I slouch up the shallow stairs in the Student Centre on my way to the office. She’s probably still upset with me, so I word my text carefully. “I don’t suppose I could hang out with you tonight?” Apostrophe, capital I, and question mark—I’m such a dork. But as I drop my backpack on the couch and shrug off my trenchcoat, I hear the opening five seconds of Liszt’s Transcendental Étude no. 10 and I check the new text: “Yes!” She even put an exclamation mark. Nice. We’re both dorks.
When I’m done my work I pick up my pack, push clumsily out the door, and cut through the construction-paper-black night to her rez. I recognize it from when I came by to give her a teddy bear and three CDs of Dvořák’s symphonic poems. It’s like a little house, with a living room on the ground floor where she says she sits in the armchair and pulls the cushions up around her so that it feels like a hug. I don’t have to knock for the door to open, spilling light like water and revealing her. She stands with a grin and a mug of tea for me, glasses around her wide eyes and hair tied back. She looks unsettlingly like my cousin.
We find the darkest corner of the living room, lay cushions on the carpet, and open up her MacBook to watch The Fall. The screen faintly illuminates us in polychrome. I glimpse at her; she’s holding the teddy bear close to her chest. I feel timid, but when she feels for my fingers it’s clear she’s not upset after all.
On the screen Beethoven’s seventh plays over a picture of a train crossing a bridge in the daylight. I can never get my head around watching day scenes at night. Soon a man in a hospital asks an adorable little Spanish girl if she wants to hear a story. From time to time I glance at the girl holding my hand.
Before long she shifts over to lean on me. Oops, bad timing—the tea has run through my system—I have to get up. I stutter and apologize. “Aw,” she sighs as I step into the kitchen light and gradually materialize from my socks up to my face. “You interrupted the best part. It always makes me cry.”
I pause, hoping I have a clever reply. I don’t. I continue upstairs.
After I tiptoe back to my spot, we start the scene over. Actually, the scene is moving. I forget where I am for a minute, until she turns to face me in the glow, removes her glasses, and whispers, “It still got me.”
I face her, and I realize I don’t and probably never will know what to say to a girl with water coming out of her eye sockets. “Aw,” I say. Eventually she faces the screen again.
Just when I begin to doubt that tonight was a good idea, the movie ends. She closes the laptop and pushes it away with her foot before lying face up on the cushion beside me. In my head, the question of whether ours really is a romantic relationship keeps returning, only for the answer-finding algorithm to fail again and again. I stretch out a hand and gently play with her hair. She smiles.
“I want—so much—to kiss you,” I say, “but I won’t,” I finish stupidly.
She hums two notes, then frowns. “Why do you want to?”
We are friends of silence, introverts both. We understand the time it takes to find answers—and if you do find you have an instant answer, dismiss it as bullshit. I retreat into self-dialogue. It’s not that I’m taking it too seriously, I think. I’m not saying it’s morally wrong to be with her like this. It’s just that it seems like it should be a major thing for an eighteen-year-old girl to say, “I know who I’ll marry.” And no, it’s not me. But if two people are lonely…?
I let my lungs collapse slowly, imagine the situation from her perspective. I try to justify having kissed me last Tuesday, up on the roof. Having said, “Je t’aime.” I can’t. What the hell, Luke, I accuse myself. This is just a good thing. Why do you have to make everything so complicated? This isn’t what adults do.
Besides, complicated is usually wrong. I know she’d tell this story differently from start to finish.
My answer to her question slips free from my lips in three words.
I put the same lips to her forehead. She pulls me down close and does the same.
My phone loudly vibrates against the table.
I hesitate a second. “Walk with me to be picked up?” I say, hoping to buy another minute with her. But no, I tell myself. I promised myself I wouldn’t love her anymore, not tonight, not ever. She doesn’t really love me. I’m only here. I’m only convenient while she waits for him.
I rise, I tie my shoelaces, I shoulder my backpack. She opens the door for me. Before my eyes, her black hair melds into the night once the house is behind us. Her dark skin is mute. I am walking beside the invisible, save the gold buttons hovering on a black trenchcoat like pieces of daylight. Our feet slow in sync as we near the usual place.
I stop and face her. Her lips turn in mischief. If I’m going to kiss her, this is the moment. But I know I won’t. I’m not thinking about half an hour from now when she’ll text me, “I guess neither of us gets what we want. Sleep sweet, Luke Anthony.” I’m not thinking about two months from now when I’ll get one final email informing me that I didn’t really care for her, that I never care for anyone but myself, and that it no longer matters to her what I do. I’m not thinking about two days from now when I will push my decision to the point of telling her we shouldn’t even be friends. I’m not thinking about her on that day—sinking to her knees, hands falling limply from the piano keys. I’m not thinking about her jaw falling, her bare eyes welling over, while I stand and stare and fail, as I always fail, to know what to say.
No, I’m not thinking at all.
“You can go home now,” I say.
Her smile disappears. “…I can go home now?”
I nod. “Goodnight.”
Her chin falls in a soft arc to the base of her neck. She inhales and exhales deeply. “Goodnight.”
She turns and walks away.
Behind me, my dad’s car pulls up. I climb into the passenger’s seat. I feel strange. I don’t feel good, I just feel my conscience shifting around. As we drive by, I see her head is still bowed, and she recedes into the black.
Orange and Red and Jarvis Street
Chiamaka Ugwu
The cars flashed by in orange and red as we dashed down Jarvis Street.
It was the three of us: my sister Chinonye, my mother, and me. My sister was almost two and I was newly four.
We ran after my brother Josh.
“Oya! Let’s go.”
Record Two: Night and Day Page 17