* * *
In the morning, he let her overhear him scheduling a doctor's appointment for that Friday. He shuffled around the apartment, sipping tea, a sheet wrapped around his shoulders. When she left to read lines with Mark, he walked up to Washington Square Park and bought a falafel. Old men of all races played chess on the boards at the park's corner. Tall, thin black guys cruised through the cool spring sunlight, hawking drugs with their one-word mantras. College kids, mostly white, smoked cigarettes in the dry fountain and watched the skateboarders tricking on the asphalt hills.
After a couple hours, he went back home to ensure he'd get there first. She wasn't back until 11:37 that night.
Thursday, when she left to meet Mark for more work, he followed.
He watched her hips roll from a half block back. He was dressed in a sweater he hadn't worn in years and a knit cap he bought yesterday. The morning was cold and steam drifted from the corner grates with a smell of laundry and sewers. Vanessa only looked back once; he'd ducked into the gap between two parked cars, heart on fire. At the Bleecker Street station, she jogged down the stairs for the 4-5-6 trains. He swiped his card and pushed through the turnstiles in time to see her descending to the uptown 6 local.
He went home. The next day she had a shampoo audition; he ate soup and a sleeve of saltines, claiming an upset stomach. She bought him ginger ale and vitamin C. He left for the "doctor's" and wandered all the way down to Bowling Green, where he watched the gray waves of the Atlantic.
Whenever he tried to think about how to hang on to her, he found his mind mired in sick, hesitant hate for Mark (what were they doing together all those long hours? He was an actor, too—did he look like one?) and sick, overwhelming love for Vanessa. That love was a boulder, an anchor, a devouring cancer that had eaten a hole through the man he'd used to be (another part of him said: the hole had always been there, he'd just let himself forget that). At first he'd been faking, but now he grew nauseous whenever he thought of her, unable to put down more than cereal and chicken soup. He felt infected, hot, dizzy. The world looked like a puked-up joke, unstoppable, crashing.
She had another meet-up with Mark that Sunday. When she left the apartment, he donned his sweater and cap. When she cut east for Bleecker, he sprinted north, then jogged parallel for Astor Place. The train pulled in as he hit the platform. The doors bonged, closing. What would he tell her if she caught him? The doctor's appointment? A call from an agent uptown?
He didn't have to worry. He pressed his nose to the scratched glass until he was certain she wasn't in the next car, then crossed forward, rocking on the narrow platform between cars. As usual, Vanessa was at the very front of the train. One car back, he slouched down in a seat. She detrained at 86th. Uptown.
The street smelled like bread and rain and Chinese chicken. She stopped in front of a brick walkup less than a block away. On the stoop, a man stood. His grin looked permanently installed in his jaw. His jaw looked like it spent the day breaking rocks. Vanessa grinned back at him, gave a tight, waist-high wave. He leaned in, kissed her—lips? Or the cheek? Typical overfriendly actor-greeting, or the hello of newly-minted lovers? They disappeared inside the building.
Walt found himself cold and half-lost in Central Park. He bought a soft pretzel, chewed down half, tossed the rest in bits to pigeons. Was she already gone? Then what the fuck did it matter what he did? He could propose to her, burn down her apartment, hold her mom at knifepoint. It wouldn't matter. She was gone.
He sat down in the grass. The dew seeped into his jeans. If he had a box with a button that could erase his existence, he would have pushed it.
This same park had been the start. In another sense, the year and a half of NYU classrooms and dorm rooms and Village bars where he'd dogged her had been the start, but the start, the start that had launched their first movie together, their first night of moany, eye-buzzing sex together, their first morning-after when he'd descended to a gray and silent Sunday AM in a city so empty it could have been built just for the two of them—all that had sprung from this park.
How had he talked her into coming here? He could no longer remember. He suspected it wasn't the particular words that had finally convinced her to a date with him, but rather his steady, undaunted presence. His persistence. So on that cool Saturday afternoon in spring, spurred, perhaps, by the dying of her last shreds of respect for the future electrician, she'd agreed to hop the train up to the park, where they walked around the paths before lying down in the grass on a quiet hill where she rested her head in his lap and he touched her hair above her ear and felt he'd never need to be anywhere else. They didn't move for an hour. It probably wouldn't sound that special to tell someone about. Everyone, at some point, sits in the grass with the person they love.
But after a year and a half of fruitless and corrosive pursuit, fueled by a desire his roommate Ajit kept calling "obsessive," it had been perfect. How often do you get to realize a dream? To put your hands on the exact thing you've always wanted?
Now that he was losing it, what wouldn't he do to keep it?
As if it had always been there, he had his answer. Stolen right out of The Royal Tenenbaums, which she'd seen, too, but tweaked just enough to elude notice. Smiling the unweighted smile of a man who's staked everything on the turn of one last card, he went back to the subway station, rode home to their apartment in the Village, and practiced his worried-face in the mirror. When Vanessa got home, it took her two minutes of how-was-your-day talk until she noticed.
"Everything okay?"
"The doctor called."
"What've you got? The flu?"
"There's a problem." He looked down at the carpet. It was a nice carpet, so thick your toes could get lost in it. He'd miss it if she kicked him out. "With my heart."
She reached for his shoulder, gaping, horrified. Her fingers never felt so good. "Your heart? Are you going to be okay?"
"I don't know. They want me back tomorrow." He covered his eyes with his hand, shoulders shrinking. "I'm scared."
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