Instant Love by Jami Attenberg

also some photo albums, a high school yearbook, and a tiny table lamp, the kind you get in college for late-night reading in bed, so you don’t wake up your roommate. Melanie slammed the door shut. Such vigor, I thought. She hadn’t had this much energy in a while. I guess she was fueled by desperation, though I hadn’t known it was that bad. Shows you what I know.
    Melanie opened her arms to me, and I realized I was supposed to hug her, so I did. She made me promise to come visit, and I made her promise to come back soon.
    “Don’t stay on the island too long,” I said. “We don’t want to lose you there.”
    She got in the car, and I pulled my keys out of my pocket and started toward my own car. I clenched and unclenched the keys in my fist.
    Melanie rolled down the windows.
    “Jemma, come here.”
    I walked back to the car and faced her.
    “This is Bitsy. Bitsy, this is Jemma. Jemma is my friend.”
    I waved, and so did she. I stared at her, trying to memorize everything about her, as if I might have to identify her in a lineup someday. She could have been a plain woman, with her long stern nose, the bridge of which was like a bullet, and her tight, pale purple lips, and small dark eyes like black pearls. She looked old, I thought, at least as old as Melanie’s mother. But the rest of her was extraordinary in a way, maybe because she was so different from everyone I knew. Her hair was a beautiful shade of bronze, a huge and styled and shiny mane, and her ears and neck and her wrists were dripping with gold and diamonds; diamond earrings, diamonds bigger than my engagement ring, and a thick braided gold necklace with a huge diamond teardrop hanging from it, and gold bracelets, so many of them, up and down her tanned, muscular arms. The car smelled of a rich perfume. I got a little high off it.
    “How delightful to meet one of my Melanie’s friends. At last.” Bitsy stretched her arm around the back of Melanie’s seat.
    “Well, any friend of Melanie’s…,” I said. I didn’t bother to finish it. I was certain Bitsy and I had nothing in common.
    “Yes,” said Bitsy. “And all that jazz.” She revved the engine softly and rhythmically, as if she were tapping her foot on it.
    “You take care of my girl,” I said.
    Bitsy smiled kindly, but then raised her eyebrows too high, and her face changed into something sinister, and I thought for a second that she was going to kidnap Melanie forever, and that I would never get her back.
     
     
    IN COLLEGE, I had clung to Melanie, night after night. We used to get together and drink until we saw double, and laugh so hard we could barely stand. Then we would walk home, arm in arm, from a party or from one of the bars in the U District, weaving up and down the empty, rainy streets, across campus, wherever we felt like walking, because we were young and drunk and it felt good to use our limbs. Me and Melanie, and then Will and Doug, too.
    There were other friends, other girls, but no one stuck like me. For a brief while Melanie had a fascination with this girl with a stutter, Sarah Lee, visiting from some East Coast city, Philadelphia or Boston. Some sort of town of urban blight. They worked together at this bakery near the expressway entrance. In the mornings commuters would come in for coffee and a muffin, and in the afternoon they’d get the stoner crowd, hungry for chocolate-chip cookies, or their pies, which they were known for, cherry and apple, fresh from the oven. I ate more than a few slices when I was in college. I know how sweet they tasted.
    I never fully understood Melanie’s interest in her. Yes, Sarah Lee was a pleasant girl, pretty enough, and when she laughed it was loud, and excited, with huge gasps of air at the end, and it made everyone—not me, of course—want to laugh, too. And I remember in particular we all enjoyed looking at her outfits—she was always tearing apart clothes she got at the Value Village and restructuring them into