by Zaina Arafat
“Are you sure you didn’t sleep with her?” I ask. “Because the thing is, you didn’t answer when I called this morning at ten, and I didn’t hear back from you until twelve thirty.”
“I was at breakfast!”
“For two and a half hours?”
“If I slept with her, why would I even mention that I kissed her?”
In our hotel room that evening, Matías is in the shower and I’m sitting on the bed with my computer, looking up flights to Buenos Aires. “It’s amazing to be in a vibrant place together,” Matías said that afternoon as we walked through Washington Square Park. “Now I can’t wait to take you to Argentina. Choose the dates, I’ll buy you a ticket.”
I smiled. “I’ve never been.”
“Believe me,” he said, “Once you’re there, you won’t want to come back.”
As I’m sorting through flights I decide to check my email. There’s one from my mother, which makes me literally gasp. We haven’t spoken in nearly six months. “Habibti,” she’s written, “I’m in Amman with Teta. We wish you were here with us.”
I feel an ache of desperately wanting to be there with them before my mind begins conjuring up images of the last time we saw each other, on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge after she’d left the restaurant mid-dinner. “I miss you so, so much.”
Her words travel past my head, down my throat, and land on my stomach. They stay there, effortlessly imposing their weight.
I hear Matías push back the shower curtain and pull a towel off the rack. He steps out of the bathroom. “My mother emailed me,” I tell him. He knows I don’t speak with her, but nothing beyond that.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I answer, shutting my laptop and placing it on the nightstand. He climbs onto the bed and lets his towel fall to the floor. He grabs me by my shoulders and props me up against the headboard, pulling the rubber band out of my hair. He pushes himself inside me, and I yell, “Stop!”
He jumps back. “Was that too much?”
“No.” I break down into tears and tell him about her. I tell him about the summer, about Healing Internal Trauma, about grief letters. “I didn’t want you to know any of this,” I say.
He wraps his arms around me. “I wish you’d told me about your mother sooner,” he says as I press my body against him. “Maybe you can think of me as someone who can fill that role for you. I have this urge to protect you. You’re my girlfriend, but I also think of you like a daughter.”
We planned to go to dinner that night in Nolita, but he suggests we stay in and order takeout. We pick up sushi and eat in bed while watching When Harry Met Sally on TV. By the end I can barely keep my eyes open. He turns off the television, and half awake, we make love. “I love you,” I whisper. “I really do.”
He comes, collapses, and I fall asleep.
•
As soon as we get back from New York I call Renata, who’s now in her first year of residency at Georgetown and just coming off an overnight rotation. I catch her while she’s driving home. I tell her about his kiss with Claire, the talk of pregnancy, saying “I love you.” He sounds like such a cliché, she says, he obviously just wants to mess around.
“I feel like I need him,” I tell her. “I can’t stand being away from him for even an hour.”
“You don’t need him,” Renata says. She then yells “asshole,” presumably at another driver who’s cut her off. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
As a first-year dermatology resident and newly engaged—Thomas flew them both to his family’s villa in Italy and proposed—Renata has notably less time and patience for anything that isn’t work- or wedding-related. “Clearly you don’t trust him,” she tells me. Her response isn’t harsh so much as efficient; our conversations are usually curtailed by her sleep deprivation and need to maximize time between shifts for rest. I’ve memorized the exact amount of time it takes her to drive home from the hospital, and I know that we now have only two minutes before she turns onto her street. “What you need is to break up.”
I’m immediately annoyed—as if it were that easy. She of all people should know! “Okay,” I say, to allow a tidy ending to the call.
Twenty-five seconds until she pulls into her driveway. “By the way,” she says, and I brace myself, knowing she’s about to segue into wedding logistics. We are operating in accordance with a universal law dictating that whoever marries first can permissibly subject the other to indentured servitude vis-à-vis maid of honor duties, and expect enthusiastic, unfaltering compliance in return. “Do you think you could take a look at the bridesmaid dress options I sent?”
“Of course,” I say. I hear her car door open then shut. “Sleep well.”
I rush to get dressed for Matías’s reading. I arrive to find people clumped around the room, holding plastic cups of pale white wine. I feel a sudden social anxiety set in, not wanting to be seen as I scan the room for him. He spots me before I do, touching his hand to my arm and startling me. “Hey,” he says, “is something wrong?” When I am upset it shows all over my face. I look at my watch; his reading starts in five minutes. I don’t want to get into things until after, but he keeps insisting.
“Are you playing me?” I ask. “I mean, we both know you’re leaving soon,” I tell him. “Is this just une affaire de cul?” A French expression he taught me.
“If so, then I’d have to be the worst womanizer around.” He laughs, pressing his hand into the dip of my back. “I mean, think about it, would I take you to New York? Would I invite you to Buenos Aires, where sex is plentiful? Would I tell you that I want to have a baby with you?”
I don’t know. Would he? And why, when we’re already sleeping together? Why bother with all the extra gestures?
After the reading I go backstage to congratulate him, and he is holding roses. “Who gave you those?” I ask. He seems uncomfortable, and he turns to greet someone without answering me. I try not to overspeculate. I assume the roses are normal protocol for all readers. “I need to go to the hotel to change,” he says, “but how about we meet for dinner? Maybe that place with the martinis you’ve been talking about?”
We get drunk that night at the restaurant. He turns to the table next to ours and asks, “Isn’t my girlfriend cute?” I tell him to do his François Mitterrand imitation—“Oui, j’ai un enfant naturel, et alors?” I laugh and he does it again. By the time we leave I’m so drunk that I can barely walk, so he carries me home on his back. We stay in bed until late the next day, getting up only to eat and pee.
At around five in the afternoon, we decide to go for a walk along the river that runs alongside campus. “I keep wondering what I’m doing with my life,” he says. “What my purpose is. I guess it’s to write, but that’s hard to accept when I haven’t published a book in years.”
“You’re also a father,” I remind him. “Someone’s life depends on you.”
We stop to share a cigarette under a tree. We talk about our imagined life together in Argentina. “Would you be interested in teaching?” he asks. “Because I could get you a job lecturing at the American university. You could take the spring and try it. Try living with me?”
“Maybe,” I say. “Too bad I’ve been studying French all these years.” He smiles, then leans forward and kisses me. After a while he stands and helps me up off of the ground. As we continue walking, we sing. Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez. It’s getting dark and the university crew rows by. “What are you thinking about right now?” he asks.
“The little red lights on the boats,” I answer.
“Me too!” he says. “They’re like clown noses, Matisse red, alarming but familiar.”
“I never come back this way,” I tell him.
“Good to know. Then I can bring my other girlfriend here.”
I nudge him playfully, and he takes my hand. “Would you think I was a jerk if I went back to my room tonight, to write?”
“Of course not,” I say. “We don
’t have to spend every night together.”
•
Several evenings later Matías comes over. He ties me to the fridge using my bra, arms behind my back, skin drawn tight across my chest. For weeks now, he’s been saying that he wants to tie me up, “and have my way with you,” he’d whisper in my ear while pressing himself against my hip bone.
The next morning I wake up to the sound of the toilet flushing; he comes out of the bathroom and slides back into bed, shivering. I wrap blanketed arms around him and pull him close, and I fall back asleep. The second time I wake up, he is gone—he’s spending the weekend in Chicago with the other writers-in-residence—and I am hugging a pillow that smells like him.
I go to make coffee in the kitchen, where yesterday’s clothes have been folded neatly and placed on a chair. I gather them and carry them to my room, along with my laptop. I’m planning to spend the weekend without Matías catching up on my own writing. As I’m sitting in bed checking email my phone buzzes with a text from a classmate who volunteered to show the visiting writers around Chicago. Sorry to ask, but do you have any knowledge of Matías’s whereabouts? He’s not on the bus with everyone else.
I feel my cheeks tingle with a flush of blood. I’ve been trying to keep our relationship a secret—unsurprisingly, dating the visiting writers is highly discouraged—and I clearly haven’t succeeded. Next comes concern. I imagine him leaving my apartment and getting hit by a car. He still doesn’t have a cell phone, just the phone in his hotel room, which he never answers. I think back to a recent conversation. “Claire will also be in Chicago this weekend,” he told me, “and we’ll all probably be spending time together. I wanted to let you know, and if it bothers you, I won’t go.”
“No, it doesn’t bother me,” I responded, which was true. I no longer felt threatened by their tequila-infused kiss. “I’ve decided to trust you, remember?”
“Good, because you have nothing to worry about. Though I’m beginning to suspect that Claire’s interested in more than just my work.”
“Well, kissing her might’ve led her on a bit, Matías.”
Annoyed, I respond to my coworker’s text, Maybe he got a ride with Claire?
In class that afternoon, my mind wanders to the night before. I took part in a reading, and afterward everyone went to a bar. I had eagerly signed up, knowing I’ve been far less focused on both writing and getting to know my cohort than I should be. So far, almost all my attention has been devoted to Matías, and to how to act around him whenever we were together in public. “Want to go for a walk first?” Matías asked. He led me away from downtown, in the direction of my apartment.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“The Midwestern landscape is almost obscenely demure,” he said, diverting the question. “But there’s something oddly thrilling about it.” Soon we were standing in front of my building. “Why don’t we just stay in tonight?” he suggested.
I was disappointed. I wanted to go out with the others after the reading, my first in this town. But we were already back at my place. Besides, it was always awkward to be in a group setting together. I never knew how to interact with Matías around other people, how to pretend to be “just friends” without seeming unnaturally detached. “Okay,” I said.
“Great, I’m going to the hotel to pack for Chicago. I’ll be back in an hour.”
My mind now crackles with questions. What did he do in that hour he was gone last night? Why didn’t he want to go to the bar? Why hasn’t he called since leaving? Why wasn’t he on the train with everyone else?
By Saturday morning I still haven’t heard from him. I call Renata and it goes straight to her voice mail, meaning she’s either working a weekend shift or asleep. I then email Matías. “I need to talk to you. Call me as soon as you get this. I hate that you don’t have a cell phone.”
My head spins with images of him and Claire gallivanting around Chicago. Feeding each other bites off small plates in restaurants. Having hotel shower sex. Him inviting her to Buenos Aires, her tossing her head back in delight before accepting. Later they’ll laugh at the thought of me, how cute I was to believe that I was anything more than a fling.
The spinning is out of control and I know it would help to get to the nearest Twelve Step meeting—any kind. “It’s all the same,” Richard said on my first day at the Ledge, and by now I understand what he meant. But instead of looking up meetings, I scroll through my phone to find the number of a Lebanese med student I met at a a coffee shop last week. I overheard him speaking in Arabic over the phone, which led to a conversation and him giving me his number. I send him a message: Any plans tonight?
•
That evening, Matías finally calls. “I got your email,” he says. “What’s wrong?”
“Where are you?”
“In Chicago, where do you think I am?”
I tell him about the text from my coworker.
“I missed the train and got a ride in Claire’s car with three of her friends,” he says. “You’re not mad at me for that, are you?”
“I don’t know, Matías. It seems like it’s always something. Either you kissed her, or she’s calling at midnight to ask a question, or, oops! You missed the train and got stuck together!”
“It’s funny that you’re mad at me,” he says, “because I’m here wishing I hadn’t come on this trip. I’m about to take a train home right now.”
I roll my eyes. “You don’t need to be dramatic. Just tell me, are you cheating on me?”
“Of course I’m not, are you being serious?!” he asks, sounding incredulous. “I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”
“Who are you rooming with at the hotel?”
“Oh, the Swedish guy. I barely even notice him. He hasn’t spent a single moment in the room. He’s such a playboy.”
No part of me likes his answer. “What are you doing tonight?” he asks.
A Lebanese doctor is taking me to the movies. “Writing,” I tell him.
“Can I call you in the morning?”
“Yes,” I say. “Please do.”
The doctor picks me up at nine. He’s wearing a tie and seems excited to see me. “I was hoping you’d call,” he says, “I wasn’t sure if you would.” I sense I’m supposed to say something to confirm this, but instead I just smile and stare at the road ahead. All I can think about during the movie is Matías, how much I’d rather be anywhere with him. I almost yell his name in the theater. Afterward, the doctor drives me back home, and I practically jump out of the car and run inside. I flip open my laptop and sign into my email. “I just want to tell you,” I write to Matías, furiously and guiltily, “that I love you.”
By Sunday at noon he still hasn’t called. At one thirty he responds to my email. “I love you, too. I question whether I was ever happy before we met, if I even knew what happiness was.”
I don’t want his overblown professions of undying love. I want a phone call. I write back, “When will you be home? I’d like to see you.” And I wait for a response.
I try to find things to do. I rearrange my bookshelf. I rewash all the dishes in the cabinet, then go through my clothes and make piles for Goodwill. By the time I’ve moved from the closet to the dresser he’s responded: “Me and some of the other writers decided to stay in Chicago until Monday to see The Winter’s Tale at the Shakespeare Theater. It’s supposed to be a fabulous production. I thought maybe you could catch a train up here to meet us. If not I’ll come over the second I’m back. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
Right then, I know. All the unnecessary exposition, the time between emails. As if to confirm my suspicions Matías calls seven times that night. I don’t pick up his first call. He leaves two messages. The first is breezy; the second, panicked. “Is everything okay? Why aren’t you answering? I’m starting to worry.”
This is what fear of getting caught looks like. Fear of losing. I know. I’ve seen it before.
“Hopefully you’ll learn you can’t treat p
eople with such disregard.” My mind summons the words from Anna’s email. “Even yourself.”
I think back to those terrible days in the desert after she found out. All along I knew what I was doing was wrong, that I was dangerously close to a precipice. But still, I need to fall in order to stop. Beyond the shock of getting caught was the realization that I had hurt someone, and badly. I’d lied for so long, and not just to Anna. But the idea of losing her because of something I’d done, a series of mistakes, the thought of being alone, was all too much to bear.
Matías has checked his email on my laptop, and I try logging into his account. I type “M” into the user-name field. His handle pops up, but the password isn’t saved. I make several incorrect guesses before closing the browser and forcefully shutting the screen.
On Monday morning, I answer a call from an unknown number. “What the hell is going on?” Matías asks frantically.
I hang up and he keeps calling back. He sends me a text message: I bought a cell phone, call me. Please. He calls eighteen times throughout the rest of the day. Each time I hit “ignore,” I feel momentary doubt—what if I’m wrong, and punishing him unnecessarily? I put my phone away, unable to watch as the calls accrue.
That evening I’m leaving my apartment and I run into him right outside. He’s walking fast, lighting a cigarette, eyes pregnant with fury. He stops when he sees me. “I was just on my way up to your place. Are you ignoring me?”
“Obviously. There’s nothing to say, Matías, I know you’re sleeping with Claire.”
“I’m not!” he protests, grabbing my arm and squeezing it. “Call her now, she’ll tell you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I was being evasive this weekend, yes. But Claire has nothing to do with it.” He sighs, then stares at the ground before making eye contact again. “It’s my wife. She wants to get back together, and I needed time to think about it, for my son’s sake.”
Now I feel embarrassed. I feel low. “If that’s true,” I say, “then of course you should save your marriage.”