I did not even know that I put teacher outfits together. They were just my clothes.
“I like teaching,” I said.
“No,” Lelah said. “You don’t.”
When I returned to Beck’s TriBeCa apartment after the bread truck incident, Lelah was there. Lelah, stale lipstick, unwashed stringy black hair, belly hanging over her pants, looked more disheveled than I did, but there she was, somehow fitting in with the abstract paintings and art deco furniture in a way I never could. She was drinking one of the power smoothies full of spoon-sized servings from the six or seven jars on the countertop that Beck always made, but never made for me.
“Hey, Sarah,” Lelah was cool around me now. Here she was Beck’s friend.
Beck greeted me, boss-friendly, giving away nothing. I went into the office to upload my new photos to the company website. Dropping the photos into folders, I could see how unsteady my hand had been. The pink and yellow bedrooms were overexposed and smeared. They looked like sunsets. I could hear Beck and Lelah laughing. I wanted to start over. To drive back to Harlem, knock on new doors, smile and ask if they had a little girl’s bedroom I could photograph, watch their faces light up they recognized the name of the pop star I’d never heard of, the one who might dance on their daughter’s childhood bed, who might pretend their daughter’s stuffed animals and Barbies were her own. I wanted to repeat the warm invitations into strange families’ homes, to try again, to make the camera steadier, to remember to shoot from every angle.
When I was finished, I came back out to the living room, trying futilely to pull the wrinkles from my skirt. Beck was showing Lelah photos from her wedding.
“I know that if you make a photo album for us, our marriage can work,” Beck was saying.
Lelah cooed, sort of.
I stood and watched. Stood rigid, puppet-like. I opened my mouth to tell Beck about her bumper, about misjudging, not noticing a truck-sized vehicle behind me. My mouth was held partway open. On the verge of speaking.
“Sarah,” Beck looked at me. “I was telling Lelah that you would take my car to help her move next week.”
“Oh, that’s great,” I said, trying to smile at Lelah. “That’s really sweet of you,” I told Beck.
“Oh it is not,” Beck insisted. “It’s the least I can offer. I might not be able to come, which I feel awful about, but at least if you have my car, it will make her move easier.”
I wasn’t sure if Beck involved me in the helping because my job was being Beck number two, replacement Beck, the one out in the world doing Beck things when Beck’s long limbs were splayed across her green chaise lounge flipping through indie fashion magazines. Because Lelah was her friend and I was her assistant. Or because. Maybe she thought Lelah and I were girlfriends. Maybe Lelah wanted her to think that. Maybe Lelah wanted everybody to think that and maybe everybody did. Lelah and I left Beck’s apartment together to go back to Brooklyn. I didn’t tell Beck about the car. Maybe she wouldn’t notice, I thought. I didn’t tell Lelah either. On the subway platform, Lelah said, “Ohhh, Little Sarah. You are so beautiful. But you’re, like, not even an eighth of what you could be. You have so much potential.”
