Free The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon

Sylvie Vartan songs across our shared wall and recited e. e. cummings poetry. Sometimes a scrap of paper weighted with an old coin would come sailing over with a note, e.g., “Do you still love me? Check the box: □ Yes □ No.” When it got late, she’d wander in with ramen and beer.
    I hated distracting her—she had two shows coming up—but I’d been having trouble making work, which she knew. She often found me curled on my studio couch, streaming B movies through my Ear Beads, and she’d make me scoot over and rest my head in her lap. Then she’d stream the same thing on her own Meme even though she hated aliens and monsters. She also often gently suggested that I call my mom. “I’m just jealous, Nans. You can see her any time you want.” Coco’s own mother lived in Paris.
    And there
were
lots of things I really loved to do with Vera. My favorite ways to spend winter weekends were with her. Going down to one of the city’s last movie theaters on Houston to watch all the brassy fall blockbusters that we both so enjoyed. Prowling the Union Square Greenmarket for anything that wasn’t a root vegetable. Taking greedy gulps of air as we wandered through the redolent rows of listing Christmas trees. (Vera didn’t believe in chopping them down to appreciate for just a few weeks, so we’d never had one when I was growing up. But we did both adore the smell.) Discussing my most recent projects or a biography Vera was reading during our volunteer shifts in the park. Taking the Q train all the way to Avenue J for wedges of the greatest pizza on earth, a sojourn we made just once a year. And—maybe the very best—we spent hours together baking: scores of shortbread wheels and linzer hearts,
sablés
, truffles, meringue. Ostensibly they were for friends and family, and we did ship lots of wax-paper-lined tins. But our muse had always been Doug, who was an enormously appreciative audience. (“And growing more enormous daily,” he’d say, slapping his gut.) The thought of melting butter and dusting things with sugar without his constant interruptive “help” seemed inordinately sad. And honestly, I was having a hard time just feeding myself then; after Max left I lost my appetite, which I’d previously disbelieved could happen.
    There was another, more salient reason I hadn’t been in touch with my mom: she’d never much liked Max. (“It’s not that I don’t like him,” she’d say, unconvincingly. “I just worry that he doesn’t really make youhappy.”) I hadn’t told her yet that he’d moved out—I wasn’t quite ready for her commentary—and the thought of keeping up a front seemed very tough.
    But maybe even more than that, I also didn’t much like the man she’d been seeing, Laird Sharpe. Before he’d shacked up with Vera, Laird had long been one of Doug’s best friends. They’d been freshman roommates: Hollis Hall, Harvard class of ’72. They’d formed a trio with a man named Fergus Hedstrom, who was soon to resurface in all our lives. (I’d never met Ferg; he didn’t spend much time in New York. But all through my girlhood I’d heard filigreed stories of adventures he and Doug had taken—and occasionally still took—in places as far-flung as Norse Lake, Ontario; Barra de Navidad, Jalisco; and Angkor Wat: catching walleye, surfing, visiting shrines, drinking insalubrious amounts. For whatever reason, Laird never went along.)
    I was confounded by Laird and Doug’s ongoing friendship. And I likewise didn’t get why Laird was beloved by the audiences of PI News, the station he anchored. Before he’d found his calling, reporting small and large tragedies to the public, he’d done a stint for several years as an investment banker; he still often covered financial stories. And watching him, I always felt like he was still selling something (beyond what was required). I didn’t really enjoy the thought of him and Vera on their jaunt overseas, pitying my fate in some Beijing teahouse