Luckiest Girl Alive

I told Luke about that night at a time when he was enamored with me, which is the only time you should ever tell anyone something shameful about yourself—when a person is mad enough about you that disgrace is endearing

“If you feel thirsty when you’re not actually thirsty, it could indicate that an important need isn’t being met.”

She finished examining me, told me to hang tight. There had been a question burning in my throat for the last ten minutes, but it was her reaching for the handle of the door that forced me to say it.

“Is it rape if you can’t remember what happened?”

The doctor opened her mouth, as though she was about to gasp “Oh no.” Instead she said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear it, “I’m not qualified to answer that question.” She slipped out of the room soundlessly.

Dukan didn’t permit wine, but I had to drink to socialize with women like this. That first glass, the endorphins ballooning in my stomach, it was the only way I could realistically feign an interest in her world. Her kid’s piano lessons, her Van Cleef push present. I couldn’t believe Mr. Larson had succumbed to a woman whose greatest aspiration in life was to do the supermarket glide. When the waiter came by with the bottle, I accepted his pour gratefully.

“But even if it doesn’t,” I said, “how can you vote for someone with a stance like that?”

“Because I don’t care, Ani.” Luke sighed. My silly feminist wrath had been cute once. “It doesn’t affect you, it doesn’t affect me. What does affect you and me though? Obama taxing the shit out of us because we’re in the highest bracket.”

“That other stuff does affect me, though.”

“You’re on birth control!” Luke bellowed. “What do you need an abortion for?”

“Luke, if it weren’t for Planned Parenthood I could have a thirteen-year-old right now.”

“I’m not doing this,” he declared, and lunged at the light switch on the wall. He stalked to the bedroom, slamming the door behind him, leaving me crying alone in the dark kitchen.

LoLo roared once, when not a single editor came to the September lineup meeting with a blow job idea. “This is what sells.” Maybe everything in New York wouldn’t feel so playhouse size, like such a struggle to just get anywhere, if the husband hunters stayed away. But that’s the thing about New York that I think I love the most—it makes you fight for your place.

“Nice to see you,” I replied, which I’d traded in for “Nice to meet you” ever since Mr. Harrison first introduced himself to me like so. I was horrified, wondering how many people I’d tipped off to my pedantic rearing with all my lewd “Nice to meet you’s” over the years. The beauty of good breeding—for those lucky enough to enter this world with the golden rib—is that it’s almost impossible to authentically replicate, and poseurs will always out themselves, usually in some spectacularly embarrassing way. Every time I think I’ve climbed out of the bourgey pit, I realize something I’ve been doing wrong and my people pull me back in. You’re not fooling anyone. Take oysters, for example. I thought it was enough to pretend to love those salted loogies, but did you also know you’re supposed to place the shell exterior-side down once you’ve slurped them back? Something that small is that telling, the danger always in the details.

“Isn’t it funny how New York has some of the cleanest drinking water in the world,” Whitney said, expert hostess, skilled in maneuvering an awkward turn in the conversation. “A filthy city like this?”

We all agreed. Yes, it was funny.

“Holy shit!” Dean clapped his hands. The stern October air caught a few words before releasing them into the night—“Never seen a girl take it down like that”—their effect as good as an A in English class, as the pride I felt years later when I landed a desk in that glossy honeycomb tower.

We have so much in common that it took me a while to understand why we didn’t get along. Infighting. We both defeated the odds to get to where we are now, and we’re terrified there isn’t room enough for the both of us.