Or, with the Xanax wearing off, was it this morning’s anxiety speaking again, making me spin these thoughts, all the while urging me to keep a straight face before them — in case I was making it all up?
Which was worse: making it all up and not enjoying anything, or watching them together and not knowing anything?
Tossing and turning. Not tossing, but turning. .
Clara, I’ve disappointed you, haven’t I?
Oh, Hieronimo, Hieronimo, what have they done to your mind? Your thoughts are all scrambled, and the sedge is withered by the lake. I could feel it coming on again.
I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I knew the bathroom would break my heart. I splashed some water on my face. I liked the cold water in the stinky bathroom. Dabbed my face again. Wet my nape, wet my wrists, the area behind the ears. I remembered the pressure of the steel nut against my head and how it had dented the skin on my forehead. Poor, poor scalawag. And my trying to cool things down a bit, thrilled to the marrow of my boner, me with my how-do-I-leave-graciously-after-we-go-at-it-tonight? Last night she’d lowered the collar of my turtleneck and kissed me there. Hands groping everywhere, all the while I’m reining in Sir Lochinvar, charger and steed, till we kissed by the blessed bakery of blessed memory. Happy, happy, happy hour. Tonight, her heart’s with another man. Turncoat. Clever trick, that, hesitating before taking a seat next to his. Ah, you think that would fool Printz Oskàr? Why wasn’t this last night, why couldn’t it be last night, turn back the clock, undo the bad dream, unmake every mistake, put time on splints, work things back to the point where I’d taken the wrong turn and found myself standing in the snow in Straus Park after we’d kissed and heard her say, “We met here this morning, here we are again.” Ach, Sir Tristram, you bald-pated simpering sop, I thought you were all glittering with the noblest of carriage, but you’re only a Guido. I thought you great in all things, you’re but a puny. Bear down, old fool, and sink hereunder.
When I came out, she didn’t see me approach. They were talking.
This was a party and I wasn’t invited.
They were about to order a second round. I decided not to. She was surprised. Didn’t I want fries with ketchup?
Was this her way of asking me not to go yet?
The question spoke so many good things.
It’s been a rather long day, I said. And I think I may be coming down with something. Bad, bad day.
He didn’t ask why. His reticence and the haste with which he wanted to return to what they were discussing told me she might have told him about my incident at Mount Sinai and he didn’t even want to pretend he wasn’t aware of it.
Nice work, Clara.
“Plus I really shouldn’t drink,” I added, remembering the young doctor’s recommendation.
“Stay a bit. You don’t have to drink.” It sounded very off-the-cuff, almost like a polite afterthought, but I knew that, with Clara, casual did not mean perfunctory. She was speaking in code. The informality was aimed at him, not me. She might have been pleading with me to stay. I, instead, chose to take her nonchalant tone to the letter. I was operating in bad faith, until I realized that the casual accent of her request might have been intended for me as welclass="underline" she wanted me to stay, because it would look better if I did, but it made no difference — one way or another.
What I wanted all along became instantly clear to me as soon as I stood up to leave. I had expected her to change her mind and not order anything once she saw me stand and put my coat on. She’d leave with me, and I’d walk her home, as was our habit. The bakery. Straus Park. This time I’d ask to come upstairs even if she didn’t.
“I hope you feel better,” she said. She was pretending this was all about not feeling well and about catching up on sleep. I looked at her to mean, So you’re really not coming? “I think I’ll stay awhile and have another drink,” she said.
I shook his hand, and Clara and I kissed goodbye on both cheeks.
I’m never having anything to do with her again. Never seeing her again. Never, never, never.
This had been one of the worst days of my life. The worst, actually. It would take a few days, maybe another week, then I’d put the whole thing behind me. Or was I underestimating the damage? Give it a year, until next Christmas Eve — the soul holds its own anniversaries and all that. .
Instead of walking downtown, I walked up to Straus Park. No more, no more, no more, I thought. This is the last time I’m coming here. I remembered the candlelit statue filled with votive tapers standing upright, and the crystallized twigs, and the bleeding for love, and the walk to and from the cathedral as she drifted away from her friends and brought me to this quiet spot and, just as we were getting very, very close, said she wanted a strong, ice-burning shot of vodka. She’ll pass by, and each time she’ll think of me, and be with me, and one day, with her husband, when they stare out of her living-room window at the snow falling over the Hudson, she’ll break down and say, Sad is his voice that calls me, and she’ll turn old and wizened and nodding toward life’s close and be filled with gall and remembrance, telling the first beggar she’ll find in Straus Park, He loved me once in the days when I was fair.
This cruel and spectral city. Manattàn Noir. All of it was noir. The snow was just a screen, a lie — for it too was noir. Snow hurts because it deceives you. With gleaming asphalt you know you’re dealing with dark, hard stuff and beaten-down slate underneath and shards of glinting glass mixed in. Snow is like pith and like molten tar, except it’s soft on the outside, like velvet and bread, and the good things that yield as soon as you just touch them. But underneath, it’s black, blunt, and bituminous, and that’s how everything felt tonight. Black, blunt, and bituminous.
I stood around a moment, hoping she’d have second thoughts and come after me. But no one was coming this way. The area around Straus Park was deserted. Everyone was gone. The stranded Magi with their heads ablaze were gone, Phildonka Madamdasit was gone too, Rahoon and the beggar woman had probably come and gone. Just our shadows now, or just mine. Leopardi, the poet, was right. Life is bitterness and boredom, and the world is filth.
SEVENTH NIGHT
I hoped she’d ask one day, when none of this mattered, Why did you leave that night? Because I was angry. Because I grew to hate myself. Because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to sit quietly and go on struggling with him, with you. I was losing you, and sitting in a bar watching the loss unfold before me unleashed more bitterness yet, because you seemed determined to speed up its course. I felt ridiculous, weak, ineffectual. I hated you, and I hated you for making me hate myself. I was pissed. Pissed that you never once let me catch my breath on those nights when all I did, it seemed, was watch the torrent of missed opportunities race past us. I blamed you for inhibiting impulses that had nothing wrong with them, then for holding these very same inhibitions against me. I blamed myself for thinking it was your fault. It was mine, always mine.
All I saw that night was the lightness with which you turned a new leaf and were letting yourself off ever so easily—see, one hand, one hand—while fate in the form of a jack-in-the-box waved a broomstick over my head. Yes, we could have gone somewhere with this, but see, we all change. You made me find solace in self-pity. I could never forgive this.
I’d thought of waiting for you inside the park. I was even tempted to send you a text message and say something either funny or obscene about Monsieur VFC, or so cruel that it would burn all bridges between us if I hadn’t already burned them at the bar. But you’d pick up your phone and, on the pretext of not wearing glasses, hand it to VFC, ask him who the caller was, then grab it from his hand and shove it back into your coat pocket. Printz!