by André Aciman
“Soon,” I said.
“Soon,” she mimicked.
As the door began to shut between us, I knew I was seeing her for the last time.
“The fucking door,” I heard her yelp once the door had slammed into her. I’d forgotten to remind her about the door again. I could hear her laugh all the way down.
•
Once in my apartment, I was back to that moment earlier this morning when I didn’t know if we’d ever speak today, let alone continue this hybrid friendship for another day. The late-afternoon hour, which I remembered having set as that time of day when I’d finally let myself break down and make the dreaded phone call, had come and gone, and yet I was no better off now, after spending a few hours with her, than I’d been in the morning when my resolution stood out like the last beacon, the best morsel you leave for last, because after that there’s nothing left to look forward to.
I looked out the window. Dreary, dreary, dreary.
Teatime, I thought. But I had just had tea with her. I could feel the air closing in on me, as it does in everyone’s image of London in this unnamed, predusk hour that could last anywhere from fifteen minutes to an entire day. Time to get out. But there was nowhere to go. I should call a friend. Half of them were out of town. The other half might not be free. There were Rachel and her sister, but the first thing they’d do was give me a hard time for lacking courage, gumption, and, above all, honesty. Besides, I didn’t want to see them again without bringing Clara to meet them.
I decide to head out to the gym, take a book, get on the treadmill, maybe swim a few laps, and by 7:10 be where I had always planned to be, except that now it felt as though I’d be doing it failing anything better. Maybe I’d have dinner after the movie—ironically at Thai Soup, of all places. Sometimes it’s not bad to be alone.
She had cut the avocado into thin slices and superimposed a series of green half-moons obliquely on the baguette, then added two layers of ham, then the cheese, then a drop of hot mustard, finally flattening the bread down a bit under the panini grill, licking the excess mustard that had stained her fingers. “This is for you, Printz,” she had said, handing me the sandwich on a plate with something any halfwit wouldn’t have called just friendship.
But there was the caviar too. She insisted on spreading it on the sour cream herself. Why? I’d asked. “Because you don’t know how to do it.” “I can do it just fine.” “Then because I want to.”
•
The words Because I want to simply undid everything protecting me from her and shot straight to my heart.
•
The afternoon went faster than I expected. What surprised me was the sense that things hadn’t turned out as badly as I’d feared. One could always live through this. All I needed was to overcome the haunting regret of having come so close, only to lose her. I’d live. Or was she, like John the Baptist, a sign, a precursor of worse things to come, of sorrows, like photographs, that hadn’t even been developed yet, much less hung out to dry?
When I arrived at the movie theater, I noticed that the line was shorter than usual. These were not Rohmer’s better films, and the thin audience tonight confirmed it. After purchasing a ticket, I decided to get a grande coffee next door and, without bothering to ask myself why, bought a candy bar. Then I bought her brand of cigarettes. Time, I wanted to think, had stopped last night at the movies, and like a sports trainer, I was intentionally holding the stopwatch down to mark the moment when the race ended, to mark the high point of the week, of the year.
Phildonka Madamdasit was there, unchanged and stout, same haircut, same scowl, same shirt. Without her, though, he was not funny, simply smug and thuggish. He took my ticket, stared me down with a Stood you up, didn’t she? then grabbed someone else’s ticket.
I found a spot three seats away from people at either side and sat down. Coffee at the movies was her invention; I’d always had a cold drink, never coffee, and certainly not a nip. I wondered which of her many ex-boyfriends had taught her to bring nips to a movie theater. How many times had she resurrected with me habits picked up with old flames?
In the dark before the film started, I suddenly remembered how I had put my coat on the seat next to mine the first time with Clara when she’d gone to make a phone call, trying to pretend that I had come alone that night the better to enjoy waking up to her presence when she returned. Had I squirreled away the memory for this evening, the way a time traveler on a mission to alter history buries an automatic pistol now, to retrieve it in Ancient Rome tomorrow?
Then came the film credits, and my mind tried to drift and think of someone else with whom I’d been to see this film a few years earlier. This was not bad—not great, but not bad. The opening sequence was exactly as I recalled it, and I was happy to see that for all my ability to recall it in detail, the film still seemed very fresh and would have carried me exactly where I wished to be taken had there not been more noise than usual in the theater, a latecomer unable to decide where to sit, a couple chitchatting about changing seats, Phildonka’s beam traveling over my head, and finally the banging of the door, and behind it the repeated clank of a soda dispenser that seemed to be stuck. There was a rumble of voices. I heard someone try the dispenser again—clank, clank, and clank again—then I heard the thud of several cans crashing into the dispenser’s bottom tray. “You’ve hit the jackpot,” someone shouted. The audience laughed. This should have been Clara’s line, I thought. But just as the film was starting, the door opened once again and another couple walked in, both their heads cowered in typically considerate, Upper West Side self-effacement. The light from outside intruded for a second but disappeared when the door shut. Another intruder was having a hard time finding a seat—that too distracted me. Then I heard the cough. Not a nervous cough, but an intentional cough, as when people cough to remind others of their presence in a room. Again the damned cough interrupted both the credits and the voice-over that had begun as soon as the credits had run their course. Cough, cough. I was convinced I was making it up—but the cough was whispering, “Printz Oskár”—I couldn’t be making it up, but what wouldn’t I give . . . Seconds later, without the cough this time, but whispered all the same, almost as an inquiry to mean, Are you there? Can you hear me? “Printz Oskár?” The whole audience turned in the direction of the door. This was unbelievable, but who else would say such a thing in a movie house once the film had started? I raised my arm, hoping she’d spot it. She did, and walked immediately in my direction. “Very sorry, most very, very sorry indeed,” she said in mock-apology to those standing up as she tried to reach my seat. “The fucking Phildonka wouldn’t let me in”—and right there and then she burst out into uncontrollable laughter, arousing universal hisses from everyone in the theater, while I couldn’t let go of her as soon as I embraced her, holding on to her head and kissing her head and pressing her head against my chest as she quietly began to remove her shawl.
“Can I watch the movie now?”
My lips must have been all over her neck. “Do you have any idea how happy I am?”
She took off her coat, disturbed more people, sat down, took her glasses out. “Yes, I do know.”
I knew, however, that I’d have to let go of her. I didn’t want to let go of her. I liked being like this. I knew that, once released, she’d be impossible to touch again, and that soon enough the water that had bubbled between us for a few seconds would freeze and, for miles of cracking ice, would loom the old no-man’s-land between her mainland and my distant shore. So I let my hand rest almost casually on her shoulder, knowing, though, that she’d spot the studied nonchalance of the gesture and in all likelihood make fun of it. So this is awkward for you, isn’t it?
When she spotted my coffee, she immediately reached over and drank from it. Why hadn’t I put sugar in? Because I never do. I can’t believe you didn’t buy me coffee. So this is your revenge—not buying the poor girl coffee? Anything to eat?
I handed her the candy.
&nb
sp; “At least that!”
She chuckled.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.”
The man behind us asked us to lower our voices.
Clara turned to him and threatened to wash his hair with her coffee if he didn’t take his feet off the seat next to hers.
•
Until she appeared in the movie theater, I’d been more or less resigned to an evening by myself. I was even able to stare straight ahead and not be too scared of the bleakness awaiting me as soon as I walked out into the empty street. It was not going to be so terrible, I’d been telling myself, just as it wasn’t so terrible that she had found yet another cutting way to remind me she had a life outside of mine, other friends, otherpeoples—not terrible that a day that started poorly should end no less poorly, not terrible being so thoroughly alone now and watching the hours stretch into tomorrow, and other tomorrows, and more tomorrows pitching their way back-to-back like blocks of ice crick-cracking down the slow Hudson till they’d leave all land behind and head to the Atlantic and out toward the glacier of the Arctic Pole. Not terrible that everyone was wrong, wrong as my life, as this day, as everything can seem so thoroughly muddled and disjointed and yet so easily tolerable.
After the movie I’d already resolved to head uptown, perhaps even walk past her home, especially now that I knew which side her windows faced. Walk uptown to replay and relive the scene uptown. Or was this all an excuse to stalk her building, her street, her world? Was I really the type who stalks buildings, windows, people? Follow her, spy on her, confront her? Aha, see! Or better yet, bump into her. Fancy running into you at this time of the night!
Or was heading uptown to 106th Street simply a pretext to stay busy and give myself something to do at night, the way buying Christmas presents three days after Christmas might give me something to look forward to once I’d run out of things to stuff my hours with?
Sitting next to her now on our usual banquette, I realized that all I’d done since hearing she wouldn’t be going to the movies with me was try to keep a straight face, with her, with me, with everything—try not to enjoy too much our moment together on the rug so as not to feel it was the highlight of the year, keep the moment on ice, keep friendship on ice, and live with each of my tiny, minuscule hopes, like caviar always chilled.
As soon as we walked out of the theater, neither of us said anything about where we were headed. Instead, we started walking in the same direction as always and, in case there were any doubts, crossed over to the right side of Broadway to show we had no other place in mind but that one. I couldn’t wait to get there and go back to our ritual by the banquette and order our first drink. Perhaps she too was eager to bring things back to where we’d left them—though there was no telling where her thoughts were. Once we crossed Broadway, though, all she did was slip her arm into mine and say she couldn’t wait for our Oban.
“You’re becoming an alcoholic under my influence.”
“That, and other things,” she said. I thought she was referring to her growing fondness for Eric Rohmer and didn’t bother asking her to explain. Then it occurred to me she might have meant something else, but for fear of finding it out, I didn’t press her to explain.
But no sooner were we sitting at our spot and had signaled to the waitress, who immediately assumed we were ordering the “usual,” than things began to trickle forth. At first I thought she’d already had something to drink before coming. But that was almost four hours ago, long enough for her to have sobered up. As was her habit, she ordered crispy fries, which she liked to drown in salt and mounds of ketchup. I would have ordered a salad, but decided to go with a side order of fries as well. I liked mine with mayo. Once the matter of ordering was taken care of, she extended her palm.
“Give!” she said.
I gave her a dollar.
“More.”
She walked over to the jukebox, and soon enough we began hearing the few bars of Chopin that prefaced our tango.
I had made myself promise not to ask her anything about where she’d been, what she’d done, whom with. But she almost resented my silence, and after we’d danced, she finally blurted a “Well, aren’t you going to ask me what happened?”
“This time I don’t dare ask.”
“Because you’re too polite to ask, because you don’t care, because you don’t want to know—or other?”
“Other,” I said.
She was in a strangely sparkling mood tonight, and I feared the worst. She was going to tell me something I knew I didn’t want to know. I would gladly have steered her away from it. I could sense it was probably going to be something like “We’ve decided to get back together,” or “I’m having his child,” or—and this was a road I didn’t even want to travel on, though scoping out its signposts before she’d even hinted the matter might blunt the shock—she’d remind me I was doing precisely what she’d warned me not to do, Printz. Knowing Clara, she’d still manage to surprise me. “I think we shouldn’t be together so much.” She would not say “seeing each other,” which might implicate her more than she wanted, but “be together,” which would leave things vague enough and not give a deeper meaning to the whimsical, improvised beauty of our five days. I was already anticipating the flustered stammer in her smile as she let an earnest, longing gaze precede the tenderness of the five words she would most likely say, all the while gauging their effect on me: “You’re not upset, are you?” Damned if I’m upset, I’d say, fuck damn I’m upset! But I knew myself: I’d say nothing.
The drinks arrived. We clinked glasses carefully, because if you miscounted, you’d have to clink another nine times. We uttered the Russian words in unison.
“Do you or don’t you want to know?”
I said I wanted to know, almost listlessly, not just to dampen my curiosity, but to dampen the frisky tone in her voice.
“I was with Inky.”
“So you two are an item again?”
She looked at me in wonder.
How had you guessed? she seemed to ask. It was obvious from the start, I would have said.
“I had promised to have dinner with him. We started with early drinks, which is why I had to leave your place early. Then it fell apart—I knew we were going to quarrel. So I left.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“You wanted to leave?”
Clara gave me a fearless stare.
“I’m not going to lie to you: I was looking for an excuse, and he gave it to me in no time. I knew I’d find you at the movie theater.”
I couldn’t put together the reasoning behind what she’d just said.
“Are you two over, then?”
“So very over.”
I was on the verge of asking if she was sorry things had taken this course, but she seemed so bubbly, there was no point in asking.
“Now it’s your turn,” she said, leaning sideways toward me.
I knew what she meant, but pretended not to understand. “My turn for what?”
“What did you do after I left?”
“Went to the gym, swam, went to the movies—that’s all.”
She wanted something from me, and I wasn’t responding. She started doing what she’d done the first night: wrapping her napkin around the base of her wineglass. It was her way of collecting her thoughts before speaking. I knew exactly where she was headed. There should be others in your life, not just me. I don’t want to mislead you. And besides, I am still lying so very low. I didn’t know the exact order, but these were going to be the highlights of her little talk, because, from long experience with my father, I could sense a little talk coming.
No sooner had the waitress passed by than Clara ordered another round. That was fast, I thought.
“So I’m the one who’s going to have to say it, then?” she said.
All I could do was stare her in the eyes till she looked down.
Was this how she had started with Inky? Want me to
be the one to say it, then? Twice in one day? I hated conversations that threatened to leave me totally exposed—even when I didn’t know what exactly I’d be exposing, even when I knew that exposure, as an abstract concept, was far better than being so bottled up. What was I hiding that she didn’t already know?
“I was going to say it in an e-mail two days ago.”
What was she being so cagey about?
“Why didn’t you send it, then?”
“Because I know you: you’d read it this way, that way, turn it around 180 degrees, 360 and 540 degrees, and still come out with nothing. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“See, I know you.” She was going to accuse me of not heeding her warnings, of wanting from our friendship things she’d never promised, much less be able to deliver. She’d said it before already, didn’t have to repeat it, it hovered over every minute we’d spent together. Now it was going to come out in the open. I knew the it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech. I’d given it myself many times.
“You asked me the other day if we could end up at Hans’s party and be total strangers. I’ve run into people I no longer speak to. I can live with that. I don’t even mind having to hate them if that’s what it takes to dump leftover baggage. I know how quickly I change. But if we do become strangers, and I do learn to hate you, and watch you turn your back as soon as I walk into a room, just know this: that no part of me will ever forget this week.”
“Why?”
“For the same reason you won’t.”
“This is starting to sound like a lopsided goodbye.”
“Let’s say then that maybe this is our hell. The closer we draw, the farther we drift apart. There’s a rock standing between us. I obey it. Or let’s say: I don’t have it in me to fight it, not these days. Frankly, I don’t think you have it in you either.”
“Don’t say that.”