“Can I watch the movie now?”
My lips must have been all over her neck. “Do you have any idea how happy I am?”
She took off her coat, disturbed more people, sat down, took her glasses out. “Yes, I do know.”
I knew, however, that I’d have to let go of her. I didn’t want to let go of her. I liked being like this. I knew that, once released, she’d be impossible to touch again, and that soon enough the water that had bubbled between us for a few seconds would freeze and, for miles of cracking ice, would loom the old no-man’s-land between her mainland and my distant shore. So I let my hand rest almost casually on her shoulder, knowing, though, that she’d spot the studied nonchalance of the gesture and in all likelihood make fun of it. So this is awkward for you, isn’t it?
When she spotted my coffee, she immediately reached over and drank from it. Why hadn’t I put sugar in? Because I never do. I can’t believe you didn’t buy me coffee. So this is your revenge — not buying the poor girl coffee? Anything to eat?
I handed her the candy.
“At least that!”
She chuckled.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.”
The man behind us asked us to lower our voices.
Clara turned to him and threatened to wash his hair with her coffee if he didn’t take his feet off the seat next to hers.
•
Until she appeared in the movie theater, I’d been more or less resigned to an evening by myself. I was even able to stare straight ahead and not be too scared of the bleakness awaiting me as soon as I walked out into the empty street. It was not going to be so terrible, I’d been telling myself, just as it wasn’t so terrible that she had found yet another cutting way to remind me she had a life outside of mine, other friends, otherpeoples—not terrible that a day that started poorly should end no less poorly, not terrible being so thoroughly alone now and watching the hours stretch into tomorrow, and other tomorrows, and more tomorrows pitching their way back-to-back like blocks of ice crick-cracking down the slow Hudson till they’d leave all land behind and head to the Atlantic and out toward the glacier of the Arctic Pole. Not terrible that everyone was wrong, wrong as my life, as this day, as everything can seem so thoroughly muddled and disjointed and yet so easily tolerable.
After the movie I’d already resolved to head uptown, perhaps even walk past her home, especially now that I knew which side her windows faced. Walk uptown to replay and relive the scene uptown. Or was this all an excuse to stalk her building, her street, her world? Was I really the type who stalks buildings, windows, people? Follow her, spy on her, confront her? Aha, see! Or better yet, bump into her. Fancy running into you at this time of the night!
Or was heading uptown to 106th Street simply a pretext to stay busy and give myself something to do at night, the way buying Christmas presents three days after Christmas might give me something to look forward to once I’d run out of things to stuff my hours with?
Sitting next to her now on our usual banquette, I realized that all I’d done since hearing she wouldn’t be going to the movies with me was try to keep a straight face, with her, with me, with everything — try not to enjoy too much our moment together on the rug so as not to feel it was the highlight of the year, keep the moment on ice, keep friendship on ice, and live with each of my tiny, minuscule hopes, like caviar always chilled.
As soon as we walked out of the theater, neither of us said anything about where we were headed. Instead, we started walking in the same direction as always and, in case there were any doubts, crossed over to the right side of Broadway to show we had no other place in mind but that one. I couldn’t wait to get there and go back to our ritual by the banquette and order our first drink. Perhaps she too was eager to bring things back to where we’d left them — though there was no telling where her thoughts were. Once we crossed Broadway, though, all she did was slip her arm into mine and say she couldn’t wait for our Oban.
“You’re becoming an alcoholic under my influence.”
“That, and other things,” she said. I thought she was referring to her growing fondness for Eric Rohmer and didn’t bother asking her to explain. Then it occurred to me she might have meant something else, but for fear of finding it out, I didn’t press her to explain.
But no sooner were we sitting at our spot and had signaled to the waitress, who immediately assumed we were ordering the “usual,” than things began to trickle forth. At first I thought she’d already had something to drink before coming. But that was almost four hours ago, long enough for her to have sobered up. As was her habit, she ordered crispy fries, which she liked to drown in salt and mounds of ketchup. I would have ordered a salad, but decided to go with a side order of fries as well. I liked mine with mayo. Once the matter of ordering was taken care of, she extended her palm.
“Give!” she said.
I gave her a dollar.
“More.”
She walked over to the jukebox, and soon enough we began hearing the few bars of Chopin that prefaced our tango.
I had made myself promise not to ask her anything about where she’d been, what she’d done, whom with. But she almost resented my silence, and after we’d danced, she finally blurted a “Well, aren’t you going to ask me what happened?”
“This time I don’t dare ask.”
“Because you’re too polite to ask, because you don’t care, because you don’t want to know — or other?”
“Other,” I said.
She was in a strangely sparkling mood tonight, and I feared the worst. She was going to tell me something I knew I didn’t want to know. I would gladly have steered her away from it. I could sense it was probably going to be something like “We’ve decided to get back together,” or “I’m having his child,” or — and this was a road I didn’t even want to travel on, though scoping out its signposts before she’d even hinted the matter might blunt the shock — she’d remind me I was doing precisely what she’d warned me not to do, Printz. Knowing Clara, she’d still manage to surprise me. “I think we shouldn’t be together so much.” She would not say “seeing each other,” which might implicate her more than she wanted, but “be together,” which would leave things vague enough and not give a deeper meaning to the whimsical, improvised beauty of our five days. I was already anticipating the flustered stammer in her smile as she let an earnest, longing gaze precede the tenderness of the five words she would most likely say, all the while gauging their effect on me: “You’re not upset, are you?” Damned if I’m upset, I’d say, fuck damn I’m upset! But I knew myself: I’d say nothing.
The drinks arrived. We clinked glasses carefully, because if you miscounted, you’d have to clink another nine times. We uttered the Russian words in unison.
“Do you or don’t you want to know?”
I said I wanted to know, almost listlessly, not just to dampen my curiosity, but to dampen the frisky tone in her voice.
“I was with Inky.”
“So you two are an item again?”
She looked at me in wonder.
How had you guessed? she seemed to ask. It was obvious from the start, I would have said.
“I had promised to have dinner with him. We started with early drinks, which is why I had to leave your place early. Then it fell apart — I knew we were going to quarrel. So I left.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“You wanted to leave?”
Clara gave me a fearless stare.
“I’m not going to lie to you: I was looking for an excuse, and he gave it to me in no time. I knew I’d find you at the movie theater.”