They lingered over their food, sipping cheap vodka and lime soda. The alcohol had smoothed their conversation, which was sliding more freely now, without pauses or impediments. They spoke only of things they’d be allowed to share: it didn’t matter what, anything that came to mind would do—a visit to the Prado, the beauty of Norwegian fjords, what had happened with Terrence Malick in his recent film, a cult book by Julian Jaynes they’d both happened to have read. They were like tightrope walkers on the same line, careful not to stray from their finely attuned balance. They had been given only one direction to go and the challenge was exhilarating.
The owner approached with the fly-swatting rag in his hand and began to wipe the table next to them. It was closing time.
There was a pause.
“Where shall I take you now?” he asked her.
“I’ll get a room somewhere for the night,” she said.
“There are no hotels around here where you’d want to spend the night.”
“It’s fine. I’m not fussy.”
They walked on the gravel toward the car. A soft breeze enveloped them. The sky was like blue carbon paper. It felt so wrong to pretend to be indifferent.
“Wow. I’m totally drunk,” Sonia said, stumbling, taking time, wanting it to slow down. It seemed to be ticking too fast.
He opened the passenger door and looked at her. He seemed perfectly sober.
“I like talking to you.”
“Yeah. Me, too. That was nice.”
She sat in her seat, not knowing what they would be doing next.
“I wish I had met you when you were still living here,” he said as he turned the key of the starter.
In the years that followed the accident Sonia thought often of that phrase. How her life would have panned out differently had the eye doctor Consuelo Gambrino never entered the bathroom and interrupted their conversation when they’d first met, had she not been too shy to follow him through the party crowd, had she pursued him, kissed him, made love to him that same night. Maybe she would’ve stayed on in the country and learned to cope with the hovering feeling of impending disaster, with her lack of sophistication, which at the time had seemed so unbearable to her. That way she would’ve had a good reason to go on living in the place where she belonged.
She also often wondered how it had been possible to fall like that. When exactly had it happened, this falling, this opening up completely? What was the connection, why him of all the people she’d come across? Clearly she couldn’t talk to anyone about this without feeling pathetic. It sounded like some adolescent fantasy, material for a cheap novel, something her friends would laugh about.
She went quietly back to her life, and kept that feeling a secret, something stashed away in the folds of her memory that now and again she would turn to. She’d go back to it and there it would be, intact, unfaded, like a diamond ring that one cannot wear in daylight, that can only be taken out of its velvet pouch every now and again, just to make sure it is still as glittering and fabulous as one remembers.
The only tangible memory of the car crash was a tiny scar. Nothing more than a thin line running across her forearm. A discreet reminder, something she would see on herself every day, that had become part of who she was, a mark that people hardly noticed.
II
The list, dashed off in pencil on the back of an envelope, is quite long. It starts with a new set of pajamas and a few toys for the child that she will need in the days to come. There’s lots of other stuff she has to get, like milk and vegetables, snow boots, medicines, honey, detergents, printing paper and converters for their European plugs, but Sonia has decided to start with the child’s list, which is the longest and the most urgent.
Since they arrived in New York it has been nonstop rushing and fatigue. The moving, the settling in, the adjusting to the new space. She hates the new bed. She hates the view. A fire escape is not what she was expecting to be looking at, first thing in the morning.
It has been snowing for days. The brownstones in the Village are laced in a mantle of white, romantic as in an Edith Wharton story, but this morning Sonia struggles to see the beautiful side of things.
She walks very fast, making her way uptown. These days she cannot face the subway and prefers to walk; crowds make her nervous, she has been breaking out in cold sweats. It’s just tension, nothing to worry about—after all, it’s the least she can expect from her body given the circumstances—so she keeps some herbal remedy in her pocket. It’s called Rescue Remedy and she likes the sound of its name. Every now and again she squeezes a few drops under her tongue to rein in any spike of anxiety.
Inside the department store the suffocating dampness mixed with the smells emanating from too many bodies feels like a lethal gas that will slowly poison her. She spends too long inside there, unable to make up her mind between two sets of pajamas, incapable of picking the right kind of snow boots, feeling heady, hungry and weak. Too much to choose from, too many options, that’s always the problem with department stores.
She bolts.
Out on the street Sonia inhales the cold slap of air on her face and quickly heads back downtown toward her more familiar neighborhood. The farther south she goes, the deeper into the West Village, the more stylish the women: cloaked in well-cut coats and fur-lined boots, extravagant head gear—a Mongolian-Tibetan style with a contemporary touch—hands gloved in unusual shades for a splash of color. Her own clothes feel limp and stale on her. What seemed a perfectly decent coat only two weeks ago as she was leaving Europe here feels threadbare, secondhand.
It’s going to be tough to brave this city, she thinks. It would’ve been easier, exciting, had they been in a different state of mind. Had they come for a different reason. Her feet are freezing already after only a few steps, the soles of her boots are too thin for the hard, icy pavement. Had she been more patient in her shopping attempt, she could’ve gotten at least the snow boots that were on sale on the ground floor. At least she’d have ticked one item off the list. Actually this constant postponing is a way to keep away all that is in store for them in the coming weeks. For what feels like a long time now she has been pushing the future—any portion of the future, regardless of its weight and size—as far away as possible.
A bubble, a tiny capsule of time where nothing is happening, no decision can be made, is all she wishes for.
A Starbucks beckons from across the street. Another whiff of hot air welcomes her. Sleepy youths in cotton T-shirts lounge in the ample armchairs holding laptops on their knees, busy with their Facebook pages, their backpacks and jackets spread on the floor as if it were their living room.
She sits by the window with a tall regular coffee, and along with the caffeine kick she injects her neurons with more drops of Rescue Remedy.
That’s when her peripheral vision catches a slight movement on her left side. She looks over to the window. Someone is standing outside looking in and shading with a hand the reflection on the glass. It’s a man in a leather coat. Their gaze meets in midair—a laser beam that pierces the glass and freezes the frame.
She jolts, her heart beating wildly in her throat.
Neither one knows how to proceed. He has walked in, brushing fresh snowflakes off his scarf, with a big smile made to conceal a certain uneasiness. They hug, briefly, circumspectly, without kissing. He sits down without taking off his coat, as though he cannot stay for long. Clearly he’s had to walk in, given the incredible coincidence, spotting her inside a Starbucks in an unlikely neighborhood, in a city of millions. They agree that once again they’ve met under unusual circumstances, though neither one pronounces the word sign or destiny. He has aged slightly, gracefully. His hair is shorter, he might have gained a few pounds, but his body still looks strong and muscular; it has the natural build gained by a life outdoors rather than the neatly sculpted physique created inside a gym. His clothes—such an African wardrobe—make him look incongruous, in a way rather unstylish; like a cowboy just landed in Manhatta
n. He glances over at the indolent college kids sitting next to them, at the mess of their used paper cups and half-eaten pastries on the tables. He seems fascinated, as though he’s never been inside a Starbucks before.
He and Sonia are evasive as to their whereabouts—why they both find themselves in New York of all places. He says he’s there for only another couple of days—business, boring stuff—and he’ll be flying back home on the weekend. Actually he might have said We’ll be flying back—Sonia tries to replay the phrase in order to double-check the pronoun but her memory plays funny tricks, it tends to blur words she doesn’t want to hear.
“Business,” she repeats, then asks, smiling, “Sheep business in New York?”
“No,” he says, “no more sheep in my life. More like big spare parts. You don’t want to know.”
Then he rubs his gloveless hands and blows on them.
“What are you doing here? Are you waiting for someone?” he asks.
“No, I was just …”
She stands up and gets her coat, gathers her bag.
“… just getting a coffee. Come on, let’s get out of here. I hate this place.”
Her hands are shaking lightly as she wraps the scarf around her neck. Nothing has changed—the excitement, the fear, the desire—it’s all still there, unevolved, unexpired. Still dangerously alive, as if it has only been asleep inside her.
Suddenly New York in the snow looks heartbreakingly beautiful. They walk along the small blocks around Greenwich Street, where there are fewer people, less traffic. They don’t have a plan yet but she wants to be somewhere quiet, where they can have some privacy.
“Are you hungry, you want to get something to eat?” she asks, to let him know that she does have a little time.
“Sure,” he says, looking slightly disoriented now. She sees a Japanese banner farther up the street.
“Good. How about sushi?”
“Whatever you feel like.”
She quickly writes a text on her phone and he discreetly looks the other way.
grabbing a bite, back by 2
She then turns the phone off.
The restaurant has just a few tables, low lighting, wood-paneled walls saturated with a fishy aroma. There are no customers as it is still early. A rice paper sliding door is half opened onto a private room with a table and two simple benches. She points toward it and the waiter nods.
“Shoes, madam,” the waiter whispers.
Slipping in the small room in their socks feels sinful, as though they are entering a bedroom.
The table is long and thin, meant for at least eight, low and slightly sunk in, so they can eat cross-legged facing each other.
They are too nervous to be interested in the food, neither one feels like looking at the menu.
“I’ll take what you take,” he says.
She orders soup, black cod with miso and tea. For a moment she fears it might have been a mistake to drag him all the way inside this private room; he might be feeling uncomfortable, trapped. He could’ve been on his way to a meeting, or maybe his family is waiting to have lunch with him somewhere after all. Yes, she might have been moving too fast, again, without thinking.
“What have you been up to since I saw you last?” Sonia asks, deciding to sound casual, with the tone people use when bumping into each other at a party. They have to start somewhere, after all.
“Uh, let’s see …” He fiddles for a moment with the chopsticks. “I’ve been thinking of you,” he says, deadpan, “on and off since we crashed.”
Sonia gives a nervous, artificial laugh.
“Well, I guess that was a hard one to forget, since we nearly died,” Sonia says. It’s the wrong tone of voice, she knows—casual, ironic. Yet she doesn’t know how to change it.
He doesn’t answer and keeps his eyes on her, intent.
“Did you ever recover the car?” Sonia asks.
“No, I had to buy another one.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
There is a pause as the waiter walks in with tea and soup in lacquered bowls.
She just can’t bring herself to say what she has been waiting to say for all these years. Time keeps ticking away. Soon they’ll be done eating, they’ll find themselves out on the street and once again she will go home having said nothing. She knows she will not be granted another chance. On the edge of a bathtub; in the middle of the bush; now Perry Street in the snow. It’s not going to happen again.
“What is this thing?” she blurts out at last.
“Which thing?”
“This thing between us. It’s ridiculous.”
“It must be what people call falling in love.”
How shocking, that he should be the one to be so unfettered. Yet she’s thankful, he has dared to say it out loud.
“I didn’t say I love you,” he says, defiantly. “I said I might have fallen in love. In love is a different phase, it doesn’t involve all that love requires.”
“What does love require?”
“Things like trust, affection. Solidarity.”
“I like trust, affection, solidarity,” she says. “I prize them enormously.”
“So do I. But those need time, and a lot of work.”
Sonia holds her cup with two hands, hiding part of her face.
“Okay, so what exactly is this?”
“It’s the way we as a species came to be. Some billions of years ago, that’s how life started to happen on the planet. I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
Sonia smiles. His humor is gentle, unthreatening. He sips his tea.
“We didn’t just crash, you know,” he says. “We exploded. From the … from the tension. That’s an enormous amount of energy, what you and I conjured up that night.”
“We fell off the bridge because we had had too much to drink,” she says, and again regrets the way she’s still keeping herself at a distance, feigning to be blasé.
He shakes his head.
“No, that’s not it. I’m not making this up. It’s physics. Like, you know, quantum theory.”
Sonia knows that soon her husband will call her phone and find it turned off. He won’t think much of that, he has no reason to be suspicious. There is trust between them, there has always been. The babysitter will leave in an hour. She really needs to go soon.
She looks at him and suddenly their eyes meet in that brief, suspended space where there are no more funny lines, no irony, but a seriousness they hadn’t dared before. She knows that this is the only chance she has to cross that realm and say what she has been wanting to tell him; that, yes, she has, in some quiet way, loved him all these years. She just wants him to acknowledge the part he’s been playing unknowingly in her life, as if, after learning that, they will finally reach a place of rest. And yet, she can’t make herself say it. What would happen at this point, she thinks, once those words are spoken? Would they really be at peace? Wouldn’t they feel they ought to do something with them? Take a room in a hotel?
And that, of course, would be insane.
“My husband has cancer.” The words pour out fast, almost without her knowing. “We came here because they have the best doctors. I have no idea how long it’s going to take.”
He nods, waiting for her to continue.
“We had to sell our apartment back home because it’s going to be horribly expensive to have surgery done here without insurance.”
Sonia leans sideways. She lets her own weight pull her down and slides slowly, till she’s reclining on the bench, under the table.
It’s the fatigue, the weight of all the events and circumstances that she can no longer control, all the questions that have no answer, this venturing onward, through a darkness getting darker. It’s the near future at the rice paper door.
At times it is so tiring, she needs to close her eyes.
He too slides and reclines on his side, coming into her view. Now they face each other under the table, supine on
the benches, just like they did in those hospital beds six years earlier.
“We decided we’d do whatever it takes. So here we are.”
He nods and then holds out his arm toward her.
“Tell me more,” he says.
“We have a child, she’s only three,” Sonia says, her voice nearly breaking. “She needs her father. They adore each other.”
Sonia needs him too. It’s just that her mind refuses to register the likelihood that she may lose him.
She extends her arm till their hands find each other. It’s the first real physical contact they have had since the night of the crash. She feels his fingers closing on hers, brushing them lightly. They remain like that, without saying anything for a while. And it feels okay to be able to be silent together, lying under the table, taking a break from all that is happening above it.
It’s a relief. This resting place.
“What about your children?” Sonia asks.
“They’re growing up fast. We have three now.”
“You and Alexandra are still good?”
He nods.
“I’m happy for you.”
“She’s wonderful. I couldn’t live without her.”
This is a grace, Sonia thinks, to have this, to be able to look at it and say this is what we have, rather than this is what we can’t have.
Love has many faces.
The rice paper door slides open and the waiter enters holding a tray with the food. For a moment he looks around—it seems as if his two customers have vanished. Then he sees they are lying on the benches under the table, facing each other. Holding hands.
He places the food on the table and steps out as lightly as possible, so as not to wake them.
Roman Romance
Elsa still had his letters in a shoebox somewhere. They’d been written in longhand on a yellow legal pad and on the backs of the envelopes was “drew barker 21 taft road kenosha wisconsin usa,” all in lowercase.
The Other Language Page 26