The Last New Year Read Online Free Page B

change, dump it in the tip cup
and start to the waiting area.
    I see the giggler, or at least I assume she is the giggler
as she is in the right position and seems to be quietly amused by her
surroundings—the same surroundings that have been annoying me to all hell for
the past minutes.
    She looks to be about 5'6", shoulder length brown hair,
pretty in a kind of unorthodox way: long nose, full lips, good -natured
chin. She's wearing a ringer t-shirt with a band name on it, dark skirt, and
boots that seem neither stylish nor particularly functional. A
ring with a bright green stone on her right hand. Her purse is
distractingly large and flops gently at her side as she sways slowly to either
the piped-in jazz or her own internal soundtrack. I kind of think it's the
latter.
    She reminds me of someone, but I can't really place it. It
should be obvious. She should remind me of a thousand other girls in this city,
young women who pay very close attention to how little attention they seem to
pay to the way they look and act and interact with the world. Just too quirky for words, as my roommate would probably say. These girls wear glasses with no prescription and pay lots of money for a purse
that looks like they found it in a dumpster.
    Not that I'm one to talk, really. In my own way I do the
same thing. Most of us do, to some extent or another. Right? I mean, it's all about projecting to the world what we want it to see, what we
want people to think we are. Nobody puts on a pair of pants and thinks, "I
hope these project to the world that I pick my nose when I'm on the
toilet." I mean, I imagine the vast majority of people don't. I can't
speak for everybody.
    Anyway, so about this girl: I should be able to lump her
right into this same group, but somehow I can't. Somehow the artfully
unfashionable boots look too comfortable, too right, to be affected. She just
looks like she is exactly the person someone else might just pretend to be. I
don't know how or why I feel this way, but I do. All this goes through my head
in an instant.
    Suddenly she's looking right at me, so I smile in what I
hope is a charmingly self-deprecating way. She looks away, still smiling off
into the middle distance. Oh well.
    She leaves my mind almost immediately as I press myself into a corner near the counter, open my book and wait
for my drink.

 
     
     
     
    In the living room, my roommate is on the couch watching
TV. Zee is one of those people who seems to take up a
lot more space than the physical size of his body would indicate necessary.
It's as if his presence extends a good 18 inches from himself in all
directions, like he's wearing one of those sumo wrestler novelty costumes, only
invisible. In actuality he's about 5'10" and stoutly built, but not
particularly imposing at all. His nationality gives him a sort of nut-brown
complexion that women seem to either like or be afraid of. Not that it matters
to him at all.
    Here's the thing about Zee: he always seems genuinely glad
to see you. You'll walk into a room and suddenly feel like the greatest person
in the known universe because it's easy to believe in his sincerity, and he's
absolutely free with his affection. He wasn't always this way—when I met him he
was kind of stiff—but he really found himself at one particular point. I take
at least some of the credit for that.
    He's my best friend, of course, and since meeting in college
we've continually occupied the same general space, so by this point we're pretty
used to one another and our particular quirks of personality and behavior. I
give him his space, and he gives me a pile of small bills and change to convert
to his half of the electricity and rent and cable every month. It's a good
system. Or at least it's worked thus far.
    But this morning I'm finding him somewhat inscrutable. He is
frowning and doesn't look up when I enter, nor does he wish me a good morning
in a loud, jocular voice, which is usual when he knows I have a hangover. (Ah,