“You’re crying,” he said, his face glistening. Who? She laughed, but it came out like a moan. Then he kissed her mouth, gently, barely touching her lips; surprised, aware of him, her bystander self looking on amused, she couldn’t stop crying. She couldn’t stop. “Who’s crying?” she said, fragments of Peter refracted through the prism of her tears, his broken face in flight like an enormous bird. She wanted him to leave her alone — the tears his fault — but when he moved away she missed him (felt it as a loss). She shivered, wiped her eyes with her scarf, remembering curiously the first time she made love with Stanley; the apartment they got to use, a terrible yellow-walled place smelling of after-shave lotion. The really bad part was that afterward, believing she ought to, she had been unable to feel remorse, unable to cry. Caught in the light of memory, she turned and was gratefully surprised that it was Peter, not Stanley, who was next to her.
The street lamp seemed to be getting brighter, an electric sun, growing, breaking through the clouds; it blinded her. Even when she closed her eyes the light intruded; it had her number. Oh, Peter. Oh, Peter, you … what? She didn’t know. What was he thinking?
“I can’t see you,” he said. “The light’s in my eyes.”
She laughed, still crying.
“It’s in my eyes too,” she said. “Why don’t you turn it off?”
“All right,” he said, climbing out of the car, walking slowly along the side of the curb. Was he out of his mind? she wondered, as if it mattered. She saw him pick something up — crumpled paper or a large stone (it was difficult to tell) and then, turning — casually, it seemed — pitch it at the lamp. A bang like the popping of a champagne cork. And suddenly it was dark, fragments of glass shining on the sidewalk. He returned to the car, a shadow. Though she couldn’t see his face, she imagined he was smiling.
“My hero,” she said with nervous irony, impressed and upset at the same time.
He didn’t say anything — his expression impossible to determine in the dark — then he put his arm around her shoulders.
“Peter, I really have to go up now,” she said. “My mother will think I’m being raped.”
“Okay,” he said glumly.
“Okay,” she mimicked.
He grabbed her, nearly lifting her out of the seat, and held her fiercely against him. Crushed, about to cry out in pain, she decided not to. There would be plenty of time for retribution. Besides, in a crazy way, she was in love with him.
| 3 |
Had he actually rung the bell? It was hard to know, hard to distinguish between what he had done and his dream of himself doing it. He was about to ring again — for the first time? — when the door opened. For a moment he didn’t recognize her, her face distorted from having lived too long outside the knowledge of his recollection.
“Yes?” she inquired. A dreamer, she guarded the half-opened entrance to the apartment, looked at him blankly, a crease in her forehead the only sign of interest.
He waited for her to discover him. Still gaunt, she seemed, if somewhat changed, to have gotten younger; her hair, un-grayed, cut short in the fashion, the blue veins in her eyelids more pronounced. A lovely woman, she looked at him without recognition, without interest.
“Lois,” he said softly, aware that in his ragged gray overcoat he must have looked like some sort of beggar.
“Uhhh!” The sound, a half-sob, escaped involuntarily and she stood stunned with disbelief — remembering — the process painful, like awakening from an anesthetic. “Peter? My God, it’s Peter. I’m going out of my mind.” She turned to look behind her and he realized that there was someone else in the apartment, another man.
“I’ll come back later,” he said.
She looked behind her again. “No, come in. Please come in.” She took his hand, led him into the apartment; spare and immaculate, it reminded him curiously, for all its dissimilarities, of her parents’ place of fifteen years ago. “It’s Peter,” she announced to the room. “I can’t get over it. Peter. It’s been how many years? Twelve. Thirteen. I haven’t seen Peter in thirteen years, Oscar. Isn’t that amazing?” She continued to hold on to his hand.
Oscar, standing, nodded, a thick-set man in his fifties with a magnificent mane of white hair, his manner cautious and professionally benevolent. Peter was introduced as a former husband, the first (of how many? he wondered); the other, a Dr. Patton, was merely a friend. They shook hands; Peter embarrassed that his nails were dirty. Lois took his coat from him, over his insistence that he wasn’t staying, and hung it in the closet. He felt exposed in his old suit; he hadn’t counted on company.
He looked around him: the furniture modern, unobtrusive — the camouflage of studied taste. Lois, in an expensive black wool dress, was smiling at him affectionately, or was it the indulgence of pity? (He wished Patton would leave.) In recollection, he had always conceived of Lois as a kind of willful bohemian, a rebel against the triviality of fashion, and he wondered if the apartment’s tasteful respectability reflected some quality in her that he had failed to comprehend. Or was it the passage of time that made the difference? The failure of memory. His own historian, he wanted to know.
“What kind of work do you do?” Patton asked — a break in the silence.
Peter shrugged. “I’m writing a book,” he said.
“That’s interesting,” Patton said. “What — ”
Lois interrupted. “What do you drink?” she asked, fluttering nervously, her hands like birds. “I’ve forgotten. I’m sorry.”
They were drinking Manhattans at a bar on Eighth Avenue when he asked her to break off with Stanley. She had cried, and had made him promise that no matter what happened between them, he would never leave her. Never. He had to swear to it several times before she would believe him. Who had made a liar out of whom?
“I’ll have whatever you’re drinking,” he said.
“As a matter of fact,” Patton said solemnly, “at the moment we weren’t drinking anything.”
Peter flushed. “Then don’t bother,” he said. “I don’t really want anything,” but Lois had already made the drink and was bringing it over.
“You don’t want me to throw it out, do you?” she said, her smile patronizing him.
He accepted the drink regretfully, in the interest of conversation; also, his toes were cold. When he had drained the glass — it was good Scotch, much better than he was used to — he felt less like an outsider and sat down, without being asked, on a chair next to the sofa. Patton, sitting stiff-backed in the center of the black sofa, seemed himself like a part of the furnishings, his white mane the final touch of grace. He couldn’t imagine the apartment without him.
Lois sat between them. “Tell me,” she said to Peter, pulling her chair nearer to his, “what have you been doing? What have you been doing all these years?”
“Not much,” he said, glancing at Patton. “Trying to keep track of things.” What else could he say? “And you?”
“I’ve been fine,” she said sadly. “I have good and bad weeks. This is a good week.”
“You look fine,” he said.
“You do too. You really do.”
Patton glanced at his watch, a gold cuff link winking its secret eye; he smiled benignly.
“Well…” Peter said.
“I’ve been painting again,” Lois said. “I’d show you something, but it’s not very good. It’s just something to do. Like, it makes me happy.”