My heart just then held its breath as it dived into dark, cold waters.
“Hello?” she said. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“It’s me.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have anything to say to me?”
“Let me turn down the television.”
I pulled the phone from my ear and sat there for a moment. There is always one that gnaws at the bones. You think of her when the alcohol floats you into a tidal pool of regret. You dream of her still. In the simplest of moments, waiting for an elevator, mailing a letter, the memory of her slices into your heart as naturally as a breath.
“Okay, I’m back,” I said.
“Are you still mad?”
“That’s a funny question. You get mad when your fiancée flirts with your old pal Jimmy. I think what happened sort of transcends mad, don’t you?”
“Is that why you’re sending me the letters?”
“What letters?”
“Maybe we should get together and talk about it.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Then you have to stop.”
“But I’m not doing anything.”
“How about some coffee, Victor? The letters are a bit deranged, don’t you think? And I know deranged, believe me. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m not sending any letters.”
“Just coffee, Victor. Please.”
That was the start, the first step in our version of the old-lovers’ tango. You meet again by chance, you meet by design. She’s thinking about you, he wants to make amends, she wonders why you’re writing her anonymous letters filled with hate. You deny it, although it sounds just then like a pretty good idea. You meet, slyly, surreptitiously, as if your meeting together like this is somehow indecent, as if you already know the way it will end. You ask how he’s been, you ask how’s her job, how’s his mother. You look good, she says.
“So do you,” I said. And she did, damn it.
Julia had been a slim, dark girl when she crushed my heart beneath the sole of her boot, and so pretty she’d been hard not to stare at. Glossy black hair, sly eyes, thin wrists, breasts like ripe tangerines, a feline curve to her lips that drew out startlingly indecent thoughts. She had been a walking explanation for the burqa; to see her in the flesh was to want to do all manner of things to her, slowly, over and again. And she had a surprising accessibility that made it all seem deliciously possible. It was that voice, sexy and impassive and sweet, like Honey West’s. She was easy to talk to, easy to flirt with, easy to kiss, easy to kid yourself that maybe you understood what was going on inside her pretty skull. But even so, you never lost the sense that she was forever holding something back. It was as if she carried in her heart a truth that could make everything perfect if only she would share it, though you sensed she never would.
At the Starbucks now, elbows atop the bare wooden table, she remained stunningly beautiful, but noticeably older and more prosperously dressed. No more black jeans and loose white oxford shirts, not for her. She had pinned an Hermès scarf around her long, lovely neck, she wore a Burberry skirt, she sported a fragrance, like a Frenchwoman or a grandmother. Still, when she smiled, my heart seized. Did I mention her smile? It was a rare enough sight, true, but so dazzling it hurt. Even the lines around her eyes when she smiled caused me pain. It was as if she had spent all the years after me laughing.
“How have you been, Victor?”
“Fine.”
“No, really.”
“Fine,” I said.
“Okay. I won’t press. I know how it is to keep things to yourself. I’ve been reading about you in the papers.”
“Just part of the job,” I said.
“Maybe, but you seem to thrive on the notoriety. How’s Beth?”
Beth was my erstwhile partner, who had left our legal practice to travel the world. “I suppose she’s okay. Last time I saw her, she was heading for a plane to India. She’s off to find herself.”
“That sounds exciting.”
“It sounds like work.”
“You weren’t tempted to go along with her?”
“Gad, no. I actually might succeed, and then where would I be?”
“So you’re all alone at the firm?”
“At the firm, yes.”
“And life’s good? Everything’s fine? It all turned out great?”
“Sure it did. Doesn’t it always?”
“Even Voltaire didn’t believe that,” she said, eyes glancing first down at her coffee and then back up at me like an invitation.
She wanted me to ask. It’s what is done at this stage of the reunion, the feigned friendliness and concern. How are you doing? I hope things are going well. A sort of teeth-grinding politeness that hides the truth boiling underneath. But just then, with the lovely face of my betrayal sitting across the table from me, framed by the steam of her latte, I wasn’t in the humor to be polite.
“Tell me about the letters,” I said.
She reached into her red leather bag—Coach, I couldn’t help but notice—pulled out a short stack of envelopes, handed it to me. The envelopes were plain, no return address, Julia’s name and address printed in a basic computer font. The postmark was from Center City Philadelphia. I opened one, took out the letter, unfolded it.
“They’ve been coming for the last couple months,” she said. “Every week or so. At first I thought they were nothing and threw them out, but then I got scared enough to keep them.”
“Did you show them to the police?”
“I’ve never shown them to anybody. There is nothing that could be done. And I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
“You mean you didn’t want to get me in trouble.”
“I didn’t know who was sending them, but it was someone who seemed to know me intimately enough to have a grudge, and you seemed like a logical choice.”
She was right about that.
The first one read “SLUT” in big, red, hand-scrawled letters. A designer shoe that fit quite neatly, I thought. I opened the next, and the next. “WHORE. WITCH’S CUNT. FAT SLOB. SLAGHEAP. BANGSTER. YOU GREEDY BITCH.”
I went through them all, noticed the way the S’s curved, the L’s looped, the way the E’s tilted to the right. I placed each carefully in its envelope, handed the stack back to her.
“I never thought you were fat,” I said.
“So you didn’t send them?”
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, though maybe I should have thought of it.”
“You’re still upset.”
“I’m over it.”
“You don’t look over it. You look like you just ate an iguana.”
“We were engaged,” I said. “We were planning our future together. You left me for a urologist. A urologist.”
“It wasn’t a comment on your masculinity.”
“Thank you for that, Julia. The burden of Atlas has been lifted from my shoulders. Why, I might now even be able to get on my hands and knees and scrounge up a bit of my lost self-respect. Oh, look, under that couch over there, with the dust bunnies and the discarded sugar packets. Yes, it’s my self-respect. Glorious day. I now can go on.”
“Lower your voice, please. People are looking.”
She was pulling back a bit, biting her lip. I fought the urge to bite it with her. I ducked my head, leaned forward like a boxer burrowing forward in a clinch.
“Tell me, Julia, what was it, really, that caused you to betray me like you did? Was it that you couldn’t help yourself from running after a doctor? That I actually would understand. I’m Jewish, remember, I’d leave me for a doctor, too. Or was it just the sheer joy of emotionally destroying me? I bet you and the doc had a few laughs over that. Sure you did. I did, too. Look at little Victor, rolled up in a ball in the corner of the room. What a hoot. Or maybe the truth of it all is that you simply are a slagheap, whatever the hell that is.”
“Is this
making you feel better?”
“Yes, actually. Thank you.”
“You weren’t blameless,” she said softly.
“Oh, no, of course not. It was all my fault, wasn’t it? I was sleeping with your sister. Oh, but you don’t have a sister. Then I must have been sleeping with your best friend. Except I wasn’t, was I? I was too busy being faithful. That’s a good word. Faithful. You should look it up. It means not screwing around on your fiancé with a urologist.”
She put the envelopes back in her bag, stood up from the table. “I think I’m going to leave now.”
“Oh, don’t go, Julia. We’re having so much fun catching up. Why don’t you tell me about your wonderful marriage? Why don’t we chat about your marvelous life, your Persian rugs in the foyer, your bright expense account at Nordstrom? This was a good idea, wasn’t it, getting together like this?”
“Good-bye, Victor.”
“That’s funny, I’ve heard that before. When was that? Oh, yes, at the coffee bar where you worked, with the fwoosh of the frother and the scent of scorched espresso, when you told me you were abandoning me for a urologist. A urologist. Well, at least his urine’s clear. Clear enough to drink, I’d bet. Hey, that’s an idea. Let’s the three of us get together sometime and share a pitcher. Won’t that be fun?”
These last few sentences were said loudly and to her back as she made her way out of the Starbucks. I looked around. I was being stared at, which felt perfectly appropriate, since I just then felt lower than a carnival geek with chicken blood smeared across his teeth. That was the end of that, I figured, but of course I was wrong.
The explosion of the bitterness that had been bubbling and boiling inside me for years was a perfectly natural part of the whole sleeping-with-the-old-lover thing. Until the bitterness of the ending is drained away, the next phase of the dance can’t begin. And it wasn’t just my bitterness that had to be bled.
“You pulled away the moment you proposed,” said Julia over the phone. She had called, anger seething beneath the placid surface of her voice. Then she called again, repentant. She said she couldn’t help herself from calling. And even as I recognized her on my caller ID, I couldn’t help but answer. We were each other’s wound that we prodded and poked to know we both were still alive. I apologized for my behavior in the Starbucks. She laughed and then blamed herself and then blamed me. For my part, having released my bitterness at an overpriced coffeehouse, I was ready to accept her judgment. And wasn’t it just like Julia to nail my pathologies with deadly precision.
“I was scared,” I said.
“You could barely look at me.”
“I could always look at you.”
“It was over as soon as I agreed to marry you. It was like you never expected I would say yes.”
“I didn’t. You were too pretty, you had the body of a dancer. I expected you to burn me. Which, of course, you did. But we could have worked through it.”
“I wasn’t strong enough, Victor. You knew that about me from the first. I needed to be adored.”
“And he adored you.”
“Madly.”
“I always wondered. Where did you meet him?”
“In an elevator. He struck up a conversation, offered to buy me a drink. This was after you started pulling away. I was feeling vulnerable. I let him buy me a manhattan. He had nice hands.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“And he wore a Rolex.”
“There it is, the secret of my undoing. A Rolex.”
“It was a very nice watch,” she said.
“And you didn’t give me a chance after that.”
“I did, don’t you remember? I told you about him, and you turned away.”
“You told me there was someone else. I was supposed to take you out dancing?”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t going to fight for you.”
“And right there was the problem. I could tell that all you wanted was a way out. So I gave it to you.”
“You don’t know how much it hurt.”
“Yes I do,” she said.
Granted, her display of bitterness didn’t include the brilliant image of the three of us hoisting a pitcher of piss, but it was plenty tough and plenty accurate, and it hurt like only the truth of things can hurt.
So of course we met for drinks.
We met at a hotel bar, something intimate and classy. At this point the enterprise takes on an air of inevitability. Over drinks we each blamed ourselves for what happened. It was my fault. No my fault. No really, my fault. Okay, your fault. Shared laughter. All part of the dance. And the next part too. So really, no really, how are you?
Not so good, either one of us.
Her marriage had died, become a farce. Her husband had shady business dealings and a mistress with blond hair and skinny legs, and she didn’t really care. When I met Julia, she had been an art student, pulling espressos at the local coffee shop. Now she didn’t know what she would do with the rest of her life. But she needed a change, she said. She was ready to change everything.
And me? My relationships since her had been frank disasters. I was in the same apartment as when she knew me. My legal practice was limping along. When we were engaged I had two partners, both had deserted me, and now I was practicing alone.
“As in love as in law,” I said in that fancy hotel bar.
“Things haven’t quite worked out the way we had hoped,” she said.
“No, not really.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“So am I. But more and more I find that life is nothing but regrets.”
“That is so sad.”
“It is.”
“But I know what you mean.”
“And I guess you’re just one more on the list.”
We parted with a hug and a shrug, a wan good-bye and good luck. As if the purpose of the whole thing was to lance the boils of bitterness that had grown like goiters on our necks so we could both, separately, go forward with our lives. But that wasn’t the purpose, was it? And even as I stepped out of that bar, I knew that wasn’t it. Because about some regrets in this world there is nothing you can do, but this was not one of them.
She called.
It was late on a Sunday night. I had been lying on my pleather couch, my shoes off, my head resting on my hands, remembering the way her lips would part ever so slightly in the middle of sex.
And she called. On my cell phone.
“Victor,” she said.
“Where are you?”
“I’ve been thinking of you.”
“Where are you?”
“Victor?”
“Because wherever you are, I’m coming.”
“I’m parked outside your building,” she said.
And this is the thing about falling into bed with your old lover: it is the best of both worlds. It is new, spanking fresh, spontaneous in the way it only is the first time with someone who has your blood and your soul at fever pitch. But it is also old and familiar, as comfortable as your favorite pair of jeans. The steps, the sounds, the scents, as familiar as hearth and home.
I missed you. I think about you all the time. I’m sorry. Kissing you feels so right. I think I’m ready now, finally, yes. If it wasn’t for your husband. Forget about him. It could be perfect. Maybe. We need him out of our lives. He already is, I’ve already moved on. What got into us? I don’t know. I’ve been in a fever about you for days, for weeks. Are we really going to try again? We can make it work this time, I know we can.
And the words are sincere, absolutely, as sincere as any words can be accompanied as they are with tossed socks and bra hooks coming unloose.
Her shoulder, her neck, the soft underside of her breast, so new and so familiar. The brush of her fingers across my tattoo, the smoothness of her thigh, the taste of her tongue, the delirium that leads to the sweetest step in the sweetest of dances. Because it’s not happening just in the present, it’s happening in the past and the future, to
o, and all three are suddenly pure and full of promise. The unzip, the pull down, the kiss of the calf, still taut and lovely, the bite, the laughter, the sigh, teeth clacking, hands gripping, an ecstasy over the horizon so distant and so close it leads to a burning—
And then, smack in the middle, after commitment but before consummation, the knock at the door, a knock so loud the walls shake.
3
The car was still there, Sims and Hanratty were still there.
“They came,” I said to her as I stared out the window, “to tell me that your husband was murdered.”
I didn’t turn around when I said it. Whatever registered on that lovely face, a reaction of staggering shock or something else, something more frightening, I didn’t yet want to see it. It was my legal training kicking in, I suppose. The sad truth about lawyers is that we are fantasists, we make up stories in our heads, stories we can weave for judge and jury, but we don’t want to know the reality. And what fantasy could ever be larger than lost love recklessly reclaimed?
“What did you say?”
“Your husband was murdered, Julia.”
“Where? How? Victor?”
“At the house,” I said. “Shot through the head.”
“Victor, stop it.”
“Not long before you showed up here,” I said.
“Stop it. Just stop it. Please.”
There was a quiet for a moment, and then a whispered “Oh, my God,” as if she had just put together the meaning of my words, followed by the sound of something falling, collapsing, a long, dangling rope dropping to the ground.
I supposed she would expect me to rush over and help her through it. I supposed she would expect me to act like a human being. But instead I stared out at the cops sitting in the car in front of my apartment building and I thought over a few things. Like how Julia had come back into my life just a few weeks before her husband was murdered. Like how it seemed almost too wrong to be a coincidence. It might all have been a slapstick twist of fate, sure, and every piano that falls out of a fifth-floor window has to land on some sap’s head, but if it wasn’t pure happenstance, then I was already in serious trouble.
I took another look at the cops in the car, then I pushed myself away from the window and walked over to her.
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