by James Gregor
“I’ll think about it, okay?” he said.
“Fine.”
* * *
FOR SEVERAL WEEKS ANTONELLA had been in Italy for the long-dreaded wedding of her cousin, but she had recently returned to New York and wanted to meet with Richard. Comforted by the ocean between them, now that she was back Richard was nervous again.
He told Anne they would need to differentiate their work more starkly.
“Maybe you should start writing your own stuff again then,” she said, in one of her angrier moods. They were sitting on her couch again, eating from a charcuterie plate.
He hardly knew how to respond. In fact, he was speechless. She had struck him consciously in his most vulnerable place.
“I’m sorry,” she said, seeing this. “I’m not in a very good mood.”
“You know, it’s not that easy for me,” he said, managing to cough out some words. “I thought you knew that.”
It was clear, by her unusual cowed expression, that she regretted her words.
“That was a terrible thing to say,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
His face was red with embarrassment.
On the way to the meeting, she tried to make up for it by sending him texts exhorting him not to feel guilty—citing the corrupt character of the academic establishment, the high instances of plagiarism, and the fact that the ideas expressed in her work were latent in him as well. It was simply that he’d not had time to express them.
Richard deleted these texts immediately.
He entered the campus wearing Converse high-tops, shorts, and a short-sleeve, button-down shirt adorned with a childish pattern of sailboats. It was an outfit meant to project a guileless innocence, but perhaps it only seemed immature.
“Bentornata,” he said to Antonella as he entered her office. She stood up from the desk and gave him a hug.
“Salve.”
“How was Italy?”
“I saw my family but it was too hot in Naples. I’m always glad to be back in America.”
“Really?”
“I’m used to the informality and convenience now,” she said. “How are you?”
“The same old, really. I’ve been trying to exercise more.”
“No jogging, I hope. Jogging has destroyed my knees.”
She sat down again.
“It’s swimming mostly.”
“I don’t like the public pools in New York, except that one off Riverside Drive.”
She opened a plastic container of figs.
“I’m also trying to get more sleep,” he said.
A glistening fig in hand, she nodded.
“Great, great.”
Trying to gauge the expression on her face, he nodded in return. Was she angry or suspicious?
“I wanted to talk to you about your paper—the one on the Modistae.”
“Sure.” Did he sound agitated?
“There are so many beautiful parts to this paper, Richard,” she said, flipping through Anne’s latest masterpiece as if it were a contract. “You really have a passionate interest in this.”
He nodded, somewhat relieved.
“I didn’t know you were particularly interested in the Modistae.”
A group of medieval speculative grammarians, the Modistae had indeed not been much on Richard’s radar until Anne decided she wanted to write about them and apply their theories to Dante. Richard had to give himself a little credit: after she’d mentioned them he’d gone straight to the Wikipedia page, and then he’d transitioned to heavy scholarly works in the library. Martin of Dacia, Thomas of Erfurt, Siger de Courtrai. Their names were like Chiclets he moved around in his mouth, walnuts to crack between his molars.
“It was Thomas of Erfurt who first led me down that path.”
“Are you going to submit this for the Clio?”
“I thought about it.”
“I think it’s a good idea. If you won that, it would help your job prospects. And there is the money, of course. You could go to Italy for the year—for a postdoc.”
“It’s very enticing,” Richard said. He hesitated, and then leaned forward. “Don’t you think . . . I mean, isn’t Anne a more appropriate candidate? Maybe her work is a bit closer to this idea than mine?”
“You can both submit. Besides, I think her Clio topic is something else.”
“Right.”
He nodded, his brow wrinkled.
“How is Anne?” she asked. “Do you see her?”
“Yes, I see her often. I mean, we run into each other in the department all the time.”
It was better, he thought, to be honest in as many ways as he could be. Open the valves wherever possible.
“Is she all right?”
“She’s fine, I think. I mean, as far as I can tell. Why do you ask?”
“She has gained weight. You have too. Ti sei ingrassato.”
“I’ve gained weight?”
This seemed an outrageously tactless, and perhaps inappropriate remark. It occurred to Richard that he could probably take Antonella up on some kind of complaint if he wanted to.
“It suits you.” Antonella nodded.
“Uh, thanks.”
“Anne seems very tired though.”
“Aren’t we all . . . here in New York.”
Antonella squinted.
“Actually, Richard, I am concerned that, if she is under pressure somehow, the work—”
“I can’t imagine Anne’s work suffering.”
She paused.
“No, but your work is very similar. You must be careful.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not to be . . . derivative. Not to put yourself at risk.”
It was true, he thought, she really did hate Anne. And she didn’t do a very good job of hiding it. Richard was nodding vigorously.
“I won’t put myself at risk.”
“There are certain types in the world, Richard. You are the generous type.”
“That’s nice of you to say.”
“And then there are other types.”
He nodded more slowly now.
“Don’t worry about Anne,” she said. “Write up the application proposal tonight and send it to me tomorrow. Focus on the area of syntax.”
“I think that’s a promising area,” he agreed.
“Can you do that? Can you send me the proposal?”
Not knowing whether Anne would be free to help him, but agreeing anyway, Richard nodded.
“I’m very happy that you were able to start writing again, Richard. This has been a wonderful change. What’s your secret? Do you have any tips I can offer to other students?”
Was it the most absurd question that had ever been posed to him? He smiled bashfully and shook his head.
“Organization, I guess,” he said, going quiet. “Organization is key.”
“Yes.” She laughed. “But I was hoping for something more.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” Richard muttered, anxious to get out of there as quickly as he could.
* * *
HE WENT TO THE library. It was strange to be there without Anne. He was so used to her anchoring him in the space, contracting the room around her with the pull of her absorption, shielding him from the waves of distracting chatter, snack unwrapping, and the phones on the tables with their incessant seizures.
He reread the paper on the Modistae that had so impressed Antonella. Anne was still working on it—revising and expanding it in one direction—but of course it was already trenchant and tasteful. The particular area that Antonella wanted him to focus on was similar, but disparate enough to constitute another paper entirely. He decided to try to work on it himself.
He went to the website of the Clio Prize and read the requirements for the initial proposal. Most of the work had already been done; he could pull the bulk of the main text of the proposal from the paper itself. He opened a blank document on his computer and began to jot down notes. To his surprise, his thoughts arrived and settled
in a reasonably brisk and efficient manner. He was reminded of his previous, successful academic career—when he’d been an accomplished undergraduate, and the early, hopeful days of graduate school.
For several hours he remained at the library. Though he did not write as quickly as he once had, to his relief he managed to complete the application by five o’clock that afternoon. He revised and corrected for another hour, and then he emailed the submission to Antonella.
Patrick was waiting for him outside, in high spirits. Professor Mikhailkov had found him an office with a stained-glass window. Every time the professor came by, he offered Patrick a wine gum and praised him. He was fulfilling the role of a mentor, something Patrick had long been looking for in the university. Patrick was working long hours on his Russian, and it was improving markedly. They translated together, passing words back and forth like precious jewels, a vague smell—minty and analgesic—emanating from Professor Mikhailkov’s hair, which seemed to shine even under dim light.
“I had another article accepted,” Patrick said. “It’s a contemporary art magazine. I’m thinking this could be a new angle for me.”
“Oh wow.”
“And the postdoc is pretty much locked in.”
Richard pretended to listen, but he was distracted by what Antonella had said. He could not unburden himself to Patrick about Anne—especially now that Patrick was at the apex of his achievement and happiness as a student. Richard imagined revealing the truth and Patrick pushing him into Antonella’s office, one hand on his shoulder, as in those black-and-white photos of downtrodden collaborators at the end of World War II. He was doing something wrong—though really, whom was he hurting? But Patrick would not see it this way.
“I broke up with Valdes.”
Richard’s attention was swiftly recaptured.
“When?”
“About three weeks ago,” Patrick said, nodding.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were busy. I was busy. I didn’t want to talk about it at the time.”
Maybe he didn’t want me to know, Richard thought. Maybe he didn’t want me to think he was free again.
“How are you feeling about it?”
“Fine,” Patrick said. “I want to focus on the future.”
It was another one of Patrick’s bold maneuvers, Richard thought. He would have wallowed for weeks if not months after the breakup, smoking copiously and playing the same gooey melancholy songs, whereas Patrick—he was giving a quick summary of his activity since the breakup—had already blasted through a series of sentimental freshmen, several of whom, after they were crisply dropped, began to follow him around campus. Patrick dealt with this through a campaign of kindness, sitting the dejected suitors down in coffee shops, in one or another overly lit campus bar with wobbly patio furniture, and attempting to give them a roadmap out of their infatuation. Richard was troubled by a morbid empathy as he pictured these dazed, ambitious young men shuffling around campus, dismally resilient.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” Richard asked.
“Totally sure.”
But how was Valdes? Did he go back through the messages he’d exchanged with Patrick, glancing with an entirely forced air of casualness at the radiant impassive screen of his phone, the textual history of their now-defunct relationship contained behind it like the bones of a saint in a glass box?
“That’s my news,” Patrick said. “How are things going with Blake?”
“They’re great,” Richard said. “He’s great.” Patrick was nodding, clearly waiting for more details. “I’m having dinner with his parents tomorrow night.”
“Is it the first time you’re meeting them?”
“Yup.”
“Well, you’ll get a good meal for once.”
Richard might have amplified or embroidered the dinner plans, but he found that he no longer wanted to batter Patrick with the happy details of his time with Blake; the desire to retaliate was gone. Which was no conversational impediment. Patrick would surely be willing to go back to talking about his own life.
“Wait, though,” Richard said. “Are you still living together? With Valdes?”
Patrick had left his apartment a few weeks earlier and moved in with Valdes, after Paul Michael sold the decaying brownstone and decamped to Alto Paraíso, a town in southern Brazil with the world’s largest concentration of crystals. Patrick shook his head.
“Thankfully, no. It was us and then suddenly, like, all his friends from art school. Always coming in and out. There was no privacy. It was a nightmare. I couldn’t fuck, I couldn’t listen to music, and I couldn’t cook.”
“So where are you now?”
“In a sublet not far from here.”
“Sounds grim.”
“Grim enough—just a mattress on the floor and a hot plate.”
“God.”
“I’ll be back in Brooklyn soon. Anyway, I needed a break from the vegetable pancakes and forty-year-old-men who still ride skateboards.”
“Touché.”
“Plus, I met someone who lives in Manhattan,” he continued. “And I think he’s husband material.”
“Husband material?” Richard asked, nodding and trying to feign enthusiasm. “Who is he?”
He was a handsome advertising executive named Vladimir who had contacted Patrick online. Aside from a substantial salary, Vladimir was blessed in real-estate terms—his family owned two apartments in the city.
“He’s a Republican,” Patrick said, barking out a laugh.
“That’s okay.”
“You think?”
“Well, maybe it’s, like, cool to disagree politically with your significant other? Maybe it’s more, um, more open than agreeing.”
“I thought people got divorced over politics now.”
Richard shrugged, thinking of himself and Blake, of Blake’s profile and how it said that Atlas Shrugged was one of his favorite things. Richard wasn’t about to pull out an Ayn Rand novel and read it on the subway, but of course Blake—conscientious, honest, kind—wouldn’t hide it if he believed in it, would scrupulously claim it as a favorite thing on his profile along with Tennessee Williams and Marc Chagall, talk about it at a party even under the specter of obvious scorn. He was direct in his communication, measured in his criticism, open to dialogue. Perhaps he had picked up these traits from his parents, whether in the genes or in the raising. As he was meeting them in a matter of hours, Richard might possibly find out.
“I like that idea,” Patrick said. “I don’t know how true it is, but it’s convenient for my current situation.”
Ultimately, Richard didn’t much care what Blake thought about Ayn Rand, if he was against affirmative action, pro-life, pro–death penalty, or anything else considered by Richard’s circle to be an egregious moral or political infraction. None of it seemed to matter terribly when they were together; the world receded. Perhaps this was the true test of their compatibility?
Still, in Blake’s presence Richard did feel the specter of improvement, the mechanism of judgment nudging him along toward some superior version of himself. With Anne, on the other hand, there was an equivalent freakishness: they were two animals of the same species who had sniffed each other out in the blind murk of a swamp, not even realizing or caring how dirty they were.
As for Patrick, despite his new Republican boyfriend, he did not allow differences to slide by so easily. His sense of right and wrong was consistently inflamed. Richard admired and was impressed by Patrick’s moral certainty, but it also frightened him. He did not want to live in the classroom of Patrick, forever imbibing a moral lesson, did he?
SIXTEEN
Richard waited for the light to change. Across the street, Blake was standing beside a middle-aged couple in open trench coats, which fortunately didn’t match, amid the human topiary of tourists and hot dog stands gathered near the Columbus Circle entrance to Central Park.
As though on some kind of bluff, with a handsome, disaffected
, and perturbed expression, Blake was staring off in an easterly direction. He was probably hungry, Richard thought. A concerned crease bisecting her forehead, Blake’s mother rubbed his arm.
Richard stepped off the curb, excited to begin this evening, even as it seemed to grow suddenly wider and denser—the approaching dwarf star of meeting and knowing Blake’s parents. Blake spotted him and waved. There was something marionette-like about the way his arms and face, the entire exoskeleton of his mood, lifted and came alive. Both promising and frightening, it pointed to a feeling that deepened and a potentially harrowing responsibility. This was a significant step. Blake’s expression of casual happiness, and Richard’s own cheerful, measured smile as he crossed Fifty-Ninth Street, were at stark odds with the expectations and hopes they’d both placed on the meal.
Blake’s mother had a thin, airy, dignified bone structure, little of which had been transmitted to Blake, Richard observed. Or had it been smudged into the rounder, beefier circle inherited from the man now standing to one side of Blake, unreadably absorbing Richard’s approach? With a flare of worry, Richard wondered if Blake’s father was the kind of patriarch who makes a hard point of his skepticism when an outsider tries to enter the family circle.
They were shaking hands. It was all so concrete now. They were saying how nice it was to meet him, and how much they’d been looking forward to it. Richard smiled at Blake, and Blake leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, answering an unvoiced question. When they pulled apart, Richard didn’t look up to see the expressions on the faces of Blake’s parents. He wondered if they were at a place where this simple exchange of affection was no longer charged, if it had ever been charged; if it felt of a piece with the flamboyant city where they’d found themselves, the tolerant commercial metropolis; if this was a defiant pose for Blake or merely a habit he’d fallen into. It was possible they’d seen Blake kiss a man before, maybe even on that block. Richard was suddenly jealous of a whole imaginary series of men who had preceded him on that very corner.
They started walking and soon took their seats in a busy, highly praised, and sought-after new restaurant two blocks south of Columbus Circle.