2014 “Excuse me, sir?” Ari stands her ground, feet shoulder-width apart, on the sidewalk in front of the Brooklyn Museum. “I know that someone who waited ten minutes for a six-dollar cold brew has the time to stop and talk to me about protecting the second-largest bobcat habitat in New Jersey.”
Always best to start with a provocation. None of that “do you have a moment?” crap. No pedestrian in this city has “a moment” for a canvasser.
The tall man in sunglasses, expensive jeans, and a dark sweater—slightly hunched from the weight of a large backpack— slows down, not quite to a full stop. He glances at her neon vest and binder, realizing his mistake a half-second too late.
“I’m on a f***ing call!” he snaps, angling his body to route around her.
It’s fine. Ari is used to people faking calls to avoid engaging with her. She takes a step to the right, blocking his path again.
She needs one more donation to make quota, so Tall Sweater Nightmare Man can give her twenty seconds to make the case for the bobcats.
“Can I have a sip?” She reaches toward his cold brew cup with a minimalist Blue Bottle logo. “I’ve had a super long day out here.” This trick—passed down from Gabe, her coworker-with-benefits—works about twenty percent of the time, which is a phenomenal success rate in the business of pestering strangers for (no) fun and (little) profit.
“Un-
f***ing-believable!” He lifts the cup out of her reach and jaywalks across Eastern Parkway, turning his head to look back at her and scowl.
Or maybe to ensure she’s not following him.
When Gabe told their improv class about the “lucrative opportunities” with ProActivate, he’d assured them that they’d become accustomed to constant brush-offs, the lack of eye contact, the utter rejection. “It’s good practice for comedy,” he’d said. “And it pays better.”
Everything pays better than comedy.
But at least onstage you can flop in front of dozens of people at once. Ten efficient minutes of agony. On the street, it’s like extending your hand every thirty seconds and getting one of those extra-painful envelope paper cuts in return.
Something, something . . . the definition of insanity. Ostensibly, Ari moved to New York to pursue comedy. When she met Gabe, one of the charismatic leaders of the sketch comedy theater where Ari had planted her flag four months ago, he’d spun tales of casting agents frequenting open mics and late-night encounters with
Daily Show writers. He’d become a hero and a crush.
What Gabe neglected to mention is that most of those encounters occurred while he worked the register at the noodle place down the block from the studio.
On the drizzly walk home, she keeps an eye out for one last chance to make her donation quota. The woman with the promotional umbrella, letting her Yorkie pee on a flower bed? The stocky man with a gingery beard and thick-frame glasses, waiting in the doorway of a bar on Washington Avenue? But neither feels likely. Resigned, Ari turns to head toward home.
When she responded to Natalie’s posting on Craigslist, looking for someone to sublet the “cozy” second bedroom in her “Prospect Heights–adjacent” apartment, Ari quickly discovered it was actually a twenty-five-minute walk from Prospect Heights. “The room is technically considered a closet,” Nat had explained when Ari came to look at it, “but there’s already a lofted twin bed in there and a desk would totally fit.”
The desk didn’t fit. But living with Natalie was definitely preferable to Ari’s last living situation, which was a futon in a friend’s cousin’s living room.
Especially tonight. Natalie spent the weekend in the Hamptons and she won’t be back until late. The apartment will be luxuriously empty: the perfect opportunity for Ari to use her noisiest vibrator.
That was the plan, anyway.
“Guess who met quota standing outside Whole Paycheck?” Gabe is leaning against the front door to her building, under the awning, just out of the rain. He has the classic good looks of an Eddie Bauer catalog model or someone who poses for stock photos, with his wavy-but-coiffed hair and twinkling brown eyes. “Like shooting fish in a barrel. How’d you do?”
Gabe pushes off the brick wall, his neon ProActivate vest tucked into the back pocket of his jeans. He’s always a big hit with the leashes-and-strollers crowd.
“One short,” Ari replies, fishing her keys out of her pocket.
“Bummer.” He holds up a Blu-ray of
Inception. “Wanna finish it?”
It’s a flimsy pretense. They’ve been “watching”
Inception for the last three weeks, in fourteen-minute increments. Last time, they’d paused after a particularly horny round of “F***, Marry, Kill.” (Ari: Hardy, Watanabe, Gordon-Levitt. Gabe: Cotillard, Murphy, DiCaprio.)
“Natalie’s out,” Ari says, forcing her key into the lock. “I was planning on—”
“Perfect.” He holds the door open. “I have a date in Boerum Hill later.”
When they get in the apartment, Gabe pulls off his shirt before Ari gets the disc in Natalie’s Blu-ray player.
It’s convenient, this thing with Gabe. He’s easygoing, open to trying new stuff. Proficient at undoing her bra with one hand. They both want sex and to
not be boyfriend-girlfriend in equal amounts. He’s the first man Ari’s been with who doesn’t take it as a huge personal failing if she introduces a vibrator into the equation.
And after dealing with face-to-face rejection all day, it’s nice to be
wanted
. At 1:06:47 into the movie and two pairs of underwear on the floor, the intercom buzzes in three shrill bursts.
“Did you order takeout?” Gabe asks, breathing hard. He flops back onto the sofa. “A sandwich actually sounds amazing right now.”
“How would I have done that?” Ari sits up. “With my third hand?” Two more buzzes trill through the apartment, followed by one sustained buzz.
Ari rolls off the sagging couch and stumbles to the intercom. She punches the talk button: “Yeah?”
The response is a garbled mix of static, a low voice, “food,” and “Natalie.”
“Buzzer’s broken,” she says. “I’ll come down.” Ari tugs her tank top over her head. “Natalie orders these macrobiotic meals,” she tells Gabe, who’s already back on his phone. “Must be the delivery guy.” She picks his boxers up off the rug, scanning the floor. “Crap. Where did my underwear go?”
“Underwear is overrated.” Gabe heaves himself off the couch. “I’m gonna jump in the shower.”
Ari pulls on his boxers, shoves her feet into her sneakers, and jogs down the stairs to grab the meals from the delivery guy. When she reaches the ground floor, she sees a hulking shadow through the window at the top of the heavy door at the entryway. But as she begins to open the door, the shadow takes on a familiar shape.
Tall Sweater Nightmare Man is standing under her awning, holding a reusable shopping bag of produce that looks like an eighteenth-century Dutch still life.
He’s pale and lanky—mid-twenties?—with dark hair and a longish face that’s oddly proportioned.
But not in a bad way.
His eyes move back and forth across the slice of her face that’s visible between the frame and the door.
Ari clears her throat. “Can I help you?”
Copyright © 2023 by Kate Goldbeck. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
