Miss Fortune by Lauren Weedman Page B

to, I moved into a quaint little month-to-month studio that seemed artsy because it had a shared bathroom, “like an artist commune,” but the place turned out to be an SRO that houses mostly male ex-convicts. It’s not ideal, but I need some time alone.
    There’s always some surprise awaiting me when I open the door to my room. Cockroaches, a drunk man the landlord accidentally let into the wrong room slumped over on a chair, you name it. Tonight I open the door, and there she is, sitting in the dark. Nico. She’d used her Texas charm to get my landlord to let her into my room.
    I cannot believe she’s here. It’s incredible to see my BFF here. Or it should be incredible, but I’m feeling slightly ambushed. I’d missed the tape she sent me that said she was going to take a road trip to Seattle to come see me. We laugh about the pile of dried throw up in the hallway. She tells me about a “god moment” she had right as she crossed the border of Arizona.
    She thinks my voice sounds odd. I think her voice sounds odd.
    I am a little worried she’s mad at me for not sending any more tapes. I’d like to turn the lights on to make sure she’s not sitting there with a horse’s head on her lap or a loaded gun, but she won’t let me.
    In the dark, she starts making plans for day trips for us to take. Got to go see that mountain! Got to check out those fish throwers! Got to see this waterfall I heard about! We laugh about how I’d missed that she was coming to see me, but I’m fake laughing. Thanks to my wound work, it sounds real.
    Most days, I stay at the theater filing plays for the artistic director, or watching him play video games on his computer. I have no idea what she’s doing with her time and I don’t want to know. It’s going to be something huge and dramatic and I won’t believe her and I don’t know what she plans on doing here in Seattle. I’m working with a new theater company. And honestly, I don’t really need aroommate. The only reason I’m staying at the lawn care guy’s place every night is to give her room. My place is tiny.
    Praying she’s not home, I’m making a quick stop to pick up some clean clothes. She’s not there. At all. Her stuff is gone. She’s written me a note on the cover of a
People
magazine (I mean
The Atlantic Monthly
): “Gone to stay in a motel.”
    Sure, I’d avoided her completely and been deliberately unwelcoming, but I hadn’t meant for her to just leave. I feel awful. And completely relieved.
    Nico has also left me a message on my answering machine. Her voice is flat. “Why don’t you meet me the Irish Lion at eight P.M. ? We need to talk.”
    At 8:15 I’m standing outside the door of the Irish Lion wishing they served beer on the sidewalk. I’m a nervous wreck. Making eye contact with Nico is impossible. She seems very . . . okay. The nachos arrive. “I read your journal.”
    What? She read my journal? I’m trying to think of what I wrote about her. I’m sure I wrote something, but hey. Wait a minute. You can’t read my journal. It doesn’t matter what I wrote.
    â€œListen, girlfriend, something was going on with you and you weren’t being honest with me.”
    â€œSo you took it upon yourself to go into my private things and take what wasn’t yours to have? Wow.” Reading a person’s journal is too far. You don’t read a person’s journal. The only thing I think I even wrote about Nico was something about how she annoyed me sometimes. Big deal. I may have mentioned how I think she could be a big old lesbian and was full of shit, but outside of that I think I mostly wrote about what I ate for lunch.
    â€œYou aren’t yourself, Lauren. You’re pulling yourself down and I’m not going to watch.”
    â€œThat’s a real deep insight, journal reader,” I