Marigold’s sentences are running upstream, or against the current, what else would you call it they’re getting in the way? They’re taking me, the reader, out of the book. But, it’s easy taking a break from your own brain to visit Marigold’s, rather than forming your own sentences. Easier still to critique her writing. Her energy is right, but she could use half as many words. You feel a sisterhood at this thought, not that Marigold is gonna meet you half way or anything. You’re reading her book. She doesn’t know anything about you. But even the editor in you is met in her sentences, you feel seen in her writing. After all, her book is in your hand, which means it’s been passed around a lot, it’s already made its way. Maybe there’s a sisterhood there too, as you’ve been passed around a lot, haha, but your work has not, less-haha. Many people have already deemed that these in-the-way sentences of Marigold are perfectly fine, best-seller fine, gonna be a movie fine. And maybe you need to show a little more to get the goddamn ideas across.

Should you go back to getting in your own way? You remember a night out on the town at a free vodka tasting for an event marketer. You were the test demographic. You really felt like you’d made it. You were paired with a photographer, a woman whose wardrobe you liked, and when seated opposite her, in the cabin-like interior of a Scottish hunting-themed bar in the west village, you were struck with stalking thoughts. You imagined a violent night of passion, followed by a morning where you filled whatever canvas bags she had lying about with her own clothes.

Before you even met the photographer you had been paired, she was a friend of your friend, the same friend representing this new vodka client for her job, and both of you were essentially hired to be compatible for the evening: two women of equal intellect, plus a night of free booze. At the very least, it was a free blind date, that featured not just a willingness amongst the target demos, but a certain prerequisite wont for getting fucked up. Everyone had to have checked the reckless box on the survey before being omitted to the group. The reckless box was next to the phrase, up for anything.

One challenge during the vodka tastaway day was to make an original recipe with five items from one bodega across the street from the second of the four bars you’d pummel in and out of that day. This was during the sheen-gloss, still attentive, late afternoon vibes where you started, before the fully glossed and sauced send-off dinner. For the challenge, the photographer and you ditched half the group to search the produce. “The tomatillos are ripe,” is what she said, this woman whose name was Mabel, signaling that yes, she and you were in a dance, and yes, the tomatillos being ripe could be applied to her breasts, her thighs, your thighs, your breasts, because of the way she didn’t blink, the way her thin fingers pinched the green tomatoes and her eyebrows made inquisitive but serious peeks and you took in the bone structure that upheld those cheeks. And you said, what about a green bloody mary, a Verde Mary, and Mabel was already nodding, like maybe that’s what she was gonna suggest, and if it wasn’t it didn’t matter, because now the idea was fused between the two of you by her prompt and your proclamation.

The characters in Marigold’s book aren’t going to get together, it’s a platonic story, a whole novel about love that doesn’t end, start, or get interrupted by sex. But, the leads become a sort of yin and yang to each other. Anytime they aren’t tethered they become unhinged. They only operate at their most efficient when together. They end up, like the two of you started, at a drunken party. But theirs ends with angry words spoken in a finite way and the book has to jump five years for them to reasonably come back together. You made it to a fifth bar that night, after the four freebies. You had to pause on 7th Ave to look at the low-hanging moon, a crescent cutting out of the hazy sky, competing with green traffic lights in your peripheries. You with the photographer, already getting handsy, and your mutual friend in tow, all of you laughing your asses off because this was the best date of your life, and it was by someone else’s design, sponsored by vodka, and unlimited in scope. The cab ride home was entirely tongue in cheek.

What happened when you entered her home after the vodka tasting is that she put on the exact album you used to romance women of equal sizes and shapes to the photographer, often auburn of hair, and usually just as fond of leather and punk. She put on this record and you saw yourself. You watched yourself approach with the confidence that this record gave you, you watched yourself crawl up to you and remove your scarf from your neck and wrap it around her own, like she was finishing all your sentences. And you laughed, and almost spoiled the mood, but then you turned serious, and said, this is my record. She descended towards you, and the pleasant drunken darkness of two strangers put you at peace in the embrace of these familiar moves, two creatures perfectly fit for each other’s target demo.

You and Mabel only went on one other date. And since the first one was fireworks, the next one could hardly keep up. Mabel’s story was practiced, not new, and it didn’t matter if you rewrote the whole thing to be daring, you were gonna keep playing the same record too, except now, you might have to rethink it, because suddenly it was clear, in the way you want it to be with Marigold’s book, that you’re always going to be in your own way. And anyway, you didn’t leave victoriously with a bag of her clothes, you lost a scarf that you loved for a night of getting fucked by yourself, though Mabel was better looking, which made you envy her and the fact that any lady she met down the line would be complimenting your scarf on her long neck, and her music cues as they lied down in a bed where you once slept.