The Girl in Times Square Read Free Page A

was a tiny bit short on.
    Lily liked to sleep late and paint. But she liked to sleep late most of all. She drew unfinished faces and tugboats on paper and doodles on contracts, and lilies all over her walls, and murals of boats and patches of water. She hoped she was never leaving the apartment because she could never duplicate the work. She had been very serious about Joshua until she found out he wasn’t serious about her. She read intensely but sporadically, she liked her Natalie Merchant and Sarah McLachlan loud and in the heart, and she loved sweets: Mounds bars, chocolate-covered jell rings, double-chocolate Oreos, chewy Chips-Ahoy, Entenmann’s chocolate cake with chocolate icing, and pound cake.
    One of her sisters, Amanda, was a model mother of four model girls, and a model suburban wife of a model suburban husband. The other sister, Anne, was a model career woman, a financial journalist for KnightRidder , frequently and imperfectly attached, yet always impeccably dressed. Her brother, Andrew, Cornell having paid off, was a U.S. Congressman.
    The most interesting things in Lily’s life happened to other people, and that’s just how Lily liked it. She loved sitting around into the early morning hours with Amy, Paul, Rachel, Dennis, hearing their stories of violent, experimental love lives, hitchhiking, South Miami Beach Bacchanalian feasts. She liked other people to be young and reckless. For herself, she liked her lows not to be too low and her highs not to be too high. She soakedup Amy’s dreams, and Joshua’s dreams, and Andrew’s dreams, she went to the movies three days a week—oh the vicarious thrill of them! She meandered joyously through the streets of New York, read the paper in St. Mark’s Square, and lived on in today, sleeping, painting, dancing, dreaming on a future she could not fathom. Lily loved her desultory life, until yesterday and today.
    Today, this. Six numbers.
    And yesterday Joshua.
    Ten good things about breaking up with Joshua:
    10. TV is permanently off.
    9. Don’t have to share my bagel and coffee with him.
    8. Don’t have to pretend to like hockey, sushi, golf, quiche, or actors.
    7. Don’t have to listen to him complaining about the short shrift he got in life.
    6. Don’t have to listen about his neglectful father, his non-existent mother.
    5. Don’t have to get my belly button pierced because he liked it.
    4. Don’t have to stay up till four pretending we have similar interests.
    3. No more wet towels on my bed.
    2. Don’t have to blame him for the empty toilet roll.
    And the number one good thing about breaking up with Joshua:
    1. Don’t have to feel bad about my small breasts.
    Ten bad things about breaking up with Joshua:
    10. There
    9. Are
    8. Things
    7. About
    6. You
    5. I
    4. Could
    3. Never
    2. Love.
    Oh, and the number one bad thing about breaking up with Joshua…
    1. Without him, I can’t pay my rent.
    1, 18, 24, 39, 45, 49.
    Her hair had been down her back, but last week after he left Lily had sheared it to her neck, as girls frequently did when they broke up with their boyfriends. Snip, snip. It pleased Lily to be so self-actualized. To her it meant she wasn’t wallowing in despair.
    Barely even needing to brush the choppy hair now, Lily threw on her jacket and left the apartment. She headed down to the grocery store where she had bought the ticket. After going down four of the five flights, she trudged back upstairs—to put her shoes on. When she finally got to the store on 10th and Avenue B, she opened her mouth, fumbled in her pocket, and realized she’d left the ticket by the shoe closet.
    Groaning in frustration, tensing the muscles in her face, Lily grimaced at the store clerk, a humorless Middle Eastern man with a humorless black beard, and went home. She didn’t even look for the ticket. She saw the mishaps as a sign, knew the numbers couldn’t have matched, couldn’t have. Not her lottery ticket! She lay on Amy’s bed and waited for the phone