bounty.
“Bouillabaisse? What an odd thing to ponder.” Donald’s salutation was like a stone thrown in her pool, sending a series of ripples outward, fragmenting her daydream.
“I made bouillabaisse yesterday. A giant pot of it. Mussels, fish, everything. You should have seen me.”
“You’ve taken up cooking?” heaved Donald with a sniff. “Girls in my day would have killed anyone who tried to stick
them
in the kitchen. It is the lowest kind of women’s work. Putting your mind on hold to feed the stomachs of the patriarchy, offering sustenance to others while your soul starves—”
“I was only cooking because it was part of my interview. The food person was out. The real point is, I wrote my first television script and, in case you’re wondering, it went quite well.”
“I see,” he said. “How nice that
your
writing career is taking off.”
At six forty-five, Eve held up the leash. “Ready for a walk?” The dog stirred, blinking. Eve hooked the leash to her collar. Together, they crept softly down the stairs to avoid waking Mrs. Swan and the other neighbors and outside into the cool, hushed morning. They walked several blocks, Eve scanning the buildings, wondering, as always, if any of them might have been Penelope’s. She’d never mentioned where her apartment was, nor had any of her old papers contained the address. It seemed she’d thrown almost everything out from her old life. But each time Eve passed a townhouse or tenement, she tried to picture her mother there, looking out a window or sitting on the stoop, as the locals so loved to do.
Before long, the moment that Eve had been dreading came: the dog’s sudden pull out to the curb and ominous squat. Sure enough, contractions began, and suddenly, there it was in all its reeking banality. Eve had thought raw fish was bad. But there was absolutely no doubt about what she had to do: Dog owners who didn’t clean up after their charges were considered the lowest of the low around here.
“You’ve done your job. Now I must do mine,” Eve said to the dog as she fished out one of the crinkled plastic bags Mrs. Swan had provided. She squatted down next to the blight, holding her breath. She looked up at the sky and began to tap the ground with a bag-enclosed hand, hoping to find her target without having to actually look at it. A couple of punky girls in heavy black eyeliner, who looked like they’d been out all night, walked by arm in arm, giggling at her. After several attempts, Eve’s fingers went from the unforgiving hardness of concrete to the sickening yield she sought. With a clawing motion, she picked up the mound and, still holding her breath, sprinted like an Olympian to the nearest trashcan, the dog struggling to keep up on her short legs.
At six minutes before seven, she placed the puppy carefully in an old leather tote and pushed open the door of the diner. She saw Vadis’s hand go up from a nearby table.
“Hey.” The combination of Vadis’s olive skin and wide-set pale eyes—gifts from her Colombian father and Swedish mother, respectively—made her stand out even in New York’s diverse population and drew admiring glances from a couple of nearby diners.
Eve half leaned in for a cheek kiss, but when Vadis made no move, she pulled back. “Thanks for coming all the way downtown,” she said. “I could have come up to you.” She sat down, gingerly placing the bag on the floor next to her chair.
“Nah, it’s cool. I have a meeting in Soho at nine-thirty,” said Vadis. She went back to scrolling through her BlackBerry’s reams of contacts. No doubt about it, she was part of this town. Vadiswas a real New Yorker. And she was the one who’d insisted that Eve could be—and should be—one, too.
It all started almost three months previously at the reunion of the Ambrose Aesthettes, the club for art history majors at Ambrose College. The college dedicated to creating “the women leaders of tomorrow” lay just outside
“Bouillabaisse? What an odd thing to ponder.” Donald’s salutation was like a stone thrown in her pool, sending a series of ripples outward, fragmenting her daydream.
“I made bouillabaisse yesterday. A giant pot of it. Mussels, fish, everything. You should have seen me.”
“You’ve taken up cooking?” heaved Donald with a sniff. “Girls in my day would have killed anyone who tried to stick
them
in the kitchen. It is the lowest kind of women’s work. Putting your mind on hold to feed the stomachs of the patriarchy, offering sustenance to others while your soul starves—”
“I was only cooking because it was part of my interview. The food person was out. The real point is, I wrote my first television script and, in case you’re wondering, it went quite well.”
“I see,” he said. “How nice that
your
writing career is taking off.”
At six forty-five, Eve held up the leash. “Ready for a walk?” The dog stirred, blinking. Eve hooked the leash to her collar. Together, they crept softly down the stairs to avoid waking Mrs. Swan and the other neighbors and outside into the cool, hushed morning. They walked several blocks, Eve scanning the buildings, wondering, as always, if any of them might have been Penelope’s. She’d never mentioned where her apartment was, nor had any of her old papers contained the address. It seemed she’d thrown almost everything out from her old life. But each time Eve passed a townhouse or tenement, she tried to picture her mother there, looking out a window or sitting on the stoop, as the locals so loved to do.
Before long, the moment that Eve had been dreading came: the dog’s sudden pull out to the curb and ominous squat. Sure enough, contractions began, and suddenly, there it was in all its reeking banality. Eve had thought raw fish was bad. But there was absolutely no doubt about what she had to do: Dog owners who didn’t clean up after their charges were considered the lowest of the low around here.
“You’ve done your job. Now I must do mine,” Eve said to the dog as she fished out one of the crinkled plastic bags Mrs. Swan had provided. She squatted down next to the blight, holding her breath. She looked up at the sky and began to tap the ground with a bag-enclosed hand, hoping to find her target without having to actually look at it. A couple of punky girls in heavy black eyeliner, who looked like they’d been out all night, walked by arm in arm, giggling at her. After several attempts, Eve’s fingers went from the unforgiving hardness of concrete to the sickening yield she sought. With a clawing motion, she picked up the mound and, still holding her breath, sprinted like an Olympian to the nearest trashcan, the dog struggling to keep up on her short legs.
At six minutes before seven, she placed the puppy carefully in an old leather tote and pushed open the door of the diner. She saw Vadis’s hand go up from a nearby table.
“Hey.” The combination of Vadis’s olive skin and wide-set pale eyes—gifts from her Colombian father and Swedish mother, respectively—made her stand out even in New York’s diverse population and drew admiring glances from a couple of nearby diners.
Eve half leaned in for a cheek kiss, but when Vadis made no move, she pulled back. “Thanks for coming all the way downtown,” she said. “I could have come up to you.” She sat down, gingerly placing the bag on the floor next to her chair.
“Nah, it’s cool. I have a meeting in Soho at nine-thirty,” said Vadis. She went back to scrolling through her BlackBerry’s reams of contacts. No doubt about it, she was part of this town. Vadiswas a real New Yorker. And she was the one who’d insisted that Eve could be—and should be—one, too.
It all started almost three months previously at the reunion of the Ambrose Aesthettes, the club for art history majors at Ambrose College. The college dedicated to creating “the women leaders of tomorrow” lay just outside
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