Underwater New York

The New Main Stream by Nicole Haroutunian

An hour later, we’re no closer to the tunnel. In our rental car, we’re just two in a school of a thousand fish skimming the edge of the island. Go with the flow, we keep saying to each other. We’re just going with the flow.

Leaving the house, we were dressed in our baby-shower-best: Bellie in white, sweet and wholesome, me in blue, calm as the ocean. But now, lurching stop-start-stop, Bellie’s emitting high-pitched groans, hands cupping her big, round stomach—“I’m a beached whale,” she moans—and I’m thrashing around, fanning at my armpits, flapping my elbows like fins, sweat carving rivers through the city-silt settling on my skin.

We eek forward a half-block then come to a halt. Bellie cracks a can of lemon-lime soda, takes a sip and passes it to me. I dribble it down the length of my arm; it’s warm enough not to feel good at all. I blot the spots with an old tissue and bits of fluff stick to my flesh. “You really want to introduce me as the mother of your child?” I ask.

“Everyone at the shower knows you plenty well,” she says. “You need no introduction.”

Bellie and I have been roommates going on fifteen years. We get along better with each other than with anyone else; people have always made the mistake that we’re a couple and this whole baby thing won’t help matters. The truth, though, is that we both like men—we like to sleep with them, I mean. In fact, that’s where the whole baby thing came from—no funny business, just an old-fashioned slip-up with Bellie and this guy she used to bring by.

What made this time different from the one or two others, when it was either Bellie or me in a bit of a snafu, was the fact that we’re getting older—old enough that the thought of keeping the baby actually stuck and started growing like the little embryo itself, getting more complicated by the day.

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Tags: Current, Hudson River, New Main Stream, Nicole Haroutunian