The next morning the excitement had been all about Sara’s engagement, and Irene had left after breakfast without even a kiss or a phone number. Now William guessed he was somehow supposed to act as if nothing had happened. As if he didn’t remember every microsecond of the evening, as if he hadn’t been replaying it on the 35mm film reels of his mind ever since. It felt a little shameful, really, as he’d watched it that afternoon right through a meeting with the partners and during a Sunday phone call with the London office, and on the walk home as he passed thousands of people on the sidewalks. But they couldn’t see it, he reminded himself — even if it were projected as high as the Empire State Building and as wide as the Battery. It was all in his head, and in the head of one other, who remained a ghost.
All weekend he’d been miserable and afraid to return Sara’s calls.
He drank deeply from his cup of warm wine and wished the red plastic container would, instead, swallow him up. He looked around the party and wondered if anyone would even notice if he spontaneously disappeared. It was a bit like watching the play. He was still there, in their audience, almost as if, hours ago, the curtain had gone down, the bows had been taken, the cheers had risen, and everyone in the orchestra and all the people in the mezzanine had gone home… but for the actors, the whole thing just went on and on.
“How was the show then?” George was asking. It took William a moment to realize that he was speaking to him.
“It was fine,” William lied, thinking that it would be rude to say otherwise in such a small room, filled with the very people who’d produced the play. They’d clearly worked hard and created something from nothing — wasn’t that praiseworthy?
Both George and Jacob stared at him, clearly expecting some elaboration. But William simply couldn’t think of a positive thing to say. He swayed a bit and tried looking at the ceiling where a bare bulb in a fixture dangled with great intent. But when he looked back, the boys were still waiting for him to speak. And William, exasperated at the party, at the days of waiting for Irene to call, at the bad wine — finally snapped.
“It was really, really awful. Really. God. Awful,” he confessed in a whisper. George and Jacob looked both delighted and not surprised. As William described the awfulness in detail, he tried to keep his voice down, but he soon realized it was utterly unnecessary — the actors were all so loud that they wouldn’t have heard him with a bullhorn in hand.
“All the dialogue was in rhyming couplets. Not sure why. Or why there was line dancing. And the guy who played Hades shouted all his lines. And, well, Eurydice couldn’t sing, so I have no idea why they put her in the lead role…”
George and Jacob each looked over at the girl in question, the frightfully thin hostess of the party, with breasts so enormous that her every movement seemed a complex balancing act.
Jacob commented wryly, “I can’t imagine.”
“You could count her ribs through a parka.” George concurred.
William went on to describe the highlight of the play: the moment when the actor playing Orpheus had slipped and crashed into Cerberus, whose three papier-mâché heads had gone flying into the wings.
George began telling them all about his star, collapsing two thousand light-years away, but then got distracted by the skinny actress as she rotated a tray of Bagel Bites in her tiny toaster oven. George left to go see if they were almost ready and then Jacob began telling him—William! — about the homeless man he’d seen on the subway that day and about how he felt silly now for getting so worked up about it. William was vaguely aware of a buzzing sound on the chair beside him. He looked down and saw Irene’s smiling face on the cell phone that lay there.
“Oh, get that?” Jacob said quickly. “That’s George’s. Irene probably got lost coming out of the subway again.”
William lifted the phone, almost not wanting to answer it because if he did, her smiling face would vanish from the display. And he’d have to think of something to say to this girl, who’d slept beneath him last week and awakened a total stranger.
He hit the green button to answer the call. “Yes? George Murphy’s phone. This is William Cho.”
There was a silence on the other end. Then, static. Then, “William?”
“Irene? Can you hear me?”
More static. Then a strange sound he couldn’t identify. “William?” she said again. William thought Jacob must be right. She sounded lost — scared.
“Hello? Irene?” he said, louder. The actors were all so loud. And the hot-water pipes were clanking above them — how could the skinny girl ever manage to sleep?
Jacob pointed to the street. “You’ll never get reception in the alley. Head out front.”
William hurried to the little hobbit door and ducked out onto the quiet sidewalk.
“… William?… Are… there?”
William raced out, past the trash cans, lined up for the morning, and the tightly bundled stacks of newspapers that were ready for recycling. He eased between the cars, parked neatly in their rows. He was desperate to hear Irene. He fought the urge to tell her insane things: that he had been missing her all weekend; that he hadn’t washed his shirt from that night because it still smelled like her. He wanted to tell her that he was sure he loved her, even though he’d only known her for eight hours, during five of which he’d been asleep.
He ran out into the dark street without even looking — if a truck had been going by, he wouldn’t have noticed until ten seconds after it had hit him.
Finally he could hear her clearly. Finally he could make out the strange noises on the other end. Full-on, reckless sobbing, more painful than any in the songs in the musical.
“Irene, where are you? What’s wrong?” He ran down the street to the corner, so he could figure out exactly where in the enormous city he was. He wished it all away. He wished every borough, block, and street away.
“William, I — William, I’m at a coffee shop across from Mount Sinai.”
William kept running. He looked around, as if maybe the hospital were nearby. And then he remembered he was in Brooklyn and it was on the East Side of Manhattan.
“Are you okay? Were you in an accident? Hold on, I’ll find a cab—”
The crying stopped, and he heard her clear her throat.
“William, I’ve got cancer. I’ve got… osteosus… I forget the name of it already. Bone cancer. This lump under my eye. Only five people in a million have it.”
He knew he ought to turn around — go back to the party and tell her friends. That was what she wanted probably. After all, they’d known her for years. He hardly knew her at all.
“You’re going to be fine!” he yelled into the phone. Not even his phone. He knew he should go back to the party and tell George. But he was still racing down the street. As long as he could hear Irene there on the other end, he knew she’d be all right. He ran past the water tower, past the pencil factory, past the Polish restaurants. He ran all the way to the water’s edge to a dark wooden pier. Black as the Styx, the East River rushed by.
“Don’t tell anyone,” she said.
He realized she was still sobbing into the phone.
“I don’t know why I even called. Don’t say anything to Sara or George or Jacob or anyone, all right?”