Eight White Nights

SIXTH NIGHT

That night, in Straus Park, I almost did light a cigarette. It was too cold to sit and it had started snowing, so I could stand there for only a short while before moving on. One day, I’ll grow tired of this. One day, I’ll pass by and forget to stop.

I called her as soon as I arrived home. No, she wasn’t sleeping. Didn’t want to lose the feeling either. No, same spot, by the window, men’s pajamas. She sounded sleepy and exhausted, but no different than when I’d left her. I can still smell you, she said, and it will be like sleeping with you. I felt she was drifting off, perhaps I was keeping her up. “No, don’t go yet, I like that you called.” Maybe I’d done the right thing, she said. “Calling?” I asked. “Calling too.”

There were long silences on the phone. I told her I’d never felt anything like this for anyone. “I have,” she said, and, after a momentary interruption, added “for you.” I could see her smile rippling on her tired features, the dimples when she smiled, her hand when she rubbed her palm over her forehead. I want to be naked with you. It’s not like you weren’t asked.

We said good night, but neither got off the phone, so we kept urging the other to hang up, and each time we said good night, a long silence would follow. Clara? Yes. You’re not hanging up. I’m hanging up now. Long silence. But she wouldn’t hang up. Did it take you an hour to get home? Almost. What crazy ideas you have, Printz, going home like this, you would have made me happy, and I’d have made you happy too. Good night, I said. Good night, she said. But I didn’t hear a click, and when I asked if she was still on the line, I heard a smothered giggle. “Clara B., you’re crazy.” “I’m crazy? You’re crazy.” “I’m crazy for you.” “Obviously not crazy enough.”

I did not want to miss her by calling too late the next morning. But I didn’t want to call too early either. I waited to take my shower for a while, but then, for good measure, took both my phones into the bathroom in case she called either one. As for breakfast, no way I was going to leave home before speaking to her. This was when I came up with the idea of buying an assortment of muffins and scones nimbly stacked in a white paper bag folded at the top. That’s right. Two coffees and an assortment of muffins, scones, and goodies, nimbly stacked. .

On my way to the shower I spotted the mound of salt on the carpet still bearing the grooved imprints of Clara’s fingers. My God, she had been here less than twenty-four hours ago — here, in this very apartment, sitting on this very carpet, barefoot, with chocolate cookies wedged in between her toes. The idea seemed unreal, impossible to grasp, as if some higher order had suddenly descended to pay a visit to my arid, dull, sublunary landfill. Yesterday we were together, I kept repeating.

I watched the stain and feared that it might lose its luster and meaning, that she too, as a result, might begin to retreat, ebbing like a lakeshore town when just hours earlier it seemed a stroll away.

When I bought this rug, the idea of a Clara couldn’t even have crossed my mind, and yet that Sunday in late May with my father when I bid on the rug at an auction before moving here is now indissolubly fused to this spill, as though she and the rug and my father, who wanted me to learn how to buy things at an auction, because one had to learn these things, had run on three totally seemingly unrelated paths that were destined to converge on this very stain, the way the pictures of the cages in the Tiergarten would lose their meaning now unless joined to that of a baby born that same year one summer thousands of miles away.

I loved reading my life this way — in the key of Clara — as if something out there had arranged its every event according to principles that were more luminous and more radiant than those of life itself, events whose meaning was made obvious retrospectively, always retrospectively. What was blind luck and arbitrary suddenly had an intention. Coincidence and happenstance were not really chaotic but the mainsprings of an intelligence I had better not disturb or intrude upon with too many questions. Even love, perhaps, was nothing more than our way of cobbling random units of life into something approaching meaning and design.

How nimble, how natural, how obvious her suggestion that we have lunch at my place. It would never have occurred to me. How simple her way of coming up to me at the party. Left to my own devices, I’d have spent the whole evening trying to speak to her and finally given up on hearing her tell someone something casual, caustic, and cruel.

I looked at the salt on the rug and renewed my promise never to touch it. This was proof that we’d been happy together, that we could spend entire days and not once grow tired of the other.

Of course, I feared that the joy I felt, like certain trees, had taken root at the edge of a craggy cliff. They may crane their necks and turn their leaves all they want toward the sun, but gravity has the last word. Please don’t let me be the one to pull this tree down. There is so much sarcasm and drought in me, to say nothing of fear, pride, disbelief, and an evil disposition ready to spite myself if only to prove I can do without so many of the things that life puts on the table that I’ll even be the first to push the poor sapling into the water. Don’t do it. If anything, let her.

I thought once again of last night and how our hips had moved together. Too soon, too sudden, too fast. What an idiot!

Compare this to: You’re the best thing that’s happened to me this year. You could take these words to a broker and buy put options in a bullish market and still make a killing — words whose hidden luster I recovered and would let go of so as to recapture them over and over, the way someone finds his fingers returning time and again to a pleasurable round object on a string of tiny hexagonal worry beads. Even when I forgot these words, I knew they were waiting close by, like a cat rubbing its back against your closed door. I’d even delay letting it in, knowing that as soon as I changed my mind, it would immediately rush in and jump on my lap—You’re the best thing that’s happened to me this year.

I had a vision of Clara wearing glasses still, in her men’s pajamas and white socks, but nothing else. “So this is no longer too soon, too sudden, too fast?” she’d ask. “Fuck too soon, too sudden,” I’d say, struggling with the urge to undo the drawstring of her jammies — drop the jammies, keep the socks, off with the glasses, and let me see you naked in the morning light, my north, my south, my strudel gâteau, Oskár and Brunschvicg ready to rollick, coiled up like reptiles flailing and agile. I wonder if the coffee would get cold. Split the muffins and bless the crumbs, the sticky buns, the icing on the cake, and stay in bed, reach out for the coffee until arousal sweeps over us again, and we’ll call it making strudel gâteau.

In the shower this morning, hands off Guido.

“So did you make love to me last night?” she’d ask. “I most certainly did not,” I’d say. Did not.

By nine I was walking out the door when the phone rang. I hoped I’d still answer with last night’s tired, intimate, unguarded voice, perhaps I’d even try to affect it if it wouldn’t come naturally. But it was only a deliveryman. The thrill with which I had rushed to answer told me how much I wanted it to be Clara, today like yesterday, like the day before, like every other day this week. I wondered if she’d sound as languid and hoarse as she did last night, heedless of everything that didn’t bear on us — or would she be back to her blithe and sprightly self again, light and swift, alert and caustic, untamed rebuke all set to sting?

The delivery was taking longer than necessary. “He’s already on his way,” said the doorman when I called downstairs. I waited. By now it was past nine. I waited some more. Then I buzzed downstairs and told the doorman to see why the delivery was taking so long. I hung up. The phone rang again. “Yes!!!” I said. “Didn’t you know I was going to call?” Obviously I must have sounded miffed and was sending the totally wrong signal. Her voice, as I suspected, was entirely sober. “Funny, I was just on my way to bring you muffins and coffee.” But I knew I had picked something up in her voice. I couldn’t quite tell what had tipped me off, but I knew that something didn’t bode well. “That’s so sweet, but I have to be all the way downtown. I was just about to walk out the door.”

Why didn’t I trust the drawn-out, doleful all the way downtown that wished to suggest that going downtown was an unwelcome and painful task that was surely going to ruin her entire morning?

Why had she called, then? To make contact, to keep last night alive, to reassure the two of us that nothing had changed? Or was it because I had taken too long to call and she’d gone into high pandangst? Or was hers a preemptive admission, truth as cover-up, which explained the peremptory haste and the diversionary blandspeak of her all the way downtown?

What made me furious was how I always let events and others dictate how my day was going to turn out. Passivity? Timidity? Or was it every man’s diffidence, which invents honorable obstacles to avoid asking for fear of being turned down? I could have offered to go with her, but I didn’t. And I could have told her I’d meet her immediately afterward, but I didn’t. Clara, sensing I wasn’t about to do either, may have suspected I wasn’t so eager to see her. But that didn’t make sense: Why would I offer to bring her breakfast if I wasn’t eager to see her? But then, why was I making it so easy for her not to change her plans downtown? To hide my disappointment?

I knew I was letting the whole day — and Clara along with it — slide like sand between my fingers. Her uncompromising tone had snuffed out my desire to put up a fight or even attempt to.

“Where will you be around lunchtime?” I asked.

I was expecting something like At a place where people eat.

“Well, I’m having lunch with a friend.”

I didn’t like this at all. She had used the word friend to avoid using a name. I knew she knew I’d see through this. Was this, yet again, an instance of tit for tat? What made it worse — and what drew me like a moth to a flame — was that, even if she was trying to avoid being more specific about her friend, she knew I’d think she was doing it on purpose.

“What if I call as soon as we’re done? How’s that?”

But How’s that? was not so neutral either. It could mean Happy now? Or it could mean: See, I can be nice. Now, be a good boy and take this offer before I take it back. She was, it seemed to me, willing to meet me halfway, but not more, even though both of us knew this wasn’t halfway at all. It sounded like a final concession made to a temperamental child before one lost patience and resorted to warnings. How’s that? could easily mean Take that!

I wanted to see her now, before ten in the morning. But she was saying she’d call me around three.

I already sensed that, at the earliest, we’d meet at the movie theater — if then.

What was I to do with myself all this time? Hope? Worry? Fight her? Sit staring blankly at my walls, at my carpet, at my windows, like one of those hollowed-out Hopper characters? Trundle up and down Broadway? Start calling friends I’d been too happy to neglect? Swim in my bathtub? Live with myself?

Wasn’t this what I had been doing — living with myself — and hating every minute of it?

“Bummer!”

She heard it too. Not just the catch in my voice, but the extent of my distress and my hapless attempt to put a lilt on it.

“Bümer?” she said, making light of the word, which was always her way of deflecting tension.

Meanwhile, the two cases of wine arrived. I signed for them and tried to put more authority in my voice. But there was no hiding the whimper, even in front of the deliveryman.

“I was just about to come over. .” I let the thought trail. There was no point. She had already conceded with the promise of a call. No need to push.

“Where will you be?” she asked.

“Sitting in the dark by my télyfön.”

We laughed. But I already knew that at no time today would I enter a building where I’d risk losing the phone signal.

•

It was 9:30. At 9:30 on our third day together we were already past Hastings. Now it felt so very far away. Even the scones, the coffee, the obscene gesture that had totally disarmed me felt far away. I wanted Clara today. Clara so as not to be without Clara. Clara to screen me from things that may have nothing to do with Clara but that found in her a stand-in for life’s inflections. Her image would be before my eyes all day now. To walk about the city and project her image on every store, every building, everything. Run into people and wish you were with her instead. Meet a friend and want to talk of nothing else. Share the elevator with neighbors and wish to unburden every sorrow if only they asked, How are you today?

We’d agreed to call each other by mid-afternoon. I couldn’t prevent myself from saying it: Don’t make me wait forever.

I won’t.

Firmly, but summarily spoken, and with attitude — meaning, Let it go, hon. By the very tone in her promise, I inferred not only that she probably wasn’t going to call me but that she’d made up her mind precisely because of my way of asking. Whiny and mopey. I might as well have said: If you don’t call me, I’ll kill myself.

“That’ll be good,” I said, trying to muster a decisive, chummy-business air myself.

“That’ll be very güd,” she echoed back, instantly poking holes in my bogus firmness.

We hung up.

I immediately wanted to call her back. What would be so terrible about calling someone right back and speaking frankly about the things eating you — the dashed hopes, the worries stoked, wishes left hanging and then nipped before you’d even had time to nurse them and coddle them and get to know them better? Crush and rip, how easily it came to her. Nip and rip. This would have been my morning with her, our morning. Had we spent the night together, she’d never have pulled that friend all the way downtown. Had I spent the night, we might be sleeping still, sleeping after strudel gâteau, sleeping then strudel gâteau again. Eventually, I’d sneak out to buy muffins and scones and go back to lovemaking on our bed of crumbs, our bed of cum, breath of my bread on her bed in her mouth, languid, tender, and raucous her voice, as it was last night after so many cigarettes, the Clara who’d say I was the best thing that happened this year, the Clara who seemed about to break terrible news to me but ended up telling me she spoke my name in the dark — and I believed her, and still did — the Clara who called me idiot in French and meant it, in German, in Russian, in English.

This was definitely going to be the ugliest day of the year. I had hated this year — now I had every reason to want to put it behind me, put her behind me, forget her, forget the party, Straus Park, Leo and strudel and the ice cackling away on the frozen Hudson to the rhythm of the Bach-Siloti prelude. Forget. And if I couldn’t forget, then learn to hate. Suddenly I wanted to find a way not just to hate but to hurt her. Or rather, not so much to hurt her as to watch her suffer. She wants to play rough? I’ll show her rough. I’ll not answer my phone. I’ll go to the movies with someone else. And then head out to the same bar afterward. That’s what I’ll do. But I thought we had a date. Fat chance! Just you barging in on people when you want to and spilling your venom all over their lives, trashing and sweeping everything they hold for dear life, and in your wake, when you’re over and done with them, nothing but stains and salt on a rug, a glass trinket from a factory workers’ den called Edy’s, and the taste of your mouth on their breath, taste of your mouth in my mouth, the bread of your mouth, the food of your mouth, the crumbs from your mouth that I’d pick up one by one, just leave them at my door, bloodstained and wine-stained and heaped with salt and dollops of bile, and I’ll watch over them and bury my seed in them. I wanted you to call me, to want me, to be patient and kind to me. Not this friend downtown malarkey.

But what was I thinking! What if I had offered what she’d offered me last night and waited for a call that never came this morning? What if she’s doing what I had been doing myself from the very start? What could possibly have made her beg me not to keep her waiting last night at the bar while I went to the bathroom if I hadn’t already signaled that I was Mr. Reluctance Amphifibbing personified?

•

This, I could tell, was not going to be a good day. I’d have to put myself on hold, find a quiet spot somewhere, and, like an animal about to hibernate, stop breathing, hold still, make no plans, just wait for her call.

By eleven, I couldn’t stand it. I tidied up the place a bit, if only to start working. But working at home was not what I wanted, so I put everything aside, decided to pay some bills, tried to answer some e-mails. But I couldn’t focus on anything. I picked up my wallet and keys, put my coat on, and headed out.

Life without Clara had officially started. Going down in the elevator where I’d heard her laugh so loudly, I repeated to myself: Life without Clara has officially started.

I knew that there was no reason to despair, that we might be back to the movies this very evening, but I also suspected that something had cracked and that I had better start rehearsing the loss now.

It occurred to me that rehearsing loss to dull the loss might bring about the very loss I was hoping to avert.

What crazy ideas you have, Printz.

The thought amused me. Just trying to think the worst-case scenario would most likely bring it on; the anger I felt each time I thought of losing her would, if she suspected it in my voice or on my face, turn her against me.

I walked down Central Park West and then decided to cross over to the East Side and head to the Met. I liked walking on the bridle path, liked the chalk white city on winter mornings that could take a miserable day and white out the sun long before sunset. I even liked the frozen, whey-hued ground that made me focus on my steps as I crunched my way across the park, step by step, like an invalid learning to walk again, her image before me all the time, and the sound of my footsteps going crick, crack, crack, crick, crack, crack, how I had loved that day. We’d enjoy this too if we were together, she forever nipping every moment of effusion by adding a livelier form of effusion herself. She and I just crunching along together, step by step, each trying to be the first to break the icicles along the way.

You’ll never forgive me for last night, will you?

I never held last night against you. But maybe you’re right.

Don’t keep saying that.

I could feel it coming — this whitening of the landscape gradually closing in around me and spreading out like stage fog, wrapping the entire city in the oppressive color of eggshell and blanched almond verging on the dirty gray-white of industrial cataracts humming away in the distance. The oppressive whiteness of the day swimming before my eyes.

I was going to be alone all day. Who knows, tomorrow as well. And the worst was, there was no one I wanted to be with to stave off the loneliness. I could have called people. But I didn’t want them. I could go to the movies early today, but movies, especially after the past four nights, would drive the point home even more fiercely now, as though even movies, from being my staunch allies, had gone over to her side now. Why were people so easily available to her? Why did someone forged in the same smithy as I need to gather so many people around her? The answer scared me: because she’s not you, not your twin. Simple. Or is it that she can be of your ilk and everyone else’s as well? The woman she is with them is totally unknown to you, and what she’ll share with them or want from them has names she’s never even told you.

No doubt about it. I’ll be alone all day and learn to look things squarely in the face. It may not have much to do with her. It had to do with wanting, and waiting, and hoping, and never knowing why or what I wanted. And this creature made of flesh and blood and a will so strong it could bend a steel rod simply by staring it down, was she another metaphor, an alibi, a stand-in for the things that never worked out, for what draws close but never yields? I was drowning, not swimming to Bellagio. I was on the outskirts of things, and being on the outskirts of things was how I lived life, while she. . well, while she’d simply flipped on me. Yes, that was the cheap, petty, sordid word for it: she’d flipped on me. From extreme this to extreme that. Tit for tat.

And the worst part of it was that there were no explanations.

When I reached the East Side, I watched the traffic lights turn red, one after the other — pip, pip, pip — their blotchy red halos suddenly reaching all the way down into the Sixties, casting a premature evening spell, which seemed to wipe off this entire big mistake of a day to restore a semblance of peace by sundown.

But when I watched the lights suddenly turn green again and the day prove far younger than I’d hoped, I saw that I was hours away from her promised mid-afternoon call, five long grudging hours, with the weight of five long winter afternoons before I’d leave the Met, watching the tourists wander through corridors abutting each to each, leading to an overwhelming question — Are you losing your mind, Printz?

I looked at the green lights dotting Fifth Avenue. They seemed so cheerful, like office receptionists blinking their false eyelashes while uttering tame, perfunctory, upbeat greetings to clients who’ve lost everything, a poinsettia at one end of their desks and bonsai evergreens at the other, festive and mirthless, like all season’s greetings, like today, like Christmas itself, like Christmas parties, with and without Claras or a bowl of punch sitting right in the middle of them. If you didn’t bring your own warmth, these lights had none to give. They just glittered like party sparklers across the city, bringing neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain. All these words, words, words coming to haunt me, not rescuing, just waving — why was I losing my mind?

Could I really be losing my mind if I knew I was losing my mind? Tell me, Clara.

Ask the pumice stone.

Tell me why.

It’s quantum stuff, dear, for the answer is both yes, you could be, and no, you couldn’t, but not the two at the same time.

But if I know that the answer is yes and no, but not the two at the same time, am I still losing my mind?

Hieronimo doesn’t know, Hieronimo won’t tell.

I knew what I was doing. Cobbling fragments together the way my father, once he began losing his memory under the spell of morphine and more morphine yet, would quote long stretches from Goethe and Racine to show he remembered each in the original. I was reaching out to the poets like a cripple lurching for a cane.

The Met, when I arrived, was mobbed with tourists. Everyone was milling about me like flat, two-dimensional cardboard figurines capable of producing stentorian sounds when speaking French, German, Dutch, Japanese, and Italian, their children especially. People fretted their way about the great hall like souls awaiting transmigration in this great Grand Central of God’s kingdom. They’re all craving to be New Yorkers this time around, I thought, suddenly struck by the notion that I would give anything to be a native of their own sunless, pallid cities, Montevideo, St. Petersburg, Bellagio, how distant they all seemed this morning. Wipe this life clean and start all over again, less shipwrecked, less wanting, less damaged.

Are you damaged? Am I not what you like?

Really, lady!

Suddenly, all these aimless, jittery foreign souls threading their way about me seemed to strap on billboards like sandwich men, displaying large playing-card portraits on their fronts and backs, some parading as kings, others as queens, and still others as jacks. The handsome jack of hearts and the queen of spades. The Gorgon and the Joker. You Gorgon, me Joker. There are places on this planet where they stone women like you. Then the man slits his own throat or hurls himself off a bluff.

I had never hated myself so much as I did now. I’d brought this on myself, hadn’t I? Me with my quixotic too soon, too sudden, too fast shit, and she with her cheap, petty, sordid flips. My shit and her flip. Flip for shit. Tit for tat. Flit for ship. Ship that slipped, that got away. A whole life summed up by bip, bip, bip, and crick, crick, crack.

I was losing my mind, and the more I grew aware of it, the worse it became. I tried letting my thoughts drift to other subjects and settle on anything that might strike a cheerful note — one good thought, my kingdom for one good thought — but everything my mind landed on seemed to start out quietly enough, only to rouse satanic images, three good thoughts morphed into three blind mice. Three queens of diamonds walked by me, twittering away in a strange tongue, followed by a king of spades and two jacks with tiny electric gadgets sulking each to each. King stopped me and, pointing to timid number 2 wife, asked for directions to the bathroom. I must have turned away in shell shock. You’re a Shukoff, I said. You rude, mister. Me very sorry, most very, very sorry indeed, I said. How I missed her, how I loved her, how I wanted to laugh with her — all I want is to laugh with you, Clara, hold you, make love to you, laugh with you, and if we do nothing else in life but spend each day sans friends, sans children, sans work, and speak of Vaughan and Handel and strudel gâteau and a lifetime of nonsense words studding our love like medals on the tattered uniforms of White Russian generals turned panhandlers after they’ve had everything taken away from them by the revolution, it would still be the right life for me. I wonder what she’d say when I told her. I’d have to tell her, had to tell her, for this fat doting husband/father, who’d asked directions to the vaterklosèt, was more important to me now than anything in this entire museum, for all I wanted was to take out my cell phone and tell her of my brush with the king of spades and his number 2 wife keeling with pipi trouble.

Suddenly I felt the need to stop and hold on to something and make sure the world around me wasn’t reeling. Must leave the museum. I rushed out into the cold and saw the steps of the Met before me spill like the Spanish Steps all the way down onto Fifth Avenue, turning white-gray before me like the cold waters of Venice flooding the embankments and reaching down to the pretzel vendors, whose diminutive trucks seemed bolted to an ever-receding sidewalk. I directed my path down to one of the vendors. Heading toward him gave me a direction. When I finally reached his stand, I saw him spread mustard on one of those large salted pretzels. The sight turned my stomach, and I felt something surge in me, something like nausea, but not nausea, more like seasickness after a forgotten nightmare. The sweat was collecting on my face, despite the cold. I grabbed a pole around which a rider had chained his bicycle. I could hear my heart racing. And what didn’t help was the antiphonal whine of a bus bickering with its inability to kneel for an old lady with a cane, as if heart and bus were busy arguing like the piano and violin in the Kreutzer Sonata, talking back each to each, tit for tat, pip for pip, shit for flip, all loose ends tied together into a crusty warm pretzel with bilious mustard dolloped on top, the whole pretzel resting on my nose like a pair of binoculars, my eyes are your eyes to my eyes, your tongue and my tongue is one tongue, and your teeth on my lips, your teeth, your teeth, what beautiful God-given teeth you have, you have, you have.

I was — there was no question — losing it, yet obviously faking composure quite well. No one was staring at me, no one even noticed me, so I wasn’t about to embarrass myself. I finally understood why people who have heart attacks in public suffer on many counts: for the pain, for the shame, for the pure fear of falling to pieces in full view of every tourist and every messenger and hot-dog vendor. Just don’t let me soil myself. If I have to die of a broken heart, let me go gently and vanish at dusk through narrow streets and put an end to this bungled life that started on the wrong foot. Was I dying?

No sooner had the question crossed my mind than I decided to rush myself to Mount Sinai. I hopped into a cab and told the driver to take me to the emergency room. I knew the drill well from taking my father there several times. Simply tell the guard that you’re having chest pains and they roll out the red carpet and let you bypass all the stops. Indeed, they immediately put me on a bed. Next to me with his mother was a ten-year-old boy who was bleeding from the leg while a nurse was patiently removing shards of glass with a pair of surgical tweezers, speaking softly, telling him that there were a couple more, and a couple more pieces after that, but that he was such a brave boy, not one tear, not one, she kept saying with her comforting Jamaican lilt as she dabbed the wound ever so softly with a piece of gauze held delicately in between her thumb and her index finger.

The resident intern was wearing Crocs.

I explained that my heart was racing.

I had nausea too.

A strange film was clouding over my eyes. As if fog were closing in. Was closing in. Were, was, I couldn’t decide which.

“Any disorientation?” he asked.

Big-time, I answered, thinking back to the stairway spilling down from the Met over into the lagoon on the way to the Lido. Ever been to the Lido, Doc?

He ordered a regular cardiogram.

I had expected an echocardiogram, maybe an angiogram. I was dying, wasn’t I?

Ten minutes later: “Everything checks out fine. You’re a very healthy man.”

“I thought I was having a heart attack.”

“You were having a panic attack.”

I looked at him.

“Maybe you’ve got too much on your mind?”

“Not especially.”

“Family issues?”

I was single.

Love troubles — heartbreak?

I suppose.

“Tell me about it.”

I was about to tell him when I realized that Tell me about it meant Say no more, we’ve all been there.

If all this was as common as he let on, why hadn’t I experienced this before?

Because you’ve never loved anyone, Printz.

What had I been doing these past eight-and-twenty years, then?

Barely been alive, Printz, barely been to the rose garden. Waiting for me, that’s what. You came to life when we stepped onto the balcony on that first night and stood watching the beam together, you and I, Printz, and you watched my suede shoe kick the cigarette butt down to floors measureless to man, you and I leaning together on the parapet like two notes on the same staff, both of one mind, as you stared at my breast in my very crimson blouse.

Where had I been all this time?

Where were you? You were waiting. Except you grew to love the waiting more than the love you waited for.

You see, Doctor, I was just pretending to be like others who find love if they look hard enough for it. But I wasn’t like them. I was just pretending. I’m like her. It’s love I want, not others.

“Take this,” he said, producing a Xanax in his palm like a magician bringing his hand to your ear to retrieve a coin. He watched me swallow it with the help of a tiny plastic cup of water, then tapped the front of my shoulder a few times and let his palm rest there in a sympathetic gesture of fellowship and male solidarity: We’re all in this together, bro. The last time someone had touched me on the shoulder was less than twelve hours ago. “You’ll be all right. Just rest awhile.” He grabbed a stool and sat next to me to take my pulse again. Just having someone sit next to me like this was comforting.

He reminded me of Officer Rahoon. Officer Rahoon, whom I’d totally forgotten, but who stood over me now as policemen do when they gather around your stretcher in the ER, filling regulation forms and papers, their walkie-talkies squawking away loudly, as they seek to comfort you while confabulating about this or that hockey player last night with the Filipino head nurse. His apparition now made me think of a me who had stopped being me; Rahoon was the last person to see me before I’d molted that old self on the night after the party. Perhaps I’d gone back to Straus Park that night and sat there the way snakes seek out a hidden, scraggly rock against which to squeeze and rub their old skin off. Perhaps this was why I liked to return there every night, and had wanted to come back there last night as well, because there was a part of me that either didn’t want to let go of its old slough or hadn’t shed it completely, and coming back felt safer than going forward. Two steps forward, three steps back. Story of my life too, Clara. This was where I would heal, not here in a hospital. Suddenly I was dying to go back and sit in the park. Just sit and find myself, just sit and learn why I kept coming back to Clara’s world.

Perhaps I was right not to sleep with her last night: had she pulled any of this after making love to me, I’d have slit my throat with one of her father’s kitchen knives, killed myself first, then her.

Or maybe I was no different than she was. She had simply beaten me to it. I remembered that moment when, alone in the bathroom at the bar last night, I’d planned to slip away after making love to her. This is about tonight, I had kept telling myself, but make no promises about tomorrow. We were each other’s mirror image. Is this why I wanted her so badly?

“Maybe talking to someone might help,” said the intern.

I had never “talked” to someone before, I said.

“I’m surprised,” he said.

Why was he surprised? Because I was a visibly self-tormented, insecure, prone-to-self-hatred, depressive type you’d never think of leaving alone before an open window on the eleventh floor?

“No, it’s just that everyone has a setback at one point or another.”

And my point was now, right? A setback. Was this the polite way of naming what had happened to me? A setback. I see eternity one day, and the next we’re talking setbacks?

All I could think of asking was how long they were planning on keeping me there.

Till my heartbeat was back to normal.

Here was a prescription for more of these. And: No caffeine. No drinking. Lay off cigarettes too.

Six days with the world’s most beautiful woman and I was a wreck headed for the loony bin.

Suddenly I heard my phone ring.

“It’s the télyfön,” I said.

“I’m going to need to ask you not to use your cell here.”

I could just imagine Clara responding to such contemptible bland-speak: Are you needing to ask me now, or are you going to need to ask me in some fabricated moment in an undefined, politely ambiguous future?

“I have to take this call,” I told the doctor. “It’s from”—and I whispered the word—“the heartbreak.”

“Well, make it very brief, and don’t get all wired up again.”

“I am all wired up,” I said, pointing to the wires of the cardiogram still suctioned to my body.

“I’m free,” she said. As always she cut to the chase, then greeted you.

I looked about me and couldn’t help snickering: But I’m not.

Oh?

I’m actually tied up. Then, realizing the joke had gone far enough—“I’ve got wires stuck in every part of my body.”

“What are you talking about?”

She was yelling, and I was hoping that junior-internist here might get a sense of the madwoman I’d been up against these past few days.

“I’m in a hospital.”

A grapeshot of questions. She was coming over.

No need to. I can take care of myself. They’re letting me go.

Where was she?

On Printz Street — added emphasis — about to hail a cab headed uptown. Was using my nickname a good sign, or was she just making nice to cover up being downtown still?

I put a finger on the mouthpiece of my cell phone. “How long before I can walk?” I asked.

The young resident made an almost disappointed smirk. Time to remove these wires, put my clothes on, fill out the paperwork.

“Can you meet me downstairs in my building?”

“I can do that.”

I can do that. What on earth did I can do that mean? Did she have to speak Amphibabble too? Didn’t everyone?

Was she coming because she was eager to, wanted to, or was hers a lukewarm acquiescence bordering on indifference?

Finally, there it was: Don’t keep me waiting long.

•

“What were you doing in the hospital?” she asked.

She was sitting on a sofa in the lobby of my building. She had removed her shawl and her coat, so she had to have been waiting for a while. When she stood up, she looked absolutely stunning. Slender, dark colors everywhere, her hazel-eyed beauty simply forbidding. Diamond stud sitting on her sternum. Last time I’d seen it was ages ago. All of it reminded me that whatever bridges we’d crossed last night had been completely blown up this morning. The corvus had tumbled off the ship.

“I’m just staying for a few minutes. I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

Did she want to come upstairs?

“Yes, but only for a few minutes.”

I felt weak and sapped. I had no stomach for emotional haggling and tussling. I was just relieved to see her in the very same place where we’d picnicked twenty-four hours before. But she was chilly, wasn’t sitting. The meter was obviously running.

“So, are you going to tell me what happened?” she asked once we were in the elevator.

From the way she framed the question, I could tell she’d already guessed the answer. There was no point hiding the truth.

“Call it recurrent shell shock from my years in the trenches.”

“In the what?”

“In the bog, in the quag, the trenches.”

She nodded. But she seemed to have forgotten. Or perhaps she hadn’t. “It was a panique attack,” I finally said, hoping she’d pick up the rhyme with garlique. She shook her head.

She took her time getting out of the elevator, and once again was brusquely shoved out by the door. “This is not the time.” She turned to the elevator, then kicked it in the equivalent of its shin. “Fucking beast. Fucking, fucking beast.”

We burst out laughing.

I opened the door. Thank God I had tidied up the place this morning. Someone next door was cooking what appeared to be a late-afternoon soup. How I wished we’d had breakfast together this morning.

I turned on the lights. The day had aged so fast.

She dropped her coat on one of the chairs, yet another sign that she wasn’t staying long. “I’ll make tea.”

Had they given me something?

Yes, they’d given me something.

“I disappear a few hours and you end up in the ER. Nice.”

I looked at her. I didn’t have to say anything.

“You’re blaming me, aren’t you?”

“No, not blaming. But the tone this morning was so different from last night’s, it sent me into a tailspin.”

“So you are blaming me.”

“It’s not a question of blaming. It’s more like I don’t recognize me, and I don’t recognize you.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s right what?”

“We change. We change our minds.”

“That fast?”

“Maybe.”

“What happened to yesterday?”

“You’re one to ask.” She paused for a second. “Besides, I can’t be tied to yesterday.”

She walked over to where she must have stowed away the chocolate cookies, found the box exactly where she’d left it yesterday, and freely took two out. It thrilled me that she was behaving as if she were at home. At other times, though, I’d seen her take out a dish and stack four to six of these cookies, arranged, as I suddenly remembered from our very first night, in a Noah’s ark formation.

Neither of us had made a gesture to boil water. She’d obviously given up on tea and had headed directly for the cookies. Bad sex tea. Very, very bad sex tea, I remembered.

“Look, I don’t want us to fight.”

Obviously I must have raised my voice when asking about yesterday.

“What makes you think I want to?”

“Well, you’re obviously upset.”

“Any idea why I might be?”

“Why don’t you tell me, since you’re about to anyway.”

From the tone of her voice I could tell she’d been through this exact conversation endless times before. She dreaded its coming and could probably spot all of its signposts, its shortcuts, cross streets, tangents, and escape routes long before I could.

“I’m sure you already know what I have to say.”

“I think I do. But go ahead,” she added, with an implied If it makes you feel any better.

“Maybe there’s no point.”

“Maybe not”—meaning, Suit yourself.

“Let’s just say I’m sorry you changed so fast.”

She stared at her cookie like a child being chastised, or like someone trying to gain time, collect her thoughts, and come up with the right answer. Or just sitting out a cloud. How I wished that she’d tell me I was completely off the mark, that she hadn’t changed at all since last night, that I should stop putting words in her mouth and making her say things she hadn’t meant to say at all.

“Maybe that’s my hell.”

“What’s your hell?”

“Always letting people down.”

“Do you blame them?”

“No. I can’t say I do. I set them up for it, then I let them down.”

She made it sound that setting people up for disappointment was far worse than the disappointment that rushed them to the hospital.

I stared at her. “Just tell me one thing.”

“What?”

Her What had come too quickly, as if it were concealing a timorous What now behind a seemingly confident, open-faced Ask-anything-you-don’t-scare-me-of-course-I’ll-answer.

“Was it because we didn’t make love last night?”

“That would make me cruel and spiteful. It had nothing to do with last night.”

“Then it’s worse than I thought.”

“Maybe we just got carried away. Or maybe we ended up wanting the same thing — but for entirely different reasons.”

“Your reason was not my reason?”

“I don’t think it was.” Then, to soften her words but to show that softening them was not going to change her mind: “Maybe it wasn’t.”

“And you’d warned me against that.”

“I did.”

“And I listened.”

“You did.”

“Until you told me that I shouldn’t have.”

“Until I told you that you shouldn’t have.”

“We’re a mess, aren’t we?”

“A big mess.”

I was standing in front of her, and suddenly put both hands on her face, rubbing this face with its lips and hazel eyes that meant more to me than sunlight, speech, and anything inside or outside this room. I kissed her, knowing, with a certainty I had never encountered before, that she would kiss me as passionately and as desperately as I longed to kiss her, and that she would do this because the escape hatches between us were wide open and tomorrow was no longer in our vocabulary. It would be aimless, desultory lovemaking, safe and shiftless — with, once again, my usual blend of goodwill and tact, not the stuff of last night.

She kissed my neck as she had last night. I loved the way her hips moved with mine, the way we held each other tight, not letting the air creep between us. We were, it took a second to notice, almost dancing. Or was it lovemaking and I didn’t know it?

I unbuttoned her shirt and let my hand travel under it. For the first time ever, my hand touched the breast I’d been dreaming of for days. She didn’t resist at all, but she wasn’t participating. I let her be. Moments, just moments later, she was already buttoning her shirt.

“Please don’t,” I asked. I want to see you naked, want to think of you when you’re gone, want never, ever to forget that you stood naked in this room by the failing light of the day rubbing yourself against me, with your breath that smells of bread and of old Vienna and of the bakery by your house where last night you and I, just you and I—

“I really have to go.”

I’d known this from the very start. She had looked dressed up downstairs. Not just dressed up for the long lunch she seemed happy to have cut short when she called me at the hospital, but dressed for something that was due to occur yet and about which she hadn’t said a word.

And then I saw it. She had kissed me no less savagely than she’d kissed Inky or Beryl at the party. She probably didn’t know how to kiss otherwise — which was why so many got hooked and tangled. They took for large bills what for her was loose change. She probably made love no differently. What was a mere gesture — consent, as she called it — for others was the full monty, the once-in-a-lifetime you get to tell your grandchildren about when they’re old enough to ask about the woman who called you by the name of a ship.

I wondered if there was or might soon be a third party who was going to be given minute-by-minute dispatches of this fellow called Printz, who came after another called Inky was spurned, kissed, sent packing. Pretty soon I’d be leaving messages on her answering machine, or calling her at the movies, while she’d ask whomever it was she was with to look at the caller ID and mutter a muffled curse on being told my full name. It’s Printz, she’d say.

I wanted to be cruel to her. Say something that would scar her for years, or at the very least stick on her like a stain or a bruise that was sure to ruin her whole evening.

Clara, I feel this is the last time I’m going to see you.

Clara, the moment you walk out my door it will be as though we’d never met.

Clara, I don’t want this to tailspin — I want to save it — help me save it before my ego or yours gets the better of it.

Clara, do you read me?

“Don’t go now,” I said.

“You don’t want me to go?”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Was she about to tell me? “Listen, last night was last night. As you said: Too soon, too sudden, too fast. It ends there.”

“I don’t want it to end. This is not just about last night. It’s what we both know is bigger than either of us — it’s about our life, I don’t know how else to say it. You are my life.”

“You are my life,” she repeated — clearly not the sort of thing one said in Clara’s world. It went with not singing in the shower, not rhapsodizing over sunsets, what else?

I hated her.

“Do you enjoy making me sound stupid? Maybe I am stupid.”

“Maybe I am stupid,” she mimicked. “Two home runs in a row, Printz. Now it’s my turn — and I don’t know if you’re going to like it.”

“With or without tea,” I interrupted, reaching for humor, however lamely.

“Teatime is long past. Here is what I have to say, and live with it as you please.”

“Shoot.” A touch of fading irony in my voice, but I was buckling up for the worst.

“The truth is this. And I’m not the only one who says it. The sooth-sayer woman said it too. I care for you. Call it what you will — love, if it pleases you. You, however, just want to get me out of your system, and if mistaking this for love helps you, you’ll call it love. I want you in my system, not out. I know what I want from you and I know what I have to give for it. You haven’t got the foggiest idea what you want and certainly not what you’re ready to offer. You haven’t thought that far, because your mind isn’t really interested — your ego, yes, and your body, maybe, but the rest of you, not a clue. All you’ve been giving me so far is the hurt, sorry puppy face and the same unasked question in your gaze each time there’s a pause between us. You think it’s love. It’s not. What I have is real and it’s not going away. That’s what I have to say. Now can I go?”

She had so persuaded me that I started to believe her. She loved me, I did not love her. She knew what she wanted, I had no idea. Made perfect sense.

“Just stay, will you? Don’t go yet.”

“No, I can’t. I promised I’d meet someone.”

“Someone? Is this a friend of the friend who lives all the way downtown?” I was trying to show I was mimicking her.

“No, this is another friend.”

“Do you care for him too?”

She gave me a withering glance. “You want war, don’t you?”

“That’s not what I want at all.”

“What do you want, then?”

She was right. I had no idea. But there was something I definitely did want and it had to do with her, or it was through her that I would find it. Or it was her I wanted and all my doubts were just my last-ditch way of avoiding seeing this simple truth. That I wanted her. That I was destined to lose her. That I had shot my wad and didn’t have a single card left to play.

“I want you to give me another chance.”

“People don’t change, you certainly won’t. Besides, what does another chance mean? Is this something you picked up at the movies?”

“You’re always tweaking and putting me down.”

“That’s because you’ve been giving me palaver. When you’re good and ready, I want this,” she said, suddenly putting her right hand on my crotch and grabbing everything I had there in her palm, not letting go, all the while doing something that felt like a squeeze. “I want you — not the puppy face, not the snide antics, nor your evasive asides. I want you in the moment, here and now. For this, I already told you, I’ll go the distance and do anything you want, anything, anything. When we’re good and ready.” She stopped squeezing me without letting go yet. “But don’t ruin it. You ruin it with your silly games and your cold feet and your other nonsense, and you’ll never live this down — this much I can promise you.” With that, she put her hand inside my trousers and reached for my cock. “You want my breasts? I want this.”

“Now can I go?” she asked, as if I were holding her back with my cock.

I nodded.

“Are we going to the movies this evening?”

I hated my voice.

“Yes, we are.” Why? I asked, not knowing why I’d asked her why.

“I thought I just told you why.”

“And what are you doing now?” I couldn’t help myself.

“Now I’m going to meet someone who’s been kinder to me than I deserve.”

•

I had already purchased our tickets and was waiting outside the movie theater, drinking my large cup of coffee to keep warm. I was doing penance, and she was late. Something had already warned me she’d be late. I was trying not to let it bother me. I knew that five more minutes of this would make me more anxious, that anxiety might upset me, that I’d try hiding being upset, but that it would all leak in so many oblique and treacherous ways that were sure to draw her fire and finally erupt in all-out war. I tried keeping my anxiety in check. Please don’t stand me up, Clara, just don’t stand me up. But I also knew that it wasn’t the fear of being stood up that had caused the surge in anxiety. It was the image of her doing to this other friend what she’d done to me, her hand squeezing and caressing his cock, making the same speech. No, not the same speech. She’d make love to him, totally and completely, then hop in a cab headed uptown and show up at the movie theater, all wired and frisky, didn’t want to miss the credits, have been thinking of you all afternoon, not upset, are you? Who knew what she’d been doing on the afternoon of our first movie.

But if I was sincerely worried about her someone, it was also to avoid thinking how she’d touched me, or at least not use up the thrill of that moment by thinking too much on it. I wanted to dip into it, take furtive nips, and then run to safety, like a bird nibbling tiny tidbits. I was a leave-some-for-later type, she the here-and-now, guzzle-all-you-can-in-the-moment. No woman had ever put her hand there without first knowing that she could. Even my caresses last night, for all their boldness when we leaned against the wall of the bakery at three in the morning, had none of her nerve. I wondered if hers was a merely symbolic groping for a man’s balls, which explains why she rubbed my crotch somewhat before letting go of it, as if to make light of the package, or whether she had pressed me with the heel of her palm to tease me, to feel me, to turn me on, to show what she was capable of?

In between the worrying and the fading memory of how her hand had held me hovered hazy reminders of what had happened earlier outside the Met, things I didn’t want to think about, and could still manage to banish, but that were still there, like an enemy waiting for the gates to open, but equally capable of breaking them down or of digging under them if he wished. This morning I’d almost buckled on the ground — the tourists, the stands, the children, the crowd milling everywhere, the sandwich men dressed as playing-card kings and queens, everyone sucking the air till I seemed to be floating on helium. I’d never forget this day. It had started bursting with desire, my hands off Signor Guido, and look at me now, sipping coffee, which I wasn’t even supposed to drink, humbled, crushed, vulnerable, prone to new setbacks as soon as the Xanax wore off. I did blame her.

Why had I allowed this to happen? Because I had hoped, because I had trusted? Because I’d failed to find something to hate in her? Because everything, just everything was beautiful and promised to take me to that one place where I felt I belonged but had never seen, and that my life would be one big nothing without it?

“You didn’t think I’d come,” she said, after stepping out of a taxi in front of the theater.

“Well, maybe you wavered a bit. Did you want me to worry?”

“Stop.”

She took the second coffee from my hand, no doubt in her mind that it was hers.

I also produced a roll of Mentos, which made her ecstatic. Or perhaps she was making up for not thanking me for the coffee by throwing profuse thanks for the candy.

“Want one?” she asked, tearing open the package. The first one was red. She always loved the red, hated the yellow. “I want the red,” I said. But she had already put it in her mouth with a teasing you’re-not-getting-this-one-unless-you-come-and-get-it-if-you-dare smile. I would have kissed her in the mouth, found the candy, stolen it with my tongue, and, after playing with it awhile, given it back to her. Suddenly, with our imagined kiss racing through me and the thought of her fingers passionately combing my hair, something arrested me: they may not have made love this afternoon, but they got very close, almost too close.

Meanwhile, not a word about where she’d been or what she’d done. Her silence on the matter confirmed my worst doubts. I stewed in them all through both of Rohmer’s films, poisoning both films.

By the time we were out at midnight, it was impossible not to sulk. “What’s eating you?” she asked. My “Nothing” was not even trying to be dramatic or visibly cryptic; it was a glum “Nothing,” and I didn’t care to hide it.

“You didn’t like the films?”

“I liked them.”

“You don’t feel well?”

“I’m fine.”

“It’s me.”

What lay ahead was a field of nettles that I wasn’t eager to cross barefoot.

“Did I say something wrong?” she asked. “Let’s have it. Let’s just put it out there.”

It took me a few moments to find the courage.

“I just wish you hadn’t left this afternoon. I felt terrible.”

“I had to see someone.”

I tried to put on a placid, indifferent face, but I couldn’t resist.

“Do I get to ask who?”

“Whom? Sure, ask away.”

“Who, then?”

“You don’t know him, but he’s a very dear friend. We talked about you. About us.”

I was trying to find my bearings, but didn’t know how.

“Everything confuses me. I’ve never been this confused. Nor have I ever told anyone I was so confused. Ever.”

This was the most honest thing about me that I’d ever managed to say to her. This way of speaking was new to me, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.

How was I going to let down my guard with her tonight and ever attempt to recapture last night’s kisses with this plague standing between us?

•

When we arrived at the bar, things couldn’t be worse. A man wearing a dark blue suit, a white shirt, though without a necktie, was sitting at the table next to what had become ours, and no sooner had he seen Clara than he stood up and embraced her. No introductions, of course, until he turned to me and introduced himself. On his table were what looked like loose galleys of a book of black-and-white photographs.

He was nursing an oversized martini with a bunch of olives skewered on a long toothpick that he hadn’t touched. There followed an awkward moment, during which Clara and I were trying to decide our seating arrangement. It only made sense that she should sit next to him on the banquette, which spanned from his table to ours, but this precluded my sitting next to her, as had become our habit. She would be in between us, but the men would be sitting too far apart. So I did the obvious: I sat across from her, facing the two of them. She hesitated for a moment, which I took as a positive sign, but then she opted to sit so close to him that we found ourselves occupying his table. I was furious with her for not insisting that I sit next to her. Yet Clara’s hesitation had pleased me, as had the waitress’s histrionic enthusiasm: Here they are! The man, whose name was Victor, didn’t seem to pick up on Clara’s momentary hesitation or on the waitress’s clamorous greeting.

I wondered what he knew about Clara and me. Were we just friends? More than friends? What were we anyway? And what were they? He explained he had decided to come here for a drink after spending the evening with his assistant. He wanted to go through the pictures one last time before turning them in in the morning. Somehow he wasn’t pleased. He’d just come back from two shows, one in Berlin — grand, just grand! — the other in Paris—sensationnel! — and London and Tokyo in three weeks — could you ask for more? What was the subject? I asked, trying to make conversation. Manhattan Noir, which, given his French accent, he pronounced Manattàn Noir. Clara threw me a quick squint. There was mirth and collusion in it. We knew we were putting this on hold for parody and demolition later on.

Victor, dapper blue suit and starched white shirt, French cuffs, couldn’t be happier with the project. Next year’s Christmas coffee-table sensation, he explained, trying to make light of the project. But he was clearly pleased with himself. Even the gleaming white shirt and wide-open sans cravate louque was going to be the subject of ridicule once we were alone together, to say nothing of his name in bold letters on the cover: Victor Francois Chiller. The initials made me want to laugh.

Talk of Manhattan Noir kept us animated and laughing way past midnight. Everyone had a theory about Manhattan Noir. We took turns: The noir city in each of us, even if we’d never seen a film noir before. The noir city we love to catch glimpses of, because it takes us back to another Manhattan that may never have existed, but exists by virtue of films and their afterimage. The noir city we sometimes long to live in. The noir city that disappears the moment you go out to find it. The noir city that is more in us than it is out there in the real city, I threw in. “Well, let’s not get carried away,” he said.

She corrected his pronunciation. Not Manattàn but Manhattan. Not aunting hower of ze nait but haunting hour of the night. He thought the joke and his English pronunciation very funny and, with confident hilarity, placed an arm around Clara’s shoulder, pulling her toward him each time he laughed out loud, which forced her to rest her head on his shoulder. Perhaps, sensing his arm around her, she had automatically leaned toward him as a way of being pardoned for joking at his expense. Or was it: press the touch button and she’s instantly yours?

His arm stayed there awhile. He caught me staring at it. I looked away and turned my eyes to her, only to sense that she too had caught me staring and, like him, had instinctively looked the other way. Neither of them moved; she didn’t lift her head away from his shoulder, and he didn’t remove his arm. It was as though both were independently frozen in that position, either because it was too late to undo the gesture or because they wanted to show there was nothing awkward or improper in it and that — come to think of it — they could do as they pleased, seeing they had absolutely nothing to hide or be ashamed of, and would stop if and when they were good and ready.

Were they, was she doing this to spite me — was she egging him on? Or was she too weak to stop him, or was this her message to me? You have no rights, no claims, and if I want to lean on his shoulder or touch his hand or feel his balls, well, I’ll do so in your face — live with it.

Was theirs perhaps the threadbare familiarity that lingers among ex-lovers?

Or was it a murky friendship between man and woman, the way ours was no better than a murky friendship between man and woman?

Was I perhaps misconstruing everything? Or had I not even scratched the surface? My doubts, like proofs of the Pythagorean theorem, suddenly outnumbered the stars.

Or, with the Xanax wearing off, was it this morning’s anxiety speaking again, making me spin these thoughts, all the while urging me to keep a straight face before them — in case I was making it all up?

Which was worse: making it all up and not enjoying anything, or watching them together and not knowing anything?

Tossing and turning. Not tossing, but turning. .

Clara, I’ve disappointed you, haven’t I?

Oh, Hieronimo, Hieronimo, what have they done to your mind? Your thoughts are all scrambled, and the sedge is withered by the lake. I could feel it coming on again.

I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I knew the bathroom would break my heart. I splashed some water on my face. I liked the cold water in the stinky bathroom. Dabbed my face again. Wet my nape, wet my wrists, the area behind the ears. I remembered the pressure of the steel nut against my head and how it had dented the skin on my forehead. Poor, poor scalawag. And my trying to cool things down a bit, thrilled to the marrow of my boner, me with my how-do-I-leave-graciously-after-we-go-at-it-tonight? Last night she’d lowered the collar of my turtleneck and kissed me there. Hands groping everywhere, all the while I’m reining in Sir Lochinvar, charger and steed, till we kissed by the blessed bakery of blessed memory. Happy, happy, happy hour. Tonight, her heart’s with another man. Turncoat. Clever trick, that, hesitating before taking a seat next to his. Ah, you think that would fool Printz Oskàr? Why wasn’t this last night, why couldn’t it be last night, turn back the clock, undo the bad dream, unmake every mistake, put time on splints, work things back to the point where I’d taken the wrong turn and found myself standing in the snow in Straus Park after we’d kissed and heard her say, “We met here this morning, here we are again.” Ach, Sir Tristram, you bald-pated simpering sop, I thought you were all glittering with the noblest of carriage, but you’re only a Guido. I thought you great in all things, you’re but a puny. Bear down, old fool, and sink hereunder.

When I came out, she didn’t see me approach. They were talking.

This was a party and I wasn’t invited.

They were about to order a second round. I decided not to. She was surprised. Didn’t I want fries with ketchup?

Was this her way of asking me not to go yet?

The question spoke so many good things.

It’s been a rather long day, I said. And I think I may be coming down with something. Bad, bad day.

He didn’t ask why. His reticence and the haste with which he wanted to return to what they were discussing told me she might have told him about my incident at Mount Sinai and he didn’t even want to pretend he wasn’t aware of it.

Nice work, Clara.

“Plus I really shouldn’t drink,” I added, remembering the young doctor’s recommendation.

“Stay a bit. You don’t have to drink.” It sounded very off-the-cuff, almost like a polite afterthought, but I knew that, with Clara, casual did not mean perfunctory. She was speaking in code. The informality was aimed at him, not me. She might have been pleading with me to stay. I, instead, chose to take her nonchalant tone to the letter. I was operating in bad faith, until I realized that the casual accent of her request might have been intended for me as well: she wanted me to stay, because it would look better if I did, but it made no difference — one way or another.

What I wanted all along became instantly clear to me as soon as I stood up to leave. I had expected her to change her mind and not order anything once she saw me stand and put my coat on. She’d leave with me, and I’d walk her home, as was our habit. The bakery. Straus Park. This time I’d ask to come upstairs even if she didn’t.

“I hope you feel better,” she said. She was pretending this was all about not feeling well and about catching up on sleep. I looked at her to mean, So you’re really not coming? “I think I’ll stay awhile and have another drink,” she said.

I shook his hand, and Clara and I kissed goodbye on both cheeks.

I’m never having anything to do with her again. Never seeing her again. Never, never, never.

This had been one of the worst days of my life. The worst, actually. It would take a few days, maybe another week, then I’d put the whole thing behind me. Or was I underestimating the damage? Give it a year, until next Christmas Eve — the soul holds its own anniversaries and all that. .

Instead of walking downtown, I walked up to Straus Park. No more, no more, no more, I thought. This is the last time I’m coming here. I remembered the candlelit statue filled with votive tapers standing upright, and the crystallized twigs, and the bleeding for love, and the walk to and from the cathedral as she drifted away from her friends and brought me to this quiet spot and, just as we were getting very, very close, said she wanted a strong, ice-burning shot of vodka. She’ll pass by, and each time she’ll think of me, and be with me, and one day, with her husband, when they stare out of her living-room window at the snow falling over the Hudson, she’ll break down and say, Sad is his voice that calls me, and she’ll turn old and wizened and nodding toward life’s close and be filled with gall and remembrance, telling the first beggar she’ll find in Straus Park, He loved me once in the days when I was fair.

This cruel and spectral city. Manattàn Noir. All of it was noir. The snow was just a screen, a lie — for it too was noir. Snow hurts because it deceives you. With gleaming asphalt you know you’re dealing with dark, hard stuff and beaten-down slate underneath and shards of glinting glass mixed in. Snow is like pith and like molten tar, except it’s soft on the outside, like velvet and bread, and the good things that yield as soon as you just touch them. But underneath, it’s black, blunt, and bituminous, and that’s how everything felt tonight. Black, blunt, and bituminous.

I stood around a moment, hoping she’d have second thoughts and come after me. But no one was coming this way. The area around Straus Park was deserted. Everyone was gone. The stranded Magi with their heads ablaze were gone, Phildonka Madamdasit was gone too, Rahoon and the beggar woman had probably come and gone. Just our shadows now, or just mine. Leopardi, the poet, was right. Life is bitterness and boredom, and the world is filth.