“What’s wrong?” I asked. A mistake.
She sat slightly more erect, drawing herself away from me. “My father was killed. I was at his funeral. With my fucked-up family. I’m in my period. And I’m on a special all-protein diet to lose ten pounds.” She raised her eyebrows and nodded, as if to ask: Enough?
I waited to say something but no words came forth. I thought of offering to rub her temples and the base of her neck but that gesture was clearly not mine. And then I made the stupid, compulsive error of thinking of her in her period, of envisioning the inch of Tampax string curled in her pubic hair and that was followed by a memory of me plucking at the string with the nails of my thumb and forefinger and then wrapping the string once around my finger as if for a yo-yo loop and pulling the blood-streaked cotton tube out of her. It was not, for all of its deliberateness and detail, a welcome thought: it was enough to experience Jade in three dimensions; the pull of intimacy, even remembered intimacy, and its inevitable quick heat, practically made me squirm.
“I want to ask you about the funeral,” I said. “But I don’t know how.”
“It was terrible, terrible. You know, boring in a crazy way. I couldn’t get it through my head that that was Pappy in the jar. I think it’s crazy, cremation. Or if you’re going to do it, then let’s do it right. A bonfire. With all of us there. How am I supposed to believe the guy’s really dead? I get a goddamned phonecall, spend a few hours with a lot of hysterical drunks, and then sit on a folding chair with about fifty other people listening to organ music and staring at an urn. I don’t have any proof that anything really happened. I mean, everyone tells me he’s dead, but I’m not sure. They could have gotten those ashes anywhere.” She shrugged and hooked her finger around her gold chain.
“Fifty people,” I said.
“And a lot I didn’t know. Also unreal. Ingrid’s sloppy crowd. I like her, though. Probably for the same reason Pappy did. Her earnestness. Her sexiness. How much she cried. Mom was very cool. She seemed impatient with the whole business. Ingrid was crying so loud that it made a lot of other people cry, you know, people who might not have otherwise. But Mom leans over to me and says something like Why don’t we get a bucket of ice water and pour it over the woman’s head? She’s a strange lady, my poor mother. Lonely. Getting a little bitter, I think. Uncle Bob spoke, about Pap and growing up. It was actually quite beautiful, to tell the truth. I didn’t think Bob had it in him. But he was almost singing and I could see even from where I was sitting that he had tears in his eyes. It made me cry, but you always cry at funerals, no matter what’s said. I looked over at Mom when Uncle Bob was talking. She held on to my hand and I looked at her. I could see she fucking wanted to cry but goddamn if she was going to let herself. The tears were Ingrid’s, I suppose that’s what she was thinking, let Ingrid cry. Like Mom knew Pappy too well to cry for him. That’s how she swindles herself out of practically everything.”
“I was with Ann when she found out,” I said. I wondered if this would be the first that Jade had heard of it.
“I know. She told me.” She narrowed her eyes for a moment.
“She cried then,” I said. “A lot. I mean if that matters to you.”
We went silent for a time. We were strangers and half terrified in each other’s presence: we were seeing ghosts, both of us. How strange to be having a supernatural experience in that small hotel room. We should go out, I thought, we should be walking. But just as I was afraid to clear my throat, I was afraid to suggest anything.
There was a knock at the door. When I heard the knock I realized that Jade and I were staring at each other, quite boldly, and I had no idea how long our gazes had been locked.
I got up. “That’s the wine, probably,” I said.
“I have to go pretty soon.”
I wanted to shake my head but I stopped myself. “It’s good to be with you,” I said.
“Like you expected?” There was a slight smirk in her voice, from shyness.
I paused, to emphasize that I wasn’t just answering out of politeness. “Yes. Like I expected.”
The wine came in a heavy glass carafe. Two wineglasses and a foil package of peanuts. I signed for it, like a man of the world, and gave the man who delivered it a dollar bill because I didn’t want to ruffle the surface of the moment by digging in my pockets for change. I placed the tray on the table next to Jade.
“Shall I pour?” I said.
“The wine’s so dark. It looks black.”
“No. It’s the light in this room.” I poured some wine into her glass and held it in front of the light. It turned bright red. “See?”
Jade nodded and took the glass from me. I wondered if she would let her fingers touch mine accidentally, but she didn’t. I was disappointed, sensually let down, because I wanted to feel her, but it was better, I knew, that we not permit ourselves coy gestures. What better way to emphasize our strangeness than to flirt?
I poured my wine and stood in front of Jade. I would have liked to propose a toast but I knew I wasn’t going to. I returned to the edge of the bed. “I’ve been trying to find you,” I said.
“I know.”
“Your family protects you from me. I asked Keith and your mother, but they wouldn’t give me a clue where you were. I sent Sammy a letter to pass on to you.”
“I know, I know, David. I know.”
“Did he?”
Jade nodded.
I waited for a moment and then I nodded, too. “You didn’t answer.”
“There was nothing to answer. They weren’t your words, or don’t you remember? You sent me someone else’s letter. Charles Dickens.”
“It was all I could say,” I said. “I don’t know why. I was afraid to send something in my own words. I needed someone else to talk for me.”
“That’s not how I remember you,” Jade said.
“All I needed was one word from you,” I said, “and I would have sent you a hundred letters. I wrote them but I didn’t send them. I didn’t know where to send them or if you wanted me to.”
Jade sipped the wine and then ran her tongue over her top teeth, to wipe them clean. Each gesture drove the flag of her reality deeper into me; each movement made it seem more certain we could never be apart.
“I want to ask you a lot of things,” she said. “And tell you things. It’s too strange. I’ve just been to my father’s funeral and I want to ask you how you’ve been doing. I can’t handle it. This doesn’t make any sense.”
“How have I been?” I asked. “You can ask that. I mean, I can tell you. It’s not very difficult because I’m just how you think of me.”
“How do you know the way I think of you?”
“OK. I didn’t mean that. I mean I’m just the way I was the last time we saw each other.”
Jade looked away and rubbed her fingers together in that nervous way people do when they’re used to reaching for a cigarette but they’ve given them up. I could see the picture she had of herself in that moment, lighting the cigarette, drawing on it and keeping the smoke in her lungs for three or four moments, and then expelling it along with her breath and a sigh.
“The last time we saw each other,” she said, “was in Chicago and you were in my house after you set it on fire. Is that how you are now, too?”
I answered without hesitation. “Yes.”
She immediately consulted her wristwatch. “It’s time to go,” she said. “I’ve got twelve minutes to get eight blocks. I’ll be lucky if I make it.”
I had already hit upon my plan. I would offer to go with her to the bus station. I didn’t know where it was in New York but if it was like most cities it probably wasn’t in a safe area. I would insist. She would accept. And then I would tamper with the pace of our journey and cause her to miss her bus. But instead of offering to accompany her, I leaned forward and said, “No. Don’t go. Miss the bus. Stay. Stay with me. We haven’t talked in so long and I don’t know when I’ll be able to see you again.”