That night, she goes on the pontoon boat to the biobay. She swims in the luminescent water, looking down at the shine of her movements. She floats on her back, sinking her ears under the surface so that people’s shrieks of joy are silenced. Tears run down her temples and disperse in the liquid light as she stares at the black sky. She lifts one arm out of the water and admires the glitter sliding down her skin.
Even after she leaves the bay, she will try to continue bathing in the beauty of existence. She will let the universe embrace her, since no man will.
ON THE PLANE back to New York, Lily tells herself that if Strad e-mails her or leaves her messages, perhaps she won’t return them. Perhaps it’s for the best. Their relationship might have worked out for a while, but now that he knows, how can it?
THERE ARE NO e-mails or messages when she lands. Nor are there any later that evening.
She calls me and we talk about her trip.
Worried about her, I suggest we get together. Lily says she’s tired and will visit me tomorrow evening instead.
WHEN LILY ENTERS my apartment the following evening, I scrutinize her. In addition to her customary ugliness, there are lines of stress on her face, and an expression of resignation that amplifies the overall sorry effect.
The first thing she says to me is, “Strad doesn’t care.”
“What do you mean?”
“He hasn’t called.”
“It’s only been two days. And plus, you left suddenly. Maybe he’s afraid you might not want to talk to him after the way he reacted. Maybe he thinks he has a better chance of explaining himself in person.”
“He’s made no attempt to see me in person either.”
“Maybe he needs time to think about things, figure out what he’ll say, especially if he happens to want to continue the relationship. It’s possible,” I tell her.
“Why are you trying to get my hopes up? You usually do the opposite.”
“It’s for your own good when I do the opposite. To manage your expectations.”
“And you no longer care about my expectations?”
“Yes I do.”
“So why are you doing this?”
I answer by looking past her, into my living room. She follows my gaze, which brings her to the large swivel easy chair with its back to us.
Slowly, it turns.
And Strad is revealed.
In Lily’s ear, I whisper apologetically, “He persuaded me to let him do this.”
I tell them I’m going out for an extended errand. And I leave.
What happens then, I’m told later:
Strad gets up and walks over to Lily. She has an urge to hide her face, but she remains motionless.
Without saying a word, he gently kisses her lips. And then he kisses her more passionately. He envelops her and buries his face in her hair.
“Isn’t this great?” he whispers. “We can go to my place and listen to some of my music, for a change.”
She laughs, crying a little.
He gives her another long kiss and takes her hand and pulls her out of the apartment. They fly out of the building.
AT LEAST THAT’S how Lily describes the scene when she calls me the next morning. She says last night was the happiest of her life. “And to think that just the night before, I was so depressed I almost died.”
I grunt sympathetically until I realize she’s not just using an expression. “You almost died?” I ask.
“Yeah. I was playing at my piano, feeling devastated, and my hands started turning reflective again. Clearly it’s the depression that triggers it. It hadn’t happened in a long time, many weeks. The reflectiveness spread up my arms. I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t have the will. And when it got past my shoulders and started spreading onto my chest, I could feel I was dying. And part of me just wanted to let go, let it take me, and be released from the burden of living. I can’t tell you how difficult it was to muster the will to stop the process. I managed it this time, but barely. If it ever happens again, I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop it. Hopefully, I’ll never be that unhappy again.”
THE NEXT DAY, I’m finally ready to return Peter’s calls. I’m still just as disillusioned by his secret and by the fact that he’s not a valid exception, or if he is, there’s no way to be certain of it now.
But in early afternoon I gather my courage and dial his number.
He picks up. I ask him if we can see each other, to talk.
He comes over an hour later.
We sit at my dining table, nothing to drink before us. Neither of us wants anything.
I begin with, “I can never bypass my rule.”
“I know. You told me,” he says.
“But I miss you. And I was wondering if we could be friends. Just friends. But good friends.”
“It won’t be easy for me.”
“I’m not sure I believe you. And actually, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
“What?”
“Why did you torture me?”
“When, specifically?”
“All the time. Like when you came over with your piece of red velvet.”
“Yeah.”
“And when you kept canceling or postponing our appointments.”
He nods. After a pause, he says, “It was all very calculated. And very difficult.”
I stare at him.
He says, “You’re sort of right that I was trying to torture you. It was an elaborate ploy to get you to…” He seems unable to finish.
“Get me to what?”
He looks embarrassed. “I thought that if I could increase your desire and your frustration you’d be more likely to forgive me for knowing what you really look like, once you found out I knew. It didn’t work, of course.”
We talk for hours. When we get tired, we lie on the couch, one of us at each end of the sectional. We keep talking for most of the night, covering countless topics.
The last thing he says to me before we finally fall asleep on the couch is, “Okay, I guess we can be friends. I’ve missed you. Having you in my life in whatever capacity is better than not having you at all.”
Even though I can’t be his lover, I love him more than ever.
PETER AND I get together frequently. It’s usually my initiative, sometimes his.
It comforts me to be with him. So I keep asking him to come over.
When he points out, pleasantly, the abundance of my invitations, I simply say, “I like to be with you.”
He never turns me down. The few times he can’t make it, he makes a counterinvitation, usually for earlier or later the same day.
I CATCH MYSELF staring at him when I think he’s not looking. But sometimes he catches me. Like the time we were sitting on my couch, watching a movie, and I thought the angle would make it impossible for him to know I was gazing at him, and he said, “Why are you staring at me like that?”
Blushing, all I could say was, “You have good peripheral vision.”
“Yeah. So why are you?”
“Just looking at what a good friend you are.”
His eye twitched.
WE MAKE A point of not getting together on Valentine’s Day to avoid the romance aspect. But we make up for it by seeing each other five evenings in a row after that.
I don’t know what Peter did on Valentine’s Day. I don’t ask. As for me, I stayed home working.
FINALLY, ONE DAY, when I call Peter — as I often do to ask him if he wants to come over and hang out — he tells me, “You don’t understand. It’s very difficult. I am practically delirious. I could get killed crossing the street because I have fantasies and I don’t see the cars.”