FROM: AnnaC402@gmail.com
TO: NatchReally1@clearcast.net
Sent: Friday, 7/25/08 5:06 pm
I have a draft due on a brief. I'll be frantic and lousy company. Another time?
FROM: NatchReally1@clearcast.net
TO: AnnaC402@gmail.com
Sent: Friday, 7/25/08 5:18 pm
Come on! It's Saturday! And you sublet your place thanks to me. (Sorta kinda.)
By then, I was feeling like a pretty big ingrate, so I agreed to meet for something superquick at Wally's, realizing I should take the opportunity to cool him out. As I was leaving to meet him on Saturday, I asked Meetra Billings, the pool secretary who was typing the brief for me, to call in twenty minutes and pretend the partner wanted to see me.
Wally's is a takeout deli with a few tables. During the week, it's all bang and bustle in there. The patrons and employees shout at top volume, and the rusted window unit in the transom bangs as though there's a jackhammer inside, while Wally, an immigrant from somewhere east of Paris, yells, 'Closs door, closs door!' to the people in the queue to get in. But on Saturday you can actually hear the voices of the countermen gruffly demanding, 'Next!' out of habit. Nat was already there. There were two coffees on the table, one with cream and two yellow packets resting on the lid, which is how I take mine, a nice touch. His cell phone was also on the Formica, and I asked if he was expecting a call.
'From you,' he answered. 'I figured you'd cancel at the last minute.'
Nailed, I made a face. 'I don't have your number.'
'Clever of me,' he said. 'So, I mean can I ask-what's that about?'
I took a seat at the table, trying to come up with a reasonable excuse.
'I just feel like it would be weird if we started hanging out. With my having worked for your dad and all?' It sounded ridiculously lame, even to me.
'I'm thinking there's something else,' he said. 'Jealous boyfriend, maybe, who wants to lock you in a closet?'
'No.' I actually laughed. 'No relationship. I'm taking kind of a time-out from men.'
'Because of that breakup? What happened?'
I missed a breath before I finally shook my head. 'I can't talk about that, Nat. It's too raw. And too embarrassing. But I need to be surer of who I am, and what I want, before I get involved again. I haven't gone this long without a date since seventh grade. But I do feel more virtuous. Except when the batteries drain on my Rabbit.'
I guess I was trying to forestall more questions about my broken heart, but I still couldn't believe that had sailed out of my mouth. Yet I'd already found we shared a pretty outrageous sense of humor, and Nat roared. His laughter seems to come from some hidden part of him.
'That sounds like a therapist's idea,' he said. 'The time-out?'
It was, of course, and we ended up in this pretty deep conversation about therapy. He'd done tons but had quit because he was afraid he was turning into one of those people who lived just so they could talk to their shrink about it. I hadn't ever really discussed seeing Dennis, and I was actually disappointed when Meetra called. I also felt like a terrible goof because we hadn't even ordered lunch yet. I apologized like mad but still got up to leave.
'And when's moving day?' he asked.
'Sunday, August 3. I hired professionals for the first time in my life. I've hit up my friends so often I didn't have the courage to ask again. All I have to handle is the stuff I'm afraid the movers will break. It'll be a pain, but less.'
'I could help. Strong like ox,' he said in an accent. 'And I work really cheap.'
'I couldn't ask.'
'Why not?'
My mouth moved a little while I groped for the words, and he finally cut in.
'Hey, okay, so let's get it out there. "Just friends." You're on a time-out and I'm too young for you anyway. Your thing is older guys, right?'
'Yeah, father runs. It's pretty predictable I've been into older guys.'
'So okay,' he said. 'I don't feel like I've been voted off the island. Just name the day.'
I couldn't pretend I didn't need the help, especially somebody strong enough to handle my new TV, which I was afraid to hand over to the movers. One thing I'd realized in my two meetings with Nat was that I was starved for male company. I've always had close friends who are guys, sharing certain common ground-sports, gross jokes, dark movies. As I've gotten into my thirties, when almost everyone else is paired up, opposite-sex friendships have seemed tougher to maintain. Wives get jealous, and the borders are better patrolled. It was hard not to welcome Nat on these terms. Especially since his roommate had an SUV he could borrow.
And so, on Saturday, August 2, Nat was at my door again. It was a horrible day to move, close to a hundred. The sun was so intense that you felt as if you were being hunted, and the air was as close as a glove. I'd been up all night packing. Once I got started, I just kept going, and when we carted everything down to the dock, it turned out I'd boxed too much for a single load.
By noon, we had the first run up in the new place. It's on the sixth floor of an old building along the river, with lots of period detail-dental moldings at the ceiling and beautiful oak and gumwood, including the window frames, which have never been painted. I had bought it out of a foreclosure and hadn't realized that the bank had turned off the electric. There was no AC and we were both dripping. He had completely sweated through his sleeveless tee, and I looked even worse with my seventy-dollar haircut licked to my face.
We decided Nat would return for the remaining boxes while I went out to buy us lunch. It took me longer than I expected to navigate my new neighborhood, and when I got back he was already upstairs, standing out on my back porch. He was naked to the waist while he wrung out his T-shirt and looked awfully goddamn good doing it, lean but ripped with muscles, and I felt the effect in my whole lower body. I turned away just before he could catch me gawking.
'Ready to eat?' I showed him the bag when he came back inside.
'Not an air lunch like last time?'
I poked him in reprisal. There was no table, and while I tried to figure out where we could sit, he pointed to one of the last boxes he'd brought in. It was stacked with various framed photos I've stored for years, all too precious to toss and too embarrassing to display.
'I couldn't help noticing,' he said, and pulled out a blowup of an old snapshot taken when I was no more than five, of my mother, my father, and me. It was Christmas, and the snow was piled high in front of our bungalow. Wearing a felt hat and overcoat, my dad looked fairly dashing as he held me. I was dressed in a little kilted outfit complete with tam, and my mom smiled beside us. And even so, there was a certain visible discontent among the three of us, as if we all knew the cheerful pose was just that.
'That's one of the only pictures I have of the three of us,' I told Nat. 'My aunt basically hid it. After my dad split, my mom went through every family photograph and cut him out. Literally. With a scissors. Which never made complete sense to me. He was playing around, but from the little hints I've picked up over the years, I think she may have been doing the same thing. I've never really been sure. It's weird.'
'I know what that's like,' he said. 'I think my dad had an affair when I was a kid. It had something to do with his trial, but you know, neither he or my mom was ever willing to talk about any of that, so I still don't know exactly what went down.'
Neither of us seemed to know what more to say. Nat looked back to the box and pulled out another picture, which turned out to be my bridal photo.
'Wow!' he said. The truth, which I wasn't about to admit, was that I looked so great that day, I have never been willing to throw away the picture.
'That photograph,' I said, 'is literally the only good thing I got out of my marriage. You think, someone like me, no kids and not much money, back to zero will be no biggie. But it is. Marrying anybody is such an act of hope. And when it craters-it takes a long time to regather yourself.'