“They burned the coffee today,” Lena said, standing in the doorway, leaning against the arched entrance like she was modeling her tailored jeans and strappy white bodysuit. “Let’s go across the street.”

I couldn’t see my boss Hilary at her desk from the kitchen, but I could hear her. She typed like she was angry at her keyboard for betraying her, like she had lead strapped to the tips of her fingers. The sound had become so annoying I’d convinced myself it was performative; that she wasn’t actually busy but pretending to be.

“She’ll literally never know,” Lena said, sensing my hesitation. “She hasn’t looked up from her computer once in the last hour.”

We took the hallway and elevator in silence, but it wasn’t awkward, and I didn’t feel the need to fill the space with the sound of my voice. I felt like whatever I wanted to say around Lena needed to be important; I needed to think about it and have it fully conceptualized in my own head before I could speak. She wasn’t the kind of person who befriended just anyone, and I wanted her to befriend me. I needed her to.

She was cool, but not in that “cool girl” male gaze kind of way that had become so popular—the one who knows football players by jersey number and drinks Bud Light and wears her hair up to bars; the one that men have deemed approachable because “she’s one of us.” Lena was cool in the female gaze. Which meant she wasn’t approachable at all, but incredibly intimidating. She was the kind of woman other women hated. Because they want to be her. But they didn’t know how. I did.

I had some practice shadowing someone until I became her. Until I blended right in.

This wasn’t that different. But the stakes were a lot higher now.

Outside our building, Lena stepped off the curb confident there were no cars coming before she even attempted to glance to her left and right. This, I learned, is a New Yorker instinct. No one here waits on the sidewalk—you walk as close to the approaching cars as possible. They might be busy, but you’re busier. And they’ll never hit you. Because they’ll go to jail. Sure, you might die in the process, but there’s also consequences for them. It’s a kind of nihilistic revenge that would only be fulfilling in a place like this.