Welcome to Envy Park (16 page)

"I’m sorry that I assumed you had.
I shouldn’t have told her anything. I was...I shouldn’t have told
anyone."

"No harm done."

"I really wanted to kiss
you."

"Oh you’ve established
that."

"I mean, when I met you I knew
that I shouldn’t be dating anyone, that I shouldn’t start
something. But then I just started thinking,
I want to kiss her
. And other
thoughts. And the thoughts wouldn’t stop. So yes, I’m capable of
feeling."

"Nice to know."

"I need you to know that. Even if
we end up saying goodbye to each other when my lease is
up."

Chapter 21

Knowing it, led to me thinking about it.

So much that I couldn’t sleep, and soon the clock on
Ethan’s bedside was saying it was five a.m. and I told myself to be
productive while sleepless and go for a run. I would be able to
think about him with a clearer mind if I weren’t actually beside
him anyway.

I slipped out from under his arm and whispered that
I was going out for a run. He sort of mumbled in response, probably
the same way I did when he tried that on me. I went up quickly to
my place and changed, pausing only to slip enough money for public
transport in the pocket of my shorts. I thought of Matilda at the
moment, when she was at the clinic carrying nothing else, and I
pretty much did the same.

On my way to the elevator, I came across another
familiar face.

"Airport again?" I asked
Lucille.

"Yes, always," she
said.

"Can I hitch a ride?" I said. "I
want to be dropped off somewhere on the way."

"Sure," she replied.

-/\/\/\-

Contrary to the building gossip
and speculation, Lucille wasn’t a flight attendant or jetsetting
model. She was actually a trainer, specializing in corporate
planning, and she delivered that program to "emerging markets in
Asia and the Pacific." It meant travel every month, at least, to
Vietnam and Cambodia primarily. Sometimes a little further
out.

I didn’t have that much time in the cab with her
(early mornings, no traffic) but I did manage to tell her all about
my upcoming move, and asked for her advice.

"Oh I don’t know," she said. "I
think the people to ask about whether moving is a right decision or
not, are the people who moved. People who stay here are here for a
reason."

Lucille’s reason, apparently, was her dad, who had
been ill for a few years now. She could have been assigned a
regional post but kept saying no, opting for short trips
instead.

"But no one ever thinks that
moving is a wrong decision," I told her.

She laughed. "That’s true. It’s
really about why we do things, I guess. I
am
thinking of cutting back on my
travel, though. Do you know anyone who might want to do what I’m
doing?"

"Let’s have lunch when you get
back," I said.

The sun was totally up by the time she dropped me
off. And I felt productive already.

-/\/\/\-

My plan was actually only a small part of a larger
one. Something nobody had yet called me out on.

Accomplish in my twenties: live and work in at least
two foreign cities. Buy property. Visit two more continents.
Contribute to parental retirement fund.

And then, in my early thirties: Meet passionate,
intelligent stranger with similar wanderlust. Be citizens of the
world together.

How did I know that my time in Singapore was up?
Because it was only my first foreign city. And I had to get hopping
onto the next one if I wanted everything to work out on sked.

So despite being very annoyed when people assumed
that I moved to meet guys, I had to admit that that was part of
it.

I didn’t want just any guy. I wanted to meet a
certain kind of guy.

And I wanted to be a certain kind
of person
by the time I met this
guy
. If I met him. If I didn’t then at
least I got to be a fabulous well-traveled responsible daughter
with her own condo. Win-win.

I must mention though that this plan was devised
during a particularly bad week in my early twenties. It was the
same week that I discovered that my first job was going to lead me
nowhere, turn me into nothing, and introduce me to nobody
special.

And maybe it had been during a time when my mother,
also knowing that my job would lead me nowhere, tried to get me
into one of her friend’s companies.

Maybe I bought my ticket the same week that my
interview was supposed to happen, so I wouldn’t have to go.

Maybe I chose to go to another country because that
seemed like a better reason than just not wanting to work for my
mom’s friend, and no one else questioned it.

I asked to be dropped off in Bonifacio, opting to go
for a run in the actual outdoors. The place seemed built for it,
and so many people had the same idea and were there earlier. I
started jogging as soon as I hit a sidewalk, and just let my
thoughts wander.

What I needed was an answer to my
own question, proof that I was following my own advice. What was
the plan, exactly? And should this
thing
be allowed to exist? Should I
make room for it?

Ethan wouldn’t put as much
pressure on himself to figure this out, I would assume. He was
someone who felt that life happened to him. I on the other hand
made things happen. Already I was figuring out ways to
make it happen
(Jobs in
San Francisco? Jobs in California? Maybe start with a six-month
sabbatical and try it out?) and I knew it could happen if thought
about it hard enough. I was just like that.

But to go through all the trouble. To rearrange my
own world so much. It didn’t seem like the right thing to do, and
for someone who wouldn’t do the same.

So I had to decide what was best for me.

MOIRA

I. CAREER AND FINANCES

+ Has job offers

- Job offers that require starting over

+ May get money soon

- May get money because of NV Park place being sold,
so will have no property

II. FAMILY AND FRIENDSHIPS

- Doesn’t see family often and should

- Complicated relationship with mother

+ Friends are awesome, should see them more

III. LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS

? Has something interesting, if only it would
last

IV. PERSONAL FULFILLMENT

- Can’t afford to travel right now, as a bum

- Needs a more fulfilling hobby than analyzing other
peoples’ lives

+ Maybe will have fun decorating new apartment, when
NV Park is sold

Even though I figured out the matrix in my head as I
jogged, I could still see the lack of plus signs. And the actual
plus signs there weren’t as satisfying as they should be. Which was
an awful record for someone who had a plan precisely to satisfy
herself in the four areas that mattered to her.

I took a turn into upscale shopping area High Street
and slowed to a walk on the cobblestone-type road. Immediately I
regretted not bringing water, my phone, or a bag, but the
no-baggage thing wasn’t so bad. I just really, really needed a
drink.

When I finally got one, a freebie
courtesy of the water pitcher in a nearby coffee shop, the answer
sort of clicked in my head. The reason why someone like Roxie would
think my "blank" life was a good thing was because of the choices I
had. I did have a lot of them. And I was just about to make some.
Oh the wonders of hydration.

-/\/\/\-

The other thing I tried to do, also for the sake of
being difficult and learning something, was take unnecessary public
transport back to NV Park.

Our enclave was perfectly accessible by cab, but
that was the easy way to do it. To really experience life back
home, which I felt I hadn’t done yet recently, it should be through
taking the three public transport rides that would bring me within
walking distance of NV Park for a fraction of the cost.

By the time I had gotten to this
part of my morning, the sun was high up in the sky and the day was
nasty hot. I ended up standing in the middle of the aisle in a full
bus, and then squeezed into one full jeep, and another, and then
made the mistake of getting off a little earlier than I should
have. I kind of wished I hadn’t run as much as I just did, and on
so little sleep too.

NV Park looked a little different, when I finally
turned the corner and headed toward Tower 3. There was a fire truck
in front of the building, and a mass of people outside, and
neighborhood security directing traffic.

Another fire drill? I wondered. How many of those
happened again in a year?

Based on the drill I knew where to
go, so I headed for the "safe zone" and just randomly started
tapping people’s shoulders.

"What’s up?" I asked.

It took about three seconds of
this for someone to notice, and then recognize me, and then someone
yelled "She’s here! Moira’s here!"

"Yes I’m here," I said, to no one
in particular.

There was a small commotion. The crowd in the safe
zone stepped back, like the sea parting, to let someone through.
And then I got swept off my feet, literally, carried off the ground
by now familiar arms.

"What the hell—" I started to
say.

Ethan silenced the rest of it with a rushed,
inelegant, but huge kiss, right on my mouth, right in front of
everyone.

The people started to clap and cheer.

And I was thinking,
This is a really strange fire drill.

Chapter 22

It wasn’t a drill, I found out later. There was an
actual fire.

There was actually more to it than
that. There was an
incident
. Curtains had caught fire
in a large unit on the 15th floor. It hadn’t spread to the other
floors or units, and hadn’t destroyed most of the unit itself, but
it got as bad as it did because there was no one around at the time
it had happened. Or, precisely, the two people who had fought and
hurled lit candles at each other inside had both bailed on the
apartment separately without checking to see the condition of the
candles they had thrown.

The building went on evacuation mode a little after
seven a.m. Ethan woke up with no idea where I had gone, and assumed
I had gone back to my room to do whatever. He went up to a locked
door. He tried calling me, and could hear my phone ringing from
inside, but I wasn’t picking up. He was pretty sure I was in there,
though, since it was way early and he thought I had just fallen
asleep again.

In any case, building security found him banging on
my door and they had to haul him out to get him to follow proper
evacuation procedures.

"That’s intense," was my
understated reaction to the whole thing.

"You gave me a fucking heart
attack," was Ethan’s more, well, intense response. "You couldn’t
have left a message? Or brought your phone? What exactly did you
do?"

"I...ran." In which I had like an
existential breakthrough, although it seemed inappropriate to
mention just then.

"Was it important?"

I smiled sheepishly. "Yeah it
seemed important at the time."

We were having this conversation
in the Zen garden over in Tower 1, surrounded by trees. We hadn’t
gotten the clearance yet to return to our building, so the
residents of Tower 3 were wandering refugees in "safe zones" within
NV Park. So we were in the garden, on a wooden bench painted to
look like stone, him in the shorts he wore to bed and some shirt he
threw on, me sweaty and sticky in my running outfit.

"Is Matilda okay?" I asked.
Because it had to have been Matilda, and the likely source of her
income, the possible reason for her recent visit to the clinic.
Later I would find out that she was fine, but had to move because
she had broken up with this guy. She got in touch sometimes, but
was typically mum about the rest of her life.

"They said no one was inside when
the alarms went off."

"I hope she’s okay."

"Fuck. I’m just glad you are." He
kissed me again, and I had lost count of how many times he had
randomly done that already since I got back. This one was soft on
the approach, and I was pleased to note that it was still
enjoyable, despite it being outside, in the daylight, in some Zen
garden, even though I was hungry, and thirsty, and sweaty, and
sticky. "What was so important that you had to go out so
early?"

"I was thinking about what I was
going to do next."

"And?" There was an impatience to
this single word, like he was daring me to come up with something
to trump his morning of drama.

"Ethan, I’m
fine.
Don’t be Angry
Guy."

"I know you are but for a few
minutes there—"

"The building didn’t burn
down."

"But I had no idea where you
were."

Oh, I got it. In those few minutes he had allowed
himself to imagine the worst. Unfounded and freakier than any real
danger, but I wasn’t going to be able to shake that off him.

"Did you break down my door or
something?"