It had always felt cliché to Mira. Her own dream, that is. A starving artist, her crummy Brooklyn studio apartment stinking of linseed oil all the time, her canvas ready for whenever she had a spare minute to open up her paints after a grueling day job. Painting photorealistically was a skill that she had spent her life teaching herself. Her mother had been unable to afford much. Mira’s schooling had been covered by a full merit-based diversity scholarship, so she had spent her spare time learning, diving into a world of her creation. Anything other than her peers from school. She knew, deep down, that she was more than a case of tokenization, she had to be. She was smart and talented. But this was not the renaissance, and nobody cared that you could paint a portrait that looked real. 

She had spent months working on her current piece. Two lovers, women cradling each other on a Manhattan street. Mira and Alana. Milana. Alira. 

*

You could tell that Alana came from money by the way she carried herself. Her confident ease coupled with her obvious arrogance: the slouch of her shoulders as she looked straight at Mira and smirked, snubbing out her cigarette on the teak deck. If that was not enough of a hint, the heirloom diamond tennis bracelet at her wrist and her Chloé leather jacket would make the rest obvious. Sometimes, Mira would forget in total disbelief how she had ended up in Alana’s two-story Upper West Side condo, sitting on a massive balcony furnished with french tables overlooking the cityscape, Alana cutting lines of cocaine with her whatever-tier Amex card on the glass table. Immediately, the same thoughts crossed Mira’s mind: who the fuck has the money for this much white powder, for this apartment, for this attitude, for all of it. But then, after a mental pause, I’m in love with her and I hate it. 

Alana bent down over the table, loudly snorted the line, and popped up suddenly, energized. She laughed. 

“What’s got your panties in such a twist?” she said. “Was the sex not good enough for you? Because I’m definitely better than you in bed, last I checked.”

“No. The sex was great. Just got a lot on my mind lately.” And Mira had a lot going on, probably too much to spare a Thursday night as Alana’s booty call. There was work the next day at 6 AM. Alana barely worked, going into the office every once in a while to comment on spreads for the monthly issue of Vogue or Interview Magazine. No to the Dries Van Noten top on that editorial shoot, yes to the Burberry collection, whatever one does at those places. Mira had medical debt, which she had been saddled with after her stay at the hospital the month prior. Alana’s rehab visits were frequent all-expenses-paid vacations. The pair were unlikely, any way you sliced it. They had nothing in common except for the fact that they had gone to the same private boarding school in a different life, which Mira’s parents had pushed her to maintain her scholarship for, pushed her harder than anyone else in the institution had to work. Giving Mira a running start, they called it. Good private school meant that Mira could earn scholarships at fancy colleges. If she could not, then she simply would not afford those colleges. Well, that was a problem for the future. 

Mira and Alana had been unusual, even then. The friendship kicked off only because Alana was forced into tutoring by her English teacher and Mira had been selected as a peer mentor. Mira was used to pining. With no designer clothing, no expensive makeup, no extroverted social skills, she was used to fading into the scenery. Alana was not the kind of girl Mira had ever expected to kiss, let alone be intimate with, even if the circumstances were secretive. Most of all, Mira had never expected to fall for a girl who would never let herself love in return. 

“Want some?” Alana asked, gesturing at a newly cut line of coke on the table. 

“Do you remember our first kiss?” Mira asked. 

“Oh yeah, I suppose I do. It was in the library, right?”

“The broom closet.”

“What brings this up now?”

“I was just wondering…do you ever regret sneaking around back then? Like, do you wish we could have just been together while we were young? That maybe things would have worked out differently?”

“Mirie, we’ve always been from different worlds. You know that. Besides, I only do casual. You know that.”

“Right.” Different worlds. Same school, same teachers, different microcosms of society. In some ways, nothing had changed since Upper West Side College Preparatory. Here they were, years later, still kissing behind closed doors, with Alana probably ashamed of her involvement with Mira. Sometimes, at night, Mira would wonder if her feelings for Alana stemmed from the forbidden nature of it all. To love the girl you could never have. The girl everyone either wanted to be or be with. The girl who none of them could ever hold, not for more than a night, not in any way other than a fleeting taste. 

“Why is this all coming up now?” Alana asked. “You haven’t brought up Prep since, well… I guess since it happened.”

“Were you happy then? With Michael, I mean?”

“Well, yeah,” she said too quickly, the cocaine in her system buzzing. “Isn’t everyone happy at that age? You just date to date and nobody seriously wants anything from you?” She grinned, jumping up. “I’m high as fuck. Let’s do something fun.” 

“I’m too tired to go to a club, Alana. I think I’m going to head home.”

“Alright then, Mirie. I’ll see you around.” Alana leaned over and kissed Mira for a moment, passionately, before bouncing off to her room to grab her things and go to the club in her private car or whatever. The balcony was suddenly quiet, powder residue blowing into chalk after a gust of wind on the glass table, the first sprinkle of raindrops settling on its surface and on Mira’s face and arms. 

*

Despite herself, Mira didn’t leave after Alana was out the door. She sat alone on the balcony and lit a cigarette, looking out at the skyline and the shady trees of central park, the miniature cars beeping their way through streets and pedestrians. There were many times that Mira found herself disappointed with Alana, and leaving during their meetup was just another on a very long list. It was routine. The time when Alana heard that Mira was in the hospital after a suicide attempt and didn’t call, the time when Alana canceled on Mira’s birthday to hook up with some guy, the time with the forgotten invitation to the New Year’s Eve party. Why do you keep going back? Mira’s ex-husband had asked after the divorce. She’s practically a drug-addicted partying undergraduate spoiled princess brat at the age of, like, 28. That was their final showdown after the papers were signed. 

He did not know Alana. Not like she did. Not really. It is easy to put somebody into the shape of a character, the outline of who they seem to be. But when Alana would get drunk and open up to Mira, when she would tell her what it meant to live through her days–well, that is something that Mira felt a private satisfaction in. That she could be trusted. Even if Alana needed to be drunk to do the trusting. 

As the rain picked up, cold wind hissing sprinkles onto Mira’s face, she stood up, snubbed her cigarette, tossed it off the balcony, and walked inside, sliding the thick glass door shut behind her. The living room was warm only in temperature; the contemporary furniture and curated bookshelves of untouched volumes gave the impression of a precisely-decorated, empty shell. She sank into the olive couch and looked up at the photographs on the wall. Impersonal. Signed originals by famous photographers suggested by an interior designer. A large painting of a fashion sketch above a table of pristine, full candles. She pulled a scotch glass out of the liquor cabinet and poured a generous amount of whisky, which lit her throat up in the scorching warmth of the heating as she gulped it down. Mira could remember covert drinks with Alana when her parents were off on yet another business trip or her mother was in the Hamptons, or wherever rich people vacationed. Ibiza. The south of France or something. 

She fished a matchbox out of a nearby drawer full of unopened letters and lit the candles, one by one, the flame flicking against her fingers. She sifted through the letters. Even Alana received phone bills, she figured, looking through AT&T’s supposedly urgent communications. The third envelope, a thicker, rose-colored artifact, was definitely not a credit card statement. She held the paper to the candlelight, ripping it open ungracefully with her fingers. The textured, gold-foiled paper announced: You are invited to Esmerelda and Brandon’s Wedding. She snorted. She had gone to high school with them, shared three classes, gotten several coffees with Brandon Patterson over the years, and had not received an invitation. Yet Alana, who had definitely not kept in touch with anyone else from her past, was cordially invited to an intimate, special day of celebration at the beach. 

Mira pocketed the invitation and sat on the couch for a moment, pensive, before refilling her whisky and downing another glass. After finishing the bottle over the span of twenty minutes, having already discarded the glass after a few pours, she went to the bathroom. While washing her hands with lavender oil soap, she popped open the cabinet to look for towels and found Alana’s pill collection. Xanax, Ritalin, Oxycontin. She smiled, grabbed a few of each, and tossed them into her pockets before passing out into a light sleep on the plush couch. Alana did not come home the next morning, so Mira left, alone and groggy. 

*

Mira was not sure how many pills she had taken, how many drinks, or even which pills. But all she could feel was a hazy rage. What was the point of it all? Of creating an image of lovers, of a love she could never have? Why cradle anyone when love was the most fucking fleeting phenomenon she had ever known of? She stared at her work. The lines seemed to blur, the women’s faces seemed to move. Had she taken acid tonight? She was not sure. The women stared at her, moving in and out of the canvas. They needed to die because their very existence was a lie. She slashed the canvas with a kitchen knife frantically, this way and that. She felt as though she were watching herself from the ceiling. 

She must have cut herself because she was lying there, the next morning in a pool of dried blood, her arm sliced with a stinging cut, and torn sheets of half-painted women’s bodies. The wedding invitation, addressed to Alana, lying amongst the wreckage in a pungent pool of lumpy pink vomit.

Mira’s Song

Upper West Side King Princess

“I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move - and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very ' bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern.” ― Charlotte Perkins Gilman | The Yellow WallPaper

Connect with the authors:

Twitter: @NYC_hours

Instagram: @newyorkcityhours

Vryn: Personal @vrindaphotographs

Allie: Personal @allisunshine3; Bookstagram @theresinkonmyhands; Bookstagram Newsletter theresinkonmyhands.substack.com

Paint the roses red; time has no hand to hold when you’re dreaming through the New York City Hours.

Share