“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.”