"Pasha?"
I look over. It's this girl Giselle I went to school with. Back then I had a girlfriend — not Lee, someone else I met through friends — and Giselle had a long-distance thing with some guy she met online. We'd go out for drinks with people from class, and every night would end with just us two left, sitting on stools at the bar together, faces inches apart. We'd stay to last call and have this weird, protracted goodbye before heading our separate ways. I came close to trying something a few times, but never did.
"Hey," I say. It's been eight, nine years, but Giselle looks good. She was always pretty, but that was never why I was attracted to her. It was more the way she'd make you feel like you and her were the only people on the planet, those big brown eyes staring deep into yours. But right now she's with some guy in a puffy vest, possibly the Internet boyfriend. I never met him.
"Come sit with us," she says, so I do, sliding my tray between theirs.
She introduces the guy she's with as Philippe, a friend of hers from high school — right away I can tell there's nothing between them. I suggest they grab a beer and stick around, making sure that it sounds like an invitation to him as much as to her. Giselle orders a Corona. Philippe doesn't get anything.
"How are things?" Giselle asks. "Still dating that teacher?"
"No, we broke up years ago," I say. She doesn't ask any more than that, so I don't offer anything. "What about you? How's your cyber-man?"
"Ha, right. Him. We broke up," she says, then adds, "too."
We drink. Philippe has found an Auto Trader that seems to have piqued his interest. I tell Giselle about how I work at the airport now, in the bookstore. "All my literary ambitions have at last been realized," I say, and she laughs.
Five minutes later I'm done eating and I've got two beers in me. "You guys want to go grab another drink?"
Philippe and his puffy vest can't. Giselle looks at him, then me. "I wouldn't mind, actually," she says and turns back to her friend. "Can we catch up later?"
At the pub down the street we realize that we both want the same beer, the house pale, so I order a pitcher. Giselle suggests we sit at the bar. "Like old times," she says. The bartender leans in with a candle and our jug and I pay him. Giselle pours and we sit there for a moment, watching the flame distort and refract through our pint glasses.
"Cheers," she says. "Good to see you."
We look each other in the eye as we drink, put the beers down and keep looking.
Our conversation flits between old stories from school and updates on classmates. Neither of us is doing much writing any more — although she's done slightly better, working as a copy editor at some trade magazine. We talk about where we're living. I don't ask if she's got roommates, and she doesn't ask me. I never once need to lie about anything.
Then the pitcher's done.
"Want another?" she asks, giving the empty jug a wiggle. Her face is flushed. "It's on me."
It feels good to be out with someone. "Sure, I say," and pat her leg. "It's nice to see you."
"It's great to see you."
We drink, and soon we're drunk, and we're close, and there's a lot more touching: thighs, shoulders, elbows. She gets in so close that my knee slides between hers. Her eyes are heavy-lidded. By the time the third pitcher comes and we're both scrounging for change to pay for it, my face feels like rubber and we're holding hands.
"ISN'T THAT WHAT you were wearing yesterday?"
"This?" I wipe the sweat off my top lip with the back of my hand. "Yeah, laundry day, got a little desperate. Ran out of quarters."
"You reek," she says. "What'd you drink last night?"
Lee's really alert today, sitting up straight. There are days like this every now and then, when it's hard to believe how sick she is. She's her old sharp self, watching me shrewdly. I try to meet her eyes and hold them.
She looks away, out the window. It's been alternating rain and snow all morning. "I'm going in tomorrow morning for the Gamma Knife surgery."
"Why do they call it a knife, anyway? It's not a knife, exactly, is it?"
"No, they — " She collapses, coughing. I spring out of my chair to help her but end up just sort of hovering while she hacks and retches. When it's over, she picks her sentence up where she left it. "do it with a laser sort of thing. You don't feel any pain or anything, and you're usually back to normal within a day. If I was healthy enough I wouldn't even have to stay over. There's some literature there on the side table. Give it a read if you're interested."
My cellphone rings as I pick up one of the pamphlets. It's Giselle. I hit Silence and pocket the phone. "Work," I say.
"On a Saturday?"
"Yeah, Sonya needs me to come in to cover someone's shift tomorrow. And she knows you're her. It's retarded. I should fucking quit."
"I'm 'her'? Who's her?"
"Here."
"You said her."
"No I didn't. Here."
Lee waves the argument away. "You're not allowed cellphones in the hospital anyway."
"It's fine."
"It's not. It messes with the machinery."
"How?"
"I don't know, it just does."
I pick up the newspaper lying at the foot of her bed. She's done about half the crossword.
"Don't do any clues," she says. "I'm going to do it."
"I wasn't."
"Yeah, right. You always come in here and do them."
"Since when? I hate crossword puzzles."
"You're always doing them. You always come in here and wreck it."
She gets to coughing again. I watch her and try to summon some inkling of compassion, but I can't. All I feel is impatient. I think about waking up that morning in Giselle's bed feeling no guilt, just inconvenienced at having to come to the hospital. When Lee's done coughing I sit there saying nothing. I want to leave.
"Can you get me a coffee?" she says.
"Are you supposed to have coffee?"
"I always have coffee. Just get me one. And don't put cream in it this time; you always put too much in. Just bring me a creamer and let me do it."
I look at her for a minute: the bald head, the gaunt face, the wreck of a body. But in the eyes is something very much alive. It's anger — not anger at me, specifically; I just happen to be in its path. Lee's not supposed to have coffee, especially less than twenty-four hours before surgery. She knows it and she knows I know it. Her wanting one now is not about coffee. She's letting me know she's given up, she's letting go. She doesn't care any more. And she wants me to be complicit in that.
So I get up and go get Lee a coffee.
"YOU REMEMBER Buster?" I ask Giselle that evening on the phone.
"Oh, right — your parents' dog? You brought him round once. He was cute."
"Yeah. We had to put him down last year."
"Aw."
"He was about sixteen. By the end he got to the point where he was pissing himself, falling down the stairs. So after like six months of him getting worse and worse eventually my mom decided it was time to put the poor guy down — which was, you know, pretty sad. But I guess she let him into the backyard to take a shit before the appointment and he just went for it, bounding around like a puppy. Like,'Hey, don't kill me! Look, I'm still happy, I can have a good time!"'
I trail off then, trying to remember where this story came from or where it might lead. I'm just lying there on the couch, Lee's Gamma Knife pamphlet unfolded on my chest. "But, you know," I say, "she took him in anyway. My mom's a heartless bitch like that."
Giselle laughs. "I never met your mom, I don't think."
"She'd like you," I say, and then actually wonder if she would. She never liked Lee.
Giselle's quiet. Then, "I want to see you," she says.