A Song in the Daylight. Paullina Simons

might be nice.”

      “Off the table. Too expensive.”

      “I’m not sure about Doug’s opinion,” she said. “I’m going to ask Ezra.”

      “Ezra!” Jared loosened his tie. “You’re going to ask a man who drives a twelve-year-old Subaru wagon with a hatchback that doesn’t open what kind of luxury car he thinks you should get?”

      “Ezra is very smart. Do you deny that?”

      “He’s an idiot about cars!” Just to prove his point, Jared got Ezra on the phone despite Larissa’s protestations that dinner was about to achieve room temperature. “Ez, it’s me. My wife wants to know what kind of sports car you think I should buy her for her birthday.”

      Larissa was violently rolling her eyes while Jared was nodding into the phone. “Exactly. My point entirely. Thanks, man. See you Saturday.” He hung up. “Do you want to know what Ezra said?”

      “I can’t tell you how much I don’t care.”

      Jared laughed. “But you wanted to ask him! He told me. Would you like to hear?”

      “Suddenly, no.”

      On Friday, Larissa asked Fran’s opinion, her twentysomething friend with whom she did only one thing—sit at the nail salon. Finklestein liked the beautiful things in life, though she was a receptionist at a Midtown-based news agency and had no actual money. The girl was single, young, hip and didn’t fit in with Larissa’s other friends. Her singlehood and youth dazzled Larissa; Finklestein was what a Republican looked like to a Democrat: unfathomable. This time over a latte, flash Fran denounced Larissa’s false dilemma by administering a brutal piece of advice. Any sports car would do, Fran said dismissively. Pick the one that will please you the most.

      The ever-practical Maggie tried to talk her out of the car entirely. She didn’t share Ezra’s risible indifference to the question. Always thrifty, Maggie thought such a purchase an unnecessary extravagance.

      Larissa couldn’t talk to Bo about something so trivial as buying a car when Bo was living in a two-bedroom apartment with her unhinged mother and freelance Jonny, who’d been looking for a long-term gig for three years. Bo spent her days on the sixth floor of the Met during lunchtime, ambling through neo-Impressionist floral displays from South America and dreaming of a different life. Talking to Bo about Jaguars was as absurd as talking to Michelangelo about it, who saw a brochure his father had brought home and said, “Ooh, nice blue car without a top, Mommy, but how you gonna fit your whole family in there?”

      Che didn’t come to school, one day, two. She didn’t pick up the phone either. Larissa walked to her house after school. She was on half-days; soon she would graduate, summer, then college! But Larissa’s daydreams of impending adulthood had faded recently in the face of Che’s trauma.

      Che’s mother let her in, curt, impersonal. It wasn’t like her. Che’s mother loved Larissa. She’s upstairs, was all she said.

      Che was on her bed, face down.

       Why is your mother mad at me?

      She’s not mad.

       Why did she give me the evil eye? Larissa thought about it. Oh, no. Did you tell her I wanted you not to have it?

      Che nodded.

      Thanks a lot, girlfriend.

      She asked me. What is Larissa advising you to do? So I told her.

       But what’s happened? Larissa perched on the edge of the bed, touching Che’s heaving back. What else could’ve happened?

      I’m not pregnant anymore, said Che in a dead voice.

      Larissa’s heart jumped, flew up into the summer sky. Oh, Che! That’s the greatest thing I ever heard.

      Che didn’t seem to think so.

       How do you know?

      I’m bleeding.

      So you were never pregnant? I told you, you should’ve taken that test.

      Che rose from the bed, her face red, her eyes swollen. Don’t you see? she said. I know my body. I was ten weeks late. You think that’s normal? Now I’m bleeding out like my jugular’s been cut. She put her face in her hands.

      Larissa patted her friend, tried to soothe her. No, it’s good. It’s so much better this way. The impossible decision was taken out of your hands. It’s the greatest day.

      Almost like God intervening, said Che.

      I guess, said Larissa. You were lucky. You were given a reprieve, a second chance. Now you can live your life right, learn from this, do things differently in the future. I don’t understand why you’re so upset.

      What if God, like my mom, was disappointed in me? That’s what it feels like. He said, you’re not ready to be a mother. You’re not ready for this child.

      That’s absolutely true.

      In my free-falling blood I feel His disappointment.

      That’s silly. He helped you out. Took matters into his own hands. Oh, if only every time it were so easy! How sweet life would be.

      But Che was inconsolable. I did this to myself, she said. I should have had to live with the consequences.

       You narrowly escaped a harrowing future. How can you be upset?

      A baby is not harrowing.

      At sixteen? Come on, clean yourself up. Let’s go to town, hang out. I told some people I’d meet them at Jerry’s Ices.

      Larissa lay down on the twin bed, next to Che. Come on, girlfriend, she whispered, putting her arm around Che’s sobbing body. No worries now. We’re golden. Every little thing’s gonna be all right.

      Larissa wrote to Che, mentioning the Jag as a postscript omitting the real reason for her agonizing.

      Che wrote back.

      Larissa, why so much commotion over a small matter? I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me. To bring up a car in an occasional letter? It’s a car. You didn’t finish telling me why Bo doesn’t throw Jonny out or move out herself. Since when do you care so much about what you drive? Buy or not buy. I’m forty next year too, you know. You’re worried about a car, and my mother couldn’t live long enough for me to have a baby. Soon I’m not going to live long enough for me to have a baby. I’m sending you a recent picture of Lorenzo. Tell me if you think he’s worth it. Send me a recent picture of the Jag. I’ll tell you if the car is worth it.

      Larissa read newspapers, magazines, to keep ahead of the times, but being versed in current events made her more anxious, not less. The only news out there was that everything was going to hell, spinning out of control.

      She wrote to Che about this. There was mental illness, homelessness, robberies, random shootings, sometimes all related, Larissa wrote. Shark attacks, poison oak epidemics, rabies. Seventy-year-old women giving birth, severed heads abandoned outside newsrooms. There were bombings and threats to peace. Is peace just an illusion? she asked Che. Will the Jaguar bring me an illusion of peace?

      “That’s a philosophical question, Larissa,” replied Ezra, while she was still waiting on Che’s reply. “The question is, will the Jaguar bring you something tangible? Is it a desire for something you don’t have? If so, what is it? And after you get it, will that be it, or will there be something else you want that you don’t have?