Is he praying, you ask? No, sir, not at all! His recitation — rhythmic, formulaic, from memory, and so, I will concede, not unlike a prayer — is in actuality an attempt to transmit orally our menu, much as in your country one is told the specials. Here, of course, there are no specials; the excellent establishment of which tonight we are patrons has in all likelihood prepared precisely the same dishes for many years. I could translate for you but perhaps it would be better if I selected a number of delicacies for us to share. You will grant me that honor? Thank you. There, it is done, and off he goes.
I had been telling you of my disquiet on the night I finally made love to Erica — a night that ought, were ours a more normal relationship, to have been one of great joy. She left before dawn, waking with a start and insisting that she return home despite my requests that she stay. Once again, considerable time would pass before I heard from her again; my calls went unanswered, my messages unreturned. I had learned my lesson, and I desisted from attempting to make contact. But once a fortnight had gone by, I tried again and was rewarded by a response. She apologized, as she had previously done, for disappearing in this fashion; she said she thought it best, perhaps for her but certainly also for me, that we try not to see each other too often; and she consented to my request that we meet. “But come over to my place,” she said. “I don’t feel up to going out.”
I was greeted at the door to Erica’s apartment by her mother, who ushered me into an antechamber — which featured, among its antique decorations, a bonsai tree and a harpsichord — and said, “I think we need to chat. Erica has told you about her history, yes?” I nodded. “Well,” she went on, “her condition has come back. It’s serious. What she needs right now is stability. No emotional upheavals, you get me? I can see you’re a nice young man. And I know she cares about you. But you have to understand that she’s a sick girl at the moment. She doesn’t need a boyfriend. She needs a friend.” She looked at me beseechingly. “I understand, madam,” I said. “I will do whatever you think best for her.” “Thank you,” she said. Then she smiled and added, “It’s easy to tell why she likes you.”
That conversation had a considerable impact on me, not so much for what was said — although I was alarmed by this grave characterization of Erica’s situation — but for how it was said; Erica’s mother’s tone was one of quiet desperation, and it frightened me. I entered Erica’s room tentatively, attempting to steel myself against what I might find. What I found was not at first particularly alarming: Erica reclined on her bed, pale, yes, as though she had a fever, and with hair that had gone some time since it was last washed, but seemingly in good spirits. She patted the space beside her and offered me her forehead to kiss as I sat down.
We spoke for a while as though nothing unusual had happened and we were meeting under the most ordinary of circumstances. I told her about my project in New Jersey — the negative reaction to our presence by the employees of the cable company, Jim’s words of advice — and about the day-to-day occurrences in my life since she had seen me last. She told me about her doctor and her medication, how the drugs made it difficult to concentrate and so her days seemed to slip away with nothing to show for them. Given the relaxed manner in which she described it an observer would have been forgiven for thinking that her condition was not serious and she was on the mend — until I asked about her novel.
I immediately regretted doing so. Her eyes began to wander, and her voice became less sure. “I can’t seem to work on it,” she said. “Every time I try, I just get upset. I haven’t been taking my agent’s calls. Poor guy. He must think I’m a lunatic.” I remarked that writers were known to be eccentric and so it was unlikely her agent was particularly perturbed, and then I tried to change the subject, but she would not have it. “It doesn’t help anymore,” she said. “I used to turn to it, my writing, when I needed to get something out that was stuck inside. But I can’t get it out now. It pulls me in, you know? I dwell on it instead of writing it.” I tried to prevent myself from asking her what it was — whether because I thought it would upset her or because I thought it would upset me, I do not now know — but I failed. “It’s whether there’s something left,” she explained, suddenly and unsettlingly calm, “or whether it’s all already happened.”
How can I describe to you, sir, how much her words disturbed me? She glanced away, and I saw her recede into her mind. I placed my hand next to hers, hoping as I had done innumerable times in the past to lure her out of her thoughts. I watched our skin — mine healthy and brown, hers sickly white — separated by a distance not greater than the width of an engagement ring, but she did not notice me. I waited for my proximity to make itself felt to her; a minute passed in this fashion. Then she removed her hand from where it lay and — without ever looking in my direction — covered it with her other hand on her lap.
When Erica’s mother entered shortly thereafter, I did not feel she was interrupting. No, she was not preventing the continuation of a discussion between her daughter and myself; she was merely bringing to an end my intrusion on a conversation Erica was having with Chris — a conversation occurring on some plane that I could not reach or even properly see. Erica waved a good-bye to me as I left her room, but she did so with her face averted, so I could not meet her gaze. Her mother thanked me for coming and asked me to wait for Erica to contact me before coming again. And with that, and a gentle kiss on the cheek, the door to the elevator was shut upon me and I began to travel down the shaft, alone.
I returned to my apartment and spent that night in semidarkness, in the glow of the city’s lights entering through my windows, wondering as I would wonder for many months thereafter — indeed, as I sometimes wonder to this day — where Erica was going. I never came to know what triggered her decline — was it the trauma of the attack on her city? the act of sending out her book in search of publication? the echoes raised in her by our lovemaking? all of these things? none of them? — but I think I knew even then that she was disappearing into a powerful nostalgia, one from which only she could choose whether or not to return.
For it was clear Erica needed something that I — even by consenting to play the part of a man not myself — was unable to give her. In all likelihood she longed for her adolescence with Chris, for a time before his cancer made her aware of impermanence and mortality. Perhaps the reality of their time together was as wonderful as she had, on more than one occasion, described to me. Or perhaps theirs was a past all the more potent for its being imaginary. I did not know whether I believed in the truth of their love; it was, after all, a religion that would not accept me as a convert. But I knew that she believed in it, and I felt small for being able to offer her nothing of comparable splendor instead.
I did not see Erica again that year. Thanksgiving soon gave way to the chill of December, and every week — every day — I thought of calling her but prevented myself from doing so. Her mother had, of course, asked me to resist, and I suspect I thought, given the catastrophic progress of our relationship thus far, that imposing myself on her interior struggle would only do her harm. But I must admit that my motives were not entirely noble; there were in me at least some elements of the anger and hurt vanity that characterize a spurned lover, and these unworthy sentiments helped me to keep my distance. Still, I remained concerned for Erica’s well-being — and remained also in the grip of a certain, probably irrational, hope—so the ongoing task of abstaining from communication was a struggle not unlike that of a man attempting to rid himself of an addiction.