“Don’t go now,” I said.
“You don’t want me to go?”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Was she about to tell me? “Listen, last night was last night. As you said: Too soon, too sudden, too fast. It ends there.”
“I don’t want it to end. This is not just about last night. It’s what we both know is bigger than either of us — it’s about our life, I don’t know how else to say it. You are my life.”
“You are my life,” she repeated — clearly not the sort of thing one said in Clara’s world. It went with not singing in the shower, not rhapsodizing over sunsets, what else?
I hated her.
“Do you enjoy making me sound stupid? Maybe I am stupid.”
“Maybe I am stupid,” she mimicked. “Two home runs in a row, Printz. Now it’s my turn — and I don’t know if you’re going to like it.”
“With or without tea,” I interrupted, reaching for humor, however lamely.
“Teatime is long past. Here is what I have to say, and live with it as you please.”
“Shoot.” A touch of fading irony in my voice, but I was buckling up for the worst.
“The truth is this. And I’m not the only one who says it. The sooth-sayer woman said it too. I care for you. Call it what you will — love, if it pleases you. You, however, just want to get me out of your system, and if mistaking this for love helps you, you’ll call it love. I want you in my system, not out. I know what I want from you and I know what I have to give for it. You haven’t got the foggiest idea what you want and certainly not what you’re ready to offer. You haven’t thought that far, because your mind isn’t really interested — your ego, yes, and your body, maybe, but the rest of you, not a clue. All you’ve been giving me so far is the hurt, sorry puppy face and the same unasked question in your gaze each time there’s a pause between us. You think it’s love. It’s not. What I have is real and it’s not going away. That’s what I have to say. Now can I go?”
She had so persuaded me that I started to believe her. She loved me, I did not love her. She knew what she wanted, I had no idea. Made perfect sense.
“Just stay, will you? Don’t go yet.”
“No, I can’t. I promised I’d meet someone.”
“Someone? Is this a friend of the friend who lives all the way downtown?” I was trying to show I was mimicking her.
“No, this is another friend.”
“Do you care for him too?”
She gave me a withering glance. “You want war, don’t you?”
“That’s not what I want at all.”
“What do you want, then?”
She was right. I had no idea. But there was something I definitely did want and it had to do with her, or it was through her that I would find it. Or it was her I wanted and all my doubts were just my last-ditch way of avoiding seeing this simple truth. That I wanted her. That I was destined to lose her. That I had shot my wad and didn’t have a single card left to play.
“I want you to give me another chance.”
“People don’t change, you certainly won’t. Besides, what does another chance mean? Is this something you picked up at the movies?”
“You’re always tweaking and putting me down.”
“That’s because you’ve been giving me palaver. When you’re good and ready, I want this,” she said, suddenly putting her right hand on my crotch and grabbing everything I had there in her palm, not letting go, all the while doing something that felt like a squeeze. “I want you — not the puppy face, not the snide antics, nor your evasive asides. I want you in the moment, here and now. For this, I already told you, I’ll go the distance and do anything you want, anything, anything. When we’re good and ready.” She stopped squeezing me without letting go yet. “But don’t ruin it. You ruin it with your silly games and your cold feet and your other nonsense, and you’ll never live this down — this much I can promise you.” With that, she put her hand inside my trousers and reached for my cock. “You want my breasts? I want this.”
“Now can I go?” she asked, as if I were holding her back with my cock.
I nodded.
“Are we going to the movies this evening?”
I hated my voice.
“Yes, we are.” Why? I asked, not knowing why I’d asked her why.
“I thought I just told you why.”
“And what are you doing now?” I couldn’t help myself.
“Now I’m going to meet someone who’s been kinder to me than I deserve.”
•
I had already purchased our tickets and was waiting outside the movie theater, drinking my large cup of coffee to keep warm. I was doing penance, and she was late. Something had already warned me she’d be late. I was trying not to let it bother me. I knew that five more minutes of this would make me more anxious, that anxiety might upset me, that I’d try hiding being upset, but that it would all leak in so many oblique and treacherous ways that were sure to draw her fire and finally erupt in all-out war. I tried keeping my anxiety in check. Please don’t stand me up, Clara, just don’t stand me up. But I also knew that it wasn’t the fear of being stood up that had caused the surge in anxiety. It was the image of her doing to this other friend what she’d done to me, her hand squeezing and caressing his cock, making the same speech. No, not the same speech. She’d make love to him, totally and completely, then hop in a cab headed uptown and show up at the movie theater, all wired and frisky, didn’t want to miss the credits, have been thinking of you all afternoon, not upset, are you? Who knew what she’d been doing on the afternoon of our first movie.
But if I was sincerely worried about her someone, it was also to avoid thinking how she’d touched me, or at least not use up the thrill of that moment by thinking too much on it. I wanted to dip into it, take furtive nips, and then run to safety, like a bird nibbling tiny tidbits. I was a leave-some-for-later type, she the here-and-now, guzzle-all-you-can-in-the-moment. No woman had ever put her hand there without first knowing that she could. Even my caresses last night, for all their boldness when we leaned against the wall of the bakery at three in the morning, had none of her nerve. I wondered if hers was a merely symbolic groping for a man’s balls, which explains why she rubbed my crotch somewhat before letting go of it, as if to make light of the package, or whether she had pressed me with the heel of her palm to tease me, to feel me, to turn me on, to show what she was capable of?
In between the worrying and the fading memory of how her hand had held me hovered hazy reminders of what had happened earlier outside the Met, things I didn’t want to think about, and could still manage to banish, but that were still there, like an enemy waiting for the gates to open, but equally capable of breaking them down or of digging under them if he wished. This morning I’d almost buckled on the ground — the tourists, the stands, the children, the crowd milling everywhere, the sandwich men dressed as playing-card kings and queens, everyone sucking the air till I seemed to be floating on helium. I’d never forget this day. It had started bursting with desire, my hands off Signor Guido, and look at me now, sipping coffee, which I wasn’t even supposed to drink, humbled, crushed, vulnerable, prone to new setbacks as soon as the Xanax wore off. I did blame her.
Why had I allowed this to happen? Because I had hoped, because I had trusted? Because I’d failed to find something to hate in her? Because everything, just everything was beautiful and promised to take me to that one place where I felt I belonged but had never seen, and that my life would be one big nothing without it?
“You didn’t think I’d come,” she said, after stepping out of a taxi in front of the theater.