Loose Change

Walls in New York apartments were, she was convinced, constructed to be deliberately thin so that life, no matter how awful, became a communal experience. For the past two hours, the wall next to Mel’s desk had been vibrating with insistent thuds, as if someone were hanging a picture on the other side but kept dropping the nail, only to pick it up and start over. It was her roommate Suzie, although it wasn’t a picture she was nailing but her new boyfriend Kyle. Of course, Suzie would never call it that. She didn’t even call it sex. She called it making love. Suzie had met Kyle the way everyone did, on the apps. It was love at first sight; that’s what she’d said. Mel had wanted to ask: which sight? The sight of his admittedly gorgeous but obviously enhanced profile picture or the duller, real-life version of him? But she’d kept that thought to herself.

The problem was, everyone was making something these days. Mel’s roommate was making love. Her best friend Diane was making babies. Well, not quite, but she was getting there. Last weekend, when they had met in their go-to pub outside the college they’d both attended and that Mel now taught at, Diane had broken the news to her: she and Steve were getting married. He’d proposed on the evening of their two-year anniversary. It was also the two-year anniversary of the night Steve had approached Mel in the campus dive bar to ask if he could get her a drink, and Mel had said no, thank you, she wasn’t thirsty, but her friend Diane over there would surely appreciate it.