alt=""/>
Margot had driven many times to the Park Slope apartment Kara had shared with Collin, and to the one she’d shared with Mullet, and to other apartments that had preceded them. She had not, Margot now realized, seen the inside of Mullet’s apartment, but that might have been true of one of the early apartments, too. Kara went through a lot of roommates when she first moved to New York.
But for all her moving, she’d always lived in Brooklyn. Margot had lived in Queens for a time, then moved back to Long Island. If she and Kara met in the city, for drinks or a show or a shopping trip, they usually took trains in and trains home. But when Kara voyaged to Long Island, which had become the most common way they visited, Margot would drive her home the next morning.
“Boring Girl’s Night Out,” that’s what they liked to call it. Margot was the boring girl—that was implied, but never said—but it was more fun being boring with Kara. They’d go to Target, rent a movie, make dinner—well, Margot would make the dinner, and Kara would keep the wine poured. Then they’d get up and have breakfast. Margot might cook, or they’d go out. Sometimes they dyed the grey strands out of their hair; sometimes they painted their nails. Then Margot would drive Kara back to Brooklyn with her haul of groceries and a box of muffins.
Kara would usually wait for the drive home to bring up anything bad that was going on. She’d been fired. She was getting back into coke. She’d been to a party and blacked out. These drives back to Brooklyn often felt like confession. Margot would say it was bad, and Kara would agree, and she’d swear she was never going to do whatever it was she needed to never do again, and—Oh, I forgot to tell you the most hilarious story—and then the subject was changed. Maybe Margot should have worried more about Kara during these conversations. But Kara always made it sound like she had things under control. She seemed naughty, yet indestructible—just like she’d been in college. Even her DUI a few months ago she’d managed to explain away somehow. There were the customary pangs of regret on the Belt Parkway, but those felt a bit manufactured, for Margot’s benefit or perhaps more for Kara’s own sense of ritual cleansing. That’s how they generally felt. Maybe there was more to it, sometimes. Maybe Margot should’ve listened more carefully.
Today she was listening to the radio, or at least she’d flipped on the radio to fill the silence beside her. Several times she considered turning around and heading home. She didn’t know Kara’s other New York friends. Why did she need to meet them now?
The apartment building was red brick and five stories tall, and as she approached it, Margot saw an empty lot just beyond it and the early signs of construction. That was different. Margot remembered when there had been a taller building there, abandoned, condemned. It had been gated off, a couple of windows broken, and Margot imagined Kara imagining what took place inside. We’re right next to the empty building that’s clearly a safe house for giant rodents, Kara would tell the car service operator. I’m one building down from the gang headquarters near the corner, she’d tell the Chinese food deliveryman. Okay, if I don’t get killed by the arms dealers living in the bombed-out building next door, I’ll meet you right outside.
Margot rang the bell for 4C, was buzzed in without any conversation, and walked up the stairs to what was for four years Kara’s home. When Margot knocked on the door, a twenty-something-year-old Asian girl with long hair and a nose ring opened the door but didn’t particularly acknowledge Margot’s presence. Margot walked inside and hovered around a table, which held bowls of pretzels and chips. Mullet and Collin were nowhere to be seen. An earnest, whiny rock ballad played from a pair of speakers attached to an iPhone.
There were about ten people in the small living room and at least as many bottles of wine and liquor gathered on the kitchen counter. Everyone was young and waifish, except for a thickly built man on the sofa who had a white goatee and was saying, “Girl, don’t make me slap you back to Kansas,” to a man wearing eyeliner. Margot had more hip and thigh and breast than the six girls here put together. Not that anyone seemed to notice her. One girl registered her presence briefly; another said “Hi” and “Excuse me” and grabbed a handful of Pringles. This didn’t look like a funeral. It looked like a party.
It was strange being back in this space without Kara. The dusty floral sofa was the same, the found-on-the-curb coffee table with one leg duct-taped in place. Against one wall was a bookshelf that had once held a framed snapshot of the two of them at a wine-tasting. The poster from Grey Gardens was Kara’s. The lamp in the corner they’d bought together.
“Are you Margot?” someone asked after what was probably a good five minutes.
“Mm-hmm.”
“So great to finally meet you,” the girl said. “I didn’t see you come in. I’m Pepper.”
The girl’s tone of voice seemed to imply that Margot should know who she was, so Margot nodded. “You too,” she said, and they shook hands.
“I worked at the restaurant with Kara,” Pepper said. “And we went to auditions together sometimes.” Pepper had spiraling red hair pulled back in a bandana. She looked like she was about twenty-five, and there was no question she’d played Annie in a high school production, talent or none. “Let me get Collin,” she added, and she turned around and shouted his name.
That seemed to do the trick. He emerged from a bedroom, opened his arms, and hugged Margot as if they’d met more than once in their lives. He was wearing a spicy cologne, and his hair dipped below his eyes so he had to toss it back when he stepped away from her.
“I’m so glad you could come,” he said. “I really am. I just felt like I had to do something. Did you go to North Carolina for the funeral? You did? I couldn’t, and I just felt awful about the way Kara and I left things, so Pepper said do something, don’t keep moping for God’s sake, and I thought, with Kara’s birthday coming up and most of us not being able to go to the funeral, that this is what Kara would’ve wanted, you know? A party. So anyway, thank you for coming. Make yourself at home—did you get a drink?”
Margot let Collin make her a madras, but he put barely any orange juice or cranberry in it. It tasted like colorful vodka, so she had to sip it down and add more juice herself a minute later. Cougar Cominsky would have been mortified.
She had heard about the falling out; she just hadn’t heard the details. Somehow, quite suddenly, Collin was an asshole, Collin was full of himself, Collin was intolerable, and Kara was moving out. That was the end of Collin.
Before he’d disappeared from Kara’s life, Collin was often the character in Kara’s stories who dragged her to the next bar at three in the morning, or had a friend who could get them more Valium, or was going through a phase of bringing home Puerto Rican men, or got them into an after-party at some stranger’s apartment somewhere in Brooklyn Heights. So when Margot heard that Kara was moving out, although she was predisposed to feel some sympathy for the people who lived with Kara, Margot didn’t mind knowing that Collin was out of Kara’s life.
“Come sit down,” he said, leading Margot and Pepper to the sofa. “Everyone, this is Margot, one of Kara’s friends from back in college.”
A chorus of Hi, Margots followed, reminding Margot of those AA meetings, or at least their sitcom facsimiles. “Hi, everyone,” she said. She sipped her madras.
“I’m jealous that you knew Kara in college,” Pepper said. “What was she like?”
“Oh, a lot like the Kara she is today—or was. Full of energy and jokes. Everybody loved her.”
“Even
