He appraised the scene again. His regular crew had dissolved into its usual arrangements.
No Damon in sight. There wouldn’t be.
The blondest, slimmest server conveniently appeared. Retrieving another glass of wine, Sasha flirted. The guy lingered, his body curving in Sasha’s direction. They discussed the creative challenges involved in devising a genuinely new spring roll. The server appeared to be willing. More than that, he proved to be dexterous, tapping his number into Sasha’s phone with one hand while balancing a tray with another. It boded well.
Sasha entered his number under the name “Party.” He could be erased or given a proper name later, as needed.
Giordana’s friends, who were clearly away from their home turf, were floundering, peering around like they were lost, diddling their wine stems, and nervously eating all the spring rolls. Sasha moved in closer so he could assist. They gushed with appreciation for the entire evening. Cindy, their ringleader and a bit of a Valkyrie, did most of the thanking.
After the conversation died back, there was a moment’s dead air. They were all used to such things, he was sure, but that was Sasha’s cue to talk. “Do you think she’ll ever run out of ruined cities?”
“I didn’t mind visiting her in Warsaw, but I don’t think so. It’s sad,” Cindy said.
“Sad for the cities or sad for her friends?” Sasha asked.
“Both, really,” she snorted, surprising herself, and looking to the others, in apparent amazement that a common publicist possessed such rare and refined wit.
He liked them; he could access them. One day they could all spread out a blanket and play Scrabble. Her crowd would surely play for blood, but he imagined he could awe them with some of his words. They could have a picnic in the park. Sasha would insist on doing the catering himself.
One of Cindy’s backups asked Sasha, “So who’s Giordana talking to?”
He turned to see that she and Jonah had moved their conversation to a corner sofa. It had gone far beyond enforced good manners. They were sitting close, nodding at each other as if it didn’t matter what they were saying. Their necks were turned toward each other in goosy symmetry, like salt and pepper shakers. Three fingers of Jonah’s hand were perilously close to Giordana’s thigh, lightly tapping the slim wedge of sofa between them. As if they were waiting for what’s next.
“An author,” Sasha said, absorbing the view. His silly plan had worked. On his cousin’s behalf, he was scandalized.
Cindy assured the sidekick, “She must know him from a conference or something like that.”
“Ten minutes ago she didn’t.”
Cindy raised a glass of sparkling water. “Then give yourself a toast.”
For the next hour, Sasha massaged the room. He supervised the flow of provisions, he circulated in and out of conversations. The mission, as ever, was to prevent hunger, thirst, or boredom.
A few more introductions were made—some business, some pleasure—but none gelled as solidly as Giordana and Jonah, who hadn’t budged from their spot, except to scoot closer to each other. They were visibly smitten. Jonah’s fingers were now, indisputably, skimming against her leg, and Giordana’s arm was propped against the sofa, the inside of her wrist supporting his neck. If she chose to scratch her cheek with that hand, they would be forced into a kiss. Sasha was turned on by the success of his match.
While Giordana hadn’t often launched into theoretical discussions about the destruction of cities with Sasha, she had often and freely confided about her romantic mishaps. He suspected that she did this for two reasons, both lame. One: Sasha, even at this advanced age, had never told his parents about his personal life. Though they would have to be wearing leather blindfolds not to notice, they officially didn’t know. All this meant was that he was unlikely to repeat anything about anyone else’s life back to the family. Two: Giordana—adorably—believed that Sasha’s carnival of fuck-buddies had yielded something remotely shaped like insight.
For a few years, her details had actually been interesting to listen to. At one of the universities that was perpetually courting her, an almost divorced and allegedly genius professor on the hiring committee was consistently making all the right noises. Downside was that he still lived with his wife, so the most that judgmental Giordana ever allowed were overtures. At the exact same time, she was having a run of resolutions and relapses with an urban planner with whom she claimed to have zero in common. He lived in Mostar, another decimated city. She had to exploit a few fellowships to keep that one going. This all made for many trips to the airport and many frantic What should I do? nights in Sasha’s kitchen. In the space of one miserable month, though, both contestants, for their own unknown reasons, retreated. After that, utter dryness. As far as Sasha knew, only her research grants and her friends accompanied her on the long dip into unpartnered middle age. Not that his own prospects were so flash, but never mind.
Sasha approached Giordana and Jonah on the sofa, to see what they could be talking about for so long. She didn’t even turn in his direction. Jonah did, and gave a look that you’re never supposed to give your publicist. Sasha backed away, more than content. If this thing stuck, Sasha would get all kinds of family cred.
Giordana’s crew kept a similar distance from her for the remainder of the night while Sasha, his mission more than completed, relaxed and gravitated toward his friends.
Connor had managed to drag Tim along. Together forever, they weren’t moving in their usual tandem. They were clearly having an off night. Sasha first met them during that brief slice of time when he and Damon were pretending to be a couple. They all double-dated. Connor and Tim’s extreme seniority as a pair made them mentors. They dispensed advice often. They were kind, they were good hosts, they’d survived a decade plus. That was enough to make them an institution. Afterward, they kept Sasha.
“Neither of you two were up to the task,” Tim told him.
“Damon pulls the pin on me and I cop the blame?”
“Yep,” Tim said. “You’ll slow down one day. Maybe when you hit your forties. Or when they hit you.”
It was irritating when Tim got superior, especially when Sasha was sitting at their table and eating their risotto.
Tonight, Tim and Connor stood close but silent. Their gazes and goatees drifted away from each other. Connor looked tense. Tim, the same, plus pouts.
His observation of Tim and Connor’s body language was interrupted by the sight of Giordana and Jonah heading for the spiral staircase. This was staggering. Her departure was as much of a gift as her arrival. Giordana’s cluster of friends, their mouths hanging open, looked extra bereft as she circled up the steps. Jonah followed close behind.
“So, has the party gone according to your wishes?” Connor asked Sasha.
“More or less.”
Giordana had ditched her own birthday. Amazing, awesome even. Sasha felt that he owed her friends goody bags as compensation. His attention returned to Connor and Tim. “You two all right tonight?”
Connor shrugged. A few feet away, Tim gave a yawn and gazed philosophically at the doors to the kitchen.
“We shouldn’t have come out,” Connor said. “It’s just a bad patch.”
“My cousin would tell you that she appreciated your effort, but she’s already left.”
Sasha fantasized that he could do for them what he had done for Giordana and Jonah. He tried to remember the trigger. Disgruntled as Tim and Connor were, they allowed Sasha to gather the two of them into his reach. He touched them at their wrists, making a chain, skin to skin to skin.
“You’re being creepy,” Tim said.
Sasha’s silent benediction provided them with a life of harmony. He felt another charge.
Connor jerked away.
Tim’s posture softened.
“Everything okay?” Sasha asked. Neither of them looked in his direction.
Tim’s hand rose up and gave Connor a sincere and tender Vulcan salute. Back in the day, the two of them
were Dungeons & Dragons freaks, so one could only guess at the geek shorthand they—thankfully—kept to themselves.
Connor offered a Vulcan hello in return, with every bit as much poignancy.
“Get a room,” Sasha said and pulled back.
They didn’t notice. They sank toward each other and into a greeting so full of forgiveness that for an instant Sasha thought he might cry.
As the other guests found their reasons to leave, Sasha was desperate to try his hand once more. He was unnerved, but also buzzed by his powers of persuasion. It had to represent an evolution of his skill as a publicist. His fingers regularly typed releases that could entice an audience. Why couldn’t they matchmake?
The vampiric chicklet who had pointed him toward the lights was standing over a side table, pouring the dregs of a dozen wineglasses into a plastic jug. He circled around her, faux-casual. He would set her up with anyone at the party, whomever she wanted. Kind of like a bonus.
“Was it a good night?” he asked.
“A friendly enough crowd.”
A spring roll splashed from a glass into the jug and they watched it unravel. Slices of vegetables floated in chardonnay and merlot effluent. “Human beings are revolting,” she added.
“Agreed. But I was wondering if I could introduce you to any of the ones here. Anyone not so revolting?”
Her lips went up in the shape of mild distaste. He felt like a pervert on a bus.
She said, “Look. Thanks. My boyfriend’s waiting back at home. He drives a truck. He’s not so chill about me roaming. Get the picture, honey?” She raised the jug at Sasha as a toast and a sign to get lost.
He wanted more subjects to practice on, but everyone was already going home.
Giordana and Jonah were on the bench under the kitchen window. They jumped up guiltily when Sasha came in.
Giordana said, “You’re back.” A line rarely delivered with enthusiasm.
“Yes, I’m back,” Sasha said, only mildly put out that he felt so unwelcome. They were, after all, his doing.
Standing there by the cupboards—as if they’d been, what, getting ready to make a torte?—Giordana took Jonah’s hand in hers as a statement.
“I had a lovely birthday. Thank you.”
A less obvious but just as beatific thank-you smile appeared on Jonah’s face.
Giordana swung Jonah’s hand lightly. Sasha had never seen her this demonstrative.
He knew next to nothing about Jonah, he realized, except that he was young and had survived The Wrong One. That was his description of his adulterous ex-wife and the title of his book. A total puzzle how he squeezed a publishing deal out of it, or why straight people cared so excessively about a little side action, but the concluding paragraphs—which were all that Sasha had read closely—implied that he would not fall for the wrong one again. So that was a hopeful morsel.
“Everybody’s welcome,” Sasha said.
A more considerate host would have decamped to a nearby hotel room for the night so the couple could rattle the plaster in peace. Sasha didn’t have those manners or that kind of money. And he wasn’t about to sleep on his own sofa.
“Good night,” he said instead, excusing himself to his bedroom. He would put on the white noise machine.
Giordana stopped him on his way. “Were you going to have a shower?”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“That’s terrific,” she said, tightening her clasp on Jonah and leading him toward the bathroom. With no self-consciousness at all, she pulled him in there and closed the door.
“I’ll need my toothbrush, though,” Sasha called out. Instantly, a hand opened the door and delivered it with—so thoughtful—the tube of toothpaste. The door shut just as quickly.
Sasha stood there, looking at his toothbrush and eavesdropping.
“We don’t have to do a thing,” Giordana said.
“I know. We don’t.”
“We have all the time in the world, so slowly, slowly.”
“Slowly, slowly,” Jonah said.
The rustling of clothes. A long silence. Were they examining suspicious moles? Jonah chuckled, as if he had lost his balance taking off his jeans. Sasha listened as Giordana helped him recover with some kind words. The worshipful quiet continued until one of them turned on the shower.
Sasha sank down outside the door and balanced the toothbrush across one knee and the toothpaste on the other. He rubbed his face with his hands, like he was trying to wake himself up. There was conversation about airplanes, something else they evidently shared, followed by some questions from Jonah. The pauses in between their talk grew till it was only the shush of the shower. They went at it, with no regard for water conservation. It was their first time, so there would probably be no giggling—a random assortment of tricks that had worked on others before and might work tonight, all with the goal of making a good impression. But everyone wasn’t like that.
Damon said that the first hours of a relationship were the most exciting, that particle of time before you knew too much. The romance could still be exactly like your fantasy. A truly observant person, or someone who hadn’t been waiting for love since he was ten, would not have been so quick to sign a twelve-month lease with the issuer of such a statement. Sasha had not been this astute. All he saw was poetry. Not to mention the sex.
That was then. To a certain degree, it still was. They had been apart longer than the minuscule seven months they had been together. Pitiful, but it was the biggest heartbreak he could point to. Damon had called up last week, like he had in the past. He’d been clear—again, like he had in the past—and said that he didn’t want to stir up anything, that he was merely after an evening of company. Sasha’s ego was at its lowest ebb, so he walked the ten blocks to Damon’s new apartment for not quite breakup sex, not quite makeup sex, but sex. They played house for a few hours after that, made dinner, read on the sofa with their legs intertwined. It happened once a month or so. Then Damon would show him the door. Like he had every time before, Sasha came home, downed a glass of triple-strength chocolate milk—a special-category prize for not asking for more—and went to sleep. The next day he’d left a message inviting Damon to Giordana’s party. No reply.
An unseemly grunt emanated from the bathroom. Was Sasha really going to wait around to hear Giordana hit her high notes? Before heading for bed, he brushed his teeth at the kitchen sink.
“It was totally bizarre,” she said. “One second I was making my way down the stairs and wishing I could hug every person in the room—and disappear at the same time, you know me—and then you introduced Jonah and suddenly his was the one face I cared about.”
“Do you feel the same way about him today?”
“To be truthful, more so. I have to send a note to Cindy to explain. What I did was just wrong.”
Giordana shoved her cereal bowl to the side and opened her laptop.
Sasha considered his father’s rule about reading material at the table. The thought sidetracked into his father’s likely disenchantment with other aspects of Sasha’s daily life. “They all saw how involved you two were with your conversation. I’m sure she’d understand,” Sasha said.
“Still, they traveled all that way and I behaved like an adolescent.”
“Did you feel like one?” Sasha asked. No answer. Giordana was pecking out her apology. “Do you think you’ll see Jonah again while you’re here?”
She didn’t look up. “There’s a mean deadline he has this afternoon, but he invited me over later. We’ll see what happens. I might stay over there. He lives alone.”
Was he supposed to feel bad that he hadn’t vacated last night? “Sorry about the pullout sofa.”
Giordana chewed on a nail and spaced away into e-mail land while Sasha observed her for crucial indicators.
An occasional fond, fluttery upward gaze—check.
The feeling that Sasha and his questions and the screen in front of her were all an interruption from the one thing that matt
ered—check.
“Can you tell me what you’re feeling?” he asked, trying to understand his power.
Giordana looked over the edge of her computer at him, annoyed but willing. It was his kitchen, after all. “Strangely calm,” she said. “But it’s been a while for me. Maybe that’s what it feels like at my age.”
“Stop downplaying it. What what feels like?”
“This,” she said, waving her hands in the air. “The tickle. The wondering what’s going to happen.”
“Does it enter into your calculations that he happens to live here?”
“Details, details. I’m not having calculations,” she laughed, getting back to her screen. “The truth is I don’t remember feeling this positively about anyone. Severe fondness. He seems real.”
Offhand, like that: real.
Giordana looked at her laptop. “Message here from Alek.”
Sasha couldn’t even remember the last time they’d spoken. His brother’s name felt like something that had been attached to his ankle when he was a child.
Giordana read on. “It’s a weird one.”
“Aren’t they all? Where is he?”
“Java.”
“For the coffee?”
“He’s been there awhile. I managed to track him down for a phone call once or twice. I was going to try to get there to see him, but he discouraged it. He said family still confuses him. Full of plans, though, living quietly.” Giordana scanned his message. “Working on rice paddies in season. When it gets cooler he takes tourists around the sights. He swears the language is easy to master, so he’s in demand for whatever he feels like doing on any given day. He can quit a job every week and still find work.”
“Sounds ideal.”
“He says that he’s suffused with earthly treats.”
“Starting with way too much kind bud.”
Giordana said, “What?”
Sasha didn’t bother.
“He says he’s lonely for love and hopes I’m not,” she read.
“There: you have something to report.”
He envied Alek, wearing out his welcome across the continents. But leaving the rice paddies wouldn’t cure the loneliness. You could be in the middle of the most crowded dance floor in the most crowded city and you could still be in solitary.
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