I ordered two Hendrick’s martinis. Did she like the place? “Feels decadent but quite, quite wonderful,” she said. She removed her shawl, and for the first time I saw her arms—same glistening skin, same tone as her hands, slim but not delicate; the merest sight of her underarms stirred me and reminded me that none of this was a mistake, that I wasn’t making any of it up, that if I couldn’t find it in me to make a pass, just the sight of her underarms at the table when she sat and stared at me would dispel all my inhibitions.
The menu seemed to confuse her. She didn’t feel like ordering. “Order for me.”
I didn’t quite believe her. But I loved what she was doing and couldn’t resist: “I know exactly what you’ll like.”
She seemed relieved. She immediately put the menu down and continued staring at me. I loved that she was staring. I reached out and held her hand.
She let me order the wine too.
The way she scooped her oysters off their shells made me hope she’d take her time and keep eating and finish none of it, ever. You’re staring at me, she said. I’m staring at you, I said. She smiled. I smiled back.
Of course, there was no way to avoid Maria Malibran. I asked if she knew that Pauline Viardot, Maria’s sister, was an opera singer as well. Yes, she knew that Maria’s sister was an opera singer. Somehow, it didn’t seem to interest her any longer. Did she know that Turgenev was madly in love with Maria’s sister for years? A lifelong love, she said, yes, she knew about Turgenev too … “Now tell me about you. You never say anything about you.”
It was true. I seldom spoke about me. “Everything there is to say is more or less already out there.” A moment of silence.
“Well, then tell me what’s in there.” She pointed to her chest to mean mine.
“Do you really want me to answer this now?” I didn’t mean it to sound wistful or cryptic. What I meant was: I’ll answer this question later, once we leave the restaurant and are on our way to your place. I want you to ask me again what’s going on in there when we’re past the film crew, which I hope will be out there tonight and which I pray will stop us from crossing the street as fake rain pours down. Let the gofers manning their cell phones and eating donuts tell us to be very, very quiet, because I want to walk and talk and be very quiet and walk till we reach your door, where you’ll ask me to come upstairs, and we’ll go upstairs, and you’ll open the door and say, This is my place. I want to see where you live, how you live, how you look when you take your clothes off. I want to see your cat spring on you and snuggle in your bare arms, I want to see the table where you sit to write and hear how you came to own the things you own, I want to know everything. That’s what’s happening in there.
Instead, I ended up saying, “A restaurant may not be the best place.”
The girl who had written about Maria Malibran, and who knew all about crypto-Jews who for centuries had been living with their identities hidden, would easily have read what I was saying in my crypto-lover’s speech. If she picks up on it, she’s telling you something. If she lets it slide, she is telling you something too.
Manfred: You’re giving her an out.
Me: Yes, I am.
Manfred: Not fair. Not fair to you. Not fair to her.
I remembered his latest e-mail after I’d told him of our plan for dinner tonight. If she invites you home, don’t hesitate, don’t ever, ever let her think you’re rejecting her. And send her flowers before you see her tonight. Your problem is not that you misread signs; all you see are signs. You’re blind, amigo.
I know when to put the moves on, thankyouverymuch.
I’m not sure, was his reply.
But I heeded his advice and sent flowers.
No sooner had my flowers arrived than she wrote back: I love lilies.
And yet, as we lapsed into a moment of silence during dinner, how very, very far from sleeping together all this seemed. Dinner began to feel like a concession I’d wrenched from her. There was even tension in our silence. One more second of this and she’ll say something that could dispel even the illusion of perfect harmony between us. I could even tell that what she was about to say was not what I wanted, that her arms, her hand, her fingers, which seemed to beg me to reach out across the table and touch them once more, would, within seconds of what she’d say, turn into stone and take back the dream and the godsend. But she chose silence instead.
“We should plan to see the Da Ponte tombstone,” I finally said. Shoptalk better than no talk.
“Maybe this weekend,” she said.
Her comeback was too hasty to sound like a real yes.
“This weekend is difficult.”
She stared at me.
“Dinner and things?”
What a sharp and twisted mind she had.
“Dinner and things,” I replied.
Any other woman would have scorned dinner and things and held it against me. Instead, she let it slide. In anyone else this silence would have meant I don’t want to cause trouble. In her it felt different. Dinner and things worked for her too—which is why I began to feel something rise within me akin to anger, though it might have been despair or, worse, sorrow. I couldn’t tell them apart.
More shoptalk then. “Pauline Viardot became friends with everyone who was anyone: Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Sand, Gounod, Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, Brahms.” But, not knowing what else to add, I couldn’t help myself. “So tell me about this new man in your life.” Was I acting jealous? Or was I trying to show that I wasn’t? Or was I trying ever so delicately to give her the chance to tell me that the new man in her life was none other than I?
“The new man?” she said, musing for a moment. “I don’t want to talk about him yet.”
“Doesn’t want to talk about him,” I echoed, trying to be jovial.
“Doesn’t.”
Her mood had changed. I couldn’t tell why. Our conversation was losing its footing. We were both groping for strings.
Toward the end of dinner, I said I knew of a small place nearby for dessert and coffee. I was hoping she’d counter with an offer of coffee at her place. “Sounds like a good idea,” she said.
We walked out. This, I knew, was the moment when years earlier I’d have put a hand on her cheek and kissed her there, on the sidewalk, in full view of the other diners. I took my time putting on my coat while she was looking for her cigarettes. In the end she produced one out of her pocket but, considering its bent shape, called it a cripple. I said I used to smoke two packs a day. How long ago had I quit? she asked.
“I’m not going to answer this.”
“Why? Because you cheat, or because you are afraid to claim that you’ve actually quit?”
“Do you really want me to answer?”
“I asked, didn’t I? You’re dying to tell me, anyway.” She had regained her spirited tone, it seemed.
My answer, after so much hesitation, might cast a shadow and betray why I was stalling with the answer. So I told her the truth.
“I quit the year you were born. Does that tell you enough?”
She looked at the ground as though taking her time to examine her boots. She had lit her cigarette and was either deep in thought or was inhaling for the first time in more than two hours.
“Do you still miss them?”
“Cigarettes? Are we still talking about cigarettes?”
“I thought we were”—she paused—“but I guess we’re not.”
“I don’t miss cigarettes, but I miss who I was before quitting.”
This was by way of both compromise and evasion.
She must have sensed, from my hardscrabble confession, why I wasn’t comfortable being clearer.
“Has this been bothering you?”
Was she speaking about cigarettes? Or about us?
I wanted to scream. When I’m with you, I feel I can take what others call my life and turn its face away from the wall. My entire life faces the wall except when I’m with you. I stare at my life and want to undo every mistak
e, every deceit, turn a new leaf, turn the table, turn the clock. I want to put a real face on my life, not the drab front I’ve been wearing since forever. So why can’t I speak to you now?
All I said was that no one liked watching time go by. That was abstract and safe enough, perhaps too abstract and safe for the likes of her or Manfred.
She made light of the whole thing. “So, while I’m kicking about in my mommy’s tummy, you’re smoking away in some nameless café in Paris. Is that what’s been bothering you, dear?”
“There’s more to it than just that,” I said, “as I’m sure you know.”
“I do know.” She said nothing more.
“My dearest.” Even I expected she’d come out and throw in a dearest. But then she surprised me. “You shouldn’t hate yourself.”
I did not answer, did not object. She looked at the ground again and began shaking her head ever so slightly. At first I thought she meant, This never bothered me, but you’ll never let yourself go, and what a pity that is. Then I thought she meant something a touch more hopeful, even exasperated, as in: What am I ever going to do with you, Paul? Finally I made out what the shaking was about: I don’t want to hurt you.
“What?” I asked.
She continued to shake her head in silence. Then she looked up and I could feel the tension almost explode in my temples. “Walk me to my building?” she asked.
“I’ll walk you to your building.”
We were, I assumed, nixing the idea of coffee and dessert. A good sign. Or a very bad sign. I did not say anything. I was trying to keep pace with her as we made our way down Bleecker. Why was she walking fast, why the sudden chill between us, why the mounting fear of saying goodbye the closer we got to her building?
Suddenly, before I knew it, there we were. She stopped at the street corner, not even at her stoop. She was actually going to say goodbye. She kissed me on one cheek, I kissed her back, and she turned to go away but then came back and gave me a hug. I didn’t have time to hold her, nor did she give me time to perform what had become my ritual kiss on her forehead. I watched her walk away toward her house. I thought she looked downcast and deep in thought, dejected, almost. She did not look back this time.
Why hadn’t we spoken? Had I perhaps rejected her as Manfred had warned me not to? Had I missed my cue?
There was never a cue.
As I walked away toward the West 4th Street station, I had an image of her entering her apartment, dropping her keys on her table, and giving out a yelp of relief. She’d acquitted herself of dinner, it wasn’t even nine o’clock, and she was free to do as she pleased, take off her clothes, lounge in jeans, call her beau. Yes, dinner’s over, thank God he’s gone, it’s the weekend, let’s go out and see something really stupid tonight!
Bold and rakish, like the piano, while I, the trumpet, felt plangent and lost.
* * *
I HAD MEANT to take her to my favorite pastry shop after dinner. I’d known happiness there once, or maybe not happiness, but the vision of it. I wanted to see whether the place had changed at all, or whether I had changed, or whether, just by sitting with her I could make up for old loves I’d gotten so close to but had never been bold enough to seize. Always got so very close, and always turned my back when the time came. Manfred and I had dessert here so many times, especially after the movies, and before Manfred, Maud and I, because it was so hot on summer nights that we’d stop to drink fizzy lemonades here, night after night, happy to be together drinking nothing stronger. And Chloe, of course, on those cold afternoons on Rivington Street so many years ago. My life, my real life, had not even happened yet, and all of this was rehearsal still. Tonight, I thought, relishing Joyce’s words and feeling exquisitely sorry for myself, the time has come for me to set out on my journey westward. Then I thought of Saint Augustine’s words: “Sero te amavi! Late have I loved you!”
So here I was, making my way back through the streets just as I had feared a few hours before, remembering now with a cruel chuckle that I’d even gone so far as to rehearse an exit line. But I recognized the walking home. This was not the first time. It took me back to my childhood when one evening, after desperately wanting to be undressed and held naked in a man’s arms, I was told to go home, behave and go home, he’d said, while I thought, this was home, you’re my home, it’s you I want to grow up with, you I want to grow old with. I want to live with you is what I should have said years ago. It’s what I should have said tonight as well.
As soon as I stepped into my study, I opened my e-mail and started typing something very short: We’ll have dessert another time. I had just pressed Send when her e-mail arrived: Dearest, I forgot to thank you for the wonderful conversation, a great meal, a truly lovely evening. A few seconds later, another e-mail from her: I’d love that.
She was thinking of me.
No, she was just scrambling to say something nice.
No, she was thinking of me. She was trying to stay in touch and not break the evening’s spell. Perhaps she was trying to tease something out of me, get me to say those extra few words that I’d been trying to coax out of her and have frequently blamed her for not saying, or myself for not helping her say them. Perhaps she was reopening a window I thought she’d closed the moment we’d said goodbye.
So I ventured something light. Have coffee with me tomorrow.
She did not reply.
On Monday she wrote back. She’d been out with friends all day Saturday and Sunday. And Sunday night, dearest, was just too horrific for words. But let’s definitely have coffee soon.
Monday evening I couldn’t resist. I wrote what I considered a layered e-mail about Maria Malibran and her sister. It turns out that Casanova had known Da Ponte in Venice and he too, like Maria’s father, is alleged to have had Gypsy origins. Could it be, do you think, that Casanova too…? Then, as though it had occurred to me right then and there: We should go out for dinner again. It was good to be with you. But I don’t mean to crowd you. I’m leaving things in your hands.
Not crowding me in the slightest, she replied, eventually.
In the days that followed I didn’t know how to reach out to her without sounding either desperate or peevish. In discussing Turgenev’s hopeless love for Maria’s sister Pauline, I finally let myself go: I understand him completely, I’m there myself. I had nothing to lose, and like all those who know they’ve lost already, I was firing my last salvo, no ammunition left, no backup, no water in my gourd. The feckless sputters in my sentence said I had shot my wad.
The silence that followed was more than a simple omission to respond, crueler than a gloved rebuke. She had lost interest, and I had lost her.
I would wait another half a day, maybe a day or two, but a week was certainly pushing it. Still, I’d have to struggle to avoid drowning in this. I’d never allowed myself to sink in too deeply for her—that much was good—though I did like her, liked her very much. Liked her on the day she ordered coffee for me. Liked her when I sent her my two-page, single-spaced rejection letter. Liked the sheen on her skin. I even liked the spot of eczema under her right elbow that she showed me on that night at the restaurant after she’d removed her shawl and knew I was admiring every inch of her. “See this?” she said, pointing at her elbow. “It’s new. Do you think it could be cancer? I’ve always had good skin.”
“I know,” I said. She knew I knew, every man knew. “Probably eczema,” I replied. “Nothing but dry skin. Do you have a dermatologist?” I asked.
“Nope.” As if to mean, Why should I? At my age?
“Want the name of one?”
“Nope. Don’t like doctors.”
“Want me to go with you?”
“Maybe. No. Yes.”
“Maybe. No. Yes?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied.
There was nothing I wanted more at that very moment than to put my arms around her, or reach over and hold her hand and say, “Put on your coat, I’m taking you to the dermatologist. He’s a … give-
or-take friend, he’ll see you if I ask him.” No sooner said than once we’d stepped outside on the curb I would have changed plans, taken matters in my own hands, and said, “We’re going to your place instead.”
I opened the window of my study and let in the cold air. We’re going to your place instead. My unspoken words rang like a promise of bliss that I’d almost uttered and that continued to resonate throughout the day like a good dream long after we’ve woken up and had coffee.
I liked the cold air. A few nights ago, I’d faced the same street, the same view, the same neighbors’ lights across from my building, and asked myself whether I’d ever miss this street once I was off to my new life. I remembered the young couple I’d seen at the movie theater a month earlier; they couldn’t even eat popcorn together. Yet they were going to see plays together, have children, hang out on rainy Sundays and listen to Shostakovich and hold their breath when the bold piano and the soulful trumpet sang to each other of old sorrows and newborn hopes. Later, they’d head out to eat somewhere in the neighborhood and then loiter their way into one of those large bookstores where people always end up buying books, even when they don’t mean to, the way I’d bought her a book one Saturday night after a movie, not sure whether I was buying it for her or for me, yet almost certain it would make her happy. “I need a hug,” she’d say. Now, how far away did Abingdon Square feel, as though it and she and the restaurant, and Maria Malibran, and the sudden false rainfall by the flickering lights of the Miramar hotel sign belonged to another life, a life unlived, a life I knew had turned its back to me and was being nailed to the wall.
I would survive this easily enough, of course, and grow indifferent, and soon learn to squelch every access of regret. For heartache, like love, like low-grade fevers, like the longing to reach out and touch a hand across the table, is easy enough to live down. There were sure to be more e-mails with more dearests—I knew this—and my heart would skip a beat and catch itself hoping each time her name floated across my screen, which meant I was still going to be vulnerable, which meant I could still feel these things, which was a good thing—even losing and aching was a good thing.