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“What do you picture, when you think about your life?” She looks into my eyes, all softness and curiosity. “Art on the walls of the MoMA? A graphic novel series? A penthouse downtown?”
“Straight to material things?”
She shakes her head, still soft. “A home. Decorated with art, probably. That guy who does the comic-inspired stuff.”
“I have four Lichtenstein prints in my room at Grandma’s.”
She smiles and digs her fingers into my shoulders. “Do you see that?”
Right now? I dream about Grandma getting better, sticking around for a long time. “What do you imagine, Deanna?”
“Why?”
“I need an example,” I say.
“I’m not a dreamer.”
“Then as close as you get.”
She nods and sways along with the water.
For a long moment, we stay there, in the cold water and the warm sun, comfortable with the silence between us, the strange mix of tension and closeness.
There is something here, something I don’t understand.
“Sometimes, I visualize,” she says. “I didn’t believe in it at first, but my therapist, the one I saw after Mom died, talked me into trying it. I always feel silly when I do it, but it helps with nerves.”
It’s not hard to imagine her nervous. Not right now.
I can see Deanna in her car before a date, fixing her lipstick again and again, wondering if the guy is going to make her laugh.
In some big modern office before a meeting, rallying all her confidence, trying to figure out how she can convince a man who doesn’t take her seriously to consider her company.
“Before our last investor meeting, before I met Lexi to drive to her office, well, while I was still in my room, at home. I sat there in my magenta suit, trying to imagine it going well. The meeting in the conference room at first. A lot of interest from Willa. She’s a woman in her fifties, a VC, venture capitalist, with all sorts of power. I imagined her taking us out for drinks to celebrate. Then I started looking bigger. Millions of users. Tens of millions in monthly payments. Features in famous papers, appearances on morning news shows, a billboard in Times Square.”
“I can picture you there.”
“Overwhelmed by people?”
“And pride,” I say.
“And Lexi, right there, next to me, loving every second of it.”
Lexi again. She still feels wrong, here. Too much light, too much sun. Like putting a hat on a hat.
The mental images of a future with Lexi are far away. Clouded by the vivid images of Deanna. In that magenta suit, on a midtown street, holding an old-school briefcase and telling off the guy on the other end of the phone.
“You’d look good there,” I say.
“In a magenta suit.”
There’s something intimate about sharing a mental image. Like sharing a bed. “And an ‘I Heart New York’ T-shirt.”
“Never.” She pushes off me.
My body feels cold immediately. I want her closer. I want all this.
“Your turn.” She treads water a few feet away, waiting. She swims back to me. This time, she wraps herself around me quickly. “I can say please.”
