and silver in the moonlight. They passed the kind of restaurants and stalls that reminded her immediately of her mom: a Mexican burger joint, complete with a waft of cumin, a half-dim sign advertising Szechuan cooking, a stall selling real Moroccan cuisine, not just whatever Al happened to pass off as authentic that week. She wanted to bring her mom here one day, she thought. As they drew to a stop outside of the bar, Paris tugged on her v-neck. “Is it too much?” she asked.
Rory took her in. She looked proper, sure, in a seafoam v-neck long-sleeve and white jeans. But there was no dress code, and if there were, she’s sure Paris would hate to abide by it. “You look perfect, Paris. We’ll both blend in, it’ll be fine.”
“There was a perceptible pause, there.”
“I looked at you.”
Paris made a noise neither of dissent nor agreement. Attending a PJ Harvey show with Paris was surely some kind of cosmic justice. Sixteen was too long ago, but she could still recall the font of the tickets Tristan had waved in her face, every track on the set-list, the position of the seats he had offered her. None of it came to fruition. And now – with Paris, standing in front of some dank East Village bar – it was as though this was the reason. This was meant to be her experience. Rory swung open the door with her heart thumping. They made their way into a bar which was somehow darker than outside, lit only by patches of soft amber lighting from low ceiling lamps, hugged by tapered metal lampshades. The walls were encased in exposed red brickwork, mazed with pipes whose rust was seemingly (hopefully) only for effect. She made her way through a small crowd with Paris pressed tightly to her side until they emerged at the bar itself. Behind the bar was the sole window in the place, which had been angled open so wide it looked like a hole in the wall. It let in none of the moonlight, offering only a sliver of tenuous cloud. They took the last two available seats and Rory turned round to survey the stage in anticipation. It was only supposed to be a small show. Marty had found the tickets after hearing about it from some of his friends who lived in the city and frequented the place. But it didn’t look as small as it was supposed to be. The venue itself was average-sized, or in her inexperienced opinion it seemed to be, but was still crammed full of already-sweaty bodies and chattering people who all seemed to know someone who knew someone else. She even spotted two of the Yale boys from the train station drinking at a booth in a corner. Rory tucked her hands into her lap and fiddled with the cuffs of her jacket.
“When does this thing start?” Paris swung around on her seat.
“About half an hour, I think.” Rory could feel the anticipation in her teeth, which chattered against each other. After today, of course, though they’d be spending another day in New York, it wouldn’t be entirely guilt free. She’d wake up at eight, write a little of her paper even though by all accounts this is something of a mini-break. But that day, then – this was enough for her.
“Do you think they’d hire me?” Paris asked flatly.
Rory turned slightly in confusion. Paris was clutching a flyer advertising for the position of ‘shot girl.’ Rory laughed, craning her head over Paris’ bicep. “You’re a good match, I’d say.”
“Beautiful, fun, energetic,” Paris read. “I’ve never felt more represented.”
Rory snorted and turned back around as Paris ordered them something non-alcoholic that Rory caught only vaguely. She brought her purse to her lap and drew out her book. For a moment her eyes struggled to adjust to the type in the darkness, black on cream. She squinted to follow along, rubbed her thumbs across the line as she went. Even amongst all the noise, she sank easily back into Forster’s words.
“Oh, Jesus,” Paris said. “Eight million people in New York and somehow, we happen to end up in the same place, on the same night, as Jack Kerouac's illegitimate son.”
Rory laughed absently at Paris’ insult. “You need to try being a little nicer to people here. Take it as an experiment.” But she was only half-involved, attention elsewhere.
Paris only groaned again. “I’ll– I’ll be right back. Listen out for our drinks”
Rory hummed and leant back against the bar. Mrs Honeychurch was insisting that there was a distinction between the right and wrong sort of people. It was the kind of sentiment that Rory, sitting in this dense and smoky bar, leant against a surface riddled with cigarette burns, was increasingly thinking no longer defined the world, if she had ever believed it at all. But Paris – whose hissing voice now was rising above the bartender’s clinking and the low, thumping music on the stage, not yet PJ – seemed to be following this dogma.
“At least I don't look like I just crawled out of the beer-stained floorboards,” she said, in traditional Paris fashion.
“Woah, I could be wrong, but I feel like I'm sensing just a touch of hostility right now.” Whoever it was had bite, Rory found herself thinking. Admirable, but it never lasted long against Paris. There was sheer acid inside of her – it was unable to be matched.
Paris continued her tirade as though the guy had not spoken. “Or did you drop out of the ceiling after a wild night with your rodent friends in the air vents?”
“At least I don't look like an IRS agent with a stick up my ass coming to shut this place down.”
“Are you here for the show or are you just homeless and skulking around in search of peanut crumbs and half-empty beer bottles?”
Rory slammed her book shut and sighed. She turned, but saw only a brick-encaved corridor blocked by strangers’ bodies. The bartender placed the drinks before her and she swept them up, setting off to trace the source of Paris’ insults.
“Actually, I'm staff. You’re looking at the newest… shot girl. Can’t you see how beautiful, energetic and fun I am?”
Rory nudged politely past strangers and noticed the vaguely amused quality to the voice. It was muffled still by other voices and music, but she almost could have recognised it.
“I suppose you fit the bill in other ways. I hear rodent chic is very in this year.”
“The last time I met you I seem to recall we got along like a house on fire. And you owe me a book recommendation”
Rory rounds the corner, jostles past someone’s stray arm, and stops.
“Oh, when was that? Right, right, before you pulled your whole woe-is-me melancholy boy routine and left Rory stranded with her feelings and of course yours, what was that, twice? Yeah, you’re a real Byronic hero.”
“And how is that– Rory.”
He did not say it like a question. He said it in a single breath, in a sigh, like a revelation. He was supposed to be in Philadelphia but of course he’s here , dense and smoky as it was, with its sticky floors, tattooed, scary women, unknown bands crooning future alternative hits on a stage too small for proper equipment. A cold wash of something like water swelled inside of her, and Rory felt at once like someone pulled her back from the road just before a car whizzed by. An inch away from certain death.
“Rory–” Paris turned to her, looking genuinely apologetic. “I tried–”
“Paris, it’s fine.” Someone was saying something muffled into the microphone and people were cheering. The bodies and stray arms and legs congesting the corridor swept away. “We’ll probably lose our seats. I think it’s starting now.”
They only lost one seat. Paris, clueless in matters of emotional intelligence, forced Rory to sit as if it would be some kind of comfort, which Rory would only come to appreciate later. She watched PJ Harvey with a stiff back, spine drawn up pin straight. The songs she loved washed over her and the lyrics got tangled in the running dialogue in her head, something of a debate with herself, with another voice on top, weaving through, telling her just to shut up once and for all. She couldn’t escape the feeling that Jess was behind her, at the entrance to the corridor, leaning against the wall and watching the show – and watching her. She didn’t turn, didn’t even twitch or tremble in that direction. She kept her eyes trained straight and her lips shut. A vindictive part of herself thought she could never loathe anyone so much: he ruined PJ Harvey for her.
Halfway through the set she asked the bartender where the bathroom was and he pointed her down the corridor she had come through before. Jess wasn’t propped there, and she propelled herself through it without a word to Paris. Only at the end of the corridor, opposite the bathroom door, was the back door – it was open, and Jess was leant against it, smoking, looking at her unabashedly.
“Hi,” he said. She noted (with complete indifference, of course) that he’d developed stubble and his hair was just a few inches longer, pushed back and tousled. He looked older. Somehow, she hadn’t realised that was possible. “I like your hair. It’s wavy now.” He made a wave motion with his free hand. Like an idiot.
Much to her chagrin, her heart was pounding intensely. She had imagined this moment far too many times to decide on one thing to say, and with a statement so stupid he had eliminated all of her options. She might have taken a page from Paris’ book and launched into a tirade. But she had a feeling it wouldn’t quell the strange feeling she had growing in her stomach. Disorientation.
“Yours has… grown.” She wrapped her arms around herself, peered down at him shyly, and boxed herself back into seventeen years old and fumbling. He tossed his cigarette to the ground, shook his head and smiled.
“Not watching the show?”
“I don’t feel like it anymore.”
“I don’t blame you. It’s mostly stuff from Stories . Too polished.”
She cocked her head at him, and he looked away with the hint of a cheeky smile. She agreed with him – of course she did, he would know she did, and of course he had to go and say something to remind her that nobody else has ever thought so identically. But she wanted him to say sorry , even if it wasn’t his fault that he was here and she was too. Even if she was the one who said no, anyway, five months ago. Still she found herself hovering in the doorway, on the threshold, not quite stepping into the night. She was content, instead, to inhale the last of his cigarette – a sourness tempered by a faint sweet note, right as it faded – and watch the blinkering lights of the city skyline.
“Weird coincidence, we’re both visiting the city at the same time.”
“I mean, it’s not a coincidence.” Rory gave him a look and Jess laughed. “I live here now.”
“What?” Rory stepped out, then stopped, almost abashed at herself. But she stayed outside.
“Yeah, I, uh – well, me and some guys started up a publishing house in Philly, and long-story-short we relocated here, mostly for business. More struggling writers to take advantage of in the Big Apple, you know?”
She couldn’t help the fascination she watched him with. He smiled when he talked, smiled sideways into the darkness and the city which was now his to claim. She was proud of him.
“Jess, that’s– that’s great.”
He met her eyes and said nothing. For a moment they stood together in near-silence. Inside, guitars whined; outside, cars zipped by and skirted on wet roads, they watched smoke rise from the low-down roofs of buildings and technicolour light flicker in faraway high-rises. Jess’ arm was against hers and she felt its warmth through her thin jacket.
(Who could foretell that she and George would meet in the rout of a civilisation, amidst an army of coats and collars and boots that lay wounded over the sunlit earth? She had imagined a young Mr Emerson, who might be shy or morbid or indifferent or furtively impudent. She was prepared for all of these. But she had never imagined one who would be happy and greet her with the shout of the morning star.)
“I’ve imagined how this would go,” she said finally, before the courage left her entirely and her silence would become yet another regret between them.
“Oh, yeah? And what have you come up with, Professor?”
Rory raised her chin. “Well, first I would chain you or something so you couldn’t escape or wrangle your way out,” she began, which roused a light laugh from him which spurred her on. “And then I’d shout at you in all the ways I never got to. And I’d do all these things while feeling afraid of nothing, which is another reason those scenarios haven’t come true, because the moment I saw you I freaked. Like that deer I hit once, or, well–”
Jess laughed again. “–Like the deer that hit you .” She was seventeen when she told him that story. Three years ago, on a cold afternoon in her bedroom, after he had read a little Ginsberg to her. It was barely a five-minute thing. He’d stretched it into a three-year one. Jess shrugged. She felt the movement against her. “I thought, I don’t know,” he started, measured. “I thought five months ago, we left it on a pretty definitive note.”
Like that, whatever they were cultivating soured. Though half-shadowed, his expression had adopted a hard, mirthless little smirk that suggested irritation, self-righteousness. She had misstepped. But, despite herself, she scoffed. “You packed everything into a five-minute, spur-of-the-moment request and then stormed away. That’s definitive, to you?”
He let out a choked laugh and leaned his head back against the open door. “Well, I didn’t ask, ‘hey, do you wanna grab coffee; oh and, by the way, what colour looks better on me’? I asked you an important question. The most important question”
“Whether I loved you has no correlation to whether I wanted to up and run from my life with you.”
“And we all know the answer to both of those questions.”
Rory felt a petulant child, her arms around herself and such a sulk to her voice. “It wasn’t fair.”
“Hey, hard decisions are never fair,” Jess said. He was doing that other thing. The thing where he gave a rare insight to his wisdom, his intelligence, the many depths of not-fair things he had to overcome to gain them, and Rory suddenly felt awful for it. Avoiding her eyes – which fixed ahead on a wall crowded with unintelligible graffiti – he reached into his pocket for another cigarette. In the quiet, he took it to his lips and lit it up. Rory scuffed her boots against the gravel. Only a few hours ago she had been thinking primarily of PJ Harvey, somewhat about Yale and the Marlowe plays she would have to finish reading for next week, of when she would manage to fit in the time to do a final once-over of her article and what day would be best to visit home. She had been thinking of familiar things, which held value to her. And now in this night she thought only of how swiftly Jess had managed to minimise these other aspects of her life. She looked into him and saw versions of herself reflected out like fractals. She saw him, eight months ago at Firelight sleeping the night in a half-frozen car; five months ago asking – telling her – if she loved him, if she would run. Not run, exactly, but leave, build, make, cultivate. But things between them had never been so black-and-white.
“Yeah,” she let out, at last. “But you don’t always get to do that to me. Drop your feelings in my lap and then run.”
Before Jess could get out whatever retort was inevitably waiting on his tongue, the steady thump of footfalls down the corridor manifested into Paris, who stood menacingly in the doorway with her arms crossed. “You made her miss the show, Kerouac Jr. Do you know how much she wanted to see the show? She put off Marlowe. Marlowe .”
“Paris, it’s fine. It wasn’t her best work, anyway,” Rory ceded. She stepped back into the corridor and gave a wan smile, which trembled and dropped after a few moments.
“Let’s get out of here, then.”
“Well, not so fast. Maybe we can beg the bartender to sleep under the bar, or something.” Paris snorted.
The scent of smoke followed them down the corridor. Never one for subtle social graces, she pressed Rory on what exactly had transpired between them, and whether Jess was due another verbal lashing, as they scooped their belongings from the bartop. Rory took a last sip of her drink and pulled out bills to tip. She gave little away. Not out of desire to remain mysterious, but because she herself did not understand it all. Even those questions for which she had answers – why was he here, what was he doing? – haunted and eluded her still, settling low in her stomach and leaving her uneasy. She was glad to slip between bodies, Paris at her heel, and spill out onto the street. While it had darkened, the night air emptied her lungs of all her stilted breath. She inhaled the aroma of fresh laundry from the apartment above the bar, but it did little to clear the remnants of smoke in her sinuses. It was as though she had been cleaved and scattered, and she was trying now to reconnect her different pieces. Paris watched her with notable concern, which always did manage to look wrong on her face, too similar to her look of mild irritation. It made Rory laugh, and finally she lightened just a little.
“You again?” Rory could not bring herself to turn at Paris’ exclamation.
From behind, Jess cleared his throat. “Maybe this isn’t as good of an idea as I think it is, but you guys need a place to crash, right?”
In place of an answer, Rory trudged to a bench by the road and sat to watch the cars. She had never been good at naming and typing cars – Dean had, she remembered – but that had never interested her, no matter how much she tried to feign it. She was content instead to watch them cruise by, catching faint impressions of whoever sat behind the wheel. Sometimes she and Jess would make a game of it, narrtivising poor strangers, giving them lines in funny voices. Behind her, the argument continued.
“I’m not taking motel recommendations from the patron saint of bad taste.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I will never forgive your Austen-Bukowski comment, Mariano.”
Jess hesitated. “Fair, but I’ll do you one better. I have a place–”
With that, Rory could not sit idly by, no matter how he had worn her out before. “No, no.” She whirled around, gestured, shook her head wildly, anything to make it definitive. “It’s fine, Jess. It’s New York, city of tourists. We’ll find somewhere.”
Jess looked at her as if she had grown another head. “Speaking from experience, you won’t now, not for a good rate, and not anywhere worth staying.”
“She said no, and I’m saying no. I would rather wring my own neck and, let me think, let you shoot an apple off my head with a nail gun – blindfolded – than trust you with our accommodation,” Paris emphasised.
Jess threw up his hands. “If you guys wanna sleep on the streets, be my guest. I’ve done that, and I woke up with a shoe missing and my pockets sliced open. It’s just, what, a night?”
“Two?” Rory tried her best to keep a flat tone.
“Two! And one of my roommates is out of town, anyway. He’s back in Philly sorting the last of the transfer. You guys can take the bed if you’re alright with that.”
“There’s one bed and two roommates?”
“Three.”
Paris turned to Rory, her hip cocked to the side. Rory could read in her face that she would turn Jess down if Rory’s brow so much as twitched, if her lip gave away any trace of hesitation. There was something so earnest written into Jess’ brows that it tugged at all the worst parts of Rory’s senses, sending memories unspooling like a film reel. It was that same earnest look he had given her in May. It was a look that had no pretensions about what it wanted from her. Curse Jess Mariano and his puppy-dog eyes.
“Rory?” Paris asked. It was not even a question.
“Alright,” Rory conceded. She fought not to feel pleased at Jess’ sudden smile. “But… we pay you. I don’t feel good at all about taking advantage, and–” She looked at him guiltily, not regretting what she had said to him earlier, but feeling sorry for it, anyway.
“Say no more,” Jess said. His voice was terribly, awfully, uncharacteristically soft. As if to offset it, he jerked back out to the edge of the curb and leaned out over the road, flapping out his arm. “Taxi!”
After a cab ride involving Paris grilling Jess’ sanitation standards and choice of cuisine, Rory found herself slightly surprised by the state of Jess’ apartment. The door opened up into a living room, and Jess – a surprisingly sheepish host – stepped in front of them to clear the couch. They watched as he swiped away an ashtray, a stack of books, a dogeared comic and a flannel shirt and deposited them onto the already overflowing coffee table. An acoustic guitar was shunted in the corner, and a broken lamp wobbled beside the couch. It reminded her too much of her place back at Yale last year. A first-home, a limbo-state, full of people who aren’t quite sure who they are and how to live. He looked at them – at Rory, mostly – like he wasn’t sure what to say. She became aware, then, that the roles had almost reversed. Here she was, needing help. Needing saving. Here he was, exposing himself and what he was made of.
“I think Matt’s out getting takeout. You guys wanna wait, or…?”
“I’m, uh, I’m beat, thanks, Jess. Paris?”
“Me, too. Can’t wait for that good, old slumber.”
Jess nodded. “Alright, no worries, I’ll change the sheets and you guys can take the bed.”
After: “Thanks again, Jess. Thank you, and–”
“Don’t stress it. You’d do the same for me.”
Surprisingly, Paris helped Jess arrange the couch into a sleepable state. Rory wandered down the hall to where Jess had said his room was and listened to her voice ebb away. (‘You don’t have a linen closet? What kind of zoo are you keeping here, Mariano.’) It seemed her sensibilities outweighed her thankfulness. Rory peeled open the old wooden door and stepped hesitantly inside. She didn’t know exactly what she was expecting. Before she had spoken to Jess outside in the light and had seen him new and reborn, she might have imagined an extension of how he had lived back at Luke’s: a lone mattress and a single pillow, a rumped duvet half-made and still imprinted with the curve of his spine, annotated books strewn across the floor and stacked up on window-sills, haphazardly filed CDs beside his bed and a Karate poster tacked up in place of any actual decoration. She was happy to see many of those details remained, only they had evolved. She was almost tempted, almost, to shield her eyes, to stop cataloguing the details of his room. It felt too personal, which was laughable given the fact that out of anyone he was someone she had gotten so personal with. But still, as she dumped their suitcases on the bed, she couldn’t help but marvel. Granted, it seemed like something he might have haggled for in a flea market, brass and slightly rusted on the bedposts, but it was an actual bed frame. He had a side-table, too, though there was only one; the other was substituted by a stack of used books and topped with a CD player.
Rory absently flicked at the reams of paper crowded above his headboard: old concert tickets, a playbill or two, polaroids taken in dingy bars of Jess and his arm around men Rory didn’t know, beers in hand, a pool table in the back. His smile was like a spark and his room smelled absently of something familiar and woody and warm, and Rory smiled because he was happy, but then she frowned. She sat beside her suitcase and dragged the zip open. She rummaged through for her pyjamas. How stupid she had been to think he might have been mourning her. She had of course imagined him moved on: writing, working, living without her. But only now, in this room which seemed to belong to a Jess she didn’t quite know, she admitted to herself that she had always injected herself into those daydreams. As some kind of ghost, revolving in translucence around him, regularly fading into and out of his mind. He had built a life here full of people, which was entirely his own, and could she blame him for that?
“I had to fight for these, Rory,” Paris announced. She clicked the door shut behind her and came to deposit the sheets onto the bed. She ordered Rory up and shifted the suitcases onto the floor. “What kind of animal offers a guest cotton jersey bedsheets?”
“Probably the kind that buys all his bedsheets from Walmart and also very kindly offers two temporarily homeless women a place to stay.” Rory folded herself cross-legged on the wooden floor and began to shift through her clothes again. At last she pulled out her pyjamas and zipped the case back up, pushing it against the far wall. She studied a small crack in the wall right at the bottom, where the paint met the skirting board. Jess had drawn a crude miniature image of a skater around it, so that the crack seemed like the angular movement of his body as he attempted some trick or other. Rory laughed quietly, like a whisper. “Are you going to help me, or are you going to laugh to yourself in the corner like you’re insane?”
“Help. Definitely help.”
Together they slipped off the fitted sheet and wrangled on a fresh one, dark green and smelling still of laundry soap, with a slight tinge of lavender. (Lavender!) They did the same for the pillows and the duvet, and by the time they finished Rory found she hadn't the energy to even undress herself. She sprawled across the bed just as Paris sauntered out to brush her teeth, her pyjamas tucked under her arms. It felt far too intimate to undress in Jess’ room, no matter how removed it was from the room he once had. She lifted her shirt above her head and thought of Jess in the next room over. Each rustle of fabric felt somehow too loud, like it might have seeped through the walls. Even the clatter of her shoes against the floor as she kicked them off felt like it was giving away something she wasn’t supposed to be doing. She only felt at ease when she was finally in her pyjamas and Paris had come back in with a cap of mouthwash.
“At least gargle,” she advised, but it was more like an order, and so Rory followed her to the bathroom and did as she was told. They came back into the room just as the front door lock clicked and at last pulled open. Rory slipped into the right side of the bed, Paris into the left, closest to the door.
“The elusive Matt,” Rory noted. She fluffed up her pillow to satisfaction before finally crashing against it. Paris wriggled around for a moment beside her and kicked up the edge of the duvet in her struggle. At last she settled too.
Jess’ voice, muffled by the walls, came through as she grew more weary in the soft plushness of his bed. Drawers were pulled open, cutlery chinked distantly. Rory turned to the side and pressed her face into the pillow. Though it was freshly washed, it smelled unmistakably like Jess, the warm curve of his neck, and she could have shot up for the shock of it. Paris watched her intently, a little bleary-eyed but always sharp.
“What did he say to you?” she asked with a little softness. She had pulled the duvet up to her chin and curled into it like an animal.
Rory thought for a moment, crossed her ankles together beneath the duvet. “He just told me about what he’s been up to. He runs a publishing house now, you know.”
“That’s all it was? A game of neighbourly catch-up?”
“Well, no, not really,” Rory mumbled into the pillow, which still smelled too much of Jess. Paris gave her a stern look. “We talked about the last time I saw him. He got a little mad, it was my fault.”
Paris shot up. “Typical! I mean, you see him for five seconds and he already has some grievance to air, I mean–”
“No, Paris. It was my fault.” Rory touched her arm and Paris, a little less incensed now, stuffed herself back into her burrowing spot.
“Well, what did you do?”
Rory studied the speckled plaster ceiling, awash with soft brown in the light of the lamp. “He came to see me at Yale, at the end of the last semester.”
“He did? Why?”
“He… Well, he wanted me to go away with him.”
Briefly, the revelation hung between them, ready to be unpicked. Paris laughed curtly. “Go away like, take a vacation, or go away like go totally off the grid and pursue a life of dishonourable vagrancy?”
Despite it all, Rory laughed. “Honestly, I’m not sure. I shut him down. I was scared, you know? He told me he loved me.”
“And what did you say?”
She remembered the conviction in his eyes when he had told her she could count on him. The palpable fierceness with which he laid down his proposals: live together, he said , work together, be together. The desperation when he had told her she could do anything with her life. She had heard that sentiment countless times in her life, and she had never really believed it until he had told her so with such ardency that he sounded genuinely maddened.
“I don’t know. I guess, in a way, I said nothing.”
“What would you say now?”
“He didn’t ask tonight.”
“ He didn’t,” Paris qualified. “I’m asking.”
“I haven’t seen him in five months and I managed to make him mad at me within five minutes. We never called or sent letters, I didn’t even get a postcard – I didn’t even send him a postcard when I was in Europe.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
In place of thinking about that, Rory reached to the side and turned off the bedside lamp, submerging them in total darkness.
“Hey, you can’t do that!” After an undefinable amount of time had passed, Rory found herself, unknowingly, on the cusp of sleep. She felt liminal. Beside her, Paris sighed, and the feeling jostled her into awareness momentarily. “You know, of all your boyfriends, I always hated him the least,” she said. Rory told herself she might have dreamed it when she woke up the next day.