A Barbie Dream House for Trustafarians – A Non-Dairy Argument – Some Medical Instruction – A Book to Someday Write – A Rescue from Near-Death! – A Text Message

Darshan had been feeling really blocked since the death of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and had insisted on making her birthday party a wake for him as well. So alongside gluten-free carrot cake and kombucha-vodka cocktails, there was copious incense and, every hour or two, someone from her ashtanga class would try to lead the party in a chant of "lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu."

Her Bushwick loft was huge and decorated with a crucial mix of novelty items and nice antiques. The effect was like a Barbie Dream House for trustafarians, with a flokati rug, a massive tufted couch, a potted fig tree, and a sleigh bed with a quilt made of old band t-shirts. It was, in fact, about to be shot for The Selby next week.

It was a successful party. Darsh's yoga friends and her militant vegan friends were lost in a pretty intense conversation about whether Salted Caramel Pecan or Spelt Red Velvet Cupcake was the best flavor of nondairy ice cream at Stogo. Darsh's former colleagues from her brief career as an entertainment editor at a long-defunct teen magazine were trying to one-up each other over who had been laid off by the most media outlets. Sunny, who had just lost her job as fashion editor at an online magazine for autistic children just the day before, making it four layoffs in three years, won. The group traded cell numbers and vowed that they were going to start selling stuff at Beacon's Closet instead of working.

By midnight, the nag champa was making Nicole's asthma act up. She sat on the faded screenprinted face of Kate Bush on Darshan's t-shirt quilt and wheezed, drank shots of whiskey and wheatgrass that were offered to her, and talked to people about the cleanses she wanted to start. But she was distracted. Elias hadn't shown up.

"So you take this tonic, right?" A girl with pink hair and an ikat print dress was explaining about a cold remedy she swore by. "It's totally gross-it has venus fly trap in it. Oh my God, seriously. I would not lie to you about that." Nicole started looking around the room, trying to remember where she had left her tote bag and cardigan, wondering if it was too early to leave.

She felt a tap on her back. "Hey, you." It was Elias. Did he still not know her name? She decided it didn't matter-he looked really good in beige Levi's cords and a flannel shirt.

"Hi. This is... Uh, we were talking about cold remedies." Nicole figured, perhaps not unjustly, that she had about two minutes to engage her crush in conversation before he wandered off to talk to someone else. "There's a roof!" She sounded way too animated. She tried to sound more nonchalant. "I mean, Darsh told me she has pot plants on the roof or something."

Nicole and Elias climbed a narrow set of stairs to the roof, where she pointed out the pot plants and talked about how she once wanted to write a book about how drug cartels were taking over the hippie marijuana farms in Northern California. They admired the view of the Empire State Building and tried to see if they could spot any stars in the sky. They couldn't.

"I finally got my fireplace to work. I know it's summer, but at least it's still cold," Elias said.

"Are you roasting s'mores? Do you have a bearskin rug and are you making sweet, sweet love on it all the time now?" Nicole could feel herself blushing in the dark and immediately regretted her joke.

"No, but maybe I should be," he said. They talked about how he was already sick of the pretzels at Café Pedlar and why he quit Facebook in 2005. "It's just not organic, you know?"

"Totally," said Nicole, nodding her head. Either the pollen or the pollution made her start coughing, which made her wheeze and begin to gasp for air. She was about to have a full-on asthma attack. She managed to get out a few words. "I... gotta go find... my inhaler."

"Let me find it. Where is it?"

"It's in a... bag with the... K Records... logo."

A couple minutes later, Elias was back with her bag. She smiled, removed the crocheted inhaler cozy she had bought on Etsy, and took a hit of Proventil. She was disappointed at the markedly not-sexy turn the night had taken and immediately felt annoyed at herself for acting so chick lit about a boy tonight. "I should probably go home," she said, promising herself she would atone for such heteronormative behavior by reading Gender Trouble before she went to bed.

She waved goodbye to Elias, went downstairs, kissed Darshan goodbye, called Northside, and checked her email while she waited for the car service to show up. On the car ride home, as she was listening to Le Tigre and trying to forget about men, she felt her phone vibrate. She pulled it out. It was a text from a strange number.

"It's Elias," the text read. "Did you have fun at the party tonight? You were my favorite part."



Part One: Bummed Out In Brooklyn
Part Two: A Tale of Two Weddings
Part Three: An Emergency Visit to the Holistic Vet

Marisa Meltzer lives in Brooklyn. Her next book, "Girl Power," will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in February.