“I have to water the plants. That’s basically it. She still has the housekeeper come once a week, so I don’t even really need to clean. It’s obscene. I took a bunch of photos when I first moved in. But I don’t feel like I can post them anywhere without betraying Louisa’s trust. The downstairs is mostly done, but the Bennington daughter sort of stopped caring once it came to the second floor.” She plucks a piece of cheese and chews it thoughtfully, and I follow her eyes as they sweep over the black-and-white-checkerboard marble floor, the handmade intarsia tabletop. “You know, I always wondered about the kind of life Odilie had living in New York. She gave us money every now and then. Not that we were strapped for cash or anything. My parents are pretty soundly old-school American middle class with their 401ks. But this shit, it’s kind of dazzling.” She looks up at the ceiling as if she’s gazing at heaven. “Anyway, how have you been?”

I tell her about my job-hunting process, take a sip of my wine, the chill hurting my teeth. “Ugh, it all sucks,” she says. “Companies really only care about their bottom lines, not their employees, huh?”

We continue drinking. At some point Page pulls out another bottle of wine, finishes more than half of it herself, orders the pizza on her phone. She doesn’t touch on anything Odilie related again, as if she actually just wants to get to know me. She asks me about growing up and going to NYU. About my family, my old job. She knows Magdelena by name, says that she once bought a pair of their pants during a sale and loves them. She asks about navigating New York, all the expenses, whether I want to stay here. Whether I ever want to settle down. What my relationship with my parents is like.

I find myself answering honestly, whether it’s the wine or Page’s open face, the encouraging smile she gives me, nudging me to go on, tell her more. “I can’t imagine leaving the city. Even with how irrationally expensive it is to live here, I can’t be anywhere else. It’s almost cosmic. I can’t explain it. Like I spent my entire childhood waiting to come here and now I have been for a decade and I’m steeped in it, the rhythms of life here. That sounds cheesy, I know, but there’s no other way to describe it. I think the only thing that would pull me out would be a family. But I don’t even think I want that, either.” The pizza comes and Page doesn’t offer us plates, so we grab from the box, hot cheese oozing to the table as I take a slice.