Friendship by Emily Gould Page B

still, up until this moment in her life, Amy had been going around assuming that her safety was at least partially someone else’s responsibility. But it never really had been, and now it was impossible to pretend otherwise. She was completely alone.
    It was nine o’clock. Without quite realizing what she was doing, she dialed Bev’s number. They weren’t yet the kind of friends who called each other out of the blue for no reason, so Amy was relieved when Bev picked up.
    “Hi! How did the move go? You must be exhausted.”
    “Oh, the movers did most of it. I just carried the little stuff, the breakable stuff. The real nightmare is unpacking, of course.”
    “Want me to come over and help?”
    “No! I mean, don’t help. I don’t want to do any more tonight, and I wouldn’t inflict that on you. But do come over! I mean, if you want.”
    Fifteen minutes later, Bev was standing at Amy’s door with a bottle of wine and a paper bag full of take-out sushi. “I had just ordered this, but I always order enough for two people,” she explained. Her hair was in shiny plaits, making her look even more innocent than usual, like a milkmaid on an antique can label. Amy felt a pang of gratitude so extreme that tears briefly, unnoticeably came to her eyes.
    They ate the sushi and drank the wine on a little ledge of roof they could crawl to from Amy’s fire escape, which the broker who’d shown Amy the apartment had described as a “deck.” Rotting fallen leaves clotted one corner and made the hot summer air smell more like the woods and less like car exhaust. They balanced the plastic trays of spicy tuna rolls on their laps and looked out at the cars on the BQE and, beyond that, the storage warehouses, the Navy Yard, and, across the East River, Manhattan, just visible between the nearby buildings, skyscrapers with all their lights on, wastefully twinkling.
    Soon the sushi was gone and they were on their third plastic cups of wine. Amy felt almost too tired to talk, so she listened to Bev, who was telling her about the latest terrible thing her boss had done:
    “It wasn’t even that she claimed credit for my work. I mean, that’s what I’m there for, I’m her assistant. It was that she wanted me to continue the fiction when we weren’t even in the meeting anymore, when we were just alone in her office. She wanted me to congratulate her on the great idea she’d had for the subtitle! If I felt like being really self-destructive, I’d have called her out on it, but it’s just not worth it. She’d just pretend she had no idea what I was talking about, and then she’d be angry at me for a week and take it out on me by deliberately leaving me off some crucial scheduling email, then having a screaming fit when she arrived at the wrong restaurant to have lunch with Marcia Gay Harden or whatever C-lister she’s currently courting.”
    “I think you should call her out on it, regardless of the consequences. If you don’t assert yourself, if you just keep being the world’s best assistant, you’ll never get promoted,” Amy said.
    “If my boss despises me, I’ll never get promoted.”
    “Ahh, a catch-twenty-two.”
    Bev pulled out a pack of Camel Lights, Amy’s favorite brand of cigarettes. Neither of them really smoked, but when Bev pretend smoked, she bought Parliaments. The Camels were another kind gesture on her part, like the wine and the sushi. They lit cigarettes and smoked with exaggerated seriousness, enjoying the ritual of the burst of flame, the first puff of smoke dissipating into the night air.
    “I have something I need to ask you, and I’m afraid it’ll be awkward,” Bev said, speaking quickly. They were still facing the highway, not looking at each other, but Amy snuck a glance at Bev’s face. Bev seemed tense but resolute.
    “Okay, what is it?”
    “Well, you know, growing up where I did, I was often considered kind of an odd duck. I mean, I wasn’t a total social reject. I always had a couple