Happy Hour

by Marlowe Granados

People think coming to New York is an answer, and that’s where they go wrong.

She is a friend of a friend of a friend. Isn’t everybody?

You should always keep old friends happy because they know more about you than you’d like.

I didn’t care because usually if I have a drink in my hand, I’m at peace.

We would’ve gone home, but putting a cap on an evening of adventure can be tough. It takes practice to have restraint, and we are not yet at an age to try it out.

I was under the impression that I loved him, simply because I never knew what he was thinking. This mystery formed an almost palpable ache. I would lie around my room waiting for a sign that he in some way cherished me. In my defense, I had trouble distinguishing between brooding and insipid.

Seeing someone you used to love is like visiting a house you once lived in. Everything about them is familiar yet strange. The greater the distance between you, the more unbelievable they seem. Maybe I have always been involved in some kind of fieldwork.

There is comfort in getting ready to go out. I relish it. Gala will put on music that gives us a sense of excitement—not excitement directed at anything in particular, but about the unknown. What may or may not happen. One must always leave ample time to get ready, so there is a slow, incremental rise in joy. These are our rituals.

“If he doesn’t know your drink order, he doesn’t know you!”

“How can I seem mysterious? I haven’t stopped talking.”

It was my favourite time of evening, when the sun starts to set and the lights come on in the streets and it’s all blue and yellow. It’s the time when people come home and turn on a lamp, and no one thinks to draw their curtains just yet. Civil dusk, it’s called. It’s the only hour in any city where everything suddenly turns familiar.

Being a young girl is always a cute trick. It leaves nothing to be desired and it is easy. I feel as though becoming a woman is like a long tradition of going through things and coming out strong, but I am tired and weary!

It’s inconspicuous; I look as though I am being aloof and texting, but I am noticing and observing all the time.

“Honey, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re either funny, or you’re not.”

Travelling alone makes you vulnerable to being moved by things.

If I were to describe typical New York conversation, it would be two people waiting for their turn to talk.

With cocktails, you lose subtlety the deeper in you go. That’s a consequence that must be negotiated with your personality. You can’t go reeling around New York.

He said with certainty, “I bet you were a sixteen-year-old runaway with all kinds of ideas about the world.” I laughed and told him how generous he was to think sixteen-year-olds have ideas.

“If I took myself as seriously as you take me, I may consider being hurt.”

I am highly educated in true sorrow, so I don’t succumb to silly criticism. In no way am I going to be shocked by someone’s ideas about me.

“It’s funny how in a place where everything is an Experience, people see such little value in just living.”

It’s always better when I am forced to be in public rather than in bed deliberating everything I may have said or done—wondering whether this time I went a little too far, was a little too forthcoming, a little too much.

Sometimes you take for granted the way the summer sun sets after eight. If you walk slowly enough, you can hear bursts of conversation from each patio. I love the way restaurant sounds bleed onto the sidewalk. Silverware grazing plates and glasses clinking—it is always rich and promising.

Summer is the only season where you can smell the outside on people.

“I don’t want you to have feelings about my feelings.”

It’s a natural urge to want to be important in someone’s life. The soft underbelly of a coarse man. A preview is never enough because I am insatiable.

Sometimes when you think of a friendship, you wonder how it ever started and what keeps it together. Today, I couldn’t think of any reason but Memories. Unmoored and drifting, we were only holding on to each other for the sake of a shared history. What else bonded us? A general willingness to not discuss things. To not pry, to know that to ask would hurt each other, so sometimes skimming the surface is the best thing a friend can do.

It is truly a gift that I can alter the disposition of an occasion entirely. I am small but my mood radiates. I can make a whole room unbearable.

“I mean, some people never get the chance to be anything. Life can be boring when you have nothing to cry about.”

It is funny that most people want money for the power. I want money so I can have beautiful things—surround myself with them.

I’ve always been able to change the way my future looks with a mere suggestion. It’s one of my greatest traits. My future can accommodate anything.

Each time I tell someone a story over a watery Pernod, it opens that someone to the possibility of the memory; that’s why I adore talking. Then maybe the stories really are mine, not because they happened to me but because of the indelible details I give. Maybe it is the how that makes them valuable.

It was dark by the time I left the restaurant. I liked the colours of New York at night. Sidewalks were warmed orange from the street lamps and the f luorescence of bodegas. I walked south for many blocks with an alertness that felt new.