The Transformation Of Amy Lunaro: Chapter Twenty. {fiction}
{source}
“I’m so sorry to hear this,” Monica was saying to Amy as she rushed along the streets of New York.
“It’s okay,” Amy said into the phone, splayed out on the bed, her laptop on her belly.
“I’ve accepted it. I think this was what I really needed to slow down.”
“Apparently it was,” Monica said.
Amy couldn’t help but notice Monica had that distracted tone, the one so many of her New York friends had, the one she now realized she must have had.
She could only notice it because recently she felt more present than ever, or maybe for the first time in her life. She could be in a moment, totally. She was tuned into Monica, just listening to her. And that was all she was doing, all of her energy was in one place.
She had read in one of her books that that was the kindest gift we could give to one another, to just listen. Just be present. So Amy was practicing. She practiced presence all the time. She just listened.
She listened to the books she read, she listened to Leanne, she listened to the Universe when she meditated, she listened to her body, and she was starting, to listen to her self. But Monica, on the other hand, seemed to be in so many places at once. Everywhere but there.
Amy could hear the swoosh and beeps of cabs going by and Monica’s breath was brisk as she walked the city sidewalk.
“Well, when you heal those gams,” she said to Amy, “it’s time to come back to real life.”
Amy paused.
“What’s real life?” she asked.
“Ha,” Monica laughed. “The country has totally made you existential. You know, Manhattan. The city. Not to quote — wait, scratch that — to quote Alicia Keys, ‘the concrete jungle where dreams are made of’. Where everything is happening. Where people don’t wear plaid except ironically and you can sit next to Beyonce at dinner.
Did I tell you I had pizza next to her and Jay last weekend in Williamsburg? I died.”
Actually, Amy had always assumed she would go back to New York. And just a month before, she was still thinking that when she healed her heart and body, she would get an apartment on the Lower East Side again and get back into magazines. But suddenly, she wasn’t so sure. She looked over at her vision board on the side of the bed.
Nowhere were there cityscapes; in fact, it was filled with sunsets and horses and oceans and long flowing dresses and sprawling farmhouses. And it was littered with the words love, joy, fulfillment, healing and peace. Amy didn’t know where she wanted to be, but suddenly her internal compass no longer pointed to New York.
“Ugh, I’m so late for a drink at Lit,” Monica said.
Amy pulled at a loose thread from the soft white comforter. “I guess, in New York everyone is always late for something,” she said.
“Taxi!” Monica screamed into the phone. Amy winced. She put the phone on speaker and dropped it onto the sheets.
“Second Ave and 11th,” Amy heard Monica tell the cab driver.
And then she said to Amy, “But always late for something fucking phenomenal. What are people there late for, the cow’s vet appointment?”
Cows, Amy thought. She loved cows. Maybe one day she’d have dairy cows. She should put those on her vision board.
“I’m meeting that cute bassist from Rampage, do you know which one I’m talking about?” Monica asked.
“No,” Amy said. “I think I’m really out of the game.”
“Girl,” Monica said, “you gots to get back in the game. I need my friends to keep a certain cool factor.”
Amy couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not. Maybe just half-kidding. Amy remembered being really fucking cool. But she had a sneaking suspicion she was no longer cool at all.
“Anyway,” said Monica. “I thought you would know them. They opened for Jimmy recently.”
“Ow,” Amy said.
“Sorry,” Monica said. “I thought you were over it.”
“Nope, still in it,” Amy said, frustrated with that term, as if you could climb over pain like a fence.
“Anyway,” Amy said, “define ‘cool’.”
“Oh My God,” Monica said. “I can’t, with you and all these questions. You know cool. You were cool. You, actually, defined ‘cool’. You worked at Rolling Stone and had a rock star fiance and wore designer clothes and went on tour with bands. You know what cool is.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think I was that happy. And I think maybe my new version of ‘cool’ is ‘happy’.”
“Are you… are you happy?” she asked Monica.
“Yeah, I mean I’m stoked I’m about to go get lit at Lit, and make out with a hot bassist, so yeah. I’m happy.”
Amy imagined the inside of Lit, their old hunting grounds. It was dark, all the time, like a vampire’s cave. Beat-up black leather booths and graffiti all over the bathroom, grunge rock playing from the jukebox. She could almost smell it — stale cigarettes and sweat and sex.
She and Monica used to go after work if they didn’t go to a movie premiere, rock show, or store launch. They’d flirt with the moody rockabilly bartender and get free vodka sodas and take home fledgling rock stars, who looked at them with moons in their eyes, like Amy or Monica — either one, they didn’t care — were their chance to make it.
Upstart rock stars loved cute magazine girls; you could get laid and possibly break your band at the same time.
“God, I used to run that town,” Amy said wistfully. She hadn’t drunk in months. She hadn’t been to a bar or a party in over half a year. She’d barely seen herself in the mirror, let alone lined her eyes with black and her lips with a bloodstained red and put on six-inch Miu Miu heels and painted-on pants.
She looked outside at the snow that blanketed the driveway; even if she could move her body, she doubted she could go anywhere.
“You mean before you were a pill-addicted housewife,” Monica said.
Amy flinched. Monica’s truth serum no longer felt so refreshing, now it just seemed to hurt.
“Well, obviously,” said Amy.
“Come back; we’ll get you back wearing head to toe Rodarte, with car service and an expense account. Oh! I hear there’s a music editor position at Elle. You can get back on the ladder.”
“But where does it go?”
“What?”
“The ladder.”
“Well, duh, to the top.”
“But what do you do when you get there?”
“I don’t know… get rich as shit and have an assistant and a sick apartment.”
“I’m saying, maybe my definition of ‘success’ is changing. Like, maybe I don’t think success is everything you just said. Maybe I think success is happiness.”
Monica sighed. “Just come home,” she said. “I need my partner in crime.”
“Here’s the thing, Monica, I don’t think you really can, ever go home again.”
“What does that mean?” Monica asked.
“Like, I don’t think you can return to what you’ve left. I think that bridge kind of crumbles behind you, and you have to keep moving forward. I don’t think it stays the same, or that anything can stay the same, and things end for a reason.”
“When did you turn into fucking Sylvia Plath? You need a stiff drink and to get laid.”
“Maybe,” Amy said.
“This is good,” Monica said to the cab driver. “But you took me the long way, so I’m not tipping you.”
“Well, Ames, I’ve arrived. Ciao, my little country bumpkin, this city girl has to go tear some shit up.”
Amy hung up the phone and thought about something Monica said. She watched the snow fall softly and silently into the sea of white. She watched the world outside until her breath returned deep and steady.
Then she called out to Leanne.
“Leanne!”
“Yes, honey, what do you need?” Leanne’s deep and throaty voice responded from the other room. “I’m watching my Agatha Christie. Make it good.”
“What’s… what’s a ‘real life’?” she asked.
“Ha! That, my dear, you are going to have to figure out for yourself. Like most things, you’ll know it when you find it. Meanwhile, brush that hair. Doctor Charm is making a housecall in an hour.”
This is an ongoing series from a forthcoming fiction novel by Sarah Durham Wilson of DOITGIRL.
Tune in weekly for the next chapter in ‘The Transformation of Amy Lunaro’.
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