by André Aciman
“Are you thinking of me?” she’d asked.
“I am.”
And then the words that pierced me to the quick: “You can if you want to.”
•
While waiting for my third cup of coffee, I did what I’d been watching so many people with pocket calendars do. It was my way of hoping, without admitting it, now that the Rohmer festival was over, that there’d be the Alain Resnais festival, followed by the Fellini, and the Beethoven Quartet series—weeks on weeks of evening rituals till we tired of them and decided, Tonight, let’s hang out.
She called me while I was having breakfast. “Change of heart?” she asked, which told me she was in a good mood. None whatsoever, I replied. Someone was giving her a ride to pick up some stuff for Hans’s tonight. Did I mind if we postponed meeting?
“Had we arranged to meet?” I asked. Why did I say something so stupid?
“Yes, we had. You forgot already?” she said almost reproachfully, as if unaware that I was only pretending, which was why she laughed. They really needed her help this morning, she said, we’d meet at the party. Pause. I wasn’t going to end up in the ER, was I? No, I wasn’t, Clara.
Around eleven in the morning I decided to call my friend Olaf. I found him in his office. He had just returned from the Islands. Horrible vacation. Why? Why? Because she’s a cunt. He wasn’t planning on staying at the office much longer, but didn’t feel like heading home. I could come over and we’d walk back uptown together, like the two pricks we are, he added. “What was so wrong?” I asked when we finally met. “We just don’t get along,” he said, using the knuckles of both fists to mimic the cogs of two gears that fail to mesh. Let’s face it, she’s a cunt and I’m a dick.
But I wasn’t paying attention. I knew exactly what I was trying to do. Leave his neighborhood, go elsewhere in the city, run into Clara.
Has it been a good year? I asked. Too soon to tell, he replied with his usual sarcasm.
Did he want to have lunch? Just had something—not hungry. We decided to have coffee instead. I was surprised to find him at work, I said. Only Jews celebrate Christmas. Jews and Dominicans. He was in one of his moods again.
On our way uptown we decided to stop at MoMA, where we’d hoped to sit down for coffee and exchange the latest in our lives, but the lobby was mobbed with tourists, and everywhere you looked teemed with human bodies. The fucking human race, he began. They don’t go to a single museum in Europe, but they come here and all they do is drag themselves through art they can’t begin to fathom, then rush to buy fake watches in Chinatown. Olaf and his rants. There was a time when you could sidestep life in the city and take time out with a friend here. Now look at this—the Mongolian horde. We threaded our way through the lobby and decided to head out to the closest Starbucks. But even the nearest one was mobbed. We ended upstairs at a place on Sixtieth Street—still too loud, too crowded, rich teenagers on Christmas break. We got up and tried a row of places around the low Sixties, till we gave up and ended up taking the Sixty-seventh Street crosstown bus. I knew why I was finding something wrong with each place. She was giving me the slip each time, or I kept missing her by a few seconds at every turn. What was his reason for wanting to go elsewhere every time we stopped somewhere? There was only one explanation: he was looking for someone too, wasn’t he? “You’ve met someone?” I finally asked him. He didn’t stop, but kept walking, looking straight ahead of him. “How did you know?” “I can just tell. Who is she?” Without meaning to, Olaf managed to remind me that he was perhaps my best friend because of the way he answered my question: “You can tell because you too have met someone and are simply projecting. But you happen to be right. We’re both love-starved.”
Eventually, we found a Starbucks in the low Seventies and located a small table in a corner by the window. I borrowed an extra chair from a table nearby while he stood in line and ordered two coffees. I could hear him arguing with the barista. “Medium, I said, not tall, not grande, medium—and it’s not next guest but next customer. I’m a customer, not a guest, get it?” I was tempted to ask him to pick up a couple of muffins or scones, but then thought I was setting things up too much, and besides, if indeed we were to run into her, I didn’t want her to suspect that I was trying to replay our breakfast in the car. Then a counterinstinct told me that being caught replaying our breakfast might indeed propitiate running into her. The stars sometimes worked that way. Wasn’t this how I’d arranged to run into Clara at the movie theater the first time? Since we were close enough to some of the stores where she’d most likely have gone with someone to buy food for the party, chances were we’d run into each other in this very place. Stuff of dreams and Rohmer films. But then I realized that thinking such double thoughts was a way of snooping into the affairs of fate and was precisely what might backfire and prevent us from meeting. I was just about to negotiate a way out of this double bind when there she was, walking past Starbucks with her friend Orla.
I dashed out of the coffee shop with just my shirt on and, from across the street, called out the name of one and then the other. What was I doing here? What were they doing here? Hugs, kisses, laughter. They were each carrying bags of food. I didn’t have to persuade them to come in and join us for coffee. I am so happy, so happy to see you, I said to Clara once I’d introduced Orla to Olaf. That palm on my face, as it lingered on my face, and kept touching parts of my face, spoke all the tenderness I’d lived so many, many days and nights without. They still had tons of things to buy, she said. She ran down some of their unfinished errands. They couldn’t stay too long. Are you happy? I couldn’t help myself from asking when Olaf and Orla were busy talking. Are you happy? she echoed, her way of saying that, yes, she was—or was she parodying what I’d just said, which, in the end, might just have been her way of saying, Yes, I am happy. But we scarcely have ten minutes. Just sit down, take your coats off, I’ll get coffee. I had the strange feeling that I was fighting to keep her with me, struggling against strange odds that were determined to draw her into my life, only to pull her away, and I didn’t know whether these odds were in her will, or in the universe of unfinished grocery errands, or just simply in my head. Part of me couldn’t believe in the sheer luck of running into someone simply because I’d wished it. This could be taken away in a second. Play it light, keep it simple, lie low, you already told her you were happy.
A man almost my age who was sitting alone at the table next to ours had raised his head from his laptop and was staring at us. The women mantled in legend and swank, the errands, the party, the nicknames tossed left and right, those who’d been asked to buy this and that and who were probably busy running similar errands farther downtown, the light hysteria of bumping into each other on the eve of the New Year, the complicated coffee one ordered and the small-black-with-two-sugars-and-something-sweet-if-you-can—Oh, Clara, Clara, will I ever forget this day?—I looked at him and put myself in his place, trying to imagine what he thought of our lives: Were we ridiculous or were we indeed mantled in splendor and dreams? Women, party, New Year’s; suddenly our lives, my life, acquired an incandescent aura I wouldn’t have noticed but for his gaze.
I liked our little corner at Starbucks. I’d imagined something similar happening exactly a week ago on the afternoon of the day we’d met at the movies. Now, seven days later, it was being given to me. How punctual the soul, as if secret alignments between our flimsiest wishes and an obliging if sometimes fractious deity were constantly organizing things for us. There’d be awkwardness at the moment of parting, but I didn’t want to think about that right now; I knew Clara would figure out a way and choose the least difficult path when it came to resuming her errands. Perhaps it was better we didn’t have a moment to ourselves right now—too soon, too much to say, perhaps a hampered and oblique glance was all we needed to know we’d be back to where we’d left off last night on the phone. Once again I tried to stave off disturbing thoughts. Olaf was speaking to both women. I went back to get more sugar for Cl
ara. I loved this.
When I got back, I saw that Clara was wearing the same sweater she’d worn at Edy’s. I wanted to rub my face against it, smell it, snuggle into it. Little lamb, who made you, Clara? Even now, I’d give anything to touch her face, push her hair back with the palm of my hand. I liked the way she spoke to Olaf or, rather, listened to him and nodded away, somewhat gravely, as his metallic voice rang in our little corner. I already knew that not a minute after seeing me tonight she’d make fun of his name and mimic his voice. Olaf goodenough, Olaf bellylaugh, Olaf, chuff chuff, had enough, and we’d laugh and laugh at Olaf’s name and draw closer because of it, though he was my best friend and she clearly seemed to like him. I caught her eyes once as she listened to him. I know, they said. We’re planning a character assassination, I responded with a glance, I just know you know I know. I know this too, she seemed to say. Oh, Clara, Clara.
I should have noticed her earlier. Someone was standing outside and literally staring at us—at me. The boy had stuck his face right against the glass window. When I stared back at him, it hit me that the little boy must surely be with his mother, and that his mother was staring in too. Rachel.
Once again I dashed out of Starbucks. She had just left the house and was going to buy a few things for tonight’s dinner. The sisters were doing their usual last-minute thing. I led her in, managed to grab two chairs from two tables nearby, and widened the circle at our table—introductions, introductions, my offering to get coffee, taking the little boy to the counter to have him pick something, his ice-cold hand in mine, perfunctory jokes with those on line, until it was my turn to order and give out my name to the cashier. Rachel, who was used to being at the center and always the one to make introductions, must have felt uneasy; she was among strangers. To compensate, I let the others infer that I’d known her long before meeting any of them. Perhaps I wanted her to feel that no one would dream of challenging her seniority or attempt to unseat her. But perhaps I also wanted to keep Clara mystified and on her toes. Who on earth are these people you’re with? said Rachel’s inquisitive gaze, not without a hint of irony aimed at them, or at me for knowing them. I shrugged my shoulders to mean: People, just people. Clara had stopped speaking to Olaf and was eyeing Rachel, as though searching for an opportunity to break the silence between them, or, as I instantly sensed while watching her size up Rachel’s ash green winter coat that I’d seen her wear for years on cold days, to find one good reason to dislike her. Two New Year’s parties, and I was invited to both and, before setting eyes on Rachel today, had never thought I’d have to decide between them. This could get very awkward, I kept thinking, hoping neither would bring up the subject of the evening’s festivities, though I’d already resolved to go to one party and then the other, except that if I went too early to one and left, any idiot would figure I was on my way to another. For a few years now, it was always at Rachel’s house that I’d watched the countdown on December 31. Was I already betraying her, casting her off?
Suddenly the barista called out “Oscar!” very loudly. Right away I stood up to pick up Rachel’s coffee. I was trying not to be too obvious about my nickname, but without looking, I already knew that Rachel was startled. Clara had scored a point and was at this very moment gloating over her victory, which she’d be dying to communicate with something like a wink in my direction. I also knew that, owing to her victory, Clara might stop looking for reasons to dislike Rachel and no longer wear her bored, slightly absent, glazed look that made you feel like a toad among giants.
I began to wonder whether I had given that nickname to the cashier to keep Rachel equally mystified—side with Clara after siding with Rachel, make Rachel think she’d lost me, if only to remind her there’d always been a side of me she never knew or ever cared to ask about and for which she was now paying the price for ignoring all the years I’d known her. Rachel, who may still not have suspected it was my nickname she’d heard, was in no mood now to make friendly overtures to Clara, nor would she be inclined to respond had Clara attempted any. Besides, there was nothing the two seemed willing to speak about, and my jump-starting a conversation to break their chill seemed futile. Had they decided to pick on me as a way of drawing closer to each other, I’d have been willing to play along. Watching Clara make fun of me for this, or for that, and hearing Rachel confirm the criticism and add something like “Don’t you especially hate it when he . . .” to which Clara would easily agree, and just as eagerly add yet another zinger of her own—anything would have been worth the price if only they’d become friends, and in being friends close a circle around the three of us, like three toddlers winding a twisted belt round them. What I feared was that, to spite me for threatening to leave her out, Rachel might start dropping hints either about Lauren or about a phantom woman who had drawn everyone’s attention yesterday afternoon.
A woman with a loud voice had seated herself beside us and was speaking to her baby in a stroller while chatting with her husband on her cell phone. “Now, isn’t it funny how Mommy forgot to put sugar in her coffee? Isn’t that fuhnnn-nnny?” Then, turning to her husband on the phone: “Tell him to ram it up his ass, that’s what your brother should do.” Clara, who had no patience with loud cell-phone conversations when they weren’t her own, couldn’t help herself: “Wouldn’t that hurt?” she asked aloud, turning to the woman on the phone.
“Pardon me?” said the startled wife-mother-sister-in-law, looking indignant at the intrusion.
“I meant, wouldn’t it hurt ramming something up your brother-in-law’s ass? Or would it be fuhnnn-nnny?”
“I can’t believe these people,” went on the woman, continuing her cell-phone conversation with her husband. “Rude, rude, rude. Listening in on our conversation, don’t they have anything better to do with their lives?”
“Oh no, we do plenty. We ram things up our asses all the time,” added Rachel. “And we’d love to tell you how we do it.”
“Yuck!” She rolled her eyes. “I’m trying to speak to my husband, would you mind?”
“If you lowered your voice, we’d never know what you and hubby do to your asses—so would you mind?”
“Get a life.” Then, turning to her baby with a righteous maternal gaze, “Mommy will take your coat off and it’ll be all better.”
Olaf couldn’t help himself: “Mamy weell mek it ohhhhll betuh!”
Everyone among us burst out laughing, including those seated behind us and the young man staring at us from the nearby table. For a moment I noticed that maybe the reason why I liked both women and couldn’t understand why they hadn’t instantly taken to each other was that I’d always known they shared this one sprightly, roguish thing in common: the ability to draw ever so close to meanness without being cruel.
Or was I once again mistaken about Clara? Was she perhaps just cruel, and nothing less? Or did I like running into her presumed cruelty only to have an instance of kindness brighten up her face like compassion on the features of a stern inquisitor?
I noticed at some point, when the two had begun to speak, that Rachel was trying ever so subtly to draw my attention. When she caught my glance, she shook her head once, twice, very fast, as though to signal a question: Who is she? Where did you fish her out from? I hastily looked away, not wanting to engage in secret messaging, but then realized that she was asking an altogether different question: Is this the one you were bellyaching about all day yesterday? I was about to answer her signal, with a No, this is someone else, because I did not want Rachel, who knew me so well, to know that yesterday’s phantom woman was indeed sitting across from her. I did not want her to know more about us than I did, though, at this point, her guess was as good as anyone’s. I forced myself to think about last night’s phone conversation—our fleeting, blissful, shameful secret when her voice had touched my ear with its furry breath and then lingered on my side of the bed when she said, You can if you want to. Now, as I looked at her, I kept thinking that perhaps there was no reason to bank on anything wha
tsoever—nothing had happened or, if it had, it hovered in mid-sleep awhile and then vanished in the wee hours of the night without a trace—weren’t we both pretending it was a dream neither was sure the other hadn’t dreamed? A growing sense of alarm seized me as soon as I realized that this thing I’d been incubating all week without telling anyone was no better than a bubble that the slightest quizzical glance could puncture. Had I lost Clara again? Was I losing her right now by wasting my ration of time with her at Starbucks? Or was I always already losing her—because, in the end, I was in a state of perpetual furlough, hence on borrowed time, in hock?
Perhaps I didn’t want Rachel to know how much like strangers Clara and I were. Which is why I avoided answering her silent prods.
Perhaps I wanted to scare myself.
I had had no time to reply, when Clara raised her eyes and intercepted Rachel’s inquisitive glance, and immediately turned to me, catching the blank, noncommittal look on my face, which, despite my efforts not to respond, still betrayed there’d been clandestine communication between us.
“Wait a minute. What’s all this?” she asked.
“What?” I replied.
“This.” She imitated Rachel’s motions of the head. “What are you two talking about?”
“Nothing.” I liked being found out and enjoyed the naughty evasion that was really no evasion at all.
“Look at these two,” said Clara, turning to Olaf. “They’re sending each other secret signals.”
“I think we’ve been caught,” said Rachel. I could tell Rachel was going to give me away. Let her.
There was no point in pretending. “Do you want to know?” I asked Clara.
“Of course I want to know.” And seeing I was about to spill the beans: “Wait,” she said, “will it make me happy or unhappy?”
Rachel and I exchanged glances.
“You two!” said Clara.
“Okay, it’s about yesterday. Rachel was basically trying to figure out if you were the one I’d invited for drinks last night.”