Once in a while she’d fall silent for hours, as if she’d moved on. I still don’t know why. I don’t know. To provoke a response I would pace around talking loudly to myself, clanking glasses and dropping things. Would pore over a Tupperware full of photographs and letters from all those stations left behind. Places raped by battle. People or actions that will never let me be. Choices that never forgive.
I blurted the old rants, cursed the old beliefs, felt so stupidly old. Put on my moth-eaten dress greens, got into bed and stared at my wall and lace drape, a whiskey glass on my belly, and. .
Wait. What was that?
Somehow, always, she’d be there after all, a hummingbird’s worth of flutter through the partition. Listening!
THEN,
there was a visitor. A man.
As he cleared his tar-thick throat I realized he’d been there before — perhaps all along. To counter his grunts, I cleaned the shower with steel wool and bleach, the scalding water burning me, blistering my hands and forearms. It was not enough. Desperate to camouflage his moans, I started to experiment with distraction, with delusion or pain. Ultimately, I found that adding a spoonful of Ajax to my whiskey provided hours of constriction, my body writhing as the sweat and saliva worked to evacuate the poison.
Nothing can overpower that.
He insulted her cooking — though he never cooked. So I began to prepare meals, as a partner should. Pasta carbonara, with fresh Reggiano, ground pepper, finely chopped pancetta, two farm eggs — a dish I perfected while home-nursing an elderly Lazian whose children had milked his pension until he passed. (I hated my complicity in their avarice, but such was the murky economy outside of Camp Darby, Livorno. Or outside of any American military base.) On Sunday mornings I whipped up two plates of Rednecks Benedict, poached eggs with brown gravy and bacon in lieu of Canadian ham and hollandaise; a heart-clogging spread I invented post-military, while working a family grill outside of Batesville, Mississippi. I thought maybe she’d get a kick out of that. (Or, hell, maybe she’d refuse but still appreciate a copy of the Herald Tribune, bought from the specialty market all the way downtown.) I bought wine instead of whiskey and allowed that I can cook veggie burgers and veggie-veggies — whatever she prefers. “We can go out, if you want,” I offered the air. “Down to Brump’s, to a booth of smoking or non-, no problem.” To play billiards and flirt like candlelight, and bicker and laugh at the young, the brazen. Be young and brazen. We could, I thought, we could we could. .
And this has been days and months, as measured by replications of red alarm clock digits, by the hum of streetlamp, and by listening. By at last fearing nothing: No man, No god, No fucking bomb, No death, No failure.
At last, with her, I am not a failure.
YESTERDAY,
I woke to her side of a phone argument. I got out of bed and bent close to our wall, caressing it until I could best hear her. The shouts made plain that she was fighting her second-tier, bullshit lover. He was no good for her, she said. She said that he was addicted to breaking her, to mending her, and then to breaking her again — but that there was someone else who understands.
Someone who will take me home, she said.
She moved so close as she stated this. I heard her breathe between phrases, maybe even smelled the tint of her salt. She told him that he is unable to trust or give, and that he’s a slob, and that she’s not some random fantasy. She explained that she loved hibiscus tea — did he know? Did he know that she is scared to death of the forest?
But that’s not the point, she said. She told him that for once, for once in her goddamned life she wants someone who’s not out to crucify, resurrect, or alienate her pain. Or her joy.
My god, I thought. You’re talking to me, aren’t you?
Yes. She was talking to me. Because we have been here so many, many times before. Battle to battle, slaughtering, staggering on.
But perhaps, I thought. Perhaps we can finally just go home.
Last night, I poured my whiskey into the sink, arranged my pillows on the floor, and then slept like a lamb against our wall. In the instant before drowsing, I heard her make her pallet there as well.
TODAY,
her door buzzer rang and rang. I’d slept through the night — slept late, in fact — and so I knew that she was already at work. I tried to ignore the interruption, but the caller held the button for a minute or more. After a brief pause, my own door buzzer rasped, and then a knock rattled my windowpanes.
Her lover, I thought. I unholstered the MK and placed it on the kitchen counter, ready to be done with him at last. Stared at the door, inhaled, and opened.
It was only the postman, sighing and rushed, holding a brown-papered parcel for her, from abroad. I signed for it and stepped into the hallway, and watched him stomp away.
Should I leave her a note? I wondered, my chin resting on the package. Show up in person when I hear her return? Hand her the package and. . Anyway, this is it, this is it!
I paced the hallway like a nervous teen. Laughed at myself as I ducked back inside my apartment, and placed the package on my desk. Settle in, shh. Maybe I’ll just leave a card with my—
I sat and stared at the parcel, my bare feet tapping the floor, my left hand trembling. Took in the scrawled handwriting of the address, and the sender’s alien zip code of letters and numbers. I wondered who on earth still used twine to seal a box (and suspected it was her mother). Maybe there’s a photo inside, a fact. Perhaps I could peer. Could finally, finally see her.
No. I stood up, and began to cook our meal, chopping fresh vegetables and peeling citrus and. . and I turned on the radio, twisting station to station to find the opera, and. . My god, how am I to do this? A note? Perhaps a funny note or sketch on the brown paper? Yes. A smiling face in a doorframe, my name printed underneath. Or maybe nothing funny — just an invite to dinner. Or perhaps I could. .
No. I stopped, slid down onto the floor, my back against the cabinet and my legs straight out. Ordered myself to ignore things until my thoughts became clear. We had come so far for this. But not too far? Just has to be right, that’s all. Just right. Yes. Let’s say we open a restaurant, I thought. The Bottle Top. A tiny place, nothing fancy. Four or five tables, in one of those dusty storefronts down the block. Come to think of it, one of those spaces has been for lease since I moved here, so maybe we can work a good deal from the landlord. You and I will labor together, and gripe over the disjointed menu. Hibiscus tea. I’ll clean, mostly, to keep you happy. We can use the mismatched plates of our apartment — it’ll be quaint, you know? Carbonara. I can make this when you need nights off. Success will be difficult, I know, but how about we set a time frame? Yes. Set a one-year time frame where we both live in one tiny unit; tough it out in order to free up funds, to make this thing happen. I can already imagine the number of times we’ll have to remind each other: Remember, it’s only for a year! Ten months left, love. Hang in there, babe. Bottle of wine, here’s to six more months. We can do it. Ninety days. We can, and we will, and