The Sun in Your Eyes by Deborah Shapiro Page A

our fucking honeymoon .”
    We murmured some indistinct acknowledgments.
    â€œGod. You two. You guys are like a fucking planet together. You make me feel like a little ant or something. Do you know I almost didn’t invite either of you? But I wanted to be generous. I wanted you to share this with me. But you know what? You don’t really share anything with anyone but each other. So, like, fuck that!” She laughed and took another drag on the joint between her fingers. I looked to Lee, but she wouldn’t return my gaze. She just stared up at the rafters, as though what Kirsten said was, for once, well-reasoned and true, and it disturbed her.
    Within a year, Kirsten left her husband, moved across the country, and became an apprentice to a marketing guru. She was forecasting trends on daytime talk shows, wearing wrap dresses and stilettos, discussing happiness as it related to various colors. She and the guru renovated a San Francisco townhouse. They spoke of their love, for their home and for each other, in the pages of a shelter magazine. It wasn’t Kirsten’s fault that the guru soon began an affair with his new assistant, but hadn’t I turned on theTV one morning and heard her say, “You are your choices”? It was back to New York, where she lived with an advertising executive–turned–rooftop farmer, incorporated antlers into the design of several downtown hotels, and acquired a new wardrobe of structurally challenging clothes you may have at first suspected weren’t particularly flattering before concluding that your eye simply wasn’t avant-garde enough to appreciate them. Kirsten moved through life in a series of clean breaks. Perhaps, in some parallel reality, a landfill of her past messes grew more and more massive. But unless this world collided with that one, she’d never contend with the garbage heap of her existence. I could try to heave myself up onto a ledge of superiority, tell myself that Kirsten didn’t really know herself. But was knowing yourself worth more than all the life she had lived? How well did I know myself anyway?
    About a year ago, I happened to be downtown for a doctor’s appointment in the middle of the afternoon and I ran into her. She was leaving a showroom and looked like a celebrity dressed to avoid the paparazzi: sunglasses, flats, leather jacket, of-the-moment bag.
    â€œViv fucking Feld!” She insisted we go get a coffee right then. Sometimes I felt I alone had maintained a life that left room for unscheduled coffees and it was like being the last house standing on an otherwise razed block. Where had everybody gone? But here was Kirsten, and though I knew her impromptu availability wasn’t the same as mine, I couldn’t say no. I hadn’t seen her since Andy and I got married.
    We covered the preliminaries: she told me about jetting to Peru recently for inspiration. I said there was good Peruvian food in Queens. She told me how funny I was.
    â€œAre you still with—I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten his name—the guy you were with at our wedding?” I asked.
    â€œRussell. No. God, no! That seems so long ago. Men. ” She sighed, as though that were the definitive word on the subject. But then she continued. “You and Andy are very lucky. Some of us just aren’t built for marriage. We always want something more.”
    â€œRight. I think there’s a song about that.”
    â€œSpeaking of which, how’s Lee?”
    â€œI don’t really know. We’ve kind of lost touch. I think she’s in L.A.”
    â€œOh, yeah? What is she doing?”
    â€œI’m not really sure. I think she was trying to figure that out.”
    â€œWell, I hope she does. You only get one life. I just hope she’s happy.”
    I wanted to ask Kirsten if she was happy, but happiness (and what it had to with various colors) was merely a topic to discuss in front of a studio