Chapter 44: Summer
1712 Words
Summer without Prisca had its own texture.
Not empty — full, in its own way. But differently shaped. The way a familiar room feels different when one significant piece of furniture has been moved. The room is still the room. The furniture still exists. The shape is just temporarily altered.
I adjusted to the shape.
---
The first week she texted daily.
Not constantly — neither of us was the constant-contact kind. But daily, the way she had maintained everything important across the year. A line about Jerome's latest session. A photograph of the Bushwick courtyard in the morning light. A question about the book. A single sentence about something she had seen on the subway that had made her think.
I texted back in kind.
The garden. The notebook. A photograph of the map with its thirty marks.
On the fifth day she sent a voice message — unusual for her, she preferred text — and I played it sitting at my desk in the evening.
Her voice in the apartment, coming from the phone speaker.
She was describing a moment in Jerome's studio. He had been working for three hours without stopping, completely inside the painting, and she had held the camera so still her arms had ached and she had not moved because the moment required it.
*And then he stopped,* she said in the recording. *And looked at the painting. And said — there it is. Just like that. There it is.* A pause in the recording. *Daniel, I've been waiting all year to be in a room when someone says that about something they've made. And today I was there.*
I played it twice.
Then I sent back a single line.
*You were there because you were willing to hold still long enough.*
Her reply came immediately.
*Same as you,* she said. *With the map. With the marks. With everything.*
---
Peter was in Boston for the summer.
Sophie had gone home to Seattle for June but was returning in July for a research internship at Massachusetts General, which Peter had received with the specific expression of someone who had thought he would miss her more than he was comfortable admitting and was relieved to have the absence shortened.
He appeared at my apartment on a Monday in the second week of June with the paper bag from Forsyth Street and the expression of a man who had been thinking about something and wanted to think about it out loud.
We sat at my desk and ate and he told me about Martinez's office hours.
He had gone. First week of summer. Told Martinez he was interested in developing the belonging problem work further. Martinez had listened with the focused attention of someone who had written a grade comment specifically to produce this conversation.
"He said there's a summer research fellowship," Peter said. "Undergrad research assistant position attached to his lab. The project is on community resilience in post-industrial neighborhoods."
I looked at him.
"Cleary Hill adjacent," I said.
"Directly relevant," he said. "I applied Thursday." He paused. "Martinez said the paper was strong enough that the application was a formality." Another pause. "He said that, Daniel. A formality."
"Because it's true."
Peter looked at the table. "I spent two and a half years at Harlow being the funny one," he said. "The social one. The one who made everyone comfortable." He paused. "I didn't know I was doing it at the cost of the other thing."
"Sophie knew," I said.
"Sophie knew from the second conversation," he said. "She told me she had filed it away and waited to see if I would find it myself or need pointing to." He paused. "She waited four months before she pointed."
"She was patient."
"She's the most patient demanding person I've ever met," he said. "Which sounds like a contradiction."
"It's not," I said. "It means she holds you to what you're capable of without rushing you toward it."
He looked at me.
"That's what Prisca does for you," he said.
I thought about it.
"Yes," I said. "Exactly that."
---
Abdullahi was in New Jersey for June.
We corresponded by text — the journal review was ongoing, no news yet, which was expected. He was working on a new paper, he said, building from the symposium piece in a direction the economics faculty respondent's questions had suggested.
He was also, apparently, having dinner with the faculty respondent.
He mentioned this in passing in a text about the new paper and then moved on as though it were unremarkable.
I called him immediately.
"Abdullahi."
"Yes."
"You mentioned having dinner with the faculty respondent."
"Professor Nakamura," he said. "She wanted to discuss the paper further."
"Over dinner."
"Yes."
"Is this a professional dinner?"
A pause.
"The conversation was professional," he said.
"Abdullahi."
Another pause. "She is interesting," he said. Carefully.
"How interesting?"
"Very," he said. After a moment.
I smiled at the phone.
"Tell me when there is something to tell," I said.
"There is nothing to tell," he said.
"Tell me when there is," I said.
He hung up.
---
Dora was in Boston for a pre-law internship at a firm downtown.
She texted the group chat with updates that were half professional achievement and half social commentary on the firm's culture.
*The senior partners do not know what a community land trust is,* she wrote one Thursday. *I explained it. They seemed interested. Or confused. Hard to tell.*
Peter replied: *Both probably.*
Abdullahi replied: *Prepare a one-page summary. Make it dense. They will respect density.*
Dora replied: *Abdullahi Hassan you are the only person I will take instructions from without questioning them.*
Abdullahi did not reply to this.
---
The book reached eighty pages in the second week of July.
Prisca had been in New York for three weeks. She had been to Jerome's studio four times and Clara's twice and had finally, after two months of preliminary visits, filmed Thomas properly.
She told me about the Thomas session on a Thursday evening phone call.
He had been writing — the actual writing, the book moving in real time — and she had been in the corner of the room with the camera and he had looked up at one point and said:
*You can move closer.*
She had moved closer.
And he had gone back to writing.
*He trusted me enough to let me see the actual work,* she said. *Not the talking about it. The doing of it.*
"What did it look like?" I said.
*Like watching someone be completely themselves,* she said. *No performance. Just — a person and the thing they make and the space between those two things where the truth lives.*
I thought about Raymond in the mirror.
About Gloria on the steps.
About Prisca herself, holding the camera still while Jerome found the painting.
"You're describing your whole year," I said.
*I know,* she said. *I'm realizing everything I filmed was the same thing in different rooms.*
"What thing?"
*People being willing to be exactly what they are.*
---
The garden on Morrison Street was growing.
I went on Wednesday evenings now — not for meetings, the summer schedule was lighter, but because the garden needed tending and because Gloria was always there on Wednesday evenings and the conversation across the raised beds had become its own rhythm.
She asked about Prisca every week.
I gave the same honest answer every week. She's in New York. She's making the film. She's good.
Gloria listened and then returned to the weeding with the satisfied expression of someone whose assessment had been confirmed.
One Wednesday in late July she straightened from the raised bed and looked at me.
"You're writing about us," she said.
Not accusatory. Just noting.
"Yes," I said.
"The book." She had heard about it through Raymond, who had heard about it through my mention of it at a meeting. Information moved through the neighborhood association with the efficiency of long familiarity.
"The book," I confirmed.
"Will we know it's us?"
I thought about it honestly.
"Anyone who has been here will recognize it," I said. "The names are changed but the truth isn't."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Good," she said. "The truth is what we have." She bent back to the weeding. "Make sure you get it right."
"I'm trying."
"Don't try," she said. "Do. The trying is over."
The same words Dora had said to Prisca.
Different mouth, same truth.
---
August arrived.
Prisca had been in New York for five weeks.
We had found our rhythm across the distance — the daily texts, the twice-weekly calls, the fortnightly map photographs she had as her phone wallpaper.
She called one Sunday afternoon with the particular quality of someone who had something significant to say.
"Voss showed me the rough assembly," she said.
"Of the full documentary?"
"The first forty minutes. Jerome and Clara mainly — Thomas's footage is still being processed." She paused. "She showed me my sections specifically. The stuff I shot."
"And?"
A pause.
"She said — *this is what I hired you for. This is exactly it.*"
I held the phone.
"Prisca."
"She said she wants me back next summer," she said. "Full project. The completed film. Post-production involvement." She paused. "She said she wants me on the film until it's finished."
"When does it finish?"
"The filming ends in November. Post-production through next spring. Festival submissions next fall." She paused. "She said my name will be on the film. Associate producer. Permanent credit."
The summer afternoon moved around me.
"You're going to have your name on a Rachel Voss documentary," I said.
"Yes," she said quietly. "I am."
---
I looked at the map after the call.
Thirty marks.
I thought about the beginning of the year. September. The registrar's hall. The girl by the window thinking about Portland.
I thought about all the marks between that moment and this one.
I picked up the pencil.
Added one.
My desk. The Sunday afternoon phone call. August.
Thirty-one.
Then I opened the notebook.
Eighty-seven pages.
Wrote for two hours without stopping.
Outside Boston moved through its summer evening.
Five weeks until September.
One year already behind.
Everything that mattered — still ahead.
- Writer
