She came home to find Lori packing. Her suitcase lay open and clothes lay in neat piles on the bed. Debbie had taken the express train instead of the local and it had brought her all the way down to Chinatown and she'd had to buy another token and take the uptown train which just happened to be slow this Friday night. Wasn't Lori supposed to leave tomorrow? What was Leslie doing here?
"Are you going home tonight? I thought it was tomorrow," Debbie interrogated sharply.
"Yes," Lori replied, emotionlessly as usual. She lifted a yellow tee top off the bed and laid it neatly in her suitcase. Leslie sat on the slate gray flannel bedsheets in the studio apartment.
"I thought you were leaving tomorrow! That's what you said this morning. Now I have nobody to go out with!"
"Debbie! You've got me! I'll be here tonight," Lola turned and exclaimed in surprise.
Lori packed methodically with not a word of explanation or apology while Debbie grumbled in fury, opening and closing her small blue suitcase where she stored her jewelry, refusing to look at her stoic roommate for fear she might ram her little suitcase over her little roommate's head.
Lori left.
Debbie watched as Lola sponged the counter, wisked the dishes away and reached into the cupboard for a glass, and she said nothing. She refused to reveal her opinion of Lola's bosom pal to her or anyone else.
She walked across the small studio apartment and climbed out the window onto the fire escape stairs. There she sat, studying the cyclists and skaters, peering at them from her perch in the East Village. Six stories down, Avenue A shot past their apartment, where noise, incredibly amplified and shrill, rose up from the streets, into the studio, all night long, all day, every day.
Some old man had his electric guitar plugged into something inside his green sedan and was cranking out a tune, just below her. The chords reverberated richly throughout the East Village.
"Smoke. Smoke sense," the smokers chanted on the street corner where A met Ninth. She could actually not hear them as they murmurred the subliminally seductive phrase beneath their breath, but she never-the-less knew what they were implying.
The familiar phrase, chanted every time she crossed the street, picked up her laundry, and bought milk at the 24-hour grocery store below her apartment, planted itself in her mind that first summer in New York.
She gazed across the street. There, in plain sight, was a fish market. She had never even noticed it before. She had been dying for fish and chips all summer.
She climbed back in.
Lola needed to use the phone. Debbie closed the window.
"Did you eat yet?" Lola asked. "Maybe we'll go out to dinner."
"No, I didn't eat yet. I don't know what I want."
"You can open the window now. David and I are supposed to do something, but not till late."
"Maybe I'll go home. I don't know what I should do."
"David's not coming over till late. I'll be here," Lola offered.
"Hey, I have some laundry. Can I put it with yours? I'll pay you," Lola promised.
"That's all right."
"No, I will. Where is that place you take it. How much is it usually?"
"Oh, that lady downstairs does it for three dollars in time for the next morning."
"Well, I need it tonight. I don't have any underwear left." And Lola handed her three dollars and they walked out with it.
"How does this look?" Lola sported an aqua half-top paired with satiny black tights.
"That's what I like about New York," she said. "I work hard to keep my body in shape so why can't I show it off? Besides, in Lexington, I hated it when they would say, 'Oh, she thinks she's a hot shit.'"
"Yeah, if you work that hard to keep in shape, then you should show it off," Debbie said agreeably.
"I don't know." Lola shrugged. And she took it off and changed into something else.
"Lori doesn't know it but she's going to let me borrow something tonight," Lola said vehemently.
"Yeah, she'll never know," Debbie assured her. She wasn't going to be a tattletale at any rate.
Lola switched into Lori's popsicle pink belted top over her own brand new faded Italian designer jeans.
"Should I wear this?" Debbie waved a huge black bow.
"Bows are for day. Your hair looks fine."
"Really? I don't think they are. They're more for night."
"Actually, bows are out," Lola said.
"Well, I like them," Debbie insisted.
Inside the Grassroots Cafe, on St. Mark's Place, the jukebox punched out a rock 'n' roll tune, reminiscent of college days in the rural reaches of Connecticut.
Debbie requested two lights and Lola dug into her purse.
"No, I've got it," Debbie slapped a few dollars on the dark wood surface of the bar. The damp cool smell of the bar precipitated the taste of cold acidic beer they would soon know.
"It's been a long summer...," Debbie started to say.
"I hate her...I.. HATE..her," Lola sputtered.
Debbie nodded drastically. "Know what she said to me? She said, 'It's obvious that you and Lola aren't hitting it off.' That's not what she told you, is it?" Debbie watched Lola's mouth open.
"No."
"I knew it," Debbie said.
"Know what she said? She told me you didn't want to live with me. I thought you hated me!"
Debbie shook her head. "Nope. I'm not surprised. Knew it."
"She said: Lola, Debbie does NOT want to live with you."
"Ah," Debbie said.
"And then, I was even meaner to you. The whole time I was in Europe in July, I thought about you. I don't know why I was so mean to you. I guess I was really scared because I was going to Europe alone. John was supposed to go with me. And then, I was even more mean after Lori told me you hated me!"
"Just forget about it," Debbie gestured with her hand, as if to brush away any residue of animosity that remained between them.
"No, really. Hit me!" Lola cried out refreshingly, holding out her arm.
Debbie made a half-hearted gesture, then stopped.
"Just forget about it."
"Let's make up!" Lola held up her outstretched arms.
The girls embraced like old buddies and all was absolved, forgiven, in the drunken camaraderie of the Grassroots Cafe.
