Splitting the Difference

by Tre Miller Rodriquez

  I’m the only female in the place and one of only three people whose shirts are still on: the other two being the boys we came here with, boys who are fit as fiddles but refuse, for some reason, to take their shirts off.

  Two Coronas later, I head to the first-floor bathroom with an idea. When I emerge, it’s with my velvet blazer and nothing underneath.

  I give my T-shirt to Gayson, who cheers and hands it off to coat-check. Upstairs, the bare-chested bartenders stare at me like I’m a rare breed of exotic bird. And when we find our boys on the patio, they perform on cue.

  All shirts are off and suddenly a gaggle of new boys surround us: tourists, native New Yorkers, a professor of Latin American studies who wants to hear about my upcoming trip to Cuba.

  Between conversations, Gayson catches my eye and smiles.

  What, I say.

  Proud of you, he says.

  Proud why? I ask.

  Because last summer you were terrified of doing a three-minute comedy sketch on stage. And here you are tonight, shirtless in public, holding court with a dozen queens.

  * * *

  It’s my last day as a publicist.

  I’ve messengered my personal things to my apartment. Created status reports and directives for my replacement. Blasted a good-bye email to all three offices, giving shout-outs to the many people I will miss.

  My final task?

  Download all of Alberto’s emails from my work inbox.

  Since July, a separate folder with all of them has lived on my office computer. The I.T. department created it at my request before I returned from my leave of absence. Tonight, I move that untouched folder onto a flash drive and confirm the transfer by opening one of the files.

  When I do, I see the words you’re my hero above Alberto’s branded signature.

  I smile.

  And glance at the date on the email: 1/14/09.

  One year ago today.

  He is proud of me?

  Backing me?

  Co-signing me?

  Apparently so.

  * * *

  This morning I wake to the blue-white light of an approaching spring in New York: the kind of light that promises it will not be this cold forever. As I make espresso, I notice the spring-ish light from the kitchen window is dulled by dirt on the double panes. The exterior panes haven’t been cleaned in months because there were no windows like this in California and I still haven’t learned how these damn things detach.

  The double-pane-cleaning ritual was something Alberto always did—usually at the first sign of spring or fall. I would walk in when he was balancing the pane on one knee, hollering for paper towels or Windex. I’d helped with the cleaning and the reattaching, but the detach? A mystery.

  But today I want to see the river and the light and not through this haze of dirt, so I stand on tiptoe and see a screw and a slide lock. Could this—?

  I press and the window releases.

  Just like that.

  I balance the pane on a chair instead of Alberto’s legs, scrub it clean, and lift it back into its track.

  Each time I walk past the window and see the un-hazy view, I feel absurdly empowered.

  Which is why the freezer doesn’t daunt me today.

  I pull out a veggie potpie and heat the oven to 400—but curb the urge to text either of my mothers about cleaning a window and using the oven today. Instead, I eat and dress for 5pm drinks with an editor girlfriend, who fills me in on the year that’s passed since we last met.

  Her husband’s just reworked a screenplay and they’re planning a May trip to Barcelona and did she ever tell me that her mom’s first husband died at twenty-four? And that her mother didn’t tell her there was a first husband until she was a teenager?

  Um, no.

  I’ve never seen a single picture of the man. I imagine it’s because he bears a strong resemblance to my own father, she explains, who Mom married less than a year after the first husband drowned.

  Well, no judgment here, I say. Statistics aside—some 40 percent of widowed spouses remarry within twelve months—I have my own weird encounter with “loss replacement.”

  A year and a half after my brother’s death, I started dating a Malibu surfer who looked so much like Phil that relatives actually mixed them up in photos.

  Which I conveniently ignored.

  For three years.

  In February 1998, I’d gotten a call that a friend of my brother’s—a man I’d briefly dated—had shot himself in the neck while cleaning a gun. I jumped on a flight from Berkeley and arrived at an L.A. hospital minutes before LaValley’s parents took him off life support. My mom, another friend of Phil’s, and I stood at his bed after the parents left, holding LaValley’s hands as his soul drained out of him, one ragged, yellow breath at a time.

  In the week after he died, I created the photo collage for his funeral, wrote the eulogy, tracked down his estranged father on the East Coast, and gathered friends for the service. During that week, I found myself re-grieving Phil, who’d been gone four years. Many memories involved the three of us: scenes that LaValley and I would reminisce about—remember when we threw that party and snowboarded off the roof into the pool?—but now, who would I ask whether it was summer ’91 or ’92 when we all dropped acid at that bonfire in the desert?

  That week, I had seen a photo of Phil and in my grief stupor, had mistaken it for my boyfriend. And I cringed for all the obvious reasons. I could not bear to see Malibu boyfriend that week and when I returned to Berkeley, I continued to make excuses about midterms, papers, anything to stave off the conversation I knew was coming. The one where I’d have to tell him it was over and why. The one where I eventually confessed that I’d subconsciously filled my brother’s void with him.

  Let me get this straight, he’d said. I remind you of your dead brother? And you only figured this out after LaValley died? Which was what—three months ago?

  More than a decade later, I think the Malibu surfer has forgiven me—we’ve been on Facebook terms for a while—but what he doesn’t know is how very much I owe him. He was my life lesson on replacing the loss: it might work for a year—or three—but eventually, you’ll get a phone call or see a picture or attend a funeral and a shit-ton of baggage will come tumbling out of dark corners. It’s also why I ignore the Latinos with shaved heads and statement glasses who seem to be at every other party I attend.

  * * *

  It’s been awhile since my last Revolución visit so when a receptionist I don’t recognize asks if she can help me, I just smile and tell her that I’m family.

  I hug my way down the hallway, telling anyone I encounter that I’m here to turn the volume up. When I reach his office, there’s a coat on the back of his chair, a head above it.

  I’m half-expecting it to swivel around and say Hey babe!

  The not-shaved head turns around.

  It belongs an unfamiliar girl in her early twenties.

  Why in hell are you in his chair, I think.

  I’m Tré, I say, gesturing toward the framed photos on the desk. I’m the girl in the pictures.

  I’m Raquel, she says, nice to meet you.

  Likewise. Mind if I slide in? I’m just gonna put the music on.

  I sound like an alpha cat, marking territory.

  Raquel stands up.

  You might want to save your work first, I say cheerfully. I’m gonna be here for a minute.

  When she closes out her window, Alberto’s portrait is about a foot wide on the desktop.

  He’s wearing his red Chanel glasses and I’m-so-fierce face.

  I say hello to him, open iTunes, and turn up Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr.

  I’ll be back next Friday, I tell everyone.

  I do not add and that girl better not be sitting in his chair.

  * * *


  Hat invited me to Saturday brunch in the East Village, and it’s the first time we’ve hung out sober and in daylight. The conversation is animated, so we continue it on the street afterward, walking through the Bowery.

  There’s a museum in this neighborhood I’ve never visited, I say. You up for some art?

  Sure, he says.

  It is the lamest excuse for a museum I’ve ever seen.

  The space itself is fantastic, but there’s exactly two pieces of art per floor. Hipsters are staring at empty walls painted an iridescent shade of eggplant and actually discussing.

  I’m over it, I say.

  I want to see the last floor, says Hat.

  Of course he does.

  Alberto and I were the only two people we knew who go in for one exhibit and leave.

  The last floor features a room of Warhol derivatives and I’m not a better person for seeing it. On the street, it takes me a few minutes to exchange my annoyance with the pleasure of wandering the City holding someone’s hand.

  But this Someone is no Alberto, evidenced by his impatience when I stop to shoot a red prom dress that’s been hung out to dry on a three-story fire escape. And by his comment after I take him into Raine’s Law Room and the manager tells us the place is closed.

  You’re like a bull in a china shop, says Hat, when we’re back on the street.

  Excuse me?

  The way you just barreled in there past the busboy and manager. He tried to stop you, but you just kept going like you owned the place.

  I drop his hand and find my pocket.

  Hat doesn’t get me.

  Will never get me.

  We part at the corner of 23rd and Sixth Avenue knowing there will be no third date.

  I’ve deleted Hat from my phone by the time I go to dinner tonight with Naumann, someone who does get me.

  Naumann is the male half of a couple with whom Alberto and I double-dated. Back in March, he hugged me and vowed we’d continue the double-date tradition even though two people would be missing.

  (His girlfriend had recently left him for one of my girlfriends.)

  His words would’ve been just another-thing-people-say if he hadn’t followed it with and we’ll do sushi.

  Naumann is Pakistani and does not do sushi.

  Yet two months after the funeral, we met up at Megu, one of New York’s fancier Japanese restaurants. I tried the dishes ahead of him, told him what to skip and what to eat. He did not have, as he put it, a bad sushi experience, so we’re replicating it tonight at Sushi Gari.

  When the blowfish arrives, he’s hesitant.

  You’re gonna try this, Naumann. You know why?

  Why?

  Because after you eat it—it tastes like chicken, by the way—you can tell everybody that you ate something dangerous and lived to tell the tale.

  Blowfish is . . . dangerous?

  So dangerous that you need a special license in New York to serve it.

  For my thirty-second birthday, Alberto, Barby, and her husband took me to Bond Street for dinner. Blowfish was in season so I ordered it for the table and said something about birthdays being immunity against poison. Alberto and his sister took a pass.

  More for us, Barby’s husband said.

  Two weeks later I’d read that Bond Street had closed indefinitely.

  Due to a fire.

  On a bike ride through SoHo that weekend, Alberto and I passed Bond Street and I asked if he’d heard that it had closed?

  What happened?

  Apparently, somebody died after eating blowfish, I say, so the City shut it down.

  Through my sunglasses, I gauge his reaction: he’s already pulled over and whipped out his cell.

  When I hear him say Barbara, I bite back a giggle.

  It’s closed because of poison blowfish, he tells his sister.

  My teeth can’t stop the laugh.

  He looks up, sees me doubled over, pointing at the restaurant.

  He follows my finger, sees the unmistakable soot stains around the windows, and tells his sister never mind the blowfish, Tré is fucking with us.

  It’s one of the sweetest laughs I ever have at his expense.

  And recalling the sex we had that later that day, he didn’t hold it against me for long.

  * * *

  Forgive me, my dermatologist-slash-girlfriend says. But I’m a total mess right now.

  No need to apologize, I answer. What’s going on?

  My husband and I are having problems, she says.

  You want to talk about it?

  I feel bad laying it on you, she grimaces.

  I can take it, sister. What happened?

  I got drunk at a party two weeks ago, she sighs. Found myself at a guy’s apartment at three in the morning. He tried to kiss me, so I left. When I got home, I confessed everything to my husband, but he was so pissed that he went to California without me.

  I can relate, I say.

  My husband is convinced I cheated.

  But you didn’t?

  I didn’t.

  Is he back from California?

  She nods.

  How is he acting?

  He’s been intermittently sweet—and mean.

  I spill the details of my Fashion-Week-prosecco-mistake in 2008. And what I realized on my own solo trip to California. How it became the catalyst for an attitude shift in me. How my marriage was actually stronger in the months that followed the drama.

  I hope you’re right, she says, starting to cry. I hate myself so much right now.

  I pull her into a hug, ask if I can pray with her?

  She nods and I ask God to draw her close and help her surrender the guilt. Forgive her and help her forgive herself. Restore her marriage and bless their future together.

  Amen.

  When our hands release, we’re both crying.

  One winter from now, her marriage will be more than restored. It will have entered a new chapter, thanks to the birth of a baby they’d been trying to conceive for several years.

  * * *

  Alberto’s side of the bed became my side of the bed in April.

  But the Tempur-Pedic foam on his side is getting concave and flipping the mattress requires two people, so tonight I decide to sleep in the middle.

  A neutral space.

  After closing my eyes, a sob ejects from my throat.

  And another.

  I sit up, waiting for the moment to pass. When it does, I settle in the middle again.

  The middle is no fucking good, so I switch it up: my head on his side, body on my side. But this just reminds me of how I found him on March 15th, so I try frantically to distract myself with thoughts about the sea in Brazil, names of cities in Cuba—anything but his visible veins and yellow skin and open mouth.

  The sobs ease up only when I start to pray, and now I’m lying awake in the dark with moisturizer burning my eyes. I turn on the light, find some Visine and open a Marquéz novel. I’ve come too far to go back to the couch. I am sleeping in this bed if it takes all night.

  * * *

  Slept in our bed that night.

  Did not sleep in it the next night.

  Instead, I found myself at 1OAK agreeing to a 3am bath with a handsome African American stranger. In his hotel room, we have the kind of sex I haven’t had since Alberto—the rough, role-playing kind—and I come twice without knowing the man’s name.

  It’s only when I’m home showering off the residue of yet another top-notch decision that I realize he had a shaved head and statement glasses.

  * * *

  After months of putting it off, I’ve rejoined the gym.

  Too many Alberto memories at the health club in our building, but Gayson goes to the nearby Equinox so I commit to a year me
mbership and haul myself on a treadmill for the first time since May.

  Endorphins carry me out of the gym and toward an overdue call with Hilda about alternate hotels in Cuba. Apparently, the one where Alberto stayed isn’t available.

  The Santa Isabel is very good and close to where he stayed, she says. And I’m checking whether you can bring your laptop with you.

  Really? You think they might confiscate it?

  Remember, she says, you are going to a police state. What is okay or not okay depends on the person you are dealing with and whether they had their café con leché today. Or if they found milk for their café con leché. Or if someone stepped on their toes on the bus. Or if the bus ever came at all.

  * * *

  Don’t know how to spend my birthday this year, but I do know that it shouldn’t be alone.

  I text Mom and ask if she might consider flying out the first week of March?

  She replies within seconds: I’m there!

  We’re texting back and forth when Erin, who always helps with the ash transfer, calls me from London.

  I’m here on business, she says, but I’d like to stop at the Albert Memorial and the pond where you sprinkled him. Can you describe the plaza?

  I thank her, offer to email a photo of the spot, and find myself hating cremation a little less today.

  * * *

  I dreamed of a wedding last night.

  At the bottom of a tall limestone staircase, I stood alone, wearing menswear with heels. I begin climbing the stairs and a man, whose face I never see, joins me on my left and links his arm through mine.

  I lean my cheek briefly on his shoulder before my brother, wearing one of Alberto’s ascots, appears on my right and puts his arm through mine.

  Phil is about fourteen, rocking a blond mullet, and his hair is sweaty, like he’s been dancing.

  Hey little brother, I say. Nice ascot. But let me fix it.

  He stands still long enough for adjustments and takes my arm again.

  Together, the three of us ascend the staircase.

  The dream will be just an entry in my journal until a year from now. By then, my cousin Brent has proposed to Quiana and they will ask me to be a groomsman in their wedding.

  You can wear a suit like the other guys, Brent says.

  Please do, Quiana adds. You look hot in menswear.