by Lucy Morton
“Come on. Come inside. Do not stay here. Kim is not coming today.”
“And how do you know that?”
I wondered if I could get into my apartment somehow. But his was on the other side of the street and there was no way I could sneak out of a window into my apartment.
“I ran into her this morning. She has told me that she has signed up for a literature course every night near her parents’ house and that she would sleep there today.
“And why did not I hear that?”
“Because you’ll be too busy thinking about… What was his name?”
I knew who he was talking about, but I was not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing his name.
“Come on, come inside. My sofa is very comfortable.”
I looked at him for a moment. I thought he was totally different from the guy who destroyed my romantic moment with Bob that night, or the guilty one of taking a good hit, leaving the moving boxes out of place.
“No way. I’d rather sleep here than go into your apartment.”
“Okay, as you wish.”
I closed my eyes, but it was impossible to sleep in that position. I looked desperately my watch. It was two o’clock in the morning. Jack was right. Kim was not coming home that night. Would she tell me about the writing course and the fact that she would stay at her parents’ house? She might have told me, but Jack was right about something: I was only thinking about Bob. My head always seemed to be somewhere else.
After a while, the front door of the apartment opened. Jack appeared in his pajamas looking at me with pity and he brought me a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of water.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I cannot let you starving to death.”
“You say the couch is comfortable, is not?”
“If you want, I can give you my bed”, he offered kindly.
“No, it’s not necessary.”
He helped me up. I could not take it anymore. I was falling asleep. My ass really hurts and if it was not for the sandwich, my stomach would have started to play an unpleasant symphony by cracking and gnashing.
“Thank you” I told him, when I was inside of his apartment.
It was a small but perfectly organized apartment. I had thought Jack would be a disaster guy; messy with shirts on the floor and cans of beer for every corner of the apartment. However, it smelled good, scented candles or something like that. I wondered if he might be gay.
“It smells like candles.”
“I like candles.”
“Scented candles?” I tried not to laugh.
“Yes, what’s up with that?”
“Nothing nothing.”
“I’m not gay if that what you are thinking”, he said offended.
I looked into his eyes. They were awake and vivacious. They had a very beautiful almond shape. Everything about him was sweet and endearing when you were looking at him closely. In the distance, seeing him in his torn jeans and colored shirts. His chestnut and messy hair. It might look like a bully, if you will; he looked very different from what he really was.
“Do you work or study?” I asked, taking the last bite of the sandwich.
“Both. I work in the day and I study in the afternoon.
“Ah.”
“And you?”
“I work in a coffee shop.”
“Which one?” he was interested.
“Jerry’s coffee shop. It is in front of Thompkins Park in the East Village.”
“Do you make the coffee well?”
“Sure.”
“Then I’ll go there one day.”
“You do not have to”, I thought, with the devil idea of throwing the coffee on one of his ugly shirts, “accidentally”.
“There’s the sofa” he said. “Or if you want to watch TV or something…”
“No, I want to sleep.”
“Okay. Well, I’m going to my bedroom. Ah, the bathroom is there.”
“Thank you, Jack.”
“You are welcome.”
I caught myself smiling at him. It was not a fake smile, but quite the opposite. It was sincere. I was truly grateful. Anyone in his place would have ignored me and would have let me starving to death on the landing of the hallway in front of the door of an apartment where I could not enter and therefore I might have to sleep standing up. But he would not. Jack was very kind. He opened the doors of his apartment and he was right about something: the sofa was very comfortable, indeed.
CHAPTER 19
—
Always have second thoughts about yourself, until the information leaves no one in doubt.
Louis Pasteur.
NOW
“It is Jack, then. He must be Dad. Yes”, April certainly said. “Something like that, so kind, it is very typical of Dad.”
“Now, do not you think Dad is no longer Bob?”
“Bob is in Australia, mom.” she was really living the story as if it belonged to her, as if, even if she was not born, she was there. “It cannot be Bob. Bob just left. He left not to come back. It’s sad but…”
“The saddest stories are the ones you remember the most. Why will it be?”
A good night kiss.
We both knew that there were not many more nights left to discover who was Dad. Bob, Jack, or the third guy, who was about to appear my life.
Kim came to see me at my studio this morning. While I am painting, she begins speaking. Speaking without stopping. I sometimes listen to her and I know what she is talking about, while other people, especially when I’m concentrating on mixing colors to get the one I want, I have no idea what the hell they are telling me.
“Do you remember that literature course that I went on Thursday nights?”
“Fucking studio”, I remembered the first night I’d slept on the sofa in Jack’s apartment.
“Well, I’m the one who’s going to teach now”, she says happily. “Can you believe it?”
Kim met his literary manager there after three years. To the person who made her famous within the field of romance novels, and the one who made her name sound with the force of a typhoon. Many people considered Kim the “Danielle Steel 2.0”. Her dream had come true.
“What will become of our shack, Kim?” I ask curiously, sitting in a stool in front of her.
“The other day I walked past and I looked out our window.”
“Did you see anything?”
“What do you want me to see? Nothing, do not you remember how small the windows were?”
“Mr. Hope and the little old woman, Dorothy must be dead” I say.
“They were much older by the beginning of the twenty-first century”, he begins laughing.
“How time flies, Kim.”
“And so it keeps flying on, Jean. And we were able to see it. There are surprises that may be waiting around the corner.”
CHAPTER 20
—
Love without measure, without limit, without complex, without permission, without courage, without advice, without doubt, without price, without cure, without anything. Do not be afraid of loving, you will shed tears with love or without it.
Chavela Vargas.
BEFORE
“Have not you forgotten your keys today, neighbor?”
“Not today”, I said, entering the house. “Hello?”
“Jean! We are here!” Kim is waving us, raising her arm and moving her hand quickly without seeing her face from the sofa.
“Are we ready?” I mumbled.
I looked around at the hallway before closing the door. I liked to see Jack who was still looking at me. We had been flirting a little lately. Just a little. He had come to the coffee shop, I decided to make an effort not to throw him over and Jerry, even, let me sit for a while with him. We criticized Kim’s habits. He promised me not throwing a party again in her apartment, ruining my date. He had already told me intimate things as he used to like aromatic candles because they reminded him recently deceased mother.
“Tom? Is that you?” I asked.
“That’s how a stroke starts”, I thought.
“No, no, no! It’s not Tom, Jean! Is not he just looks like him?”
“His twin brother, if you will.”
“You see? I told you she’d freak out.” Kim was laughing, naughty, turning to her new friend and elbowing him. I did not know whether to wonder more about the identical and striking resemblance or Kim, who was normally talking to a man for the first time in her life, when having human relations with the opposite sex had always been really bad for her.
“My name is Adam.”
(Of course, Adam was not his name).
“Jean, my name is Jean.”
I shook my hand to him when I saw him standing up. He was a little shorter than that Tom I met in Ireland and Adam did not have green eyes but his eyes were also very pretty. From the first moment they were looking at me with curiosity and I, without knowing why, looked away with the need to have a friend next to me just for a little talk.
“Well I have to go.”
“But you just got here. Adam is my classmate to my Thursday’s literature classes. We have to write a little story in pairs, do you have any suggestions?”
“Both of you are the writers”, I said, “I do not know anything.”
I ran before it was too late and I heard Kim was saying to Adam:
“Well, it will be for another time. She has been really weird lately.”
I would lie if I told you I was not offended, but I ring the Jack’s doorbell and when he opened, I felt a huge relief. Because I felt like a real friend by being with him. He was more like Kim but in a man version. He had more sense of humor. He was always making me laugh and talking nonsense. However, something different happened on that day. Something that scared me, because I felt that my heart still belonged to Bob, even though he was miles and miles away for a month and a half. Wow! Time does pass quickly, yes. I still thought it was yesterday when we were sleeping together, very close together… very close to each other. And, no matter how special that month had been, he did not anything about Bob. He had not even written an email to me. Somehow, I was angry with him because it seemed that everything we had lived, then, in the distance, it had remained in nothing. It remained into oblivion. The “Always” was not with him, not at least, back then.
Jack prepared a couple of sandwiches and we were about to watch a movie when, suddenly and without warning, he kissed me that I did not kiss him back, at first. I pulled away a little, I felt strange. It was like kissing Kim, for God’s sake! Had he gone mad? We had crossed the friend zone to go one step further. Entering a dangerous and narrow zone that at that times and due to Bob’s memory, it I find it complicated.
“No, Jack, no…”
But he was looking at me, with that angelic face, begging for just a kiss. I did not really need anything else. I did not know if I could have eyes for him, not at least at that time. I dropped the sandwich on the coffee table. I looked down, and he waited. He waited, waited and waited… then I got up and I left.
CHAPTER 21
—
Do not trust everything you see. Do not believe everything you hear and do not say everything you know.
NOW
“You really stood him up! I mean, Dad. How ugly, mom! How ugly!”
“You still do not know if Jack was Dad! What about Adam?”
“As far as I know, Dad was not much of a letter kind of a guy” she says, like a know-it-all girl.
“You do not really know anything about his past, April.”
“I have not seen him with a book in my life.”
“Because I’d rather play with you than sticking to a book. Dad used to read every night, in bed before going to sleep.”
“Yes? What did he used to read?
“Science fiction. He loved science fiction books.”
CHAPTER 22
—
I am going to write everything I feel one day. And you’re going to read it and ask yourself if it’s about you. And probably yes. And possibly not anymore.
BEFORE
Spring was about to come to New York City. Kim continued with her literary courses and stories, which she never, fortunately, stopped believing it. From time to time she brought Adam home, but she complained he was not quite romantic and he really liked science fiction.
“Science fiction! Can you believe it?” He was whining, wandering around the room. According to her, that inspired him.
I was not listening to her too much. Not because I was thinking about Bob, who had written me some email telling me that Australia was a great place to live. It was quieter than New York though…
“I miss you”
“Ohhhhhh!” Kim always exclaimed, reading my private emails over my shoulder.
“What do not you understand about the word “privacy”, Kim?”
Since that unsuccessful kiss a few months ago, Jack avoided me. I was trying to get out at the same time as him. However, he was always looking down, he waved and he ran down the stairs. When I went out, there was no sign of him.
“You had become very close friends, Jean. What a pity!” Kim regretted.
I found Adam outside the door of our apartment one day.
“Hello, Adam” I said. “Are you waiting for Kim?”
“Actually I came to see you.”
I assumed that some neighbor had let him to come in. I was surprised by his audacity.
“Why?”
Kim’s birthday was coming. I thought, because they were really friends that he might want to throw her a surprise party or something.
“Maybe we can go for a drink or I do not know, go to the movies, if you want.
I wanted to ask him again, “Why?” But he would have thought I was an idiot. I had only a thing in my head: painting that I wanted to focus on that night, but as Adam was so close to Kim, I did not want to look bad and I accepted the proposal to go for a drink at a nearby bar.
We sat at the table. Adam was touching his hands nervously and I was, looking out of the window in case I saw Kim passing by and she “saves myself” from that strange situation. At that moment I saw how Jack was looking at me from the opposite sidewalk. It was a fleeting glance, barely a second, but I understood how much it hurt him that I was in a bar with another guy.
“Kim speaks beautifully of you” Adam began to speak. “He says you’ll be the next Dali or something.”
“She exaggerates a little. No, actually my paintings are abstract.” It was smart of him asking me about my passion. “I could be talking about art for hours. Very colorful, large canvases… I often like to imagine them in huge and modern apartments on the Upper East Side, those with large windows facing Central Park.”
“They may be there someday.”
“Someday… I hope. But it is complicated.”
“Why is it complicated?” If it’s what you like, go for it. For your dreams. I, like many others, believe that when you want something strongly, the universe conspires to make it happen.”
“Where did you get that phrase, Adam?” I laughed, sipping my coffee and I tried to get Jack out of my head and his broken-hearted lover. I just wanted to get out of there and going to talk to him after so long. I did not want our friendship, at least the one he had begun to forge, just end up so badly.
“Well, do not give up hope. Nothing is over if there is hope.”
It was nice to be with Adam. We said goodbye at the entrance and we promised to repeat it another day. A “second date” Adam said. Just as I had feared scaring Bob the first night he came to my apartment, I proposed him to spend the night with me. I think Adam feared the same thing when he was looking at me seriously when he said about having a second date.
“Well, if you want, I…”
“Of course, yes, yes. Sure, Adam.”
He bent down a l
ittle. He put his hand on my shoulder and he gave me a kiss me on the cheek.
“What a charming” I thought.
“Ohhhhhhh!” Kim had exclaimed.
I ran up the stairs and I rang Jack’s doorbell. He took a while to open it. Meanwhile, I took the opportunity to take a deep breath calming myself down a little bit.
When he opened it, he was with his raised eyebrows and a grimace of disgust. He was not wearing any of those ugly shirts and he looked at me as if saying:
“Am I a second fiddle for you?”
“Come in” he said, turning around and going to the sofa.
“Jack, I do not like it. I do not like we are angry.”
“You mean a lot to me more than you think” I would have told him at that time. But I was so angry, I waited. There would be time to say cheesy things at another time.
“What about Kim’s friend? Is he good?” He was very jealous and he did not mind showing it to me.
“Jack.” I took his hand. He looked at me in surprise. “If you want so badly, the universe conspires to make it happen.
I’ve always liked to knock people out. Seeing their faces of: “Oh, God! This cannot be happening” and laughing at them a little bit. So, loving to see Jack’s face, I was the one who approached dangerously closer to him at that moment and without resistance, he let himself go and I kiss him.
I’d be lying if I said I was not thinking about Bob. Or in Adam, a momentary distraction with which I never got a second date. To the poor lover of Science Fiction who taught me the phrase that would become Jack’s favorite and that, over time, I would forget that I was the one who told him, always asking him what webpage he had read them. And then I never see him back at home. Kim told him that I had fallen in love. That it was for real this time. And that she was sure it would be “Forever».
CHAPTER 23
—
Life is sometimes easier when you learn how to interpret silences rather than asking for answers.
Paulo Coelho
(The Zahir)
NOW
“I knew it! I knew Jack was Dad!” April exclaims, with tears in her eyes. We’re both crying.