Impact 02: of Collusion

Claire's "studio" is an enormous open-plan loft.

"You have an echo," I tell her when she tries to convince me it's small. And I guess for a "loft" it's small, but compared to my little apartment, she may as well be living in a hockey stadium.

It has high ceilings and huge double hung windows facing the street. She sits me in a chair and gets me a glass of water while I study the wreckage of my shoe. The heel has sheared off and is dangling by a strip of leather.

"I'm really ok," I tell her. Too loud, she's already back, I'm shouting in her face. "I'm just such a klutz," I whisper.

"Here, drink this," she commands, handing me a glass of water. Her eyes look a little out of focus. But then she reconsiders, and taking the glass back, takes a long draft before handing it back to me, disappearing again. The water is wonderfully cold and I take greedy gulps, emptying the glass. Claire is back with a wet washcloth. She kneels in front of me, and dabs at my bloody knee.

"Your French is beautiful," I tell her. "Where did you learn?"

"Paris," she says with a smile. "I'm French."

"You have no accent."

"I grew up in Asia. I went to American international schools." she takes my hand and is cleaning the scrape on my palm. "It's not so bad."

There had been a number of times that night - that I'd said something about a tv show or someone had referenced politics or an event - and Claire had looked strangely blank, a little confused. Almost like she hadn't understood the words. It made sense now. The references were lost on her because she hadn't grown up here, she just sounds like she had.

She looks up at me guilelessly; those enormous eyes, that too-pretty face. I realize I'm staring.

"I'm so sorry, I should just go..."

"Noooo... stay!" she says, looking up at me. "Please. It will be fun, a sleepover? It's almost morning."

"I feel so bad."

"Shhh. Enough of that. Let's get you ready for bed." Claire is standing and offering me her hands. I put down my glass and take them. She dances me to the little bathroom, one hand in mine, held high, the other arm tight around my waist. Parking me in front of the sink she leaves me while I wash my face and brush my teeth with my finger.

"Do you have something I could sleep in?" I call through the door.

There's a loud crash of something large falling over and she reappears at the bathroom door, eyes wide and a big goofy grin on her face.

"It's fine! Everything's fine!" she exclaims. "Here."

She shoves a towel and a t-shirt at me and closes the door. I pull my dress over my head and hang it on the door. Undoing the clasp of my bra I look at myself in the mirror.

I look drunk. My nose and cheeks are flush, my hair is a bit wind-blown. My makeup's a mess.

"Drunks don't do makeup!" I whisper to myself.

Even if my eyes and lips are smeared, my hair actually looks really good, all loopy curls and coppery highlights.

"I should get drunk more often."

I get a lot of compliments on my hair, I think because of the strawberry blonde color, but maybe because it's so thick. My breasts are both my favorite and least favorite feature. I touched them now, hefting their weight. Remember the feel of Claire's hand squeezing me. My nipples are puffing up.

"Now, now," I warn them.

I remember Claire's comment at the tapas bar. She had told me how pretty she thinks I am, that I have eyebrows like Emilia Clarke - mine are thick and unkempt. I look at myself with new pride and think about her dark hard nipples.

"What are you doing Sarah?" I mutter to myself. I'm squeezing my breasts.

"What?" Claire calls from the other room.

"Nothing!" I call back, jumping into the shower. I take a quick cold rinse, just enough to wash off the sweat of the dancing and grime of the city and sidewalk - and hoping the cold would maybe sober me up a little. Drying off, I put on the t-shirt Claire had given me. It was a little small, a bit tight across the boobs, not quite reaching my panties.

'It's my turn to put on a show,' I think bleakly, looking at my hard puffy nipples.

I take a deep breath and open the bathroom door feeling very self conscious (and still every bit as drunk as before my cold dowsing). But the lights are already dimmed.

Claire is wrapped in a towel. She is pulling back the covers on the bed, looking like something out of a catalog; the enormous windows, her beautiful white bed and overstuffed duvet, her perfect Parisian silhouette.

'I would buy that bed,' I tell myself. 'I would buy that towel...'

"Come," she orders, stooping to pat the bed. I obey. She steps into the washroom as I climb under the cover, my bare legs against the cool clean sheets, trying to make myself comfortable. Settling in, feeling like Alice in Wonderland, or the excitement of a sleepover, or something else... I listen in the dark, my head spinning a little, as she showers and does her ablutions.

Nominally Claire's loft is a studio I suppose, but it has 16' ceilings and it's one open-plan room is easily three times as big as my entire apartment. The "bedroom" - where I'm tucked in - is to one side of the main space, there is no wall, no door, no actual "room". It's just an alcove the size of my bedroom, living room, and kitchen combined. All that's in it is a king size four poster bed and a huge antique armoire. There are two massive double hung windows facing the street. At the back of the bedroom-alcove is the bathroom - again, twice as big as my kitchen, never mind my bathroom - and outfitted with beautiful Victorian fixtures.

The main space is enormous with three more big windows facing the street. She has two large paintings, hanging facing each other. I'd just glanced at them when we arrived. In the dark all I can make out is the one on the far wall that looked like a drippy scrawl of Mickey Mouse, the other is hidden from me around the corner now, but was some sort of grid of tie dye or batik.

Besides the kitchen, which is a simple industrial affair tucked in the back corner, the main space is relatively spare. Opposite the bedroom-alcove there is an antique "secretary" desk stacked with books and magazines, the latest aluminum monitor, and a minimalist keyboard. In the center of the space, facing the windows is a big white sofa that looks comfy and expensive and disturbingly like the sofa in my fantasy... I try not to think about that. In front of the sofa is an oval Saarinen coffee table and a couple of tulip chairs.

The ceiling of the loft is antique pressed tin, and ancient peeling paint. In the main space there is old track lighting, but hanging over the bed, from a battered rosette, where a chandelier or other fixture might have hung once upon a time, are dozens of bare incandescent bulbs, each wired to the same small point on the ceiling by black industrial electrical cable. One bulb would have looked like a construction site, dozens look like an inverted Edison bouquet. In the long light from the street lights the darkened bulbs are beautiful and sculptural. Like a smoky insect's eye looking down on me.

The bathroom door opens and throws a wedge of blinding light across the bed. I watch as Claire emerges backlit and then disappears again as the light goes off. Momentarily blinded, I listen as she pads over and slides in next to me, pulling the duvet up to her chin.

"We made it!" she whispers, smiling across at me in the dark.

"I like your apartment," I whisper back, enjoying the conspiratorial mood.

"Thank you, but it's not really mine, it belongs to my step-father," she admits. "But I like it too. It's so New York."

I would have called my ancient tenement and dark one room apartment in Hell's Kitchen quintessentially New York. Now I'm not so sure...

"Oscar is such a good dancer," I tell her.

"Yes, I think he wanted a taste of Young Sarah," she enthuses.

"Nooo!" I laugh, scandalized. Oscar, the owner of Puerta Roja, had reminded me of a tall, thin Stanley Tucci. He had been charming and funny, making a great show of dancing with Claire and me at the same time - but he had also been at least sixty, maybe seventy.

"I think I would fuck Oscar." Claire tells me wistfully. ""It's been so long, I think I'd fuck just about anyone at this point."

"The tech bro?" I ask, my eyelids drooping.

"No," she whispers, her voice husky, "I'd never stoop to beastiality."

We can't contain our laughter at this. Suddenly somber and somewhat pensive, Claire mulls, "But Oscar..."

"Noooo," I moan. "He's too old!"

"Yessss!" she hisses back. "He's old and he's sexy. But honestly, I don't think he'll have me. He only had eyes for Young Sarah. You may have to take one for the team. I think I have a new favorite local, I won't lose it because you won't put out."

"Well I guess if that's what's at stake, I'll just have to fuck Oscar," I whisper sleepily.

"You're so good to me," she breathed.

"Anything for my Claire" I mumble, thinking of the way she called me my Sarah all night. The memory of it makes me smile, eyes closed, face pressed into her pillow. I am starting to breathe heavy, slow and deep when Claire again puts her face close to mine.

I must have drifted off. I wake up in the dark to the sound of rain. My face is in Claire's hair. It feels smooth and clean and smells deliciously old fashioned, earthy and sweet; like ambergris. I am spooning her, my whole body pressed against hers, one arm under her neck, the other wrapped around her waist. I start to move back, to lift my arm, but she moans a complaint, and holds my arm in place with hers.

"It's nice," she murmurs, wiggling her ass backwards into my lap.

When I wake up again it's morning. Claire and I are a tangle of limbs. We're sharing a pillow. Her eyes are open, studying me.

"You're fun to sleep with," she tells me, narrowing her eyes and curling the corners of her mouth into a mischievous smile.

"I move around a lot," I apologize.

"You do," she agrees. "But you're gentle and soft and warm. It was quite nice."

And it was nice. I can't remember when I slept better. Even though I kept waking up, always with the two of us embracing, I'd fall right back to sleep. I can remember holding her in the night, my hand on her bare belly... I have a memory of holding her bare breast. My sleepy brain suddenly realizes something, I move my hand up her thigh to her hip, up her waist...

"You're naked?" I murmur in my drowsy haze.

"Yes," she agrees simply, as if it were nothing at all. I looked at her smiling face, her clear hazel eyes. Maybe it is nothing at all?

"Brunch?" she asks.

"Tylenol?" I beg.

The day is bright and clear. Claire takes me to a tiny restaurant called Smith and Mills for brunch. Their bathroom is built inside the cage of an old elevator and has a strange folding sink. It's crisp, but warm enough in the sun to have their doors open and we sit outside drinking Bloody Marys and eating eggs. Claire tells me about her brothers, her family in France and Germany. Her feelings of dislocation in Paris, and now New York. I tell her about my parents, about my brother and sister, and Danny, about escaping Buffalo, about my own loneliness, at Brown and here.

"We didn't have things like homecoming," Claire says, sounding almost jealous. "I just know it from movies. Being the Queen must have been fun, all the attention?"

"It was," I admit. "But it was mostly about Danny, I'm not friends with any of those people anymore. Going away was like I was somehow judging them... maybe I was."

"Why didn't you have more friends at Brown?" Claire wonders, looking at me hard. Maybe she wonders if I'd done something bad. Had I?

"I don't know. I'm naturally a bit of an introvert? I think that's part of it. But I think, in all honesty, being with Danny isolated me? I was never fully there," I admit.

"But not any more!" he tells me, and her face lights up - maybe seeing I was going to a dark place. "Now you are HERE!"

"YES!" I agree, realizing she's right, I didn't feel lonely at all. "New York is where I want to stay!"

Catching me by surprise, our waiter sings out, "I get allergic smelling hay!"

Claire looks on in confusion as he and I laugh at his Eva Gábor impersonation - I explain Green Acres as best I can as soon as he steps away.

Afterwards we walk up the Hudson River Park. We lay in the grass on a pier, Claire's head in my lap, talking and napping. She tells me about growing up in Bali, teaching me to count to ten in Balinese.

"This is the best date I've ever been on," I tell her. We are walking arm-in-arm up the Highline through Chelsea drinking "New Orleans-Style" iced coffees. Claire had been telling me about Sarah Sze, who's artwork dots the elevated park.

"It's true!" Claire laughs. "All that's missing is a romantic home cooked meal."

"I can make us dinner!"

"Oh no! That's not what I meant-"

"I know, I know!" I assure her. "But I have everything for a massaman curry, and I need to make it tonight."

"Really?"

"Why not?"

"And it's only fair," Claire says. "Since I showed you mine, you can show me yours!"

I stare at her in surprise, picturing her climbing out of bed naked this morning.

"Your apartment," she says with a wicked grin, laughing at my rising color. "I can't wait to see your apartment,"

We dismount the Highline at 20th street to buy wine, which Claire chooses after much deliberation with a smitten wine store clerk. She ends up choosing four bottles, and smiles when I look at them in alarm.

"Always better too much than too little," she explains.

I'm a bit self conscious about my neighborhood, which isn't really a neighborhood at all. "It's technically the Fashion District?" I tell her. "But I think that was a rebrand because real estate agents hate saying Hell's Kitchen."

My building is the only tenement on what is otherwise a rowdy commercial street. The store fronts are all big fabric wholesalers and jam packed trimming and notion stores - most of which are closed on the weekend. No tapas places, no restaurants of any kind, and what passes for a bodega is a corner store that mostly caters to the weekday lunchtime crowds. So my block is super quiet on the weekends - kind of desolate actually, but in a good way, kinda?

Most of the block is tall loft buildings that predate setback zoning. The curtain wall is a sheer black canyon wall, like a twenty story cut through the city. The once-beautiful brick and terracotta facades and windows are all filthy with soot and blend to be more of a dark stony surface than architecture. Judging by what I can see from my windows, some of the upper floors are offices, others workshops and warehouse spaces stacked with boxes, a few seem to be occupied, there are big all night parties on the weekend sometimes.

"Beautiful" she says, surprising me. I realize she's looking at our feet, at our shadows.

And she's right. Sunsets are especially lovely this time of year because before the sun goes down it throws long golden light crosstown from the Hudson. Our shadows are fantastically elongated beings as we walk arm-in-arm.

"My boss Keith told me it's called Manhattan-henge?" I tell her. "It's supposed to line up straight down the street any day now."

"It's super cool here," she says seriously, peeking through the steel shutters at a display of buttons and zippers.

"The entrance is gross," I warn Claire as we approach my building. "But I can walk to work and it's rent controlled."

"Did you live here with Danny?" she asks, ignoring the scratched and scoured plexiglass in the steel case door. Everything is covered in the remnants of ancient stickers.

'Stickers must have been a big deal ten years ago,' I think to myself for the ten-millionth time.

"No," I answer as we climbed the steps. The ancient bluestone treads are worn down to soft slumped saddle shapes. "Danny wouldn't live in the city or sign a lease. We lived in a sublet in Hoboken."

"Jersey?" she asks in horror.

"I know! We weren't there long, but it felt like forever. I hated it," I tell her, thinking of the ratty little garden apartment he'd found. "And the commute was awful."

"How did you find this place?" she asks, as I unlock my door, a little winded from the walk up.

"Luck," I admit. "A woman at work was giving it up and heard me talking to my boss about the break up; about needing to find a place."

"Oh Sarah, it's wonderful!" she says as I turn on the lights, making me smile. Janet, the woman who had handed the apartment off to me had made it really nice, and she left me almost all her furniture. But I'd painted, and while I don't have art like Claire's, I'd found cool things for the walls.

"You organize them by color?!" Claire says, looking across at my books. She's making herself at home, kicking off her shoes and dropping her jacket on Janet's little loveseat. "I've never seen that! It's so pretty!"

"Really?" I laugh, putting the wine bottles on the table and ducking into the kitchenette. "I file that under things you do on a really boring weekend."

"Maybe you... oh, and you have wonderful books!" The glee in her voice makes me feel proud. "What is the 'Felton Project'?"

"Aren't those cool? Nick is an amazing designer. They are annual reports of his life; the music he listened to, places he went... He's been doing them for a few years. I love them."

"Oh this is AMAZING! How have I never heard of this?!" Claire asks.

"I opened the Albariño," I say, handing her a glass. She's leafing through Nick's report, looking at the graphics.

"This is so funny, I love it... cheers Sarah, to new friends!"

She looks me in the eye as we toast and drink. Smiling with approval at the wine.

"Yum! That is a very good little wine shop," she tells me, looking at her wine. "Paula should order from them, but she has some place downtown she's married to."

Claire stands in the door of the kitchenette (because there's not room for two) while I prepare the massaman, pulling everything out from the fridge, it's a quick prep cutting the vegetables. She babbles happily, keeping me entertained and asking gently probing questions. A new friend, feeling out a new friendship.

I feel her curious eyes on me as I dry fry some of the spices. "It's not traditional, but this will make it taste so much better."

The conversation stalls, temporarily, as I blitz the ingredients for the curry paste.

"That smells divine," Claire remarked, stepping in closer to smell the paste mix, before returning to the doorway, "You make it look so easy."

"I've cooked for myself since I stopped eating meat, but cooking shows, ice-cream and movies were my break-up remedy. I guess this is the best part of that break-up," I offer, as I turn on the stove and put some oil in the pot and start to fry the curry paste a little with the potatoes and kumara before adding in the coconut milk and the rest of the vegetables.

"You have a lot of cook books," she observes, looking along the bookshelf.

"I started collecting them in middle school. I wanted to be a chef when I was little. A couple of those are really old. The Louisa May Alcott Cookbook is all recipes from the book, Little Women - it was my first."

Dinner is almost ready and she is opening the second bottle.

"Saffron," she pronounces approvingly, handing me my glass to try.

"Wow, tart, that's really different," I admit, studying the cloudy amber "orange wine."

"Give it a chance," she urges me. "Once it opens up a bit, it will go really well with the curry."

She's right, it makes for a lovely pairing, and I tell her so. I put the rice and curry into warm serving bowls and bring them out.

"C'est délicieux!" Claire proclaims, helping herself to a little more.