A Special Place for Women by Laura Hankin

Author:Laura Hankin [Hankin, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781984806260
Google: w8L3DwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1984806262
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2021-05-10T23:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-THREE

I went to a coffee shop and wrote like a fiend. A poisonous side of me poured out, but it was righteous poison. How freeing it felt to be vicious in the name of justice. This man had wormed his way into power by virtue of nothing but his membership in the old boys’ club and now he was using that ill-deserved power to ruin the lives of people who’d worked harder than he ever had. He needed to be destroyed. I barely lifted my fingers from the keyboard the entire time, my coffee growing cold beside me as I crafted something that could work as either an article or a very in-depth Twitter thread. I wrote my concluding sentence. Only then did I feel how desperately I needed to pee. When I stood up to do so, my hip hurt from hours of sitting in the same position.

Stephen King says that, after finishing a draft of a novel, you should put it in a drawer for six weeks before coming back to reread so that you can see it clearly. I left what I had written on my computer for the time it took me to go to the bathroom (roughly three minutes), then read it over and decided I was fucking in love with it.

I texted Margot. Hey, I finished writing that thing. I added an exclamation point, then a biceps curl emoji, then deleted them both. “Just send the stupid text,” I muttered under my breath, and did so.

Ten seconds later, my phone rang. “You’re quick,” Margot said. “Can you bring your computer and meet me in an hour?”

“Sure. Yeah, absolutely. At the clubhouse?”

“No, just us,” she said, and gave me an apartment address on the Upper West Side instead. Funny that she lived there. That neighborhood seemed much more Caroline than Margot. It was too normal, too full of Juice Generations and The Gap. Unless . . .

“We’re not breaking and entering again, are we?” I asked.

“No,” she said, and laughed.

A few subway transfers and one elevator ride later, I knocked on a door. Margot answered with a glass of red wine in her hand, her feet bare, wearing no makeup except for a slash of bright scarlet lipstick. I hadn’t imagined Margot to be messy, per se, but I had thought her place would be cluttered, full of love letters and half-finished bottles of perfume. Like a Parisian garret, except huge and expensive. Instead, this living room was tastefully furnished, with everything put away in its place and what looked like Real Art framed on the walls. Through a large window, the trees of Central Park swayed, their leaves starting to turn orange and gold.

“Please, go ahead, sit,” she said, pointing to a brown leather armchair, so I did. I expected her to sit on one of the multiple other chair or couch options, but instead, she sprawled on the rug, lying on her stomach and cupping her head in her hands, her dress fanning out on the ground around her.

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