How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley Read Free Book Online Page A

kind of people. Though ... at one point they did express concern that their freshly minted adult would be sleeping on a futon. They went on and on about the ramifications of this, both physical and psychological. Apparently, footing the entire bill for his housing glided down a separate stream of consciousness, a ship with no raised flags. But a futon? How juvenile.
    The problem began with the fuzzy moral area of contributing to someone else’s mortgage, knowing your short-term funds were being poured into their long-term venture. With each apartment we viewed, my contribution incrementally increased. For a while this was an easily overlooked dilemma. I was still paying less than I would have on my own, and I was not particularly concerned with their financial compartmentalization. I had no concept of how long it took to actually purchase and move into a home (months) vs. how long it took to rent one (seconds, depending on how fast you could sign your name and throw an elbow at the prospective tenant coming up the stairwell behind you). Before the economy imploded, renting in Manhattan was a boxing match between how you were raised and how much money you had from week to week. You would pay and do just about anything for a livable space. A room of one’s own was probably not in the cards, but a bamboo folding screen might be nice. As you flipped through the backs of local magazines en route to the crossword, you’d find yourself hovering for a moment over the escort agency ads and thinking, How bad would that really be? And with thoughts like these in the mix, the lesser moral infractions seemed less infractiony. In this corner, measuring all the life you’ve led by all the life you have yet to lead, weighing the sum total of your sense of right and wrong, is your Morality. And in that corner, containing a twenty-dollar bill and a half-stamped coffee card, is ... And we’re done.
    Plus, Mac was my friend. Friendship is a Spackle in itself. You’ll forgive your friends a lot, and if you’re a woman, you’ll forgive your straight male friends even more. They represent the possibility of mutual toleration between the sexes, a keyhole into the mind of the Other, and the promise of one day meeting someone just like them except that you want to sleep with them.
    The situation became palpably tense as Mac’s parents began to feel a sense of unfairness that I would be paying so little each month, even with the steady increases in my contribution. It was not a buyer’s market. Mortgages would have to be recalculated. Bathrooms would have to be retiled. Places were too small or too dark or too far away from the subway—a henna tattoo of a problem for a renter but a more enduring concern for a buyer. As their comfort faltered, unsubtle suggestions that I contribute more were floated my way.
    “They think you should pay more,” said Mac.
    “How much more is more?”
    We had long since blown past the monthly maintenance mark. We had doubled it. And yet, miraculously, the dimensions of my closet remained the same. I was a second-class citizen paying first-class prices. One evening, after his parents had gone back to their world of doormen and digital cable, I offered to buy Mac a slice of pizza. I put down our tiny cups of water and reached for my wallet. The only cash I had on me was a one-dollar bill.
    “Don’t worry about it,” Mac said. “You’ll get me next time.”
    But I was worried about it. Disproportionately so. He wasn’t the one with the frowning face of George Washington folded into the fetal position in his back pocket. If I felt this indebted over pizza, how was I going to cope with floor-to-ceiling French doors? I could feel the resentment bubble. Not like a cheese bubble, which is very noticeable, but like a little pocket of raw guilt heating into something altogether different, something that muttered, You’re not even paying rent, asshole, your parents are.
    I had to get out. I cited my own impatience