given that he was moving in with Sylvia and she was seeing Evan, the intermittently employed actor sheâd been intermittently dating for close to a year now. If he didnât end it today, it would just end some other day.
He found this case heâd made to himself fairly convincingâbut felt it contradicted almost instantly when he saw a young woman of medium height, brunette and narrow-shouldered, with a distinctive gait of short, choppy steps that were at once both hurried and measuredâas if she were resisting an urge to runâand recognized her immediately as Zoey.
She had a phone pressed against her ear. When he approached, she smiledâmomentarily, apologeticallyâthen returned her attention to whomever she was talking to. âThen we want to link to it on their site?â she said into her cell, her toe tapping agitatedly, her thumb at her mouth, her expression one of brow-furrowed concentration as she stared off into the middle distance. She was dressed in a black-and-white Rorschach-patterned dress and black high heels, and Jonah could see in silhouette created by the sunlight pouring onto the plaza the shape of her slender figure under her dress, the darker outlines of her bra and panties. He found he couldnât stop staring at this sight, despite his intentions hereâand despite having seen her entirely naked maybe a thousand times before. Finally he feigned interest in his own phone, reminded himself that Sylvia had a pretty great body, too, though in an entirely different mode.
âThen we can just post the whole thing, right?â Zoey was saying. âAnd I could definitely get a quote from his publicist.â¦â She was, to use a term she had coined herself, a B-girl: a writer for the blog Glossified, a culture-cum-gossip website popular among young urban women. It was a job many envied her forâmany young urban women, at leastâbut, characteristically, Zoey managed to hate it. Her career was a source of deep, persistent anxiety for herâas were her vast credit-card debt, her recurring ulcer, her smallish cup size, her nose: long and tall from her face, with a slight bump at the center that she referred to as âthe mogul.â Despite Zoeyâs loathing of it, though, Jonah considered this nose her sexiest featureâthe one that gave her face the distinctive character that, for whatever reason, he always associated with the letter Z.
Indeed, nothing that bothered her so much about herself bothered him at all; he even found the persistence of all the (to him baseless) anxieties charming. And as he watched her frowning at whatever she was hearing on the phone, still chewing her thumbnail (a habit she had been trying to break for as long as heâd known her), it became difficult for him to distinguish between his reluctance over the breakup and his affection for her, because there really was so much about her that he found charming: the inchoate worries; her candor, her wit; her idiosyncratic habit of swearing only in languages other than English; the drama of her facial expressionsâshe being a woman whose brow furrowed, whose laughter was loud and openmouthed, whose nervousness brought tautness from her forehead to her chin, whose almond-shaped brown eyes narrowed and darted, and whose head tilted just so when she was flirting.
âFive hundred words? Two fifty?â she continued. âSure ⦠And then you saw the emails? Okay. Call me on my cell when you hear from Anika, all right? Okay, thanks, ciao. â She hung up, dropped her phone into her voluminous purse, and, with the same hand, immediately began digging around in it. âYou have no idea, Yonsiââthis being her nickname for himââI have been on the phone nonstop since I walked in this morning. I havenât even had the chance to do something terrible for my body.â She pulled out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes, by smooth rote
He found this case heâd made to himself fairly convincingâbut felt it contradicted almost instantly when he saw a young woman of medium height, brunette and narrow-shouldered, with a distinctive gait of short, choppy steps that were at once both hurried and measuredâas if she were resisting an urge to runâand recognized her immediately as Zoey.
She had a phone pressed against her ear. When he approached, she smiledâmomentarily, apologeticallyâthen returned her attention to whomever she was talking to. âThen we want to link to it on their site?â she said into her cell, her toe tapping agitatedly, her thumb at her mouth, her expression one of brow-furrowed concentration as she stared off into the middle distance. She was dressed in a black-and-white Rorschach-patterned dress and black high heels, and Jonah could see in silhouette created by the sunlight pouring onto the plaza the shape of her slender figure under her dress, the darker outlines of her bra and panties. He found he couldnât stop staring at this sight, despite his intentions hereâand despite having seen her entirely naked maybe a thousand times before. Finally he feigned interest in his own phone, reminded himself that Sylvia had a pretty great body, too, though in an entirely different mode.
âThen we can just post the whole thing, right?â Zoey was saying. âAnd I could definitely get a quote from his publicist.â¦â She was, to use a term she had coined herself, a B-girl: a writer for the blog Glossified, a culture-cum-gossip website popular among young urban women. It was a job many envied her forâmany young urban women, at leastâbut, characteristically, Zoey managed to hate it. Her career was a source of deep, persistent anxiety for herâas were her vast credit-card debt, her recurring ulcer, her smallish cup size, her nose: long and tall from her face, with a slight bump at the center that she referred to as âthe mogul.â Despite Zoeyâs loathing of it, though, Jonah considered this nose her sexiest featureâthe one that gave her face the distinctive character that, for whatever reason, he always associated with the letter Z.
Indeed, nothing that bothered her so much about herself bothered him at all; he even found the persistence of all the (to him baseless) anxieties charming. And as he watched her frowning at whatever she was hearing on the phone, still chewing her thumbnail (a habit she had been trying to break for as long as heâd known her), it became difficult for him to distinguish between his reluctance over the breakup and his affection for her, because there really was so much about her that he found charming: the inchoate worries; her candor, her wit; her idiosyncratic habit of swearing only in languages other than English; the drama of her facial expressionsâshe being a woman whose brow furrowed, whose laughter was loud and openmouthed, whose nervousness brought tautness from her forehead to her chin, whose almond-shaped brown eyes narrowed and darted, and whose head tilted just so when she was flirting.
âFive hundred words? Two fifty?â she continued. âSure ⦠And then you saw the emails? Okay. Call me on my cell when you hear from Anika, all right? Okay, thanks, ciao. â She hung up, dropped her phone into her voluminous purse, and, with the same hand, immediately began digging around in it. âYou have no idea, Yonsiââthis being her nickname for himââI have been on the phone nonstop since I walked in this morning. I havenât even had the chance to do something terrible for my body.â She pulled out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes, by smooth rote
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