Page 195 - In Five Years

were still not legal.
She has on an orange pantsuit, crepe silk, with a neck scarf, and I feel my
stomach boil in anger that she had the energy to get dressed like this. That she
has on accessories. That she still is able to believe it matters.

“Jill.”
She startles when she sees me. The martini wobbles.

“How— Is everything alright?”
I think about the question. I want to laugh. What possible answer is there?
Her daughter is dying.
“Why aren’t you there?” I say.

She hasn’t been downtown for forty-eight hours. She calls Aaron, but she
hasn’t actually made her physical presence known.

Jill opens her eyes wide. Her forehead doesn’t move. An effect of injections,
of the side of medicine she is fortunate enough to elect to use while her cells are
not multiplying into monsters.

I sit down next to her. I’m wearing yoga pants and an old UPenn sweatshirt,
something of David’s I kept, despite.
“Do you want a drink?” she asks me. A bartender hovers at the ready.

“A gin martini,” I find myself saying. I hadn’t expected to stay. Just to say
what I came to say and turn around.
My drink comes quickly. She looks at me. Does she expect me to toast her? I

take a sip hastily and set it back down.
“Why are you here?” I ask her. The same question, a different angle. Why are
you here, in this city? Why are you here, at this hotel where your daughter is

not?
“I want to be close,” she says. She states it matter-of-factly. No emotion.
“She’s—” I start, but I can’t. “She needs you there.”

Jill shakes her head. “I’m just in the way,” she says.
She’s been ordering delivery to the apartment, sending in maid service. On
Monday, she came with flowers and wanted to know where the cutting sheers

were.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Frederick. Where is he?”
“France,” she says, simply.