Now it was 11:15 at night, and she had not eaten dinner, and she had read the chapter four times. Every time she finished it, she just started again, like an album that she’d put on repeat.

Her apartment was a fifth-floor walk-up on Ludlow with a tub in the kitchen and a single window that looked out on the brick airshaft of the building next door. It had been Shailey’s apartment for three years which was the longest she’d ever lived in any one place. It was home. She had moved into it the month she finished her MFA, with the modest advance from her first translation contract, and she had filled it gradually with the things a freelance translator filled an apartment with: a long desk against the wall by the window, two lamps, a kettle, a printer, three dictionaries on a low shelf, a French press, a floral candle she had bought in a bodega on Avenue B and was meant to be lit only when she could not concentrate. The candle was lit now.

She read the chapter a fifth time.

Hélène Berthier had written the memoir she had been threatening for a decade to write, and she had written it the way she wrote everything: in short paragraphs, mostly declarative, with the cool unmoved quality of a woman who had decided in adolescence that emotional restraint was a moral position. Hélène was sixty-three years old and lived in a third-floor apartment on the Rue de Seine, in the 6th arrondissement, with a view of a courtyard that contained a single horse chestnut tree. Shailey had lived in that apartment with Hélène for about a year, between the fall when she was 22 and the following summer when she turned 23. She had slept on the twin bed in the room that had once been a nursery and had become, by the time Shailey arrived, a sort of storage room for Hélène’s correspondence, which Shailey had been hired to organize.

The chapter was about the years just before Hélène’s first novel had come out. It was about her late thirties, about the man she had been involved with at the time, about the slow turning toward the book that would change her life. It was a chapter about becoming, which was what Hélène had always written about; Hélène became famous this way, by writing about the slow precise mechanism by which a person forms themselves out of the disordered materials of their life. Très niche.

The chapter was 4,012 words long.

The passage about Shailey was on page 19, about 3 paragraphs long. It was in the middle of a longer movement about the apartment and the rhythms of Hélène’s writing life. The passage began “in those years there had often been a girl,” and it described, with the dispassionate accuracy that was Hélène’s most identifiable quality, the type of girl who had often been in the apartment: a young woman from somewhere else, hired as an assistant, intelligent in the limited way of girls who had been told they were intelligent, useful for a year or so, and ultimately dispensable at the end. The passage did not name Shailey. The passage was not, strictly speaking, about Shailey—it was about a category of girl, of which Shailey had been one example among several. Hélène had had four such assistants between 2005 and 2020. Shailey had been the third.

But the passage contained the phrase les yeux reconnaissants, which translated as grateful eyes, and the phrase did appear, in the passage, in a sentence that described one specific girl whom Hélène remembered with a slight residual fondness. “She had had grateful eyes, the way certain provincial children do when they are first taken to a museum.”

Shailey was not provincial. Shailey was from New York and essentially grew up at the Whitney. Her father was a lawyer and her mother was an art curator. They had a house in Riverdale, a beautiful Tudor-style building near the end of the 1 train. Shailey had gone to a college Hélène’s son had failed to get into, and she had read more novels by the age of 22 than Hélène’s son and ex-husband combined. None of this was relevant. The point of the phrase was that Hélène had decided, in 2014, that Shailey had been provincial, and had recorded the decision in a sentence that would soon be published in nine languages, including the one Shailey was now responsible for rendering it into.

Shailey had translated the previous Berthier novel. The contract for the memoir had come to her through the same editor at the same publishing house, with the same fee schedule and the same delivery deadlines, eight months ago. The editor had said, on a phone call, Hélène asked for you specifically. Shailey had taken this, at the time, as the small belated recognition she had been waiting six years to receive.

Now, shy of midnight on a Tuesday night, on the Lower East Side, she sat at her desk with the French file open in one window and an empty English file open in another, and she thought about the precise structure of the deception that had been performed on her.

The first thing she did was open Instagram.

Hélène did not have Instagram; rather, Hélène did not have any social media. Hélène had given exactly one interview about her aversion to it, in 2017, in the Times Literary Supplement, and had said something Shailey now remembered sort of word for word: I find that the kind of attention required to maintain a public self is incompatible with the kind of attention required to produce a private one. Shailey had quoted this line, when she was 23, to friends she wanted to impress.

But Jean, Hélène’s son, had Instagram. Jean was forty-one and lived in Marseille and worked in some kind of design consultancy and had 460 followers. He posted approximately once a month, which was usually a photograph of food, the sea, or some new car he was in.

Jean had recently been somewhere with a woman who appeared to be his girlfriend, in a coastal town in Portugal. The girlfriend looked younger than him and they were eating fish at a long wooden table. There were six people in the photograph, none tagged in the photo. Jean was laughing in the way Jean laughed, with his mouth open and his eyes crinkled, which was a thing Shailey had once found charming and now thought of as performative. The post was from eleven days ago and 43 people had liked it.

Shailey scrolled.

She scrolled back through Jean’s last three years on Instagram. She looked at every photograph and read every caption. She looked at the comments, most of them in French, some in English, one or two in Italian, and she made quiet private judgments about the people who had commented and what their lives were like and how they were related to Jean. She enlarged one specific photograph of Jean and his mother, from May of last year, taken at what appeared to be a book event in Paris. Hélène was wearing a black blouse and her reading glasses were pushed up into her hair. She was looking past the camera in the way she always looked past cameras. Jean had his arm around her. The caption read, in French, the engine of all my reading, since I was small.

Shailey closed Instagram and closed her eyes. She sat with her hands flat on the desk for a moment, breathing in a way she recognized as the way she had breathed in the apartment on the Rue de Seine, six years ago, when Hélène yelled and Shailey needed to leave the room.

It was, she thought, a very specific kind of injury to be reminded of who she was at 22 by a person who had no current evidence. There was nothing she could look at on the internet that would tell her how Hélène was now. There was no recent photograph of her. There were no quotes from her in any context less than seven months old. She existed only in the manuscript, and that too in the past tense of the manuscript, in the cool prose voice that had stayed unchanged in twenty years and would presumably stay unchanged for another twenty. Hélène had won. Shailey was always going to be young in her memory, and Hélène was always going to be the writer of the memoir, and the asymmetry was load-bearing in their entire relationship.

When she was 22, she thought Paris was her solution. She still thinks about the walks she would take in the morning, the bottles of wine drunk at Tuileries at sunset. But she rarely revisits what happened with Hélène.

Shailey had spent the summer after graduation working at a small literary magazine in New York, and she had applied to an assistantship program with the kind of unembarrassed hope that only 22-year-olds had. The program was administered by a foundation that placed young Americans with prominent European writers for terms of 12 to 18 months. Shailey had read every Berthier novel by the time she submitted her application and wrote her application essay in French. She had been told, six weeks later, that Hélène Berthier had selected her from a final pool of three candidates, and that she should plan to be in Paris by the first of October.

She had arrived in Paris on September 26th with a single suitcase. She had taken a taxi from the airport because she had not known about the train, and was out 86 euros for the ride. She had stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the building where she was going to live and had felt, for a moment, the unfamiliar feeling of standing inside her own life.

Hélène had been waiting for her in the apartment in a way that turned out to be characteristic. Hélène had been at her desk, working, and had not stopped working when Shailey had been let in by the maid. The maid had carried Shailey’s suitcase to the twin bed in the storage room. Shailey had stood in the doorway of Hélène’s study for 45 seconds, holding her purse, waiting to be acknowledged. Hélène eventually looked up. She had taken Shailey in with the long inspecting gaze of a woman who had reviewed many young women in many doorways. She had said, in French, you are smaller than I expected, and Shailey had not known what to say to this, and Hélène had returned to her work, and the maid had reappeared and shown Shailey where the bathroom was.

The thing about cruelty, Shailey thought at 1 a.m. (which meant it was now Wednesday), was that the cruel person almost never thought of themselves as cruel. Hélène had not been cruel to Shailey in any way that she would have acknowledged. Hélène had been distracted, busy, indifferent. Hélène had also been, in an annoyingly consistent way, withholding; there was rarely ever praise, any form of explanation of her erratic actions, or small administrative kindnesses that allowed an assistant to function. Shailey had spent the first week not knowing where the post office was. Shailey had spent the first month not knowing whether her work was satisfactory. Hélène had never said thank you for anything, because Hélène had decided, at some point in her own twenties, that thank you was an Anglo-Saxon corruption of French manners, and she had organized her household around the absence of the phrase. Shailey had almost convinced herself that Hélène, in her fabulousness, was right, only to be reminded during a phone call to her parents that a lack of kindness was not cool.

There had been a dinner, about six months after Shailey had moved in. Hélène had hosted a small gathering for the editor of her magazine and the man who was, at the time, her lover and a younger writer she was mentoring. Shailey had been asked to stay because she could be useful; the maid was off for the night and someone had to bring out the courses. Shailey stepped in and garnished dishes with care before bringing them out. The conversation at the table had been in French and had been about a novel they had all read in school, and Shailey had, at one point, ventured an observation in French, which she had rehearsed in her head for several seconds before saying. There had been a small pause at the table. Hélène had looked at her, eyes slightly squinted, a shadow of a smirk forming, and had said, “Shailey, please, the gratin.”

Simply: the gratin. It was as if Shailey hadn’t said anything of importance, as if her trying to join the conversation was inexplicable.

Shailey had brought out the gratin and remained silent the rest of the night, slightly humiliated at the way Hélène put her down. No one asked if she was okay.

It was now 1:43 in the morning when Shailey got up from her desk and went to the kitchen and put a tea bag in a cup and poured the water that had been re-boiled four times now. She drank the tea standing at the kitchen counter with the cup in both hands. The candle on her desk in the next room was guttering. She could see, through the window, into a kitchen on the other side of the airshaft, where a man was eating something out of a Tupperware container while standing at his sink. The man and Shailey had been kitchen-neighbors for three years and had never spoken and would never speak.

She thought, holding the tea: I am going to translate this perfectly.

She sipped. With a small surprised flush of shame she knew she wanted Hélène to read it in English and recognize that the English is better than the French.

Maybe it was because it was almost 2 a.m. or maybe it was because she hadn’t eaten dinner or perhaps it was the most probable option which was a combination of those two truths, but she felt consumed by petty thoughts. It was not even a serious professional ambition; the English of a translation was not supposed to be better than the French of the original, that was not how good translation worked. That kind of vanity-translation was the mark of an amateur. Hélène’s prose was excellent. Shailey’s job was to render it accurately. Any translator who tried to improve a writer’s work was a translator who would not, eventually, be hired again.

And yet the thought sat in Shailey’s mind with the undeniable pleasure of a thing she could not unthink. She wanted to do the work perfectly. She wanted the perfection to be a kind of refusal. She wanted Hélène, sitting in her apartment on the Rue de Seine when the English edition arrived, to open the book and read the three paragraphs about the girl with grateful eyes, in English this time, and to feel, even for just half a second, the disorienting recognition that the girl she had described had grown into a person who could render her sentences in another language with more precision than she had used to write them.

It was a stupid revenge. Shailey knew it was stupid. It was the type of thing she would have done when she was 22, holding her bag in the doorway being told she was smaller than expected. And yet still, at 28, Shailey could still feel the pull of it, the weight of embarrassment and dismissal from someone who was meant to be great.

She went back to her desk and opened the empty English translation file.

She began the chapter from the top. She translated the first paragraph, which was a description of the courtyard with the horse chestnut tree. Hélène’s French was, as always, exact and slightly cold. Shailey’s English came out exact and slightly cold. However, there was, in her English, a quality of attention that the French had not asked for. It was not a betrayal of the French language; rather, it was something more like a small inhabitation. The translator was on the page, beside the author, breathing. There was a little life.

She translated for an hour and forty minutes, slowly, without rushing. Her tea had been swapped for an espresso shot she made on her stove using a moka pot.

It was inching toward 4 in the morning when she got up and went to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror over the sink. The face that looked back was the face of a tired woman in her late twenties. The eyes in the face were not grateful, exactly. They were the eyes of a person who had been working all night. There were shadows underneath them building a home. One last push to the end of the chapter.

The next chunk of writing was the one about her.

She translated it slowly. She gave Hélène’s prose the respect it deserved, which was considerable. Les yeux reconnaissants became grateful eyes, because there was no better translation and any alternative would have been a small fraudulence. Provinciale became provincial, because the writer had chosen that word and the writer was allowed to be wrong about her assistant. The sentence about the museum stayed almost exactly as it had been in French, because the sentence was already, in French, doing what it was meant to do. Shailey did not soften it. She did not strengthen it.

When she got to the end of the passage, she went back to the beginning and read what she had written. It was good. It was a good translation. A reader of the English would feel, encountering the passage, the same small chill of dismissive observation that a reader of the French would feel. The reader would not know that the passage had been translated by the girl in it.

But the rhythm of the English, Shailey thought, contained one small thing that the French did not. There was, at the end of the second paragraph, a sentence where she had chosen the word seemed over was. The French had said was. The English said seemed. The difference was almost nothing. Any editor would let it pass. The difference was that Hélène, in the French, had been making an assertion. In Shailey’s English, Hélène was making an observation. The observation was attributed, faintly and unmistakably, to the observer. The girl with grateful eyes seemed one way. Not, in the English, was.

It was the smallest possible intervention. It was the kind of intervention that could be defended as a normal translator’s choice. Seemed was, in fact, sometimes a perfectly accurate rendering of était in indirect free style. Shailey would defend it, if anyone asked, with the small unflustered authority of a working professional.

No one would ask.

She knew, sitting at the desk at 4:45 in the morning, that this was the closest she would come to saying anything to Hélène. She remained as neutral as possible, and within the rules of her profession. She was both 28 and 23 all at once, and she understood what was going to be true for the rest of her life: she was always going to contain the smallness she felt but she was also always going to find small ways, when the opportunity presented itself, to revise the record.

She saved the file. She closed the laptop. She blew out the candle. She drank a glass of water at the kitchen sink, standing where the man across the airshaft had stood earlier, eating from a Tupperware, who was now long asleep.

She fired off an email to the editor saying the chapter was going well, that she needed a small extension to clean up some areas and attached her progress thus far. She toggled the alarm she had set off and went to sleep, hoping to wake up long after the sun made an appearance.

Outside on Ludlow Street, a delivery truck reversed slowly past her window, its electronic beep mournful and small and continuous. The first faint light of morning had crept over the East River. The candle smoke hung in the air of the apartment in a long thin ribbon and then, after a few minutes, dispersed.

The bride came in alone on a Monday afternoon, which Pia always took as a good sign. The ones who came with their mothers wanted what their mothers wanted, which was usually peonies, and usually too many of them. The ones who came with their fiancés wanted what would not embarrass anyone, which meant white, which meant nothing. The ones who came alone, in Pia’s experience, usually knew what they wanted—and it showed in the way they touched the sample stems on the counter, in the way they said no without apologizing for it, in the way they were not afraid of the silence between sentences.

This one knew. She wanted ranunculus, garden roses in the palest possible blush, eucalyptus that moved when you breathed on it. She wanted nothing tight. She did not want anything that looked like it had been arranged.

“I want it to look like I went outside and picked it,” she said, “but, you know. Better.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Pia said, and she did. It was the request she got most often now, from women in their thirties who had spent a decade looking at other women’s weddings on their phones and had developed, as a result, a horror of the visibly expensive. They wanted abundance that read as accident. They wanted craft that hid itself. It was, Pia thought, the central aesthetic problem of the age, and she had built a small business on solving it.

She wrote it all down on the intake form in her looping, slightly old-fashioned hand: Saturday, May 17. Ceremony 4 p.m. The Foundry. 120 guests. Bridal bouquet, six bridesmaids, twelve centerpieces, two arch installations, boutonnieres TBD pending count from groom. Outside, on Manhattan Avenue, a sanitation truck was reversing with its mournful electronic beep, and the late-afternoon light was doing the thing it did in April, slanting low through the front window and pooling on the cement floor in a long parallelogram the color of weak tea.

The bride’s name was Hannah Voss. She paid the deposit in full from a card she pulled out of a slim leather wallet that suggested intentional decision-making capabilities and she hugged Pia at the door, which was unusual but not unwelcome. She smelled like a department store’s perfume section and a little bit like rain. Her coat was a camel-colored thing that probably cost what Pia’s rent cost, and her hair was the kind of brown that has been quietly and expensively maintained.

After she left, Pia stood at the counter for a long time looking at the form and thinking about what an enormous, generous, wide-open thing it was, to know what you wanted, and then to walk into a shop on a Monday afternoon and ask for it, and then to write a check, and then to leave.

She thought also, as she always did after a good consultation, that this was the part of the job she liked best: before the deliveries went wrong and the buckets leaked in the van and the mother of the bride called at ten p.m. to ask if hydrangeas were possible after all. The part where it was still only an idea, and the idea was beautiful, and the bride was happy, and nothing had yet had a chance to go wrong.

Tuesday

The boutonniere count came in by email at 7:14 a.m. Twelve, plus one for the groom, plus two for the fathers. Pia opened the spreadsheet on her phone while the kettle was boiling, and saw his name in the second column.

She set the phone down. She picked it up again. She set it down. It couldn’t be…

The kettle clicked off and she did not pour the water. She stood in her kitchen in her gray wool socks, one of them with a hole starting at the heel that she had been meaning to darn, and read the name three more times, and then she opened the email itself, and there it was again in the signature line beneath Hannah’s: and Daniel Cross.

It was a common enough name. She told herself this while she finally poured the water and watched the tea bag bloom into the white cup, the color leaching out in slow brown clouds. Daniels were everywhere. She had gone to high school with two. There was a Daniel who delivered her wholesale orders on Thursdays, a sweet kid from Astoria who called her ma’am though she was only thirty-two. The world was full of Daniels but most of them were not the Daniel who had, six years ago this June, told her on a bench outside the Polish bakery on Manhattan Avenue, about five blocks from where she was now standing, that he didn’t think he was the kind of person who could give her what she wanted, and she had said what do you think I want, and he had said more than this, and she had said you don’t know what I want, and he had not answered, because he had been right.

She drank the tea. The mug warmed her palms in a way she found, in that moment, almost embarrassingly comforting, as though she needed comforting, as though anything had actually happened. She went to the shop. She did not look at the spreadsheet again until lunch.

At lunch she looked. The last name was still his.

It was not, she told herself, a particularly common last name, but neither was it impossibly rare. She typed it into the search bar of her phone and then deleted it without pressing return, which felt, perversely, like a small moral victory. She ate her sandwich at the workbench in the back (her usual turkey and cheddar from the deli on the corner, except today the bread already going soft from the mustard) and she watched a fly do figure eights around the pendant lamp and she thought about how strange it was that a name on a spreadsheet could relocate her, in the space of a breath, to a bench outside a bakery in 2019, when she had been twenty-six and had thought twenty-six was old.

She thought: it could still be a different Daniel.

She thought: it could.

She thought, finishing the sandwich and crumpling the paper into a tight white ball: it isn’t, though.

Because the thing she remembered now, sitting at the workbench with the fly still tracing its small pointless geometries above her, was not the bench, exactly, or the words but the sound of the bakery door opening behind them, the small chime of the bell, and the smell of the bread coming out. Though the words came back, they always did, complete and unaltered, the way certain sentences from one’s life remained intact in the mind when whole years dissolved around them. She had thought, even as he was saying what he was saying, somebody in there is having a very good morning, and the strange double consciousness of that, the part of her that was being broken up with and the part of her that was noticing the bread, and how she had not known until that moment that a person could be more than one person at once, could in fact be many people simultaneously, could be the woman crying on the bench and the woman smelling the bread and the woman already, in some quiet anterior chamber of herself, beginning the long business of being all right about it.

The afternoon was busy in the way April afternoons in the shop were always busy now, with the spring weddings beginning to crowd the calendar and the wholesale prices going up by the week. A woman came in for a hostess gift, a man came in apologizing for something he didn’t name, a girl of perhaps nineteen came in and stood in front of the cooler for ten minutes and left without buying anything. Pia made a tussie-mussie of mixed herbs and small white flowers for a christening. She watered the front display. She swept. She did all the small ordinary things that made up a working day, and underneath them, the way a bass line runs under a melody, ran the steady low thrum of his name is in the spreadsheet, his name is in the spreadsheet, his name is in the fucking spreadsheet.

Wednesday

Pia had a rule about not Googling people, which she had made for herself at twenty-six after the breakup and had broken approximately once a quarter ever since. She broke it on Wednesday morning before the shop opened, sitting on the stool behind the register with a cortado going cold beside her in its small ceramic cup, the milk foam collapsing slowly into the espresso like snow collapses on a windowsill in spring.

His face had aged the way she’d suspected it would: more bone, less softness, the same eyes. In the picture, he was standing on a beach with his arm around Hannah Voss. He was wearing a linen shirt, untucked, the sleeves rolled to the forearm. He looked happy in the specific way of people who had decided, at some point, to be happy, and had then made the necessary arrangements: the right woman, the right job, the right beach, the right shirt. The kind of happiness that was, Pia had come to believe in her thirties, the only kind actually available to most people, and which she did not begrudge him for having found.

She closed the tab. She opened it again. She closed it.

She had not thought about him in… well, that wasn’t true. She had thought about him. Less, over the years, but the thinking had never quite stopped, only changed shape. For a long time after, she had thought about him constantly, in the way you think about a song you can’t stop humming. Then, for a longer time, in the way you think about a city you used to live in: with a kind of geographical fondness, knowing the streets without missing them. And then, eventually, in the way you think about the weather: occasionally, neutrally, when something prompted it, with no more emotional weight than the noticing of a cloud.

He had prompted it now. He had walked into her shop without walking into her shop. He had handed her, through his fiancée, the job of decorating the most important day of his life, and he did not know it, and she was not going to tell him.

She thought, sitting on the stool, about the strangeness of being the only person in a situation who knew the shape of the situation. It was, she decided, a particular kind of solitude, not unpleasant, almost interesting. It was the solitude of the magician at the dinner party who has just slipped the card into his sleeve. It was the solitude of the doctor who has read the scan but has not yet called the patient. It was a solitude that conferred, briefly, a kind of power, though the power was the power not to use it, which was the only power she had ever really wanted anyway.

The bell above the door rang. A woman came in wanting a get-well bouquet for her sister, who was, the woman explained, recovering from something she did not name and Pia did not ask about. Pia made it beautifully, with white tulips whose green stems she trimmed at sharp diagonals so they would drink, and a single sprig of rosemary tucked deep into the center for remembrance, which the woman did not catch, but which Pia put in anyway, because she was the kind of person who put things in. The woman paid in cash and tipped extravagantly and left, and the bell rang again behind her, and the shop was quiet again, and Pia drank the cold cortado, and the day went on.

That night, walking home in the long blue dusk, she passed the Polish bakery on Manhattan Avenue and looked at the bench out front, the same bench, weathered now and slightly more crooked than it had been, and she felt a strange feeling. It wasn’t sadness, exactly. Something more like recognition maybe, the way you might recognize a face in a crowd that turned out, on second look, not to be the face you had thought it was, but to belong instead to someone else entirely, someone you had never met, who had been there all along.

Thursday

The wholesale order arrived at six in the morning, as it always did, brought by Daniel—the other Daniel, the sweet kid from Astoria, who set the boxes down inside the back door and called Morning, Miss Pia and was gone again before she’d had time to do more than wave. The cool dark of the shop smelled of damp cardboard and the faint green vegetal smell of stems in transit, and a moth was doing slow loops around the bare bulb above the workbench, batting itself softly against the metal hood with a sound like the smallest possible drum.

She unpacked methodically, the way her grandmother had taught her, the way her grandmother had unpacked the deliveries at the shop in Kraków sixty years ago and at the shop in Greenpoint forty years after that: stems first into the warm-water buckets to drink, then a slow inventory, then the cooler. The ranunculus had come in tight and perfect, the petals layered like the pages of a book that had been left out in the rain and dried into something more interesting than it had been before. The garden roses were the color she had hoped: an almost-white, almost-pink shade, the color of the inside of a shell. The eucalyptus was extravagant, silver-green and aromatic, and she breathed it in deeply and felt, for a moment, almost steadied.

She had decided, sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, lying in the dark with the radiator hissing and ticking, that she would not say anything.

There was no version of saying something that did not make her the villain of someone else’s wedding week. Hi, I used to date your fiancé, just thought you should know. What would she gain from that? To make Hannah Voss, who knew what she wanted, suddenly not know? To make Daniel, who had presumably told his future wife some sanitized version of his romantic history (I dated a girl in my twenties, it didn’t work out, she was a florist actually, isn’t that funny), look like a liar? To make herself the woman who could not handle a job because of something that had ended before either of these people had met?

No. The arrangements would be perfect. The arrangements would be the most beautiful arrangements she had ever made. The arrangements would say everything she was not going to say, and then they would be carried down an aisle and set on tables and photographed by a man with a camera worth more than her van, and eventually they would be thrown away because that was what happened to wedding flowers. That was the secret nobody told brides, that even the most beautiful arrangements ended in a black plastic bag at the back door of a venue at one in the morning like every other flower arrangement that had come before it. And that would be the end of it.

She put the ranunculus in the cooler. She started on the boutonnieres.

There was, she had always thought, something almost religious about a boutonniere: a small, precise, useless thing, made by hand, pinned over a heart for a few hours and then discarded. The beauty of impermanence. The grace of the made thing that knew it would not last. The bride’s bouquet would be tossed at the end of the night to a circle of unmarried women, who would scream and lunge for it and then, the next morning, not know what to do with it; the centerpieces would be offered to the guests, who would say oh how lovely and carry them out to their cars and leave them on the back seat overnight, where they would freeze, or wilt, or simply be forgotten; the boutonnieres would come unpinned at the reception and be set down on cocktail tables and lost.

She made his last. She used a single white anemone, because it was what Hannah had asked for, the dark center of it like a pupil, like an eye looking up at her from the workbench. She added a sprig of olive, because Hannah had asked for that too, the leaves slim and silvery and faintly bitter when she crushed one between her fingers. She wrapped the stem in ivory silk ribbon and tied it with a knot her grandmother had taught her, the kind that holds and holds and holds and then, when you pull the right end, comes apart in your hand.

She set it in the cooler with the others. From a distance, you could not tell which one was his. From a distance, they were all just small white flowers, waiting to be useful.

Friday

Hannah came in Friday afternoon to see the bouquet. She had brought her sister this time, a younger woman with the same nose and a baby on her hip—a fourteen month fat, serious baby in a pink corduroy jumper, with the alert dark eyes of someone taking detailed notes for a report she would file later. The baby reached for the eucalyptus and Hannah laughed, it was a delighted unguarded laugh, and Pia held the bouquet out for inspection across the worn wood of the counter.

Hannah said oh, very softly, and her eyes filled.

“It’s exactly right,” she said. “It’s exactly what I pictured.”

“I’m so glad,” Pia said.

“Daniel’s going to lose his mind. He kept saying he didn’t care about the flowers and I kept telling him, you’ll care, you’ll see, when you see them you’ll care.”

“He’ll care,” Pia said.

The sister was looking at her. Pia became aware, in the particular bodily way one becomes aware of being watched, that she had been holding the bouquet out for too long, that her smile had gone a little fixed, that something in her face must have done something — flickered, slipped, given itself away by a millimeter. The sister was perhaps five years younger than Hannah, and her gaze was the gaze of someone whose job in the family, Pia guessed, had always been to notice. Some sisters were like that. They came into the world watching.

Pia handed the flowers to Hannah and turned to the cooler to get the sample centerpiece, and when she turned back her face was a florist’s face again, professional, pleased, the face of a woman whose entire job was to be glad for other people on the best day of their lives. The centerpiece was beautiful. Hannah said so, in fact, she said so several times. Hannah held the bouquet against her chest and tilted her head down into it and inhaled, and her whole body seemed to soften, easing of months of worry and anxiety.

The sister was still looking at her, but the look had lost calculation, or perhaps Pia only imagined that it had changed; perhaps the sister had only been admiring the centerpiece, perhaps the sister was simply a person who looked at people, perhaps Pia was assigning meaning where there was only the ordinary attentiveness of a stranger in a small shop on a Friday afternoon in spring. Hannah was burying her nose in the ranunculus and the baby was fisting a piece of eucalyptus and the moment passed, the way moments do when no one insists on them.

After they left—Hannah hugging her again at the door, the sister giving her a small careful nod that might have meant anything or nothing—Pia sat on the stool behind the register for a long time. She did not cry. She had cried about Daniel a great deal, between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-six, on the F train and in the staff bathroom of her old job and once, memorably, in the cheese aisle of the Whole Foods on Bedford, and she had used up most of what she had to give him, tear-wise, by the time she turned twenty-seven. What she felt now was something quieter and harder to name. It was something like watching a train you used to take everyday pull out of a station you no longer lived near. It was something like opening a drawer and finding a sweater you had forgotten about, and remembering not the sweater but the autumn you had bought it in, and the person you had been then, and how that person had thought she would feel a certain way for the rest of her life, and how she had been wrong about that, and how the wrongness was, in the end, mostly a relief.

She thought, locking up the shop at six, that this was perhaps the truest secret of getting older: that the things you had been most afraid of becoming, you became, and they were fine. You became the woman whose ex got married to someone else. You became the woman who made the flowers for the wedding. You became the woman who walked home along Franklin Street in the long blue evening, the kind of April evening that smelled of wet pavement and the first leaves on the trees, and stopped at the wine store and bought a bottle of something Italian and inexpensive, and ate dinner standing at her kitchen counter (very likely bread and cheese and a tomato cut into eighths and salted) and went to bed early, and slept, against all expectation, very well.

Saturday

The Foundry was on the river, in a building that had once made something like bolts, maybe, or pipe fittings; Pia could never remember, though she had read it on the venue’s website at least three times while trying to imagine the florals in the space. The Foundry now hosted weddings, like so many old industrial buildings in this part of the city, with their iron beams and brick walls and arched windows repurposed as backdrops for the enormous undertaking of two people promising each other things in front of their relatives.

Pia’s van pulled up at noon with the centerpieces strapped into the back in plastic crates, the arch components disassembled along one wall, and the bridal bouquet in its own small cooler on the passenger seat, belted in like a child. The day was bright and cool, with a high sky the color of laundered cotton, and the river was doing its particular Saturday-afternoon glitter, the light on it broken into a thousand small moving pieces, as though someone had spilled a tray of mirrors and forgotten to come back for them.

She set up for four hours. She wired eucalyptus into the iron arch in long flowing swags, climbing up and down the stepladder until her shoulders burned, stepping back to look, climbing up again to adjust. She placed the centerpieces and turned each one a quarter turn so the best face caught the window light, the way her grandmother had taught her. Every flower has a face, Pia, you must always find the face. Then she walked the room from the back, from the place where the last guest at the last table would be sitting, to make sure the view from there was beautiful too, because the view from there was the one most often forgotten.

She left the bouquet in the cooler in the bridal suite, which was a small carpeted room upstairs with a vanity mirror surrounded by lightbulbs, like a movie star’s dressing room, with a card that said Congratulations, Hannah! These are for you. She did not sign it with anything but the shop’s name. There was a garment bag hanging from the back of the door, white and enormous and zipped, and a pair of cream-colored shoes lined up neatly beneath it, and a small bottle of perfume on the vanity, and a tube of lipstick, and a silver pen, and the whole tableau had the still, expectant quality of a stage set just before the actors come on.

She did not see him. She had timed it carefully, the way she timed all her wedding setups, because no florist wanted to be in the room when the groom or other guests arrived. The groom and groomsmen were arriving at three; she was gone by two-forty-five, the van loaded, the back door of the venue closing behind her with the soft heavy sound of a thing completed.

In the parking lot she sat in the driver’s seat with her hands on the wheel and the engine off and looked out at the river. A tugboat was going by, very slowly, pushing something she couldn’t quite see—a barge, probably, low in the water, carrying something from one part of the harbor to another part of the harbor for reasons that had been decided long ago by people she would never meet. The gulls were doing their ordinary gull business overhead, wheeling and crying. The light on the water was almost too much.

He is, somewhere in that building, putting on a tie.

He is standing in front of a mirror, perhaps, doing the small adjustments a man does in the last hour before his wedding. The cufflinks, the collar, the boutonniere I made with my own hands, which he will pin to his lapel without looking at it carefully, because he does not care about flowers, because he has always trusted that the women in his life will care about flowers for him.

In twenty minutes a woman who knows what she wants is going to walk down an aisle toward him, and she will be carrying something I made with my hands, and he will not know, and she will not know, and the only person in that whole building who will know will be standing on a different sidewalk by then, in a different part of the city, doing something else entirely.

She started the van. She drove home along the river with the windows down, the spring air cold against her face, and she passed under the bridge and watched the shadows of its beams move across her hands on the steering wheel: dark, light, dark, light, dark. At a red light she watched a woman cross the street with a child and a man, the child small and beautifully dressed, and Pia thought, with the strange unbidden clarity that sometimes came at red lights, that this was perhaps what she had wanted, all those years ago. This version of her own life that would have followed from him, the apartment they would have rented, the dog they would have argued about, the children they would have or would not have had. She thought about how she sat on that bench long after he had left feeling the weight of disaster of losing her future. But it had turned out to be the foundation of a beautiful construction of a different life, one where she drove a van that smelled of eucalyptus and lived alone in three rooms above a laundromat and made beautiful things with her hands for people she would never see again.

She thought, somewhere around the third bridge piling, that she might cry after all, but she did not, and the impulse passed, and she was only driving, and the river was on her left, and the city was ahead of her, and behind her, a woman she had only met twice was about to put on a white dress and walk toward the rest of her life carrying a bouquet of ranunculus and garden roses and eucalyptus that moved when she breathed on it.

They met four days ago. Well, not met exactly, they had started messaging on Hinge four days ago. His name is Daniel. He is twenty-eight and recently single (which meant he’s broke), lives in the West Village (which explains why he’s broke), and is 6’3” (which meant he’s 6’1” at the most). He works in “finance,” which could mean almost anything, and has an objectively handsome face. In his pictures he wears plain T-shirts, a navy baseball cap, and a suit at what looked like a wedding. In all of them, he has a faint expression of amusement, as if whoever had taken the photographs had just said something he found privately ridiculous.

His prompts invited little flutters in Polly’s heart:

The best way to ask me out is: tell me what you like and when you’re free, and trust that I’ve got the rest

Something that’s non-negotiable for me: dessert, always

Typical Sunday: coffee, a long walk, local bookstore, cooking something overly ambitious for dinner

There was also one answer that had felt almost too perfect, too carelessly specific not to be designed for someone like her.

I’m looking for: a best friend

She had read that one three times. Best friends. It was exactly the sort of thing that could either mean nothing or everything, and she had chosen, without much resistance, to believe it meant everything.

They had been messaging on the app for three days, and only just a day ago did they move over to texting. She lingered on the screen after sending messages hoping to see the three little dots float up. The four days flew by, each of them sending messages throughout the day in an endless string. The banter was top-notch and Polly found herself tapping the screen of her phone to check if she got a new message (she almost always did).

Four days wasn’t that long but it was long enough to become attached. Well, maybe not attached, that feels too earnest, too consequential. She was interested in him with the particular force of someone who had very little to go on and a great deal of talent for invention. What would that be called?

By the second day she had given him a voice; she could picture him sitting at a piano singing with that deep velvety tone. By the third she had given him hands. Long fingers, probably. Clean nails. A watch with a brown leather strap. By the fourth she had him reaching across a restaurant table to slide the last bite of something sweet onto her plate because he had remembered, from a detail she’d dropped three messages ago, that she liked dessert too.

She was sitting cross-legged on her bed in a towel, phone in one hand, glass of some boxed pink wine in the other, when she opened the chat for the eighth or ninth time that evening and reread the exchange in which they had finalized the date.

7:30 at Bar Bianchi?

Perfect.

I’ll get us a table.

That had pleased her more than it should have. I’ll get us a table. So simple. So competent. She immediately pictured him arriving first, speaking to the hostess with easy confidence, one hand in his pocket. She had pictured him standing when she walked in. She had pictured the look on his face when he saw her, eyes widening as they took each other in. She picked up her phone again and stared at his profile picture thinking of the moment after he walked her home where they would lean in...

The wind outside is chillier than she predicted (how nice that the weather people can be wrong without consequence) so she clutches at the front of her jacket hoping to shield herself from the wind. Polly walks down Second Ave towards Bar Bianchi and lets her mind continue to dream.

A long walk, used bookstore, cooking something overly ambitious for dinner.

She could see it: a Sunday in October, him beside her on a downtown street lined with brownstone stoops and ginkgo leaves, his hand light at the small of her back as they entered a bookstore that smelled faintly of dust and glue. He would pull a novel off the shelf and say, “You’ve read this, right?” She would say no, slightly embarrassed and slightly curious, and he would look delighted rather than judgmental. They would chat with the owner of the store and get one of the bookmarks near the counter at the last minute. Later, at their apartment, there would be red wine in wide glasses and garlic softening in olive oil. He would dice vegetables gently, swearing that he was going to mess up this time. She would sit on the counter eating olives out of the jar watching him move around the kitchen. She would maybe read some of the book they got out loud, pausing for moments where he would add onto what he thinks the author meant. She would always disagree and they would end laughing. She loved him and he was good at things.

At 7:24pm she’s outside the bar, ten minutes early despite trying not to be, pretending to look at a text she’s already answered. Through the window she can see a row of amber lights reflecting in the bottles, people leaning in toward each other over small tables, the smooth choreography of a Thursday night beginning. She checks her reflection in the dark glass, then looks up when she hears her name.

“Polly?”

His voice is softer than she expected. In her head it had been lower, dryer, with a little more suave in it. His real voice belongs to someone gentler, maybe slightly more uncertain. She looks at the man standing in front of her. He’s handsome, yes, but also a little taller and lankier than she had pictured and somehow more boyish. His hair is not artfully imperfect; it’s just slightly messy from the wind. His jacket is nicer than it had looked in the photos. He smiles like he was relieved she was real.

“Hi,” she says, smiling back.

He leans in for a one armed hug that feels brief and polite. “Sorry, I just got here too. They said it’ll be, like, five minutes.”

Weird, she thought he would have already gotten the table.

“That’s okay,” she says, somehow not really meaning it.

They stand by the entrance while a couple squeezes past them. He asks how her day was while craning his neck around to see if the host can see them standing. She answers and tells him about the book she finished reading. He nods a little too earnestly but doesn’t look at her.

When they’re seated, he lets her take the booth and pours himself a glass of water from the carafe on the table.

“Do you want some?” he asks, but Polly is ticked he didn’t already pour her some.

“Yes, please. Thank you,” she responds, immediately gulping it down, the corners of her mouth turning down. She imagined him ordering a bottle of wine after they settled down without asking if she wanted it, knowing her favorite white would pair well with what they were going to order. Instead he picks up the menu and laughs.

“I always panic a little on first dates about how much food is the right amount of food.”

She coughs up a small laugh. “That’s fair.” Was it?

“I don’t want to be the person who is weirdly intense and orders, like, six things.”

In her head, he had already ordered. In her head he had done so with devastating ease. In her head, he ordered dishes they already liked and one or two experimental ones that they could chat over.

They end up splitting olives and whipped ricotta and a plate of pasta. The conversation felt easy, he asks her questions about herself and shares about their shared experience in Barcelona (Polly’s mother was from Spain, Daniel studied abroad there for a semester in college). He asks her where she sees herself in five years and it only feels partially like a job interview question. Polly can’t help but think about the other version of him. She excuses herself to go to the bathroom and feels this pit in her stomach; yes, he is funny and kind but he’s just not what she had dreamed him to be.

When he said he liked to cook, what he meant was that he had recently learned to make short ribs in a Dutch oven because his roommate had gotten very into dinner parties. When he said he loved bookstores, what he meant was that he liked buying books he sometimes did not finish. When she asked about his favorite dessert, teasing him with his own prompt answer, he laughed and said, “Honestly? That answer was probably just because I was hungry when I made my profile.”

Polly jokes, “so you don’t take dessert seriously?”

“No, I do, I love it. I just maybe don’t take anything on Hinge seriously.”

He says it lightly, but something in her recoils. Not because it’s offensive, but because it was imprecise. Because the man in her head had taken language seriously. He had meant what he said in compact, quotable lines. He had not tossed them off as placeholders written while hungry.

She washes her hands and returns to the table, realizing she’s forcing a smile.

Their conversation moves on. Work, siblings, neighborhoods, the kind of subjects that can either translate to intimacy or remain a pleasant exchange of autobiographical facts. She watches him speak, waiting for him to come into focus. Sometimes he almost did. He keeps smiling down at the table for a second before looking back up at her, as though organizing his thoughts. At one point, describing a disastrous trip to Vermont, he got animated in a way that made him briefly beautiful. Another time he admits, with no obvious attempt to impress her, that he is terrible at making friends in groups and much better one-on-one.

“I think I come off more confident than I am,” he says, with a shrug.

Her imagined Daniel had never once worried about how he came off. He had moved through rooms with ease, had steered conversations into exactly the shapes he wanted. This Daniel sat across from her with his hand around a water glass, admitting something unbeautiful and true in the middle of a crowded room.

For a moment she feels the strange possibility of him as he actually is: not the distilled essence of four good prompts, but a person, uneven and less coherent, a little eager, maybe more tender than she had ordered. Polly feels a small, mean thought uncurl inside her head. Not dislike or disappointment, just a thinning. As though the air is flushing out of a figure she spent days inflating.

By the time they order dessert (tiramisu, because she insists) she feels a little numb. She stops comparing him to Her Daniel; the real one makes the imagined one embarrassingly ornate and the version in her head makes the real one unfinished.

He pays for the meal before she can reach for her bag.

“I’ve got it,” he says. “You can get me next time.”

Next time. He says it naturally, not as a line, not with any visible calculation. She looks at him and tries to imagine wanting there to be a next time. The wanting does not come.

Outside, the night is colder. They stand for a second under the awning while traffic slides past in slick bands of light. He asks if she was heading home. She says yes. He says he can hail her a cab.

They move side by side for half a block, Polly is painfully aware of the distance between their sleeves and the slight mismatch in their pace. There is nothing cinematic about it. No October leaves, no bookstore windows, no hand at the small of her back. Just two people on a New York sidewalk among many others, their faces occasionally lit by passing headlights.

He extends his hand out and a yellow car slows towards them. “I had a really nice time,” he says.

“Me too,” she replies, lying through her teeth.

“Text me when you get home?” he gently asks.

“Sure.” She knows she won’t.

She gets into the back seat and waves as the car pulls away from him standing at the sidewalk.

For a minute she just sits there, looking out the window at the city blurring by in fragments: scaffolding, steam, women in long coats laughing too loudly outside a wine bar, a man carrying flowers wrapped in brown paper. Her reflection hovered faintly in the glass over all of it. Fuck dating. Why were there no good men in this city? Polly, feeling frustrated, unlocks her phone to text her friend a quick update and instead, almost automatically, her thumb moves to the Hinge icon.

The app opens at once, bright and familiar. A face appears. Nope. Another. Also no. Another man holding a fish; another standing too close to three groomsmen; another with the same joke every fourth man seemed to make about looking for someone to split food with. Then she pauses.

Cole, twenty-seven.

He has dark hair and a lopsided smile. In one picture he’s sitting on the floor of what looked like a record store, reaching toward a bin just out of frame. In another he stands in a kitchen, flour on his T-shirt, holding up something golden and half burned on a baking tray.

The prompt answers are good.

Most irrational fear: ordering for the table and everyone hating it

Dream date: walking a mile to get coffee and then walking back drinking said coffees

I won’t shut up about: my record collection

She moves to his second photo and then back to the first. She imagines his voice: not too deep, a little dry, a little amused, probably. She pictures him leaning in doorways, cooking in a kitchen with poor lighting and good olive oil. She can smell him as he walks by her and adores the way his shirts fit him. She focuses on how he would say her name midway through a sentence, just to maintain attention.

The corner of her mouth tips up and she hearts his first prompt.

She heads to the back room to drop off her bag and nearly yelps when she flicks on the light.

All of her coworkers are standing there, grinning, and Lewis, her closest friend, steps forward holding a chocolate cupcake with a comically large candle shoved into the center.

“Happy birthday!” they yell.

Shana presses a hand to her chest, then laughs despite herself. “Fuck, I thought someone broke in.”

Lewis hands her the cupcake. “Happy Birthday Shana, blow it out. Make it good!”

She closes her eyes. The wish comes automatically, like muscle memory, because in truth, she’s always wishing for it. She has made the same one every year since she was twelve.

She wishes for her father.

When Shana was younger, she used to think she and Liam were an exception.

Other kids talked about their parents in pairs: what my mom and dad liked, what they wouldn’t let them do. Shana talked about her father in singular terms, but she never felt like she was missing anything. If anything, she felt lucky.

Liam packed her lunch every morning, cutting apples into uneven slices and pressing together some format of a sandwich. He walked her to the bus holding her brown lunch bag and asked about her teachers and friends. They had conversations like she was an adult.

They lived in a small apartment in Williamsburg, where Liam had created a loft that became Shana’s world. Her bed sat beneath the slanted ceiling, and at night she could hear him typing below her, the steady rhythm of keys mixing with the hum of the radiator. The world could move on outside but in there, Shana and Liam felt safe.

Liam came to the country as a refugee from Serbia in his early twenties. He met Isla in a small bar where she was writing poems on napkins. He asked for one and fell in love with her handwriting first, only to then draw her a flower on the back of that napkin and hand it back. She told him that it was a shitty flower and he laughed a real laugh, perhaps the first laugh he had in a decade. They talked all night in that bar and then on a walk home and then while sitting along the East River as the sun came up. Seven months later, they were married.

Isla had died giving birth to Shana. Shana didn’t know her and yet there was a grief associated with every birthday; Liam tried his best not to conflate the death of his wife to the birth of his daughter and saved his tears for when Shana was asleep. Shana heard him every year.

Without any memories of her own, Shana relied on the large wooden chest in the corner of their living room, locked with a brass padlock. Inside were Isla’s clothes, letters, and photographs, all things that belonged to the woman Shana had been told she resembled. She knew what was in there but it remained off limits, it was too tough for Liam to look through.

He was an artist in a way that was difficult to explain. He wrote essays that never found homes. He filled notebooks with poems he never finished. And he always drew flowers in corners, it was always the same one: long petals, slightly uneven, a center darkened with crosshatching.

“What kind of flower is that?” Shana asked him once.

“It doesn’t have a name,” he said. “It doesn’t need one.” But Shana knew after learning of how her parents met that it was the same flower Liam had once drawn for her mom.

When Shana turned eleven, she started middle school, and Liam took a steady day job in construction. The work was booming then due to the recent rezoning approval for Williamsburg and Greenpoint which meant the buildings were rising quickly and the neighborhoods were shifting. Perhaps the most important for them, the money came regularly which let Liam continue to rent their apartment. They ate boxed foods most of the time but when Liam got his paycheck, they reserved one day of the week to get some fresh vegetables and meat. They cooked together and learned they both loved steamed broccoli and grilled chicken, mostly because it was easy to make. It was Shana’s favorite night of the week.

She knew her father wanted to be a writer but it was hard to find work as a refugee as it was, even more so in the arts. Shana would ask if work was like school where he’d make friends and he would always smile and say, “sort of.” The income helped maintain their apartment but Shana began to notice the wear on her father’s hands. He stopped using the typewriter at night, and Shana realized she needed that sound to help her fall asleep.

One day, shortly after her twelfth birthday, Shana came home from school (she walked home alone now that she was in middle school, like every other middle schooler, of course) and sat at the table to do her homework.

After finishing her vocabulary exercise, she looked up at the clock and then around the apartment. Huh. Nothing had moved, there was an eerie stillness and yet she noticed that her father’s boots weren’t by the radiator and his jacket wasn’t hanging on the chair.

She felt a pit in her stomach but waited and finished the rest of her homework. By dinner she started to panic and thought perhaps waiting was a mistake.

Adults talk to children differently when they don’t know what else to do.

At the police station, a woman with a laminated badge knelt so her eyes were level with Shana’s. She spoke slowly, as if English were the fragile thing in the room.

“Your dad is missing right now,” she said. “We’re working very hard to find him.”

Missing. As if he’d misplaced himself.

Shana nodded. She kept her hands folded in her lap the way she learned in school and tried not to cry or make a noise.

She stayed with Mrs. Ross downstairs for three nights. On the fourth, a social worker came with a clipboard and a soft cardigan and drove her to a house that smelled like lemon disinfectant and something fried.

The first foster mother showed her the bedroom she would share with another girl.

“We all pitch in here,” the woman said, pointing at a chore chart taped to the refrigerator. “We like to keep busy.”

Shana learned quickly.

She washed dishes before being asked and folded towels into precise thirds. She said thank you for meals even when the chicken was dry and the broccoli gray.

At night, she lay in the narrow twin bed and waited for the sound of typing.

The house made different noises: pipes knocking, a television murmuring downstairs, someone coughing in the next room. She pressed her fingers into her ears and imagined the steady rhythm of keys instead.

She learned that some adults were kind and some were careful. The careful ones kept receipts for everything, even affection. It was easier not to test which kind she was dealing with.

When she moved to the second house, she unpacked in under ten minutes.

By the third, she didn’t bother unpacking.

Shana began to love art class in school and developed a good relationship with her art teacher. She would spend hours in the art room after school to avoid being in her foster house and to get everything she was thinking out onto a canvas. It became the only way for her to find peace.

By the time she aged out of the foster system, she was tough in ways that didn’t show at first glance. She didn’t trust anyone easily. She didn’t need much. She didn’t expect people to stay. But she was also lost. She wasn’t sure what to do with herself and upon graduation, she took one of the first art-related jobs she could find: a tattoo artist in the local parlor.

She was skeptical at first but it felt inevitable. People came to her with their grief, their milestones, their memories. She listened intently and drew carefully. She understood permanence but didn’t ask questions.

She refused to tattoo any flowers.

A week after her birthday celebration at the shop, a group of men wearing construction jackets and boots caked with dried cement come in. Shana remembered Liam’s boots, the memories still pop up randomly. They fiddle around in the parlor’s design books and the lost and found bin (Lewis’s hilarious idea to drop in scraps that were left behind by patrons for other inebriated customers to peruse through). The group picks out a design and hands it over to one of the guys who looks rather annoyed. The group laughs as the single man then approaches Shana.

“I guess I’m doing this one. And don’t say anything, it’s a bet. I wouldn’t normally get this.” Shana smiles politely and looks at what the man has handed her and feels like she’s just been dropped from the sky.

Her father’s flower stares back at her.

Her hands shaking, she asks, “where did you get this?” She hears her voice crack.

The man shrugs. “It was in your little box.”

“What do you mean, the one here? Are you sure?” Shana feels the shakes in her body, her mind racing and heart beating.

“Yes, can we move on with this?” His voice dripped with annoyance but Shana tuned it out and in what felt like slow motion raced towards the scrap bin. She dumped out all the contents and shakily looked through every paper hoping to find another. She looks back at the one the man gave her with the flower drawing, so discernible, so painful. She flips it over and notices it’s a receipt from a bar in Rhode Island.

White Horse Tavern
Newport, Rhode Island

Her thumb presses into the ink as if it might smear, it’s dated from three months ago.

She feels the room tilt. She grabs her bag and without a word runs out, she’s pressing the numbers of Lewis’s phone and deep breathing while waiting for him to pick up.

“Heyyy, ok so I need help figuring out what I’m wearing for…”

Shana cuts him off, “Lewis, I need your help. You have a map on your phone right?”

Lewis responds, “Yes it’s amazing, you need to get an iPhone. What do you need me to look up?”

Shana slowly says, “I need you to print out directions to White Horse Tavern in Rhode Island. Also, can I borrow your car?”

Lewis laughs, “Yeah right my car, you don’t even have a license. What’s in Rhode Island?”

“My father. I think.”

There’s a silence, Lewis knows Shana wouldn’t joke about this.

After the pause, Lewis responds with more seriousness, “Ok where are you? I’ll come pick you up and we can drive there. And tell me everything.”

The drive is as expected. Shana starts tearing up at the beginning explaining everything about her father, a part of her life she never truly shared with anyone. Lewis listens while sipping on the largest size of iced coffee from some gas station. After telling the story through to the scrap of the tattoo, Lewis looks at her while shaking his head and just says “oof,” to which Shana felt a little heat spread across her face.

Did she trauma dump too much?

But then Lewis squeezes her hand and says, “Don’t worry, we’re going to get to the bottom of this. Also we’re going to need to stop for a snack at some point, I’m starving. Maybe like a chip of some sort, something salty.”

Lewis drives north while listening to the pop music radio station and encouraging Shana to talk, and Shana is thankful that he’s taking her mind off her father. But there’s an undeniable pit and she looks outside to see the billowing grey clouds rolling over them as they journey.

The White Horse Tavern looks older than she expected. Low ceilings. Thick wooden beams. A door that has been repainted too many times.

Shana stands outside holding the receipt like proof of something holy.

Lewis is standing next to her and holds her hand, with confidence he says, “you can do this.” She almost believes him.

Inside, the bar smells like fried clams and old wood. A few men sit hunched over beers at the bar and a couple sit close to each other at one of the tables. The bartender, a woman in her early thirties with dark hair tied back loosely, wipes down the counter.

Shana approaches.

“Hi,” she says, her mouth suddenly dry. “This might sound strange, but have you seen this drawing before?”

She slides the paper across. The bartender glances down and then looks closer at her.

Her expression shifts, not to recognition exactly, but something adjacent.

“Where did you get this?” she asks.

“It was in a box,” Shana says quickly. “My dad used to draw these. He…” Her throat tightens. “He disappeared a long time ago.”

The bartender turns the paper over, studies the back.

“He comes in sometimes,” she says slowly, as though she wasn’t sure if she should reveal this information. “A guy who doodles on napkins. He sits at the end of the bar, orders whiskey. Don’t talk much.”

Shana feels the air leave her body.

Her voice trembles, she says, “his name is Liam?”

The bartender studies her face now, properly.

“Yeah,” she responds quietly. “Liam.”

The bartender turns to walk away towards the next set of dishes that need cleaning but stops midway, “Grab a seat, I’ll ring him.”

He arrives forty minutes later during which Shana almost leaves twice.

The first time Lewis tells her Liam is probably close and the second time he snaps and tells her she is being dramatic.

“Sorry! I just got a drink, I don’t want to leave yet,” Lewis justified.

When the door opens, Shana doesn’t recognize Liam immediately. He’s thinner. His hair has gone almost fully gray. There is a stiffness to the way he carries his left shoulder.

But then he looks at her and she knows.

“Dad.”

She stands. For a moment, she is twelve again.

He moves to cross the room and she starts to meet him halfway, both moving with a sense of urgency. When he hugs her, it is careful at first, like she might dissolve. Shana feels his tears on her shoulder and lets out a sob.

Lewis starts clapping.

Later, sitting at the corner table, he tells her what happened in pieces.

There had been a stop at a construction site. A routine check, they’d called it.

“They lined us up against the fencing,” he says. “Like we were part of the building.” When they asked for documents, he handed over what he had: work permits, copies, old letters folded thin from being carried in his wallet. A man in a navy jacket frowned at a clipboard and didn’t say anything else.

They loaded them into a white van that smelled like bleach and sweat. No one explained where they were going. One of the younger men kept asking if he could call his wife. No one answered.

The detention center was fluorescent and windowless. The lights never dimmed. At night he would close his eyes and still see white. They called roll by numbers, not names. He quickly learned the rhythms of when the doors buzzed, when meals slid through, when tempers flared.

“There were fathers,” he says. “Men who had been here twenty or so years. One man had a son in the Marines.” He swallows. “We all thought it would be a mistake that someone would fix.”

He thought it would be a few days and that if he kept giving instructions on what to tell Shana, on where she should go, that it would all be okay. They told him they would get the message to her. “I wrote your name on every form,” he says. “Shana. I thought if someone saw I had a daughter, they would understand.”

But it became months. He asked about her constantly, waiting for an update or any news while scared of what was to come next. Tears start falling down his face and he says, “Then they told me there was a fire, that the whole building, our building, had burned down and that you were in there.” He wipes his tears. She studies his hands. The knuckles are larger. The skin split and re-healed.

“I just lost it, I lost the will to fight, to eat, to do anything. I couldn’t believe I had lost both my girls…” His voice trails off at the end while he looks down.

“If you were gone,” he says, not looking at her, “I had failed you by not coming home that day. I couldn’t survive going back.”

He took work under the table in Rhode Island and lived quietly. Sat at the end of bars and drew flowers on napkins and receipts he never kept.

Shana’s face is littered with stains of tears too and she holds his hands, “I’m okay. I’m really okay. I can’t believe you were in a facility like that for years. I’m so sorry.”

He looks at her and she can see the stories and the hurt behind his eyes, he’s older than she remembered. Her anger and disappointment disappears as she sees her father as just a man who couldn’t bear to lose any more love.

He looks at her hands and cracks a small smile. Liam says, “you like tattoos now?”

She laughs through tears and says, “Yeah, I’m a tattoo artist actually. I love to draw. Actually, it was a drawing of your flower that brought me here, it was left in our parlor’s lost and found.”

Pride fills the air and he whispers, “You were always so talented.”

Shana and her father move back to Brooklyn to a place reminiscent of their apartment years ago with slanted ceilings and old pipes that overheat in the winter. They eat breakfast and drink coffee together every day and Liam buys a typewriter to write again. The clacking of the machine brings a true sense of peace to Shana’s day.

On her next birthday, Liam and Lewis organize a dinner at the parlor with all of Shana’s favorites: takeout burgers and milkshakes. They laugh and Liam gets to know Shana’s colleagues.

Later, after everyone leaves, she pulls out a clean sheet of transfer paper and redraws the flower from memory. The petals, uneven. The center crosshatched, darker than necessary. She places it over her ribs, just beneath her heart and draws as the needle hums.

Inside, she ordered the pandan kaya toast and an iced Milo; the creamy kaya over thick toast was custard-like and glossy. She took one photo of the menu, one of the plates, then opened the tiny notebook she kept in her purse. The notebook’s edges were worn, its cover dotted with stickers, a tiny pencil tucked into a homemade elastic loop.

“Neighborhood: LES,” she wrote. “Price point: $10-$30. Notes: chaotic, but charming?”

Since 2021, Maya, 27, has eaten at five new restaurants, bakeries or coffee shops every week in New York City. She has never repeated a single one.

Not a ramen spot. Not a trendy cafe. Not even a Sweetgreen.

By her count, she has logged 1,322 places since she began.

The rule is rigid.

No repeats.
No exceptions.
No “just grabbing coffee.”
No “it’s convenient.”

If she has gotten any dish from a place once, it gets crossed off the list permanently.

She tracks everything in a small notebook. The notes are organized by neighborhood, cuisine, price tier and rating. She writes words and phrases that come to her while she dines, from citrusy to like the feeling of eating something you can taste after a cold where your taste buds were weak.

“New York has too many options to circle back, I think there are 20,000 restaurants or something,” she said. “If I repeat, I’m losing ground.”

The actual number is closer to 25,000 across the five boroughs, according to Eater’s estimates, enough that at five new places a week, she could keep going for decades.

Maya moved to New York City at 22 years old, fresh out of college, overwhelmed by the scale of it. There were neighborhoods she hadn’t heard of, cuisines she couldn’t pronounce, and restaurants that opened and closed before she noticed them.

“At first I kept going to the same three places,” she said. “It felt small.”

In early 2022, after a breakup and a pandemic-era lull, she made a rule: five new places a week. It was an effort to force herself to explore rather than default to comfort.

“I didn’t want to waste my twenties,” she said, and the rule stuck.

On Sundays, Maya plans. She scans Eater, Resy, and OpenTable. She scrolls TikTok and Instagram saves. She cross-references her notebook to make sure she never repeats.

Her picks are well-distributed: each week includes one sit-down dinner, one coffee shop, one bakery or dessert spot, and two wild cards such as lunch counters, fast-casual spots or neighborhood finds.

Her weekly dining budget hovers around $200, though some weeks she exceeds it. She balances splurging on scenery dinners with $7 noodle bowls (she has a hard time choosing which is better).

Maya’s friends adapted quickly, excited to be part of what one of them calls “dining history.” She’s in charge of selecting the group’s dinner spots.

The system is efficient, and yet, relentless.

In a city where reservations feel competitive and new openings trend for weeks before fading, Maya’s rule doesn’t seem entirely eccentric. It feels like an exaggerated version of something many young New Yorkers already do.

Dining here is not just sustenance; it’s participation. Unlike many diners who document publicly, Maya maintains privacy by keeping her log private, and on paper.

“I’m not doing it for content,” she said. “I just like knowing I’m covering the city I live in. I like writing my thoughts and going back to relive them. I’m not sure I could feel the same with a social media presence.”

But the cultural pressure to optimize leisure time is hard to ignore. Productivity culture has seeped into weekends and free evenings have become opportunities to maximize one’s experience. What Maya finds invigorating, others might see as indulgent.

“I don’t want to look back and realize I kept going to Chipotle, even though I understand it’s delicious,” she said. “There’s definitely a small, family-run business that I would rather support. And how amazing is it that by going somewhere small and talking about it, I positively impact someone’s day?”

There is romance in infinite firsts: a novelty that brings you excitement mixed with the chance of doing good. However, there is also an absence.

One afternoon, Maya passed Tatiana on the Upper West Side.

“I think about that meal all the time. Every spice was so intentional,” she said. “But I can’t go back.”

She laughed, then paused.

“It would feel like quitting. And I think this is the one time in my life I don’t want to quit.”

The rule offers momentum but also denies her the pleasure of return. There are perfect almond croissants, curated courses of omakase, and always some format of a brown butter sage sauce that she misses.

“People say, ‘What if the restaurant is so amazing?’” she said. “And I’m like, that’s the risk.”

But what brings some solace is that the risk cuts both ways. Many meals feel one-noted and some are actively disappointing; breadth truly only guarantees variety.

Behavioral researchers have long studied novelty-seeking and choice overload. Humans are wired to crave new experiences—but too many options can paralyze.

New York’s dining landscape amplifies both impulses. There are hundreds of new restaurant openings each year. Reservation apps gamify scarcity and social media feeds cycle through “must-try” lists. In that environment, repeating a restaurant can actually feel like inefficiency.

Maya describes her system as freeing.

“I don’t waste time debating,” she said. “The answer is always something new.”

Yet the framework removes a certain kind of pleasure: the slow deepening of a favorite place. The familiarity of a regular order. The comfort of recognition.

“I guess I don’t really have a ‘spot,’” she said. “I’m not a ‘regular’ anywhere.”

In a city built on transience, that may be fitting.

After hundreds of meals, Maya has developed sharp instincts.

She can predict which neighborhoods overpromise. She recognizes when a menu is designed for Instagram rather than appetite. She knows which cuisines offer consistent value.

She has also learned that hype is fleeting.

“Three months ago everyone was lining up for one place,” she said. “Now no one talks about it. The ones that are good though, people will continue to talk about those places.”

The city’s pace reinforces her own:

Five new tables a week.
Five next week.

“I’ll probably repeat eventually,” she said. “But I’m not ready yet. I think I’m afraid of missing something I haven’t tried yet, if that makes sense.”

While surrounded by abundance, Maya chooses velocity over familiarity. And for now, this rhythm holds; she scratches tastes like the opening chords of Ellie Goulding’s song “Anything Can Happen” into her notebook while taking a bite of the crunchy toast topped with rich kaya.

My head tilted like a little dog who just heard the word “walk” or “treat.” Dubai strawberries? Is this an Oishii competitor? Did Dubai invent a strawberry? I got onto TikTok to look it up and found it was a cup of cut strawberries with a pistachio and chocolate drizzle and some crunchy looking topping. Soon my feed was flooded. The Dubai chocolate trend had spread like wildfire creating heavenly pools of chocolate, pistachio, and knafeh across the city. The viral moment was so important to latch onto and perhaps easy as well, since, frankly, it was delicious.

In New York’s independent bakeries and coffee shops, viral desserts are no longer just marketing moments, they are product strategy. What performs on the feed increasingly determines what lands in a display case or a new menu. Engagement metrics double as demand signals and so, social media algorithms have become a kind of silent product developer.

Pregnant in Dubai

It started as a craving.

In 2021, Sarah Hamouda, a British-Egyptian entrepreneur living in Dubai, found herself longing for knafeh during pregnancy. Knafeh is a syrup-soaked Middle Eastern dessert layered with shredded kataifi pastry, which for Dubai Chocolate partakers, is the crunchy bits. Instead of sourcing it, she improvised; Sarah filled a molded chocolate shell with pistachio cream, tahini and crisp strands of kataifi, creating something that was both nostalgic and indulgent. Knowing she made something delicious, she launched it under her own brand, FIX Dessert Chocolatier.

For two years, the chocolate bar circulated largely within Dubai’s dessert scene, there was an elusiveness to it since the limited production gave an aura of scarcity.

Then, in late 2023, influencer Maria Vehera posted a TikTok video splitting one open.

The clip had all the ingredients the platform rewards: the glossy snap of chocolate, the vivid green pistachio center, the satisfying spill of filling inside. It was rich in texture and color, and immediately legible in seven seconds. Within days, millions had viewed it. Within weeks, stores and bakeries across London, New York and Los Angeles were fielding requests for “that Dubai chocolate.”

The dessert hadn’t changed but the distribution channel had.

From Scroll to Counter

In New York, cafes and coffee shops began experimenting almost immediately. Some attempted faithful recreations, layering kataifi into pistachio cream into a bar with a high-contrast cross-section. Others simplified the concept and used the flavors to create Dubai inspired drinks and baked goods.

What was interesting was how significantly the timeline was compressed. What once might have taken months of testing and seasonal planning now unfolded in days.

Social media has long influenced where New Yorkers eat. What is newer, and more economically significant, is how directly it influences what they eat.

Industry reports consistently show that younger diners discover new food businesses through platforms like TikTok and Instagram at increasing rates. For small bakeries operating on tight margins and high rent, visibility can be as critical as flour costs.

A viral moment offers something that paid advertising often cannot: proof of demand.

A post that racks up hundreds of thousands of views signals appetite before the first large batch is baked. Saves on these posts suggest intent. Comments asking for location function as informal pre-orders.

For operators without marketing departments, the algorithm becomes market research.

The Business Case for Virality

Bakeries and cafes are uniquely positioned to respond to online trends. Unlike full-service restaurants, they operate with smaller teams, shorter production cycles and more flexible menus. A new dessert can be tested over a weekend rather than a quarter.

Even more, the financial logic is straightforward. If a $14 chocolate bar drives foot traffic and repeat visits, it can quickly justify its ingredient cost. If it fails to generate interest, it can quietly disappear.

Coffee shops operate on similar principles. Over the past year, strawberry has infiltrated every matcha latte and cream in the packaging of cold foam and cloud-tops have adorned cold brews. Many originate from feed logic rather than culinary tradition: layered colors, visible texture, dramatic pours.

This does not mean quality is irrelevant. Customers still need to enjoy what they buy. But visual impact increasingly precedes flavor in the hierarchy of discovery, especially since the “meet-cute” frequently happens on a screen.

Designing for the Feed

Short-form video platforms reward certain characteristics: motion, contrast, transformation. Food that stretches, cracks, drips or towers performs better than food that sits quietly.

Dubai chocolate embodies this logic. The thick shell produces an audible snap. The pistachio filling provides color contrast. The kataifi strands add texture. Whether by intention or serendipity, it is engineered for the scroll.

In dessert stores, similar design considerations are becoming common. Cross-sections are exaggerated. Fillings are piped more generously. Glazes are poured tableside for maximum visual payoff. Essentially, the display case doubles as a stage.

The shift reflects a broader reorientation in retail. The bakery is no longer just a physical storefront; it is a content generator. Every pastry is a potential clip. Every latte is a potential loop. The algorithm rewards what stops thumbs mid-scroll.

Democratization and Dilution

There is an undeniable upside to this system.

Social media lowers barriers to entry. A small immigrant-owned bakery in Queens can reach audiences far beyond its neighborhood without waiting for a critic’s review. A dessert rooted in Middle Eastern tradition can achieve global recognition through a single viral post.

Sarah Hamouda’s pistachio bar might have remained a regional specialty without the amplification of Maria Vehera’s TikTok. Instead, it became a global shorthand, a visual code that customers now recognize instantly.

Yet amplification comes with dilution.

Within months of the original bar trending, copycat versions flooded feeds. Some preserved the knafeh-inspired layering. Others stripped it down to chocolate and pistachio cream, omitting the cultural reference entirely. The name “Dubai chocolate” became detached from origin, reduced to aesthetic. A love child would be created from the viral strawberries and chocolate from Borough Market in London and the Dubai Chocolate bar on the Upper East Side; welcome Dubai Strawberries.

The algorithm does not prioritize context, just performance.

Trends accelerate quickly—and fade just as fast. A coffee shop that invests heavily in creating specialty lattes with imported pistachio paste may find demand cooling when the next visual phenomenon emerges.

What spreads widely does not always endure deeply.

Back to the Case

While the Nuts Factory is still the go-to spot to get your fix of a true Dubai Chocolate bar and pistachio has been introduced to the mainstream dessert space, I don’t see lines of pre-teens and teens waiting for the next Dubai item.

On Reels and TikTok, I scroll through videos of viral New York City eats, seeing one after another of different cinnamon rolls. Some new flavor combinations, some sourdough (gut-healthy, of course), and of course, there’s going to be a Dubai inspired spiral dessert. Bakers used to inspire window cases with their imaginations and now it reflects a virtual feed.

I go for my daily walk and there’s a sign for a new store opening: a cinnamon roll bakery.

A few weeks later she got a call from Dr. Lyah’s office. She never got phone calls to begin with, much less from doctors. Was this normal after a Pap smear?

“Hello?” Her voice came out weaker than she expected.

“Hi, is this Nora? I’m calling from Dr. Lyah’s office,” the bright tone of the receptionist rang clear through her ear.

“Yes, hi, how are you?” Nora picked at her fingers while waiting for more information.

“Dr. Lyah would love to schedule a follow up visit in the next few weeks. She would like to go over the results of some of the tests and …” Nora zoned out. Results of tests, that couldn’t be good news. Right? Or maybe that’s protocol for Pap smears? What even is a Pap smear? Her thoughts swirled, and she saw a drop of blood escape her index finger near the nail where she was picking.

“Hi, sorry, did I lose you? Are you available in the next few weeks for a visit?” The receptionist’s voice brought her back to her apartment and she responded, “Yes, sorry, does the 18th work?”

Nora sat closer to the edge of the examination room bed in the pale gown the nurse gave her. Dr. Lyah walked in and smiled, “Hi Nora, thank you for coming in.”

Nora picked at the scab that had formed over the spot she’d torn open days ago and replied, “Of course, I know this is meant to be a follow up about my results, was it the Pap smear?”

By this point, Nora had Googled just about everything on Pap smears. She was either fine or had a debilitating cancerous situation (per WebMD) which would rightfully require a follow up visit.

Dr. Lyah kept smiling and said, “No, it’s not about the Pap smear actually, it was because of what you mentioned last time. About your irregular menstruation, do you remember that?”

Nora did remember. She had periodic moments of pain and from the tracking app she used she knew she wasn’t regular but she didn’t think anything of it. She replied, “Yes, and that’s why you had me get some bloodwork done right?”

“Exactly. And I just want to do an ultrasound to confirm some results,” Dr. Lyah typed into her computer while Nora nodded.

Nora tilted her head away from the screen while the nurse performed the ultrasound, the cold gel raising the goosebumps on her arms. She tried to focus on anything but her vision went blurry and she didn’t know why but a tear slipped from her eye.

She waited for a while after the nurse left, looking around at the sterile room, feeling her heartbeat pulse through her whole body. The white walls had this spackle like texture throughout, with little flecks of pink and blue. She wondered who chose the paint. Then Dr. Lyah came back to the room.

Dr. Lyah didn’t say never. She said unlikely, which sounded gentler, like a door left ajar. She said medically improbable, which sounds like a puzzle rather than a verdict. She said I’m sorry at the end, and Nora actually believed her.

She knew she had to ask some questions, like whether it was genetic or if stress or diet caused it, or if there was anything she could have done. But she was silent, nodding her head every now and then. She kept replaying the words in her head but soon they started to jumble in her head. She left the room and paid her copay at the desk (she also didn’t know what a copay was, she wondered where people learned about these things) and pushed the “pull” door a few times until she was outside.

The city looked unchanged. The taxis still honked on 5th, the sun still poured over the high rise buildings lining Central Park. In front of her, a woman pushed a stroller past a coffee shop window. The toddler dropped something bright onto the sidewalk and began to cry, the sound sharp and immediate. The woman picks it up, murmuring reassurance. Nora pauses, waiting for something inside her to react, to collapse, to rage, to feel unmistakably different. But nothing happens.

Nora fixes her hair in the bathroom, curling the ends up on her new haircut. The bob was a choice but she needed the change. After all, she turned twenty-five today. Her pink skirt ruffled around her, reminding her of the one she wore on her fifth birthday, an occasion she had a picture of hung up in her apartment. Her mom still had that dress somewhere, saving it for when Nora’s daughter could wear it. She felt a knife twist in her stomach.

She spent the last few years trying to adapt to her new lifestyle, knowing she wasn’t super enthusiastic about having children anyway. But then again, who is at twenty-one? Nora had gone to Yale Law School straight after graduating from Wellesley, hoping that continuing studying would make things feel better. She had just graduated with her J.D. in May and moved into a fabulous apartment with her best friend Susie on the Upper East Side, still avoiding confronting feelings of sadness.

But the grief never announced itself.

It came when her new coworker announced her pregnancy the past Monday during a meeting, hands folded protectively over a stomach that was barely showing. Nora smiled and said congratulations with everyone else, performing the expected choreography. Later, in the bathroom, she stared at herself and felt oddly counterfeit.

It came when her mother brought out that pink dress while cleaning out the garage over the summer, and said it was in perfect condition. Nora let the comment float between them, unresolved.

It came when a stranger at her pregnant cousin’s wedding leaned over and said, smiling, “Hopefully you’re next,” and Nora realized they were not talking about marriage. She laughed politely and drank too much champagne, and then some.

Her future had started to have an outward frame, a path to what people thought was inevitable rather than a choice. When you have kids. Someday you’ll understand. Oh I’m sure you’ll change your mind. The language wove children into conversation, into media, into structures around her. She didn’t realize how much of adulthood centered on having children until she knew she couldn’t have them.

Nora came out of the bathroom and walked to her living room where Susie had decorated the place and made a cake. A neat 25 was written on top of the delicious chocolate cake and she took her finger to swipe off a little piece of frosting, hoping no one would notice.

Her friends came in, in small groups, until the apartment was roaring with laughter and the clinking of drinks. One of the girls, Shannon, had just gotten engaged and was sharing the story of how her now fiancé asked the question. Everyone sat in a circle on the floor around her, paying attention to the story while giggling and poking each other, it ending with a roar of applause and hugs. This was the version of life Nora wanted to stay in: where lace tights shrugged up against the rug as the group maintained their circle formation for story time. Applause was always warranted. Nora went to the kitchen to get some more water for the table (and to maybe sneak another lick of the cake) and heard some chatter around the wall.

“I felt so bad, I mean, I couldn’t bring up that we’re going to start trying soon.” Nora paled, she could recognize Shannon’s voice.

“Already? You just got engaged!” Another voice said back, she couldn’t quite discern it.

“I mean yeah, Evan’s family is pretty religious and I just want to be a mom already. I’ve wanted that forever, you know this! But I would never bring it up here, the whole thing with Nora… it’s just so sad,” their voices drew farther and Nora felt the water jug overflow into her hands in the sink. She fought off tears and then rejoined the group.

Nora’s friends had all had similar reactions the week after her appointment four years ago:

“But you’re so young.”

“Medicine is amazing now. I’m sure they’ll fix this!”

“There’s always adoption, right?”

Nora never knew what to say, she would just lie on the floor of her dorm staring at the ceiling fan after these interactions, wishing for permission to be sad without being told how to fix it.

Her mother had the worst reaction, almost as if it was a personal offense. She cried immediately, which made Nora cry too. It was the first time she did since Dr. Lyah told her. She said, “I always pictured you…” and stopped herself before finishing the sentence. This happened with a few sentences, all of whose endings Nora could sort of understand. They sat at the kitchen table, their mugs of coffee growing cold, wrapping their arms around each other crying into one another’s shoulders. They stayed like that for a while.

In the weeks that followed, her mother sent her articles. Stories of miracles and stories of science advancing. Each link arrives with a hopeful caption. Thought of you. Just in case. Never say never.

Nora used to read them at first, trying to get a sense of hope from her mother’s optimism but eventually stopped. She would always like the messages but she knew it was a refusal to accept the truth; she couldn’t feel her mother’s tears again.

And for the rest of college, dating was normal—sometimes even easier. She didn’t stock up on pregnancy tests in panic every time she slept with someone and the guys seemingly couldn’t care less. But now, her friends were dating with intention, they were looking for partners. It felt like someone had clued the straight men into this shift because the conversations would suddenly include children.

So meeting people became complicated for her in ways Nora did not prepare for.

Some men were kind in a way that felt performative. They would say it doesn’t matter, that they don’t need children to be fulfilled, but she would wonder if they would still feel that way in five or ten years. Others would hesitate just long enough for her to see the calculation flicker across their faces. A few were honest and would leave, politely, as if returning something that doesn’t quite fit.

Each time, Nora would tell herself not to take it personally. Each time, she would anyway.

And then there was the timing. Too early and it felt like a warning label, something she was required to disclose for liability reasons. Too late and it felt like deceit.

She felt as though her body failed an unspoken requirement. Not biologically but socially. There was this version of womanhood she no longer qualified for, and no one told her what replaced it.

And while she felt the grief, there were no rituals for this kind of loss. No public markers. No casseroles or sympathy cards. No language that doesn’t immediately invite correction or consolation. She was grieving something that hadn’t happened yet and now never would. And somehow the pain remained anticipatory and backward at the same time.

She mourned children she would never meet, but more often she mourned the woman she assumed she would become.

Nora really felt the shift when she was 28.

Suddenly everyone around her was married or engaged or pregnant or wanting to be in one of those three trifling situations. She attended baby showers and weddings and bought gifts thoughtfully. She wrote careful cards. She learned how to smile without clenching her jaw. People told her she was brave, as if there was a choice to be made and one of the options included some feat of bravery and she happened to choose correctly.

At Shannon’s second baby shower, she found herself standing alone in the bathroom. Shannon and Evan had moved to a new apartment where there was room for both children and the wallpaper in here reminded her of the spackled wall from the OBGYN years ago; blue and pink dots overtook the beige background, an unsettling theme of wanting children. She doesn’t cry. Crying had begun to feel inefficient at 25.

She sat on the toilet seat and scrolled through her phone, forming opinions on people’s Instagram stories and accidentally swiping up on the ads. The targeted ads had been getting to her recently, as reflected in the unopened packages of athletic leggings piling up in her doorway. A banner notification popped up with an email from her boss and Nora clicked into it:

Subject: FW: ABA International Legal Exchange (ILEX) – Paris Opportunity

Hey, saw this and wanted to forward it over. I already put in a good word for you :)

Best,
Barbara

—

From: HR and Recruiting <info@kirkland.com>
Sent: March 7, 2025, 1:39 PM
To: HR and Recruiting <info@kirkland.com>
BCC: Barbara Lancaster <barbara.lancaster@kirkland.com>
Subject: ABA International Legal Exchange (ILEX) – Paris Opportunity

The ABA International Legal Exchange (ILEX) is running a short-term placement in Paris this fall, pairing U.S. associates with international firms and legal organizations to work on cross-border regulatory and transactional matters. The program is typically a few months long and focuses on comparative legal systems, international commercial law, and professional exchange.

Interested candidates or nominators should submit materials using the link below.

Nora read the email once, and then again, and felt her heart swell a little. Paris. Her mind raced through a supercut of memories from her time there studying abroad in college. Whether it was practicing ordering bread at the boulangerie to the nights spent dancing at clubs with her friends, she would smile whenever she thought about it. She had a dalliance with this painter there, and of course, it ended when he asked if he could paint her.

One of her friends from the program, Nicole, had ended up moving to Paris after graduating Wellesley to be closer to her parents who lived in a chateau about an hour away from the city. Nora wondered what she was up to.

She searched Nicole up and scrolled through the colorful photographs sprawling the feed. LinkedIn showed that she was working as an Editor at Elle, fuck she’s cool. Facebook showed she was single with no kids.

Nora left the party, and walked home thinking about Paris and the life Nicole might be leading: walking along the Seine at night, sitting outside with a glass of wine, watching people walk, smoking a cigarette. She thought about seeing the Notre Dame, shopping in the Marais, and sitting in Musee de L’Orangerie.

She unlocked the door to her apartment, the one she moved into after her best friend and roommate Susie moved in with her boyfriend, and turned on the lights. This was her dream place, one she saved up for, one that she fantasized would get into an Architectural Digest issue. She spent the last summer curating furniture and artwork after a mini episode when her grandmother asked about grandkids (she was diagnosed with Alzheimers shortly after). She thought she made this her home, she thought she knew what she was doing.

Nora sat on the couch and looked through the window that overlooked Central Park, with the East edge of the MET visible, surrounded by the changing leaves, but found herself thinking of the seasons in the Jardin du Luxembourg instead.

She pressed Follow on Nicole’s page and booked a one way ticket to Paris.

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Welcome to Somehow Serendipitous! I’m so excited to have you here. As some of you may know, I’ve been writing for years, but it has always been a private conversation with my journal, correspondence with myself. Poems and blurbs of ideas for stories scratching the pages of many (many) loose papers, and don’t even get me started on my Notes app.

When I was five years old, my family moved to this country into a small apartment near a commuter rail. My parents worked while I learned about what an American Thanksgiving was at school; the choice was between making a Pilgrim paper crown or a Native American one, of course. Assimilation means different things to everyone but at five, the feeling of fitting in had nothing to do with the immigrant experience, everyone was learning. Elementary school was made up of what I call “building blocks,” which are experiences imperative to a person’s core. I was building a foundation with these blocks in and out of the home that helped me fit in, heavily prescribed by the many forms of media I was consuming. I begged to shop at Justice, a clothing brand that was wildly popular at the time. I played outside with the other kids in the shared playground of the apartment community, sitting on top of the jungle gym with others to gossip. I got a brother when I was just shy of eight years old, and felt responsibility (and also jealousy of the attention he got, how could my parents love him so much? They just met him!). But most importantly, I did whatever I could to reflect those around me, which at the core, was what fitting in really meant at that time. And then when I was eleven, we moved.

While many of my formative years came in the time after I was eleven in my new town, I credit that apartment and community with much about myself. Whether it be through school projects or mistakes I made, it was my first experience challenging myself and what I considered normal. I realized I loved to read; I always had my nose in a book and the local library was one of my favorite places. I would teach my infant brother what I was learning in second grade while he flopped around and discovered how both the multiplication table and tummy time were valid achievements. I found I was a performer at heart, singing and dancing wherever (even if I was bad at it), and telling jokes just to hear others laugh. Much of this stayed with me, creating the person I am, informing the choices I make.

And now, my performance is through my pen, or I guess Substack in this case. Recording emotion and creating characters remains a way for my imagination to flourish; how amazing is it that someone could have a whole life and a whole set of periphery characters and a full plot that has nothing to do with your own? I started writing short stories after graduating college more intentionally. I would spend hours on weekends in coffee shops writing and drinking way too much coffee or I’d sprawl on the couch editing when it rained—New York in the rain is the worst for anything except lying on the couch anyway. But it would hit an end and I would feel scared and shy and embarrassed (I know, I am not one to feel this way IRL ever). And I had felt that way about writing all my life, it was never something I laid out for others to see, unless it was in class or workshop. I think it’s because it matters to me the most. It’s a reflection of my sincere effort, my intimate thoughts, my frank vulnerabilities, and I wanted to keep those cards close to my chest, I mean, I still do. I feel nervous, more than I have about anything else if I’m being truly honest, but for the first time, I am also very excited.

It’s been a long time coming but I’m happy to be here now. I hope to use this space to post monthly fictional short stories, some poems I’ve written, and other bits and bobs that come to me in between. Please give me any feedback you have; I would appreciate any and all thoughts while I still get my bearings. But most importantly, I hope you enjoy the worlds I spin up and the characters living in them. My first short story, Something for Now, is live and you can read it here:

Something for Now

Thank you for taking the time to read this and anything else I share, it means so very much to me.

Sincerely,

Ananya Hajra

This was the usual morning routine: rushing to get ready, hopping to the train and finding peace in the moments that she mobilized downtown. Rafa was just a few weeks in at culinary school, and it felt as though she was dreaming with her eyes open. For as long as she knew, food was an integral part of how her family operated. She grew up with a mixed culture; her mother Elise was from France and her father Arman was from Iran and the battle between cuisines in their family was not taken lightly. Rafa’s parents worked corporate jobs so Rafa gained inspiration from Arman’s mother, her mami, who lived with them and the books left by Elise’s parents outlining their favorite French recipes and little notes of the adjustments they would make for Elise while she was going up. Rafa would pour over the notes, smiling at the scribbles her late grandmother wrote in, especially those that suggested taking vegetables out of certain dishes to ensure that her mother would eat the meal. Her mami made sure that their spice cabinet was always stocked and taught Rafa how to smell the progress of each familial dish they made together. Rafa was still learning to master the crispy bottom of the tahdig, which was a rice dish they always made with the daily assortment of vegetables. In their cozy Upper West Side home, Rafa learned to love food and by the time she was 15, she knew she wanted to be a chef.

The subway approached Fulton Street and Rafa got out with the people in suits. Her father used to work here back when he had a Blackberry but all she remembered from that time was the Brick Breaker game he would sometimes let her play. She couldn’t picture him looking so solemn, walking in a herd of people like the one surrounding her now. She hoped he wasn’t. The walk to the Institute of Culinary Education was brief and like always, the air right outside the building smelled of burnt coffee. Most mornings, she moved through the city by scent as much as by sight whether it be the sweet dough from the bakery she passed on her way to school or the metallic tang of the subway rails right before a train arrived. Rafa liked to pretend those smells told her things: when a bakery had a new apprentice, when the corner deli had switched coffee brands, when the weather was about to turn. She didn’t realize she was cataloguing all of it like ingredients in her head. She moved through the world nose first, instinctively, almost stupidly joyful about it.

Days at the Institute challenged Rafa to find routine in a way that she found comforting: measuring out mise en place (the culinary way of saying everything for set up) with hands still cold from the changing weather, lining up steel bowls that clicked softly against the stainless tables, and tying her apron twice because the first knot never felt tight enough. Each day was often split into two. Mornings were technique—knife skills, reductions, and sauces that required more patience than she pretended to have. Afternoons were louder and hotter with instructors weaving through stations like they were conducting an orchestra with too many egos. There was always something to taste, some broth or puree being passed down the table with the urgency of a secret. And she loved that part, the brief moment when everyone fell quiet, focusing on nothing but flavor and the sensation from the spoon. Even when she felt overwhelmed, there was a rhythm to the day that made her feel like she was exactly where she was supposed to be.

That night Rafa came back home and took her tiny pile of trash to the kitchen where she could dispose of it appropriately. Her mother was unloading a bag of groceries while the news held a steady tone throughout the apartment. The latest form of the COVID-19 pandemic was surging, something called the “Delta variant”. Rafa’s family had gotten the vaccine a couple months ago when it had come to New York, but as the summer progressed, the variant news grew rampant and Rafa worried for her mami. The symptoms were different from those that came with the first wave so it felt an ever-changing source of panic. Despite the rising tensions outside, Rafa’s home remained a cocoon and she focused her attention back to the bag from Citarella on the counter. Rafa helped Elise unpack the gorgeous red heirloom tomatoes, bundles of parsley, and a wedge of Comté that was wrapped in crinkled brown paper. Mami was getting things out from the fridge and together, the three women began their nightly dance.

Rafa practiced her knife work and sliced garlic so thin it was translucent before moving to the herbs. Mami was spicing the rice and Elise was setting the table. Soon the kitchen held onto the perfume of garlic hitting the pan and the nutty toasted rice. Elise set lemon wedges onto the mismatched vintage dishes she’d collected over the years, and the women laughed over stories they’d already shared before. Arman joined them at the table when the food was ready and through each bite she took mental notes of the perfect blends of flavor. Elise brought Rafa a cup of hot water with ginger since she had been coughing the night before and Rafa squeezed some lemon into it.

As she saw the plates start to clear of food, she brought out some of the strawberries she had picked on her way home and topped it with some of the charred rhubarb from a recipe she was testing. The stand on Broadway had the best strawberries and she took her time smelling each little berry basket before selecting the sweetest ones. She watched her parents and mami close their eyes and smile, making “mmm” noises with every bite. Arman spoke up, “Rafa I think the rhubarb is even better today, this is incredible.” Rafa smiled, pride filling her, and she began the objectively worst part about cooking: cleaning.

Rafa woke up the next day much earlier than she normally does and made herself a coffee at home. She foamed some milk for her espresso and decided to add a dash of a cinnamon salt she made the week before. In her nook, which looked out on 77th, she caught a glimpse of the morning bustle and sipped the coffee. Her eyebrows furrowed, weird. She sipped again and this time it was certain. She couldn’t taste her coffee. She could feel it: hot, a little thicker than water, not quite as thick as hot chocolate. She tried another sip and this time there was a faint something. Maybe a hint of bitterness? She began to notice her heart beating very fast and rushed to the kitchen, pulling out the cinnamon salt. She sniffed, nothing. She took out the vanilla extract, nothing. She ransacked the fridge for mustard, a block of aged cheddar, a leftover container of seaweed salad. Nothing. Fuck.

Rafa started breathing heavily while pulling out her phone and typing. “Unable to smell or taste” and the results ranged. Towards the top, news of new symptoms from the latest variant gave her a gut punch. It couldn’t be… could it? Moving with intention while her heart raced, she opened the cabinet with the extra at home COVID tests and placed the swab in her nose. Time dragged, thick and uncooperative, and Rafa looked around at the open cabinets. Her favorite foods and spices all seemed like they were black and white, a colorless arena of what were already memories. She tried to summon the tastes she knew: her mami’s subzi or even the charred rhubarb from the night before, but the memories felt faint. It was like someone was erasing them from the edges inward.

Her timer rang and she looked at the test.

Positive.

She ran to the bathroom and threw up, tears running down her face.

After calling the Institute and informing them of the news, she paced in her room looking around for a sign of a break in the simulation. That must be what this is, right? She thought about her parents, her mami, and felt a large twang of guilt. They had all eaten dinner together last night, were they okay? She texted in the family group chat for what felt like the millionth time asking if they were okay. Arman and Elise responded saying nothing had changed since 30 seconds ago when she texted and they were still waiting for their tests. Mami tested negative thankfully and had moved on to her daily routine of watching the shows she had recorded from the night before. How could they be so relaxed? How could she not have tasted the coffee? She looked at her cup which held the now cold cappuccino and took a small sip. Still nothing. It all felt like a bad dream, one that she couldn’t wake out of and whose weight no one seemed to understand.

By the time the sun set, Rafa had gone through the rest of The Namesake, wiped the tears from the ending, and done 3 pushups. She wrote a journal entry explaining everything she tried smelling and flipped through the pages before looking at notes from culinary school sharing notes on recipes she had tested. She ate a bowl of oatmeal her mom left outside the door. And she cried. Twice.

The first was full of anger and shame and guilt and involved a scream into her pillow. The second felt more sad, a slow grief that crept in beneath the panic, the kind that came not from pain but from absence. She felt like she was losing something she hadn’t realized she was holding and it shook her. How could she ever be a chef? Rafa responded back to her mom saying she was fine and fell asleep thinking of the first time she made lemon chicken soup by herself and the smell of fresh dill.

The quarantine was horrible. Ten days felt like a millennium and she had been hyper productive in a space that didn’t lend itself to that. Rafa’s room was spotless and she had written down ideas for recipes she wanted to test when she got her taste back. A dark thought lingered in her head, what if she wouldn’t be able to smell again? There aren’t a lot of stories about this. But she was done with the rollercoaster of emotions and ready to get back to work. She just knew that if had the chance to be back in the kitchen, it would be all ok. It had to be.

She read the results of her last test on the 11th day since she got her positive and smiled at the negative result. She grabbed her bag and came out to the living room where her family had set up a balloon and fruit tart. Everyone had maintained a negative result the entire 10 days and she took an extra day to make sure she could safely see them. She hugged her parents and tried to smell her mother’s perfume. Nothing. Rafa let a tear out and then took a fork full of the tart which had a smooth custard. Vanilla, she assumed. She couldn’t taste the berries but the bursting juices let her know that they were ripe. She thanked her parents and went on her way, after all, it was her first day back at the institute.

The train had no lingering smells from the rain and the air felt crisp. Rafa walked back into the Institute of Culinary Education with a rehearsed steadiness she hoped no one would notice. The halls smelled the same, or at least, she assumed they did. Throughout the day she acted like it was all fine. She breathed in out of habit, pretending she could detect the roasted chicken stock simmering somewhere down the line or the faint sweetness of brioche from the bakery kitchen. Nothing. During prep, she chopped her mirepoix with mechanical precision, watching classmates taste and adjust while she relied on ratios and memory alone. Every time an instructor asked, “What do you get from this?” Rafa felt her stomach drop. She swirled a spoonful of velouté, brought it to her lips, and willed herself to taste something, anything, but the world stayed mute. Was there a flour-y aftertaste? Was it overcooked? The kitchen moved around her in color and motion and heat, and she kept nodding, performing competence, and going through the motions. But inside she felt like she was cooking with her hands tied, like someone had taken away the map she’d been using her whole life. She wiped down her space and packed her bag, questioning the whole day.

It had been a few weeks and the class moved at its everyday fast pace. Rafa began to stay late after school, lingering in the quiet kitchen long after the last apron had been hung. She chopped herbs purely by sight, trusting the green flecks to mean what they always had. She sautéed onions until they looked translucent, waited for butter to foam in the familiar way, and built a simple lemon chicken soup with garlic, lemons, and loads of dill. It was a dish that once would’ve sung to her without effort, a dish she dreamed about sometimes.

She sat at a metal prep table and lifted a spoonful to her lips. Still nothing. Just warmth and the faintest memory of acidity. The first night she did this exercise she cried, thinking of the gratifying flavor and how she missed her tastebuds. But she didn’t cry this time. She let the silence on her tongue sit there, steady, and realized that even without flavor, the soup carried something: time, muscle memory, and care.

She had adapted in ways she didn’t anticipate. She stayed late and kept journals that she would jokingly call “maps” filled with notes that weren’t about flavor but rather texture, sound, and temperature. She had to unlearn a lot of what she knew about cooking, her cues based on smells no longer relevant. But she now knew the exact moment where dough could be elastic enough without tearing or that when caramel would hit the particular shade of amber it needed to be taken off the heat. She was still working on the tahdig, of course.

And her instructors had noticed:
“Your intuition for texture is getting sharp,” Gill had said.
“You’re cooking like someone who sees with their hands,” Scott joked.

Rafa would smile in return but felt the words stick to her, egging her on to continue learning in this new way. She stared at her spoon now, swirling the soup one more time. She took another spoonful and something brushed the back of her tongue, maybe a flicker of citrus, as faint as a half-remembered song. Or maybe it was nothing, perhaps she made it up.

It was something for now.