by James Gregor
By late afternoon, she had finished.
“I did what I could with it,” she said. “It’s not perfect.”
“Whatever you did, I’m sure it’s a vast improvement.”
“There wasn’t much time. It was a lot of work,” she said. He nodded sheepishly. “And now I’m hungry.”
“Would you believe it, I’m hungry too?”
“I have an idea. Let’s go to Sabarsky’s.”
There was a hint of her old enthusiasm.
“I like that idea.”
“We’ll take a cab.”
It felt good to her, he sensed, to reassert herself over him like this.
“Okay, let’s go.”
They got into a cab and drove across Central Park, looking out their opposite windows as the trees and the buildings beyond them floated by. The restaurant was full when they arrived.
“I guess it’s always high tourist season here.”
Anne suggested they kill time by looking at the paintings upstairs. She bought the entrance tickets and they climbed the wrought-iron staircase to the second floor.
There was something appropriate to where they there—all the traumas hermetically sealed and made quiet in harrowing tableaus along the wall, a cool space of empty but freighted air between them and what they looked at. Richard felt calmed. It was usually galling when someone talked through an exhibit, and even then a trip to the museum often left him with the impression that he’d failed in the pursuit of judgment or at least understanding. Like a canny dog that gets loose and knows you’re trying to reattach the leash, there was a feeling but it continually absconded, scampering away at each approach. But as they moved from Klimt to Schiele to Kokoschka—they paused decorously before each canvas—Anne’s informed, nonpedantic commentary filled the room with an unusually pleasing hum. The drunk murdered the prostitute, the bloated industrialist traded on the lives of the poor, the Freikorps soldier rampaged through the streets. She knows so much, he thought.
When they went down to the restaurant, he saw himself in a long mirror, walking behind her. Reflected with him was the dark wood paneling, the tables with their marble tops, and the waiters in white aprons, all of it made to resemble fin de siècle Vienna.
One of the black-and-white-attired waiters came to the table.
“The Hungarian beef goulash, please,” Richard said.
Anne ordered trout crepes and wine.
“I won’t be able to eat it all,” she said when the waiter left. “We haven’t shared a dish for a while. You should have some.”
It occurred to Richard that she had not asked him if he was still living with Leslie and Courtney, and he wondered if she thought he was living with Blake. He felt relieved that he could tell her truthfully that he was still at the old apartment.
“The coffee is good here. They bring it on a silver tray.”
An elegant elderly couple, wearing identical tortoiseshell eyeglasses, sat down in the next booth. The waiter came back with the wine and poured them each a glass.
“Are you glad to have your space back?” he asked. “Now that Erin and Alicia are in Queens?”
“I’m living all alone.”
“It’s everyone’s dream to get rid of their roommates.”
“Not mine.”
“No, I guess it isn’t.”
She smiled at him.
“I thought you didn’t need me anymore,” she said. “I guess I was wrong.”
“I guess you were wrong. You’re not often wrong.”
He smiled.
“You can still move in, you know?” she said quietly. “I still want you to. There’s even more room for you, now that Erin and Alicia are gone. It would be a home at my apartment.”
It was an acute, provoking keyhole break in her armor, opening out onto the expanse of loneliness that she carried around inside of her, the inadvertent sequestration caused by her intellectual talent, the strangeness and originality of her person forming an accidental abyss that engulfed her.
He felt like he was crouching and peering through the keyhole, the shadows and lights of something moving on his face. This miserable admission, that in spite of everything he’d done she wanted him to move in again, her inscrutable debasement and the decision to forgive him, took on a quiet glow, like an elevated act of sacrifice.
“I know it would,” he said, his throat catching. “I know that it would be a wonderful home.”
The food arrived, and for several minutes they ate in a mechanical, abashed silence. Even as she waited for him to speak, he didn’t know what else to say.
“Would you really still want me there?”
“Yes,” she said—too quickly, he thought. He watched her arm move through the air as she poured him more wine. Amid the bulging emotion of the room, it was a gesture whose impartial practicality was almost radiant. Her voice quavered. “You can come whenever you want.”
After the meal, they hugged each other on the street, and then she walked off toward Madison—she had an appointment—leaving him with a clenched feeling in his hands, as if he wanted to say something more before she dematerialized into the city. As in a paralytic dream, the words were impossible to extract.
He crossed the avenue and went into the park. He walked down an empty path in a vague diagonal toward the towers that rose in the southwest. When he reached Columbus Circle, he pulled out his phone
I’LL COME TONIGHT.
TWENTY-FIVE
He met with Antonella in her office two days later.
“The submission is good,” she said. “And I want to underline that I’m so happy you managed to work through these latest difficulties. But it’s . . . well, perhaps not as good as your previous work.”
“No?”
He tried to calm his face.
“Your other work had a real elegance.” She paused, weighing her thoughts. As if on rungs of growing consideration, her eyes climbed to the ceiling.
“This is competent, but not elegant.”
He nodded seriously.
“Is it ready to submit though?”
He felt a great impatience to conclude the discussion.
“I’ve marked up a few things. Once you address those issues, I think you can submit. I have to say, I don’t expect you to win the Clio with this, especially now that it’s late, but I can write the paper to the foundation now.”
Below the window, a group of students marched past, protesting something. Lively chanting could be heard.
“I appreciate your honesty.”
“I don’t need to see it again,” she said, raising her eyebrows, and clearly making an attempt to be reassuring. But her words were like a cup of hot water tossed into an inexorably cooling bath. “Go ahead and submit.”
Anne had tried to help him, but even she had been unable to raise the termite-ridden sticks of his thoughts into a gleaming cathedral.
“I will.”
“Is everything else all right? You’re over your problem?”
“Yes, I’m over it now, I think. Everything should be fine.”
“I hope you will let me know if that changes.”
“I will.”
“And make sure you focus on yourself, Richard. That’s the first step to getting healthy again.”
“I’ll submit this afternoon,” he said.
“Wonderful, Richard. Complimenti. I’m so happy for you.”
He wondered what Antonella honestly thought of him, apart from what she was supposed to think of him as one of her students. Did she see through him? Did she wonder what he was doing there, in that city? A succession of do-gooder mayors had shoved all the junkies and pimps off the streets, banned smoking and trans fat, and put bike racks on every corner, but anyone with half a brain knew it was more of a jungle than ever. He’d always thought that he blended in, that the base unreliability of his character was hidden. But he was beginning to suspect that anyone with a more than averagely penetrating stare, and especially anyone who had the opportunity
to observe him for more than a brief moment, could perceive his foundational weakness.
* * *
AUTUMN BECAME WAXY AND veiny over the sidewalks. As Anne and Richard resumed their routine in the library and she began TA-ing a class, a pedagogical spectacle she enjoyed, there was a genuine healing that seemed to take hold between them. They did not talk about Blake, or what had happened. Blake had made no further attempts at communication. Neither had Richard.
It was a somber relief that he had never shown Blake the apartment he shared with Leslie and Courtney, despite all of Blake’s good-natured curious insistence. Now it would be unlikely, close to impossible, for Blake to knock on the door, to seek Richard out if only to confirm in person that he was alive, had not been taken hostage by his roommates, or left the city without telling anyone. Scenarios revolved in Richard’s mind: Blake employing his legal skills to comb records, enjoining friends who worked for Google or Facebook to scour the Internet in search of traces, suggestive evidence, or emphatic specks—power bills, phone bills, Amazon orders—in order to track Richard down. Richard did sometimes imagine Blake successful in his search. He saw Blake climbing the gloomy stairs and knocking on the door of the apartment. Richard stepped out onto the landing, trying to explain what he himself didn’t fully understand, annoyed at Leslie and Courtney, who listened with the giggly complicity of couples humorously aroused by the romantic travails of single friends.
Richard already looked back, was trying to look back, on his time with Blake, so brief and so recently concluded, as belonging to another life, as though he was historically evaluating a younger self, objectively examining another person moving under a cloud or a bright sky of ignorance, unaware of whatever the future might happen to be, though the future was all along inexorable.
* * *
HE TOOK WALKS ALONG the Hudson with Anne. They loitered in shops and galleries. They went out to eat in the neighborhood, by candlelight. They began to settle into a life together.
Every time he was about to see her, he anticipated the feeling of sinking into himself without regret or hesitation. He looked forward to being unjudged, relinquishing control, to the prospect of Anne wielding her expertise and authority as manager and dispenser of the money, her ownership of the apartment, her jurisdiction over where he slept, ate, and bathed.
Richard finally put his bed and his desk on Craigslist. The rest of what he did not need or want he left on the curb. Predictably, a white van pulled up, a compact woman in a pink cardigan got out, lifted the entirety into the back of the vehicle—curtains, nicked chest of drawers, speckled mirror—and drove away.
When he told Leslie and Courtney, they could not disguise their palpable relief at finally having him gone.
“Come and visit us, Richard.”
“Are you going to be close by?” Leslie asked.
“I’ll be living in Manhattan,” Richard said, visibly satisfied at revealing his upscale destination. “I’m in the West Village, actually.”
“Very fancy.”
“I got a good deal,” he said. “No roommates or anything.”
With the remainder of his belongings, he took a livery cab over to Anne’s apartment. They had a happy night and woke up on a white sheet flattened out beneath them like a trampled meringue.
Erin and Alicia came over for dinner a few days later—Anne ordered Indian—and even they seemed amenable to this new reality. Their formerly confrontational posture had metamorphosed into a gentle bemusement and acceptance.
“Cheers,” Anne said, and they raised their glasses. “Is it nice to be back in Manhattan?”
“So nice.”
“What’s so bad about Queens?” Richard asked. “Everyone loves Queens.”
“Nothing,” Alicia said, looking around. “We just miss our old nest.”
“Though it has changed,” Erin remarked.
She was obviously referring to Richard’s presence in the apartment. He considered pointing out that preferring Manhattan to Queens did not square with their politics. But he was happy enough for them to all get along, so he decided against it.
“Everyone is moving to Queens,” he said.
Anne went to the bathroom. When she came back she was looking at her phone. She was oddly silent.
“What is it?” Richard asked.
“I won the Clio Prize.”
He stood up and hugged her. Only a few weeks had passed since the deadline, but in his new circumstances, Richard had hardly—if at all—thought about the Clio. It was part of some other life, some other rancorous, unstable period.
And then, suddenly, here it was again.
“Congratulations!” he said.
“Thank you. Wow.”
“This is great news.”
Erin and Alicia clapped.
“But I’m sorry you didn’t win.”
“Are you serious?” he said, shaking his head. “You deserve it.”
Even as he said it, he was conscious of how quickly he’d leapt from his seat to offer his congratulations. Had he become too good at mimicking these kinds of emotions? Did he really mean it?
He did believe that he meant it; he was happy and pleased. It was the right and good thing to relish Anne’s achievement, to celebrate her expertise.
“Let’s make a toast,” Alicia said. “To Anne becoming a famous scholar.”
“She’s a brain on the make,” Erin said. “Aren’t you glad you’ll be able to say you knew her when you were young?”
They each took a sip of wine, while Anne beamed.
“It’s like an auction,” Erin said. “Offers will be coming in from all over.”
“All the best schools will want her.”
“Where would you like to go?”
“We’ll see,” Anne said. “Maybe Oxford? That’s where the manuscripts are.”
“England would be nice.”
“Or California.”
“Or here,” Richard said.
“Cluck, cluck,” said Alicia. “Enough with the flattery! I forgot to tell you both. There’s a demonstration tomorrow on campus. Are you coming? We’re protesting the right to publish sexual fantasies about our professors in the student press. They’re cracking down.”
“I’ll think about it,” Richard said.
“Come on,” said Alicia. “Stand up to censorship!”
“I want to see you chant!”
They had cookies for dessert. When Erin and Alicia had gone, Richard stood at the kitchen sink washing the dishes, while Anne dried them beside him. Adrift in thought, Anne hummed to herself with a soft smile on her face. Even this mellow and proud distraction, after good news, struck him. She had never been even slightly demonstrative about her own success. Now she was unable to tamp down a buzz of accomplishment; she was thrilled. He smiled down at the soapy water, happy for her too.
TWENTY-SIX
The latest installment from the foundation came into Richard’s account late in the fall. He felt flushed and secure. He became a coffee shop regular again, at a place a few blocks away from Anne’s apartment called Slouch. The staff dressed with bucolic cheer, oftentimes in overalls and railroad caps, and there was always chirpy electronic music on the speakers. Their shared sartorial preferences, neighborhood, routine, and in all probability dull or stressful jobs, testy coworkers, depleted bank accounts, and lofty ambitions ostensibly united them but did not inspire them to conversation. Every time he made his way there, he passed a ragged-looking man sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk holding a sign that read, in black marker, FUCK EVERYONE IN THE WEST VILLAGE. But still, he went often enough that soon he began to feel at home.
He also felt at home in Anne’s apartment, in the surrounding blocks with their boundless provision of culinary and retail choice, in the boutiques filled with silk dresses and in the bodegas overflowing with fashion magazines and bundles of lilies. He and Anne both loved all of this; they shared a deep affection for the city, especially in its deluxe versions, and they went out a
nd walked it together, just as they had done before.
The question of their future did assert itself. As they were lying in the wreckage of their hangovers one morning, Anne turned to him and said:
“What if I get a job in another city? Will you come with me?”
“You don’t want to leave New York,” he said.
“I don’t want to leave New York, but I may not get a job here.”
He was staring at the ceiling.
“Do you need to get one?” he asked.
He was picturing them in another kind of life—a life that was safe and vivid, frivolously arranged, and flavorful. He saw them drinking martinis in an elevated bar, carving into some newfangled meat, trying on clothes, Antonella and the Clio Prize dim silhouettes in their past. It was a city made for people with nowhere to be, when you got down to it.
“I want to get one.”
“What about when I get a job?”
“We’ll look for you too, obviously. We’ll find jobs in the same place. We won’t settle.”
He got out of bed and looked out the window. It was snowing beautifully, like a mammoth cloth shredded by moths. Women with long silken hair, in black tights and furry boots, moved along the sidewalk in animated pairs, resembling a seductive alpine patrol force.
If they moved to a small college town, she said, maybe she could buy a big gabled house. There would be room for friends and visitors, a bucolic update of Peggy Guggenheim’s Venetian palazzo.
“I’ll go wherever you go,” he said.
He meant it. He had grown to believe that this tolerant communion, this forgiving harmony in which he was never compelled into a dishonest and untenable competence, would persist wherever they went together. She knew him, and she would never grow impatient searching for what was not there. “And I’m going to start writing again. I’m going to come out of this,” he contemplated.
“Of course you will.”
* * *
ONE DAY AROUND LUNCHTIME Richard found himself in Midtown. He was going to meet Anne after an appointment she had, but he was early. It was cloudy, dry, and cold, winter coming into focus. At his hairline there was a slim film of moisture and he felt damp under his coat. He went to a cafeteria-style place, dimly lit as if the day were somnolent, the frothy curved residuum of discarded cappuccinos scattered across the tables like a halfhearted installation. The spontaneous organization of the city went on under a palsied sky, the logistical and spatial negotiations dense and cryptic. He watched delivery trucks and couriers pass by and solemn young editors who wore sober, determined expressions, wrapped in scarves against the cold air. He ordered a cappuccino and sat down at a table beside the window.