December 30

CHELSEA IN MALIBU...

C HELSEA WAS SO THRILLED WITH HER LATEST PAINTING, SHE DECIDED to give it a name as grand as Heartbreak —she called it Goodbye . She pulled out her phone, angled the camera just right, and snapped a photo. Without thinking much more about it, she pulled up a message to Helena, dropped the name of the work, attached its image, and hit send. In the message window, on her sender’s side, even at the size of the thumbnail preview, Chelsea could see the pop of the colors, the hot pink of the gloves on the seat next to the girl with the flame of red hair. The ruby bits of pepperoni on the square pizza on the mahogany table. The flash of white teeth from two people laughing, and the eyes of the girl’s dining companion, the brown of iced coffee in sunshine, glistening with depth as if the whole world could be seen in there. When she saw the bubble appear, the three dots on the bottom left side of her screen, Chelsea knew that Helena had seen it. And as any artist does, she felt a tiny panic as one’s art goes for its first time to be seen and experienced and to be judged by someone else.

HELENA: You’ve been quite busy!

The message appeared just seconds later. Chelsea was flooded with relief and a sense of accomplishment of sorts. Because Chelsea already knew. She knew that she’d been working differently, that her color palette had changed. Not just that she’d integrated the color that Carlos had given her physically, but those others that she’d gained from experience. She’d been reawakened, with just a taste of family, of structure, of being incorporated somewhere, of having meaning to someone. She remembered what heartbreak was like before the breaking. The joy that the pain was worth, and what had been missing all this while.

Her phone rang. Chelsea answered, realizing that if Helena called, especially while on holiday, that this was more than just an acknowledgment of Chelsea working again.

“Chels-saah.” Helena’s staccato pronunciation carried itself through the earpiece of her phone. The distinctness of her accent, more formal now, let Chelsea know that she was likely with clients, and thus this call was as much business and opportunity as it was personal. Accordingly, Chelsea decided that she’d speak to Helena as if they spoke every day and took the cue to sound as interesting as anyone would expect of an artist, and as excited about her work as she would be during a show opening or at a gallery event.

“I take it you liked the piece,” Chelsea bubbled.

“Much more than liked it, da-ahr-ling! I was just telling my dearest friend, who’s with me here on holiday, that Los Angeles is the newest center for contemporary, which is certainly quite true, and then you sent this incredible item that I presume hasn’t been seen by anyone , correct?”

“No other eyes, Helena, just yours.” Chelsea played along, knowing precisely where the conversation was going and that the call was for an audience.

“And the inspiration? Is this Chicago?”

Again, Chelsea knew this drill. No different from the floor of an art gallery, a common question from collectors. They always wanted to know the inspiration, to hear flowery language, strange vocabulary around something so very basic, something that should be true for any artist, that was true for Chelsea now, she just painted what was in her heart.

“It captures the nostalgia of something past, of the fleeting nature of shared moments, of too little time that we get to spend with the people we love. That this particular moment is captured, just something so basic—that is its importance. It’s meaningful just in itself, because it won’t last. So, like the fondest memory, the most special one, there is particular attention given to the precision of the colors, the specificity of them, and the detailing of the brushstrokes. The carefulness given to the casual as if it were a grand portrait of nobility, that is the importance of this moment, a great meeting of two minds—they could be falling in love, or they could be saving the world. It’s everything and nothing, but it matters... because it matters that it will end.”

Chelsea had spoken to Helena the truth of her and Carlos, what she’d come to realize since returning. And she missed him, but held on to him still, in this way. One that could serve them both.

“And it’s an original?” Helena’s voice drifted back through the phone.

“It’s one of one,” Chelsea said.

It was a painting that Chelsea in fact very much did not want to sell. For her, it was a memory. It was something that she had left of what was no more. It was one of the kindest moments of her life, when someone tried to keep her warm in a world that was colder than she anticipated. Someone who cared enough to make sure she wasn’t alone, even though she was a stranger. Who didn’t care who she was or who she wasn’t, just that she was there, and that was enough. That was the magic she’d painted that no collector would ever see, or would ever know. It was what made the art more valuable to her than to whomever she sold it to, at whatever price. But for now, she needed the money.

Chelsea could hear Helena speaking away from the microphone of the phone. There was another voice with hers, the voice of a man, muffled and unintelligible. And there was Helena’s reduced to only a rhythm of speaking, but a rhythm that Chelsea knew. One that worked miracles, that whipped up a frenzy and made stars and millionaires out of struggling unknowns, that created urgency and amplified desire, that matched the art that was birthed to the place that would become its home. And while this alchemy worked, Chelsea stood, holding the phone, until Helena returned.

“Chels-saah, consider that piece sold. Show it to no one else. We’ll confirm the wire of the funds. I trust the price will be suitable.” A “suitable” price by Helena’s standards was a guarantee of at least five figures, for certain. Chelsea tried to keep her cool.

“Great,” she said, as casually as she could. “I’ll hold it.”

The call ended, and Chelsea immediately felt the sides of her mouth stretching toward her ears. And on her now-smiling cheeks the water from her eyes had a place to land, to slide down, to be wiped by her hand away from her jawline. It wasn’t the painting she didn’t want to let go of, it was the moment, it was the feeling of that moment. But it was money she needed, welcome income, already earmarked for what she wanted most.

RAMONA IN CHICAGO...

R AMONA PERUSED THE COLORFUL DISPLAY OF GLOSSY MAGAZINE covers and block lettering highlighting the celebrities du jour, just a couple that Ramona fully recognized and others she presumed were from somewhere in the world of the internet, made famous by an audience or simply being made famous by having their face plastered on these mini paper billboards.

“And, girl, get a home magazine...” Ramona was on the phone with Latrice, her virtual companion on this outing, as they were collaborating on their intended New Year’s Eve activity of vision boarding, because next year for sure was going to be their year, and they would not be leaving this one unprepared. They were both of the age that, dateless for the evening, it was entirely too cold to go out looking for one, or even out trying to have a good time like it was a different night than any other night in wintery Chicago.

“I’ve already got two,” Ramona replied. “Plus Essence, Oprah, Vogue, Elle, Cosmo, Women’s Fitness... does it seem to you that there are a lot less magazines to pick from?”

“Yeah... because people like me and you are literally only buying magazines to cut them up. They need to do a magazine called Vision and fill it with just photos of shit we can’t afford.”

“Can’t afford yet... and wasn’t that always the point of magazines?”

“Truuuue.” Latrice made a sharp inhale that could be heard through the phone. Ramona braced herself for what was coming. “You picking up a bridal mag?”

“On that note, nah. If I don’t see another dress, another place setting for a long time, I’ll be fine. Next time, I’ll elope. You?”

“You know I still have dreams of walking down the aisle in my white tux...”

“Hugo Boss, custom tailored...”

“Stupid fresh, with the Loubie Louis Junior Spiked Low Lows I still got in the box. Gotta have my flat-bottomed red bottoms!” Latrice was so entirely particular about her fashion. Ramona laughed. Latrice laughed too, until she stopped, and the air went briefly quiet over the line. “You all right though?”

Ramona shifted; the phone at her ear felt heavy suddenly with the weight of the magazines in her arm and the awkwardness of a white poster board folded and pinched to her body with her elbow.

“I’m all right.” Ramona was telling the truth. If you lose something, a dream, a person, a wedding, or a marriage even, you also lose the person you thought you were going to become. But Ramona was creating something else, in all those stacks of new dreams and inspiration, a new idea for herself—of what she could become. She would eventually fill the void of loss with hope, but in the meantime, she’d do it with cut-out images from about five hundred combined magazines. “None of this turned out how I expected,” she said. “But—”

Ramona’s phone beeped with a text message. “Hold on one sec.” She pulled the phone away from her ear to check the sender. Jay’s name, who she’d stored as Malibu Jay , popped up, and she read it, while Latrice held the line.

MALIBU JAY: You left something.

Ramona ran through in her mind what it could be. With one free hand, she typed back.

RAMONA: Too bad you can’t just run it down to me. What’d I leave?”

MALIBU JAY: A gift.

RAMONA: You shouldn’t have.

MALIBU JAY: I didn’t.

RAMONA: Um, okay. You have my address? Chicago, not Malibu.

MALIBU JAY: Yeah, I’m going to drop it off.

RAMONA: Haha, ok. I’ll be on the lookout.

“Helloooo!” Latrice’s voice sounded small and from a faraway place coming through the receiver. Ramona snapped back to attention, realizing she’d been smiling, hard, her fingers hovering over the phone. Not seeing any more dots, and now looking forward to receiving a gift from Jay, Ramona returned to her call with Latrice.

“Girl, I’m so sorry!”

“I know they can’t be texting you from the office.”

“Nah, we’re off. That was Jay, said he’s sending me a gift.”

“Now, that sounds promising.” Latrice’s voice perked up over the phone receiver. But Ramona wasn’t similarly enthused. Jay was on the other side of the world.

“Not promising. Not anything. Just a moment that happened somewhere faaar away.” Ramona sighed. She missed him, the text confirmed that. And the only thing that made it bearable really was that she had no hope whatsoever attached to him in any way. They’d had what they had—he taught her to surf, showed her a good time, a great time really, a wonderful time actually—and now she was back in Chicago, picking up pictures of other people’s lives so that she could get half a clue about what she wanted for her own.

“He must not have hit it right...” Latrice laughed, but Latrice was wrong.

Ramona felt her face flush. “I cannot confirm that statement.”

“Okay, surfboard...” Latrice teased, adopting the cadence of Beyoncé singing about lovemaking and intoxication.

And Ramona did think about the surfboard, the real one, standing on top of it, feet planted so firmly, balanced, assured, riding the waves, the wind, the moment, unafraid and ready to fall and to try again. She knew the feeling of freedom, she’d tasted it, and she was drinking it here now, in her life in Chicago. And for the first time since she’d returned, she felt the sense of real hope, of real possibility that life was as much of an unwritten road as the poster board tucked under her arm, and that, somehow, the best was still very much yet to come.

“Girl, I gotta go. I need to pick up a photo I had printed. And I still have to get collard greens—”

“And black-eyed peas too, right? You know they’re gonna be sold out. Your mom doesn’t make some?” Latrice asked.

“She does, but this year, I need my own luck. You cooking?”

“Girl, naw, but you know to call me if you need a taste tester. I’m going to sit in my bonnet, do this vision board, drink a glass of champagne, and hopefully be in bed asleep before the fireworks are over.” The fireworks, over Lake Michigan, Ramona could see from the window of her condo. They launched from Navy Pier at the stroke of midnight each year. She imagined Latrice in her bonnet, asleep before midnight, and somehow the idea didn’t seem half bad.

Ramona laughed, and then she and Latrice ended their call, so Ramona could jet around to find an area supermarket that still had two of the most popular items for New Year’s, the staples cooked by Black families from Jacksonville to Portland, from Syracuse to Santa Fe, the collard greens for the money and the hoppin’ john for luck. Especially this year, she’d love a double serving of both.

JAY IN MALIBU...

J AY SAT ON HIS SOFA WARMED BY THE CRACKLING OF THE FIRE IN his fireplace, sipping his well-poured IPA, and entirely ignored the roaring sounds of the Pacific just outside, and for that matter the view as well. Instead of looking at the seductions of the moonlit ocean, or the dancing fireplace, or any of the recorded people on television, he looked at his phone, at his last messages from Ramona. He scrolled down yet another time, as if reading them again—as opposed to the last fifteen other times—would provide some new information or clue hidden within the correspondence. This is how you go crazy , he thought to himself. How easy it would be to just ask her what she meant when she said she’d be looking out for him. Did she really want to see him again? he wondered. Except, to clarify would mean losing the excitement of possibility—the rich feeling of hope that he was using to fill the gap of uncertainty—and confronting a looming fear—the fear of rejection.

Jay’s life was an uncomplicated one by design. He had no concerns for money. In New York, he’d already learned the mechanisms of multiplying one’s wealth. He had accumulated enough of a nest egg after savings and bonuses and some very well-timed cryptocurrency investments, such that he could have what he wanted, materially at least. In the life that he built in Southern California, and in Malibu in particular, he’d managed to become quite good at hiding the fact that by forty, he’d already acquired far beyond all of his needs. He let very few people visit his home and had a second car, one built ten years prior that he used to get around the city. Had Ramona checked the odometer in his ultraluxe SUV, she would have seen miles that were exceedingly low, less than twenty thousand of them—the rides that Jay had taken literally just for joy, just to remind himself that he had enough, and that there was no one else he needed to make happy other than himself—not even his family, especially not his parents.

This fact about the two cars, Jay didn’t share with Ramona, even as much as he’d let her know him. She was also unaware that of the few people who’d been to his house, none had been after just one day of knowing him. Because as calm and collected as he seemed, what he’d alluded to was true—Jay was petrified of being pushed into wanting or needing more than what he had. He’d witnessed his former classmates and colleagues, burnt out in one way or another, dependent on alcohol breaks between meetings downstairs at the local bar near Wall Street, or a line or two on a desk or in the bathroom, which was used far more often for that sort of thing than it was for biological relief. The ones who were married often exercised some sort of fetish hidden behind curtains of alibis of working late and other bullshit that hid expensive distractions of escalating risk. In his life in New York City, there’d been no such thing as enough, or anywhere close to it. You couldn’t have enough when the scoreboard was lit with dollar signs and net worth was calculated in numbers of commas. Jay was tired of using his bank account to measure his self-esteem. For now, it only bought him freedom and choice.

Malibu became like a foreign country where the exchange rate allowed him to buy far more than he ever anticipated, including an actual life, along with his compact cottage at the sea, plus rental unit, of course. And here he could have enough, could be enough, even if that meant being alone. Because so many of the women he met were looking for the least of what he could offer—his ability to work hard. But usually, as he opened more of his life to someone, they’d start to push ideals on him of what he could be to them, provide for them, commit to them, and Jay wasn’t about to drift into deeper waters. But he hadn’t expected Ramona.

How would she know that in his messages that day, he was testing out an idea, one that he was far too fearful of proposing in real life. That idea of taking action—when you have that unmistakable yearning of missing someone, actually wishing they were here or you were there—for sure, it likely happens to everyone. But then, most people would toy with the thought, enjoy the idea of it a bit, a fantasy as some quick off-ramp of relief from the longing. Perhaps he could try, by diving into a memory of time spent, the sparkle of Ramona’s laughter, or the moment he fell for her. The moment she fell in the water and stood up, soaking wet and a bit stunned, scared too, but with so much determination to get back on that board, to learn something new. Or the version of her that fell asleep in his class. He knew that kind of exhaustion. He’d felt it, in countless nights in the office, shouldering too much responsibility with his family, trying too hard to meet an objective with a moving goalpost. He recognized Ramona because he’d been Ramona. And he appreciated Ramona because Ramona appreciated him. So, in the uniqueness of it all and how deeply he’d been moved, he couldn’t think of her enough to fill the hole that her absence created.

So, as the memory of her wasn’t quite sufficient, here he sat, with an orange box on his left side, near where Ramona had once sat, and his phone in his hand. His eyes were rereading her words “Too bad you can’t just run it down to me...” But the fact was, with time that was his and a bank account that was fully sufficient, he actually could . It wasn’t as easy as walking down the sand or driving. It would take more than a few drops of gas, some hours, or just some intentionality. But it was a decision he could make. And this is how you go crazy... for a girl , he thought, pulling up a website for flights, just to see, of course. It was New Year’s, and he had no plans. Some people with no plans do nothing, and some people fly to New York, or Paris, or Jakarta, or Bali, just to be in the exact place they wanted to be when the sun comes up over a new year. Earlier, to Ramona, he had typed, I’ll bring it to you . Was it a joke? Had he been joking? He’d been speaking wistfully for both of them, but what if? Why not? And how interesting that there was a flight in the afternoon. So, his fingers started entering his information, because they were connected to his heart and its desires, the tapping and the beating, the beating of his heart on his computer screen. Jay continued until all the blank spaces were filled. So what if I don’t go? he thought. It felt good to try, to go through the motions.

So, Jay bought a plane ticket. And then, playing it all out in his head, because he’d surely gone mad by this point, he just started making a series of decisions because each one felt good to make. These were small risks, placing small bets that just happened to keep getting bigger. Each step made the next one seem possible and the next one seem to make sense—the next logical step. Was there even a hotel room available? he wondered. What was the date? It’d be New Year’s Eve. People made significance of that date , Jay thought. Couples booked rooms together, created fantasies of just one night or two; friends booked suites only to wake up somewhere they’d forgotten how they reached. Perhaps there’d be nothing available in a city filled with visitors, and dreamers, everyone looking to make something feel different about life, to mark a new beginning.

Seeing one room available, and really not needing to worry about the price— it’s just a day or two , he told himself, feeling great now about making these decisions—Jay booked a hotel room. And then what? The box, he’d just drop it off, he’d just drop this orange box off, because it was expensive and he’d have had to ship it with insurance anyway. Why not just take it and leave it? He’d delivered a pizza once, to a girl he liked in high school. But now he was imagining Ramona, and what he’d do if she answered the door, but would she answer? Well, yes, he’d get there, and he’d go to his hotel, and of course, she might be out or have plans for the evening, or maybe she’d even be there with that guy she’d supposedly ended things with. She had ended things, right? What if she hadn’t? But Jay was wild now, wild with his imagination, in his thoughts, chasing the good feeling of making small decisions, of doing what he wanted to do. It did not matter what if . What if he got into a fight? What if the guy punched him? What if Ramona was home? What if she smiled? What if he saw her face and they kissed? What if they made love... again?

And with a ticket, a hotel room, and an orange box, Jay finally put down his phone. For once entirely satisfied. He could also do nothing, he realized. He could not go. He could forget the ticket. He could send the box. These were all choices he’d have to make... tomorrow.