Eight White Nights

EIGHTH NIGHT

Phildonka Madamdasit, say hello.”

The voice mail, when I finally turned on my cell that night, told me what I’d known about Clara from the very start but could never bring myself to accept: that everything I thought about her was always going to be wrong, but that knowing I was wrong was wrong as well. She belonged to another species. Or maybe I did. Or both of us did — which explains why we saw eye to eye on very small matters and timeless ones — but couldn’t seem to connect when it came to middling day-to-day life. There were two Claras: the one who ribbed me and could show up just when I couldn’t have wanted her more, and the other Clara, the one whose next comment you couldn’t foresee but stood in awe of, because the couple of words she might say flipped and sparkled around you like a newly minted coin that was a plea for love or another one of her barbs that start with a smile but could just as easily land you on a stretcher in the ER?

“Phildonka Madamdasit, say hello,” began her message, with traces of suppressed mischief in her voice, as though people were laughing in the background and she was cupping the receiver to prevent me from hearing them. I knew by now that this was her way of underscoring the humor of the moment and, by so doing, communicating a semblance of mirth and sprightliness. “He kept glowering at me until I said whatyoustaringatbustah. The poor fellow got so flustered that he spilled the popcorn on me. You should have seen him apologize, the bulging whites of his eyes wincing contrition as he kept gawking at me.” A moment of silence. “And yes. In case you were wondering and hadn’t figured it out, this is my subtle way of saying that I, Clara, did manage to go to France on the last night of the Eric Rohmer festival, while you, Printz — well, there’s no telling where you went and what you did after you called. Phildonka sends his greetings.” Attempted humor once again. “Needless to say, I’m very très hurt. And the funny thing”—I could hear her smoking, so she must have been calling from home—“the funny thing is that I did call you no more than half an hour after we spoke to tell you that I would have come for drinks. So, yes, I am sorry. But you should cringe with guilt and mortification.”

This was followed by yet another message. “By the way, I called you a million times — but Mister, here, had to turn off his phone again.” When I looked at the screen more carefully, it showed that she had indeed called a million times.

There was a third message: “Just to say I know you were upset last night. I’m sorry. I’m going to bed. So don’t call. Or call if you want. Whatever.”

The jab and the caress. Never one without the other. Venom and antidote.

Yet another voice mail was waiting as I got out of my elevator. It had come an hour later.

“So you’re really not going to call. Great!”

It made me smile.

“This feels worse than heroin addiction.”

A few seconds later, she hung up. Then she hung up again. Finally, another voice mail.

“What I meant was, don’t call. Come to think of it, don’t call at all.” Then silence. Just enough ambiguity in the air for me to suspect something vague but nothing to panic about — until it hit me that she could have meant Never call again. “You’re just pitiful,” she added. It had come from nowhere.

Then, as always, the line went dead. I could tell she’d hung up the phone. This was the last word I had from her. My entire being, our entire week together summed up in one word: pitiful. Suddenly I went numb again.

Pitiful dropped on me like an ancient curse that once uttered cannot be undone, lived down, or forgotten. It hunts you down, finds its mark, and brands you for life. You’ll go down to Hades with the wound still bleeding. Pitiful.

I am pitiful. This is what I am: pitiful. She’s right. One look at me and you’d instantly tell: pitiful. He hides it well, but sooner or later, out it comes, and once you’ve spotted it, you’ll see it everywhere, on his face, his smile, his shoes, the way he bites his fingernails—pitiful.

As always, hers was the last word.

I tried to find holes in her assessment of me as I unlocked my door and saw my pitiful household with its pitiful perpetual bedroom light on, which was meant to let me think someone was already there, waiting for me, and would at any moment jump out of bed on bare feet and greet me with Where have you been all this time? Pitiful because I needed this fantasy to make coming home easier. Pitiful because the person I wished might appear in my pajama shirt and no bottoms was the very person who had just completely brushed me off. Pitiful because she had seen right through all my little shenanigans, my deferrals, demurrals, my struggle to fill each silence when silence became unbearable, because during those moments of silence I felt like a poker player whose bluff is about to be called but who must keep raising the stakes to keep covering up his bluffs, until he forgets whether he is bluffing or what he is really bluffing about and ultimately knows he must and is expected, sooner or later, to fold. Pitiful because, even in tonight’s voice mails, I had let her ride me through an entire spectrum of posts, from feigned mirth, to hurt avowal, to dignified defeat, and when I could have sworn I had the matter still in hand, she’d finally turned on me, light and swift, venom and scorn. It had barely touched me at first, like a tiny immaterial pinprick far narrower than the point of a needle, but it had pierced my skin and didn’t stop digging and kept growing wider and wider till it became thicker and more viciously serrated than the tooth of a giant white shark. A nothing at first — a giggle on the phone, the illusion of rakish fellowship, and then the slash of a stiletto right across my face.

She Folía. Me Pitiful.

I went over to the CD player and put on the Handel. How I loved this piece. The ice cracking, Clara’s tears, the impromptu kiss when we lingered in the living room that afternoon in the country.

You wished me not to call you; well, I’m calling now.

You woke me up.

I woke you up. You kept me up. We’re even.

What do you want from me? She couldn’t have sounded more exasperated.

What did I want from her? What I wanted from her was her. Naked. In my bed. Or better yet, I wanted to hear my buzzer ring, watch her come out of the elevator with her shawl still wrapped around her face, the way she’d worn it when we kissed by the bakery, cursing at the elevator door when it slammed shut behind her to remind her it wasn’t scared of her. Damn your fucking elevator door. And damn your fucking cell phone too. The courage to come up to my apartment at two in the morning. She had it. Did I have the courage to call her now? Yes? No?

Pitiful.

I had an impulse to prove myself wrong, but then thought better of it.

After my shower, I put on my bathrobe and immediately grabbed the phone. So what if it was past two in the morning? Either way, it’s already lost.

I liked calling while still wet. It gave a totally impulsive and informal air to the call, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world; I could focus on my toes, my ears, or her voice, the whole thing relaxed and candid.

“I can’t sleep,” I said as soon as she picked up.

“Who’s sleeping?” she retorted, clearing her throat, as if to mean Who ever goes to sleep these days? It seemed to clear the slightest inflection of hostility from her voice. But there was sleep in her voice. Hoarse, raw, listless, like the smell of a woman’s breath when you wake up at night and her head is on your pillow. Was she embarrassed to be caught sleeping past two in the morning?

“Besides, I knew it was going to be you.”

Why not Inky? I was on the verge of asking, when I realized that her answer might be Because he is right here with me.

So I didn’t ask.

I could have asked why she knew I’d be calling so late. Instead, I told her I had just come out of the shower and was about to go to bed. “I wanted to call because I didn’t want to leave things where we’d left them last night.”

She made an amused semi-grunt. She was agreeing things couldn’t be worse. So there was no chance I’d imagined it.

“Can you talk?” I asked.

There was silence at the other end of the line. Had she, perhaps, fallen back to sleep?

“You mean am I alone?”

Such razor-sharp clarity, even in mid-sleep.

“Yes.”

All I had meant to ask her was whether she was up to talking. As always, she’d read the real meaning behind my question.

“What did you want to talk about?” Her equivalent of This is your quarter; speak. She was giving me an exceptional but necessarily brief audience. So many seconds, but not an instant more. Always with the meter running.

“I was going to say—” But I didn’t know what I was going to say and couldn’t think that fast. “I just wish we were a week ago. I wish we were still at the party and had never left and were trapped there forever.”

“The things you come up with, Printz.” This was sleep talking. “You mean, as in that Buñuel movie—”

Was sleep making her unusually conciliatory?

“Trapped forever, snowbound forever, as in Maud’s house.” And then I said it. “I wish this was two nights ago.”

“And last night.”

My heart started thumping as soon as she corrected me. In the dark living room I stood facing the night and the dark sea of Central Park. “I’m staring out the window. I’m staring at the salt on the carpet. And I wish you were with me now.”

“You want me to be with you now?”

Why did she sound so surprised?

“I want you to be with me now. . and always. There,” I added, as if, using a pair of pliers on my gums, I had managed to pull out an impacted tooth.

“And you want me because?”

I should have known that the triumph in my avowal wouldn’t last. Something sharp and unkind in the rise of her question came like two fingertips snuffing the candlelit amity I’d just found in her voice. Irony, which I loved and found comfort in and which had drawn us together from the very start and made us think we were two lost souls adrift in a shallow, flat-footed world, was not a friend. It cut the incipient warmth between us like a pointed spur wounding the belly of a loyal and beloved pony.

“I don’t know why. There are so many answers. Because I’ve never known anyone like you or been this way with anyone, never this close, or this exposed. Never like this, because every time I turn over my cards and show you my hand — I don’t know why I’m telling you this, because chances are you’ll never forgive me — but just telling you who I am and how I feel as I’m doing right now makes me hard.” I knew I’d been deferring the word, as though trying to test my sentence before finally deciding to speak it.

“Hard?”

I sensed I had caught her totally off guard. Was she really going to ask me not to be obscene?

“Printz.” She sounded heartbroken. Or profoundly disappointed. Or was this still her sleep speaking, or had she read right through me and seen the cost, the yearning, and ache behind this word — taken sex, which was the easy admission, to the heartbreak of sex, which was the impossible and far more difficult one? Or was this just her way of mulling over a tamer version of You’re more pitiful than ever now, her preamble to a long reprimand meant to cut off my balls and slice them into julienne strips.

“Why, Printz?” I said, imitating the strain in her voice, not sure yet whether this was my way of taking back and playing down my admission or of making her feel silly for taking it at face value. Or was I trying to get her to say something she wasn’t saying, hadn’t quite said, might never say, or that she’d just vaguely glossed over a second ago and needed to clarify so that the two of us might seize its full meaning?

“Why? Partly because this is hurting you, and I don’t want you being hurt like this.”

“And partly?” Come what may, by now I was ready for anything.

“And partly”—she was obviously hesitating, as though she was about to raise the ante and break new, dangerous, painful terrain between us, taking those julienne strips we’d been exchanging and mincing them down into sheer slithers—“because I don’t want you calling me tomorrow morning and saying, Clara, I made love to you last night.”

I was devastated. I felt hurt, exposed, embittered, embarrassed, like a crawfish whose shell has been slit with a lancet and removed but whose bared, gnarled body is being held out for everyone to see before being thrown back naked into the water to be laughed at and shamed by its peers.

“You didn’t have to make fun of me, nor did you have to hurt me that way.” This was the first time I told her I was hurt. “As you said, I may be pitiful indeed, and this is clearly my big, over-the-top, mushy-gushy, sulky-pouty thing limping on its last leg—”

There was a moment of silence, not because she was dutifully hearing me out or humoring my little tantrum, but as though she couldn’t wait to break in.

“Did I make it go away?”

In a second she had won me all over again.

“Most certainly did.”

I could hear her smile.

“Why are you smiling?”

“Why are you?” Then after a moment, out of the blue, as if she’d seen a connection that I hadn’t: “What are you wearing now?” she asked.

“Was wearing bathrobe, now in bed.”

My heart, which was already pounding, was going like mad. I hated this, but I also loved it, as though part of me were staring at a river from a very tall bridge, knowing that I was securely fastened to a bungee cord and that fear, more than jumping, was the thriller. Still, the silence was unbearable, and I found myself saying the first thing that came to mind so as not to say what I wished to say.

“You remember, the striped blue-and-white bathrobe hanging on the back of the bathroom door?”

It took me forever to utter this one bland, halting, breathless, complicated sentence.

“Yes, I remember. Old, thick terry cloth — it smelled good.”

Same one, I was going to add.

It smelled good, she had said.

What made her smell it?

“No reason. Curious.”

“Do you do this often?”

“I grew up with dogs.”

An intentionally makeshift excuse. She must have sensed I was groping for a quick comeback.

“If I knew you better, I’d go down forbidden grounds.”

“You know me more than anyone I’ve known in my life,” I said. “There’s nothing you’re thinking that I haven’t already thought of.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself, then.”

“You and I enjoy the same shame.”

“Maybe.”

“Clara, I can be at your front door in less than ten minutes.”

“Not tonight. I like it like this. Maybe it’s my turn to say — what was it? — too soon, too sudden.”

It thrilled me to know she remembered.

“Besides, I’m supermedicated and zombified and fading,” she added.

“I can take rejection.”

“It’s not rejection.”

Had anything ever gone better between us? Was this Clara speaking or was it the medicine? Her breath was on my face again. I wanted the wet of her lips on my face.

“Why didn’t you come for drinks?” I asked.

“Because you gave me the silliest reason to.”

“Why didn’t you say so, then?”

“Because I was angry.”

“Why were you angry?”

“Because you’re always so slippery, always avoiding things.”

“You’re the one who can never be pinned down.”

“I don’t turn off my phone.”

“Why didn’t you give me a hint, then?”

“Because we’ve run out of hints, because I’m tired of double-talk.”

“What double-talk?”

“Printz, you’re doing it now.”

She was right.

Long silence.

“Clara?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me something nice.”

“Tell you something nice.” She paused. “I wish you’d been there when I called out your name in the theater.”

She was breaking my heart, and I couldn’t even begin to say why.

“Were you going to come for drinks tonight?”

“I had hoped to, Mister-I’ll-turn-off-my-phone-to-show-her-who’s-who.”

This time she took my breath away.

Without warning, tears began welling in my eyes. What on earth was coming over me? This had never happened to me, and certainly not on the phone, naked.

“Sometimes I’m terrified you’ll know me long before I know you.”

“I’m no different. It scares me too.”

Silence.

“Why are you letting me do this?” I asked.

“Because tomorrow when I see you I don’t want us to be like today.”

“What if you’re different again tomorrow?”

“Then you’ll know I don’t mean it.”

“But haven’t we been through this already?”

“Yes. And you should have known it then too. Are you thinking of me now?”

“I am. I am,” I repeated.

“Good.”

•

The sky was overcast once more the next day, the last day of the year, giving the morning light that luminous, bleached quality we’d been having all week long and which skimmed the surface of the city like the inside fleece of a white shearling coat draped munificently around the sun. It made you long for more snow and for wintergreen and wool-lined gloves and the delicate scent of waxed gift paper lingering all during Christmas week. I couldn’t have been happier. I got out of bed, put on old clothes, and headed off to my Greek diner around the corner, hoping it might be full, or empty, it didn’t matter which, because in the mood I was in, drafty, stuffy, grungy or not, all were good and welcome. When I opened the door and was greeted in Greek by the usual hostess cradling a giant menu in her arms, everything felt lithe and buoyant, as if a weight had finally been lifted and I was allowed to love the world again. I liked being like this. I liked being alone like this. I liked winter. I’d been yearning to do this for a whole week. Breakfast without cares. I’d have buttered Belgian waffles first, orange juice, then a second cup of coffee; then I’d get back home, shower, change — or was there any point in changing before heading uptown to her lobby, where we’d arranged to meet before going to shop for extras for tonight’s party?

But I also knew there was another reason why I was happy. As if something had been finally cleared between us. A few hours before that, the year was hurtling to a dark and ugly finish. Now, merely a phone call later, life seemed to have been restored to me and things seemed so promising that, once again, I found myself refusing to look over to the brighter side for fear I’d dispel its magic or be proven wrong. How long before she and I found yet another way to bring back the darkness that had shrouded me all day yesterday and then sat on me till two this morning? How long before despair again? Lauren in the bakery, laughter in the kitchen, the walk with the dogs, sundown in the park, and dinner, during which I kept thinking, A plate, a spoon, a knife, why isn’t Clara with us tonight? — all of it so very dark.

But even these enforced reminders of yesterday’s gloom were little else than a smoke screen I was putting up between me and the crowning moment I meant to revisit ever since going to bed last night. I’d been saving this for later, putting it off each time I seemed about to give in to the thrill of opening the surprise package I was taking my time unwrapping.

Now, with my head resting on the steamed windowpane as I watched people and children trundle along the narrow strip of shoveled snow on the sidewalk, I let my mind drift awhile. “Why did you let me do this, Clara?” I’d asked. All she’d offered was an evasive “Me?” I’d fumbled for words and could tell I was blushing, yet I’d struggled not to lie to her or cover up or deflect the truth or do anything but stay in the moment. Weren’t these her words, in the moment? All I had thought of saying was How do we end this conversation? Or: How do we never end this conversation? But I’d spoken neither sentence.

“Printz?” she’d finally said.

“What?” I blurted out to mean, What more do you want from me?

“In case you’re wondering.” There was another moment of silence: “I didn’t mind.”

“Clara,” I said, “don’t go yet.”

“I’m not going. On second thought, aren’t you supposed to turn over and fall asleep?”

It had made both of us laugh.

In the end, what made me happier was not just how close we’d suddenly grown to each other but that I’d heeded the impulse to call her. Another second and the year would have ended abysmally. Bravo, Printz, I wanted to say, as if what thrilled me now was less the woman on the phone than kudos for finding the courage to call her.

But just as I was thinking of her, the conversation between us began to pulverize, like an underground mummy exposed to air. By tomorrow, will this be nothing or will this be the best we’ve ever had? Tonight’s party seemed hours away, and Lord knows, a nothing could undo everything. Undo what, I thought, undo what? I kept asking, as if resolved to see that nothing had changed for the better since last night, and that perhaps it was time to stop banking on a moment of heat caught in mid-sleep. Will she even remember, I thought, or would I be back to pitiful?

Or was I simply trying to scare myself?

While eating a waffle, which I drenched in real syrup, I remembered how the conversation had taken a different turn. I’d meant to ask why she had called me pitiful. Instead, I’d stopped myself and asked why she hadn’t come to dinner. This one question led to the next and to the next after that, not because we were saying anything special to each other, but because question and answer, however to the point, allowed us to speak in rhythms and near-whispers that bound us closer and followed a course that had less to do with our words than with the tenor of our words, of our voices. Anything we said last night, any course taken, however arbitrary, would have taken us there and nowhere else, unavoidably.

“Why didn’t you come for dinner?”

“Because you said you were bored, and it sounded so false.”

“Why didn’t you say so, then?”

“Because you’d take it the wrong way, and we’d have argued.”

“Why didn’t you help me save the evening, then?”

“Because there was so much double-talk, and I knew you were punishing me.”

“What double-talk?”

“This double-talk, Printz. The kind that stands in the way of so many things.”

“What things?”

“You know exactly what things.”

“Why not give me a sign?”

“A sign? Meeting you on a freezing cold night, going upstate the next day, spending every minute with you — you needed a sign?”

“Do you have any idea what hearing you say all this does to me?”

There’d been a silence between us. And I knew what it was. Not lack of words, but lack of ways to avoid saying the words both of us knew needed to be said.

“What you want I want,” she’d finally said.

“Do you know me so well?”

“I know what you think, how you think, I even know what you’re thinking this very instant.”

I could have said any number of things to throw her off course. But I didn’t.

“You’re not saying anything, and you’re not denying anything, which tells me I’m right in exactly the way you want. Admit it.”

“I admit it,” I said. I felt as naked as a newborn, thrilled with life, thrilled with my living body, thrilled by my nakedness, which I’d have given over to her in a second.

“If I wasn’t so zombified right now, I’d ask you to come with your coat and your bathrobe and your snowshoes, and not a thing more. Because I want you all the way — and you, Misteramphibalenceman, can take this any way you want — from my mouth to your mouth.”

Nothing she had said to me before had stirred me as much. It was as if she had spoken directly to my heart and through the airwaves reached for my cock.

The silence settling between us said everything.

I didn’t want to say good night yet.

“Are you thinking of me?” she’d asked.

“I am.”

And then the words that pierced me to the quick: “You can if you want to.”

•

While waiting for my third cup of coffee, I did what I’d been watching so many people with pocket calendars do. It was my way of hoping, without admitting it, now that the Rohmer festival was over, that there’d be the Alain Resnais festival, followed by the Fellini, and the Beethoven Quartet series — weeks on weeks of evening rituals till we tired of them and decided, Tonight, let’s hang out.

She called me while I was having breakfast. “Change of heart?” she asked, which told me she was in a good mood. None whatsoever, I replied. Someone was giving her a ride to pick up some stuff for Hans’s tonight. Did I mind if we postponed meeting?

“Had we arranged to meet?” I asked. Why did I say something so stupid?

“Yes, we had. You forgot already?” she said almost reproachfully, as if unaware that I was only pretending, which was why she laughed. They really needed her help this morning, she said, we’d meet at the party. Pause. I wasn’t going to end up in the ER, was I? No, I wasn’t, Clara.

Around eleven in the morning I decided to call my friend Olaf. I found him in his office. He had just returned from the Islands. Horrible vacation. Why? Why? Because she’s a cunt. He wasn’t planning on staying at the office much longer, but didn’t feel like heading home. I could come over and we’d walk back uptown together, like the two pricks we are, he added. “What was so wrong?” I asked when we finally met. “We just don’t get along,” he said, using the knuckles of both fists to mimic the cogs of two gears that fail to mesh. Let’s face it, she’s a cunt and I’m a dick.

But I wasn’t paying attention. I knew exactly what I was trying to do. Leave his neighborhood, go elsewhere in the city, run into Clara.

Has it been a good year? I asked. Too soon to tell, he replied with his usual sarcasm.

Did he want to have lunch? Just had something — not hungry. We decided to have coffee instead. I was surprised to find him at work, I said. Only Jews celebrate Christmas. Jews and Dominicans. He was in one of his moods again.

On our way uptown we decided to stop at MoMA, where we’d hoped to sit down for coffee and exchange the latest in our lives, but the lobby was mobbed with tourists, and everywhere you looked teemed with human bodies. The fucking human race, he began. They don’t go to a single museum in Europe, but they come here and all they do is drag themselves through art they can’t begin to fathom, then rush to buy fake watches in Chinatown. Olaf and his rants. There was a time when you could sidestep life in the city and take time out with a friend here. Now look at this — the Mongolian horde. We threaded our way through the lobby and decided to head out to the closest Starbucks. But even the nearest one was mobbed. We ended upstairs at a place on Sixtieth Street — still too loud, too crowded, rich teenagers on Christmas break. We got up and tried a row of places around the low Sixties, till we gave up and ended up taking the Sixty-seventh Street crosstown bus. I knew why I was finding something wrong with each place. She was giving me the slip each time, or I kept missing her by a few seconds at every turn. What was his reason for wanting to go elsewhere every time we stopped somewhere? There was only one explanation: he was looking for someone too, wasn’t he? “You’ve met someone?” I finally asked him. He didn’t stop, but kept walking, looking straight ahead of him. “How did you know?” “I can just tell. Who is she?” Without meaning to, Olaf managed to remind me that he was perhaps my best friend because of the way he answered my question: “You can tell because you too have met someone and are simply projecting. But you happen to be right. We’re both love-starved.”

Eventually, we found a Starbucks in the low Seventies and located a small table in a corner by the window. I borrowed an extra chair from a table nearby while he stood in line and ordered two coffees. I could hear him arguing with the barista. “Medium, I said, not tall, not grande, medium — and it’s not next guest but next customer. I’m a customer, not a guest, get it?” I was tempted to ask him to pick up a couple of muffins or scones, but then thought I was setting things up too much, and besides, if indeed we were to run into her, I didn’t want her to suspect that I was trying to replay our breakfast in the car. Then a counterinstinct told me that being caught replaying our breakfast might indeed propitiate running into her. The stars sometimes worked that way. Wasn’t this how I’d arranged to run into Clara at the movie theater the first time? Since we were close enough to some of the stores where she’d most likely have gone with someone to buy food for the party, chances were we’d run into each other in this very place. Stuff of dreams and Rohmer films. But then I realized that thinking such double thoughts was a way of snooping into the affairs of fate and was precisely what might backfire and prevent us from meeting. I was just about to negotiate a way out of this double bind when there she was, walking past Starbucks with her friend Orla.

I dashed out of the coffee shop with just my shirt on and, from across the street, called out the name of one and then the other. What was I doing here? What were they doing here? Hugs, kisses, laughter. They were each carrying bags of food. I didn’t have to persuade them to come in and join us for coffee. I am so happy, so happy to see you, I said to Clara once I’d introduced Orla to Olaf. That palm on my face, as it lingered on my face, and kept touching parts of my face, spoke all the tenderness I’d lived so many, many days and nights without. They still had tons of things to buy, she said. She ran down some of their unfinished errands. They couldn’t stay too long. Are you happy? I couldn’t help myself from asking when Olaf and Orla were busy talking. Are you happy? she echoed, her way of saying that, yes, she was — or was she parodying what I’d just said, which, in the end, might just have been her way of saying, Yes, I am happy. But we scarcely have ten minutes. Just sit down, take your coats off, I’ll get coffee. I had the strange feeling that I was fighting to keep her with me, struggling against strange odds that were determined to draw her into my life, only to pull her away, and I didn’t know whether these odds were in her will, or in the universe of unfinished grocery errands, or just simply in my head. Part of me couldn’t believe in the sheer luck of running into someone simply because I’d wished it. This could be taken away in a second. Play it light, keep it simple, lie low, you already told her you were happy.

A man almost my age who was sitting alone at the table next to ours had raised his head from his laptop and was staring at us. The women mantled in legend and swank, the errands, the party, the nicknames tossed left and right, those who’d been asked to buy this and that and who were probably busy running similar errands farther downtown, the light hysteria of bumping into each other on the eve of the New Year, the complicated coffee one ordered and the small-black-with-two-sugars-and-something-sweet-if-you-can — Oh, Clara, Clara, will I ever forget this day? — I looked at him and put myself in his place, trying to imagine what he thought of our lives: Were we ridiculous or were we indeed mantled in splendor and dreams? Women, party, New Year’s; suddenly our lives, my life, acquired an incandescent aura I wouldn’t have noticed but for his gaze.

I liked our little corner at Starbucks. I’d imagined something similar happening exactly a week ago on the afternoon of the day we’d met at the movies. Now, seven days later, it was being given to me. How punctual the soul, as if secret alignments between our flimsiest wishes and an obliging if sometimes fractious deity were constantly organizing things for us. There’d be awkwardness at the moment of parting, but I didn’t want to think about that right now; I knew Clara would figure out a way and choose the least difficult path when it came to resuming her errands. Perhaps it was better we didn’t have a moment to ourselves right now — too soon, too much to say, perhaps a hampered and oblique glance was all we needed to know we’d be back to where we’d left off last night on the phone. Once again I tried to stave off disturbing thoughts. Olaf was speaking to both women. I went back to get more sugar for Clara. I loved this.

When I got back, I saw that Clara was wearing the same sweater she’d worn at Edy’s. I wanted to rub my face against it, smell it, snuggle into it. Little lamb, who made you, Clara? Even now, I’d give anything to touch her face, push her hair back with the palm of my hand. I liked the way she spoke to Olaf or, rather, listened to him and nodded away, somewhat gravely, as his metallic voice rang in our little corner. I already knew that not a minute after seeing me tonight she’d make fun of his name and mimic his voice. Olaf goodenough, Olaf bellylaugh, Olaf, chuff chuff, had enough, and we’d laugh and laugh at Olaf’s name and draw closer because of it, though he was my best friend and she clearly seemed to like him. I caught her eyes once as she listened to him. I know, they said. We’re planning a character assassination, I responded with a glance, I just know you know I know. I know this too, she seemed to say. Oh, Clara, Clara.

I should have noticed her earlier. Someone was standing outside and literally staring at us — at me. The boy had stuck his face right against the glass window. When I stared back at him, it hit me that the little boy must surely be with his mother, and that his mother was staring in too. Rachel.

Once again I dashed out of Starbucks. She had just left the house and was going to buy a few things for tonight’s dinner. The sisters were doing their usual last-minute thing. I led her in, managed to grab two chairs from two tables nearby, and widened the circle at our table — introductions, introductions, my offering to get coffee, taking the little boy to the counter to have him pick something, his ice-cold hand in mine, perfunctory jokes with those on line, until it was my turn to order and give out my name to the cashier. Rachel, who was used to being at the center and always the one to make introductions, must have felt uneasy; she was among strangers. To compensate, I let the others infer that I’d known her long before meeting any of them. Perhaps I wanted her to feel that no one would dream of challenging her seniority or attempt to unseat her. But perhaps I also wanted to keep Clara mystified and on her toes. Who on earth are these people you’re with? said Rachel’s inquisitive gaze, not without a hint of irony aimed at them, or at me for knowing them. I shrugged my shoulders to mean: People, just people. Clara had stopped speaking to Olaf and was eyeing Rachel, as though searching for an opportunity to break the silence between them, or, as I instantly sensed while watching her size up Rachel’s ash green winter coat that I’d seen her wear for years on cold days, to find one good reason to dislike her. Two New Year’s parties, and I was invited to both and, before setting eyes on Rachel today, had never thought I’d have to decide between them. This could get very awkward, I kept thinking, hoping neither would bring up the subject of the evening’s festivities, though I’d already resolved to go to one party and then the other, except that if I went too early to one and left, any idiot would figure I was on my way to another. For a few years now, it was always at Rachel’s house that I’d watched the countdown on December 31. Was I already betraying her, casting her off?

Suddenly the barista called out “Oscar!” very loudly. Right away I stood up to pick up Rachel’s coffee. I was trying not to be too obvious about my nickname, but without looking, I already knew that Rachel was startled. Clara had scored a point and was at this very moment gloating over her victory, which she’d be dying to communicate with something like a wink in my direction. I also knew that, owing to her victory, Clara might stop looking for reasons to dislike Rachel and no longer wear her bored, slightly absent, glazed look that made you feel like a toad among giants.

I began to wonder whether I had given that nickname to the cashier to keep Rachel equally mystified — side with Clara after siding with Rachel, make Rachel think she’d lost me, if only to remind her there’d always been a side of me she never knew or ever cared to ask about and for which she was now paying the price for ignoring all the years I’d known her. Rachel, who may still not have suspected it was my nickname she’d heard, was in no mood now to make friendly overtures to Clara, nor would she be inclined to respond had Clara attempted any. Besides, there was nothing the two seemed willing to speak about, and my jump-starting a conversation to break their chill seemed futile. Had they decided to pick on me as a way of drawing closer to each other, I’d have been willing to play along. Watching Clara make fun of me for this, or for that, and hearing Rachel confirm the criticism and add something like “Don’t you especially hate it when he. .” to which Clara would easily agree, and just as eagerly add yet another zinger of her own — anything would have been worth the price if only they’d become friends, and in being friends close a circle around the three of us, like three toddlers winding a twisted belt round them. What I feared was that, to spite me for threatening to leave her out, Rachel might start dropping hints either about Lauren or about a phantom woman who had drawn everyone’s attention yesterday afternoon.

A woman with a loud voice had seated herself beside us and was speaking to her baby in a stroller while chatting with her husband on her cell phone. “Now, isn’t it funny how Mommy forgot to put sugar in her coffee? Isn’t that fuhnnn-nnny?” Then, turning to her husband on the phone: “Tell him to ram it up his ass, that’s what your brother should do.” Clara, who had no patience with loud cell-phone conversations when they weren’t her own, couldn’t help herself: “Wouldn’t that hurt?” she asked aloud, turning to the woman on the phone.

“Pardon me?” said the startled wife-mother-sister-in-law, looking indignant at the intrusion.

“I meant, wouldn’t it hurt ramming something up your brother-in-law’s ass? Or would it be fuhnnn-nnny?”

“I can’t believe these people,” went on the woman, continuing her cell-phone conversation with her husband. “Rude, rude, rude. Listening in on our conversation, don’t they have anything better to do with their lives?”

“Oh no, we do plenty. We ram things up our asses all the time,” added Rachel. “And we’d love to tell you how we do it.”

“Yuck!” She rolled her eyes. “I’m trying to speak to my husband, would you mind?”

“If you lowered your voice, we’d never know what you and hubby do to your asses — so would you mind?”

“Get a life.” Then, turning to her baby with a righteous maternal gaze, “Mommy will take your coat off and it’ll be all better.”

Olaf couldn’t help himself: “Mamy weell mek it ohhhhll betuh!”

Everyone among us burst out laughing, including those seated behind us and the young man staring at us from the nearby table. For a moment I noticed that maybe the reason why I liked both women and couldn’t understand why they hadn’t instantly taken to each other was that I’d always known they shared this one sprightly, roguish thing in common: the ability to draw ever so close to meanness without being cruel.

Or was I once again mistaken about Clara? Was she perhaps just cruel, and nothing less? Or did I like running into her presumed cruelty only to have an instance of kindness brighten up her face like compassion on the features of a stern inquisitor?

I noticed at some point, when the two had begun to speak, that Rachel was trying ever so subtly to draw my attention. When she caught my glance, she shook her head once, twice, very fast, as though to signal a question: Who is she? Where did you fish her out from? I hastily looked away, not wanting to engage in secret messaging, but then realized that she was asking an altogether different question: Is this the one you were bellyaching about all day yesterday? I was about to answer her signal, with a No, this is someone else, because I did not want Rachel, who knew me so well, to know that yesterday’s phantom woman was indeed sitting across from her. I did not want her to know more about us than I did, though, at this point, her guess was as good as anyone’s. I forced myself to think about last night’s phone conversation — our fleeting, blissful, shameful secret when her voice had touched my ear with its furry breath and then lingered on my side of the bed when she said, You can if you want to. Now, as I looked at her, I kept thinking that perhaps there was no reason to bank on anything whatsoever — nothing had happened or, if it had, it hovered in mid-sleep awhile and then vanished in the wee hours of the night without a trace — weren’t we both pretending it was a dream neither was sure the other hadn’t dreamed? A growing sense of alarm seized me as soon as I realized that this thing I’d been incubating all week without telling anyone was no better than a bubble that the slightest quizzical glance could puncture. Had I lost Clara again? Was I losing her right now by wasting my ration of time with her at Starbucks? Or was I always already losing her — because, in the end, I was in a state of perpetual furlough, hence on borrowed time, in hock?

Perhaps I didn’t want Rachel to know how much like strangers Clara and I were. Which is why I avoided answering her silent prods.

Perhaps I wanted to scare myself.

I had had no time to reply, when Clara raised her eyes and intercepted Rachel’s inquisitive glance, and immediately turned to me, catching the blank, noncommittal look on my face, which, despite my efforts not to respond, still betrayed there’d been clandestine communication between us.

“Wait a minute. What’s all this?” she asked.

“What?” I replied.

“This.” She imitated Rachel’s motions of the head. “What are you two talking about?”

“Nothing.” I liked being found out and enjoyed the naughty evasion that was really no evasion at all.

“Look at these two,” said Clara, turning to Olaf. “They’re sending each other secret signals.”

“I think we’ve been caught,” said Rachel. I could tell Rachel was going to give me away. Let her.

There was no point in pretending. “Do you want to know?” I asked Clara.

“Of course I want to know.” And seeing I was about to spill the beans: “Wait,” she said, “will it make me happy or unhappy?”

Rachel and I exchanged glances.

“You two!” said Clara.

“Okay, it’s about yesterday. Rachel was basically trying to figure out if you were the one I’d invited for drinks last night.”

“He did call — but with him one never knows,” Clara added, turning to Rachel for support. “Did he tell you how the idiot — me, that is — ended up going to the movies all by herself, hoping to run into genius here?”

“He did say something about going and not going, but then going and not going. We all told him he had to go.”

“Did he say why he wouldn’t go?”

“He looked upset.” Then, turning to me: “Is it okay for me to say you looked upset?”

Yes, it was okay for her to tell the world I was upset. And no, how could I possibly mind? Would she have the good tact not to mention Lauren, though?

“What happened at the movie theater?”

“Aside from the fact I was alone in the dark with every sexual pervert ready to pounce on an innocent single girl — nothing. Even the usher hit on me.”

“So, did you punish him?”

“Who? The usher? Or Oskár?”

“Oscar,” said Rachel, without the accent mark.

Rachel smirked as she spoke my nickname for the first time, trying to hide her hesitation. She was tasting a strange dish she didn’t want anyone to know she’d never heard of before and wasn’t quite going to swallow until making sure it agreed with her. “Oskár,” she said, as though she’d just discovered an amusing new mask on my face, a new me she was still reluctant to admit into her world and whom everyone in her house was sure to talk about later, certainly behind my back. It made me feel that this new identity, which Clara had cemented the day we’d driven up to Hudson, was no more me than a new pair of shoes I’d been parading in all week in the hope that everyone might think they’d long been integrated into my wardrobe, but whose price tag, as far as Rachel was concerned, was still showing and was not to be removed until those who knew me better had decided that they matched the real me. “So you forgave him?”

“I did try to make him pay for it, but I always fail at making men pay.”

This was certainly not the Clara I knew. Was she attempting some sort of us-against-them solidarity with Rachel, or was this her oblique way of undercutting Rachel’s attempt to tease me for my new name?

“Actually,” she continued, “we made up. He had the wisdom to call last night.”

I knew what Rachel was thinking. We must have slept together last night.

It occurred to me that Clara knew exactly what had crossed Rachel’s mind, and so as not to disabuse her, she reminded Orla that they really had to finish their shopping, got up, put on her coat, and, just as she was saying goodbye to everyone, leaned down and gave me a moist, hard kiss, tongue all the way in my mouth. “Bis bald.”

If anything could have made physical contact between us mean so little, this was it. Had we reached perfunctory touching already? Or was this her way of reminding me that, after last night, there were no more holds barred? Or was this intended for Rachel and not me? Or was this a replay of Inky’s kiss?

•

A short while later, Rachel started putting mittens on her son and insisted on wrapping a scarf around the child’s neck. The boy struggled; eventually she relented.

“Will we see you tonight, Oskár?”

“Probably,” I said, ignoring the lambent rise in her voice as she spoke my nickname.

She knew she’d irritated me. She also knew I wasn’t speaking the truth.

“Well, try. Bring her along too.”

As she put her gloves on, she couldn’t help herself: “She is stunning.”

My shrug-in-silence was meant to pass for unassuming agreement.

“Don’t do that!”

“Do what?” I asked.

“This.” She mimicked the postured indifference on my face. “She didn’t take her eyes off you.”

“Her eyes off me?”

“You’re the most exasperating person I know. Olaf, you explain it to him. Sometimes I think you purposely avoid seeing things. As if you’re scared you’d have to get undressed with the people you really care for and God forbid they should see your pipi.”

As soon as Rachel left, Olaf couldn’t contain himself.

“Cunts, all of them.”

“She may have a point.”

Olaf shrugged his shoulders as though to mean, Yes, she may, still a cunt.

His wife had asked him to order a case of Champagne for tonight, but he had completely forgotten, and now he worried they wouldn’t deliver it on time. Then, with his typical expansive bear hug, he embraced me, uttering his usual salutation, which was “Strength and honor” followed by “Stay hard.”

“She’s the one you were going to tell me about?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Figures.”

“And yours?” I asked.

“Don’t ask. You don’t want to know.”

•

If I called Clara now, I could offer to join them while they were shopping. I could just see all three of us inside a packed Fairway. Laughter. Laughter. Eggs—I saw her saying—We’ll need eggs for tomorrow morning.

I was soaring.

Just hope you don’t pay dearly for this.

When I got home early that afternoon, I decided to take a nap. Was it my way of restarting a day that had gone well so far and having it all over again? Or was it the lure of clean pressed sheets that beckoned — crisp, taut, and lightly starched, as I like them? Or was it the rapture of the afternoon sun slumbering like a cat on my bed, where I knew I’d doze off listening to music?

I had promised to call her in a few hours and wanted nothing more now than to coddle the vaguest thoughts of her and take these thoughts to bed with me, the way we take a wish we suspect may never be granted but whose contour, once we’ve shut our eyes, we begin to unpeel, layer after layer, leaf after leaf, as though hope were an artichoke whose heart lies so deeply buried that we could afford to take our time, mince our steps, step back, sidestep, take forever.

If we weren’t fated to be lovers, or friends, or casual whatevers, well, I’d sleep that off too. In the mood I was in, I too didn’t give a damn about getting hurt, just as I didn’t care if she got hurt. Just get in bed, curl up, think of her with me, our bodies cuddling and canoodling like the two spooning halves of Venice, the space between us we’ll call the Grand Canal and the footbridge my Rialto. My corvus. My Guido. My Lochinvar. My Finnegan. My Fortinbras.

Why didn’t you come for dinner?

Because I picked up resentment in your voice.

Why didn’t you say something, then?

Because I knew you were angry and there’d be more double-talk.

What double-talk?

This double-talk.

Can I tell you something, then?

Don’t you think I know already, don’t you think I know?

Oh, Clara, Clara, Clara.

•

It was already past five when I woke up. There were three missed calls on my answering machine, two hang-ups and one from Clara. Had I slept so soundly that I hadn’t heard the phone ring and missed her voice once my machine picked up? When I listened to her message, she seemed inexplicably irked and fatigued: “You could at least pick up!” I checked my cell. But no one had called. “I’ve been calling everywhere. I can’t believe I spent all this time tracking such a pitiful, pitiful man.” I could feel the numbness and rising nausea in my chest. Was I as vulnerable as all that? All this well-being suddenly zapped because of a phone message?

I thought we’d made up last night, and at Starbucks today she couldn’t have looked happier to see me, her palm not leaving my face as soon as I rushed out to greet her in the cold. Now this? As the five o’clock darkness kept closing in on the day, it finally struck me that this was the worst possible way to welcome New Year’s. Was it a preview of the coming year, or a finish to a terrible one? Or, in Olaf’s words, was it still too soon to tell?

Then I realized. These were last night’s phone messages, not today’s. Could anyone have sounded so enraged? No wonder she sounded so curt when I called her from Rachel’s!

I shaved, took a long shower, and, for good luck, decided to do exactly what I’d done last week: drop in on my mother again, wear the same black shoes, same dark clothes, same belt even; then dashed off, caught the first cab on the side street, and straight off to Mother’s building, thinking to myself what I’d caught myself thinking of last week as well: Hope she’s well, or well enough, hope I don’t have to stay long, hope she won’t bring him up again, remember to buy two bottles afterward exactly as I’d done last week, then hop on the M5, it’ll give me time to look out the windows and stare at the snow and the ice floes and at the scant traffic on Riverside Drive and think of nothing, perhaps think of my father, or simply forget to think of him, which is what happened last week on the bus when I promised to think of him and had simply allowed my thoughts to drift.

Mother was all the way at the back of the apartment, in her bedroom, so that, after opening the front door, I had to walk down the long, dark corridor, turning on the lights along the way as I walked past closed doors — she kept the old bedrooms and bathrooms closed, she said, because it gets cold by nightfall. Perhaps she had stopped enjoying the illusion there were others in the house and had shut the door on them. Her old mother-in-law, her husband, my brother, my sister, me.

I found her next to the old Singer, hemming a skirt. “Hardly anyone comes anymore,” she said, meaning You don’t come often enough. She didn’t know whether to give away the skirt or mend it. Mending it made more sense. If it didn’t work, she’d simply throw it away. In any event, it kept her busy, she said. I’ve grown smaller.

I promised to think of her too on the bus. But, with one thing and another, I knew I might totally forget. I’d be thinking of Clara. The last time I was here I hadn’t met Clara yet, didn’t even know, couldn’t possibly guess what lay in store for me that night. Fancy that! I had come, dawdled awhile making small talk, then left, bought Champagne, gotten on the M5 bus, done so many meaningless small things, and all of them belonged to a life where Clara didn’t even exist yet. What was life like before Clara? Now I wondered about the old days, which weren’t so very old, when we’d celebrate New Year’s with a wine tasting by covering the labels on the bottles and managing to fool even the connoisseurs among his guests. I remembered the crowd of friends back then as people milled about the living room, the food and desserts heaped in pyramids upon the tables, and Mother’s baked prunes wrapped in bacon, as we all waited to see which wine was voted best, and the laughter, and the noise, and Mother rushing back and forth, making sure the vote was in before the chimes of midnight, followed by my father’s usual apology for using last year’s little speech in rhyming couplets. I know he would have liked Clara.

Outside, on the terrace, where he chilled the white wines, he’d asked me to help before uncorking the bottles. We stood still in the cold weather with just our shirts on, staring at this black-and-white Manhattan night, making out echoes of the merrymaking from the neighbors’ crowded rooms across the tower, two years ago today, Theirs is the real party, ours is make-believe. He’d taken me aside and said, with veiled distemper in his voice, Why don’t you just marry her, which meant, Why don’t you just marry anyone and bring us children before we’re gone — twins for the price of one, so it’ll be faster. Then, changing the subject, he’d stare through the glass door into our crowded living room: “Just look at your mother, catering to everyone but me, Xanthippe the shrew, if ever there was one.”

I was wrapping numbered red paper napkins around each bottle of wine to hide the label, applying Scotch tape tightly around the napkin while he held a finger to it to hold it in place, as he automatically did when helping me tie a difficult package, his way of apologizing for the improvised homily about children and twins and the chronic distemper in his voice.

I remember how Livia had come out onto the terrace to smoke just as he was finishing his little talk. She too would help me wrap the starched napkins around each set of silverware while our Brazilian cook was putting the finishing touches to her yearly bombino, the music filtering in through the glass window. I placed both hands on Livia’s hips, spun her gently around, and proceeded to dance a few steps with her on the freezing terrace, then back into the living room, my rakish whim passing for tacit reassurance intended for my father, meaning, See, Dad, I’m working on it, knowing the whole thing was a fib, because I knew he knew she knew we wouldn’t last a month, a season, ten days. “What were you two speaking about?” she’d asked.

“Nothing,” absentmindedly.

“About me, wasn’t it?” She knew he was growing to like her. It was just like her to put two and two together, minus my dissembled nothing, and come out with Dad’s pep talk about kids.

Not even ten days, I kept thinking. My father must have caught that look on my face as I watched her go back inside and turn to the other guests in the room. “Funny how they cater to everyone but us — as if they’ve always known we’d never love them a single bit.”

•

“So where to tonight?” my mother asks.

“Party.”

“Just one?”

“Just one.” Obviously I’d abandoned the idea of going to Rachel’s tonight.

“Going with someone?”

“With, without. Unclear.”

“Unclear to you or unclear to her?”

“That too is unclear.”

Mother snickers. Some things never change. Did I need anything? No. Had just come to wish her a Happy New Year. Well, if I had nothing better to do later tonight, maybe I could drop by again — always a sap when it comes to Champagne on New Year’s. There’s a cold bottle in the fridge, one never knows. Maybe, I say, meaning, Yes, but don’t bother waiting up for me. “At least try,” she throws in, a last appeal. I say nothing.

“Just be an angel, could you replace one of these bulbs for me?”

No wonder it feels like a mausoleum in her house. I dig out a spare bulb in the pantry, stand on a chair, remove the dead one, and twist in a new bulb. “Finally,” she exclaims; now she can see me, she adds. I am about to put on my coat.

One more thing, she almost apologizes. That coffeemaker I’d bought her for Christmas, would I mind terribly going over how it works?

I know what she wants. She doesn’t want me to leave, at least not just yet. Oh, stay another minute, will you! So I take out two capsules of espresso, fill the water tank, plug in the machine, push the red button, and wait until the green light stops blinking. She wants to try it herself this time. We go through the motions once again.

Two minutes later we are sitting at the breakfast table, drinking two foaming cups of decaf cappuccino.

He would have loved this, she adds, stirring listlessly.

I hate it when she starts in about him—“I know, I know,” she apologizes, and right away lights a cigarette. But then she remembers and makes a silent motion to put it out. No, don’t stop, I say, it doesn’t bother me. Just because I’m trying to quit smoking doesn’t mean I’m obliged to hate cigarettes. The same, I suddenly realize, might be said of people, of so many things. Just because you can’t have them doesn’t mean. .

My mother must have read my mind or been on the same wavelength herself. “Ever hear from that Livia woman?” We’ve made the same connection, yet neither wishes to disclose the train of thought that led from cigarettes to Livia. “She used to smoke a lot,” she adds, as though to cover up her tracks, “didn’t she?” All the time, but no, I hadn’t heard from her at all. Just like you to blow up bridges behind you. Sometimes, she says, we never want to see people again for fear we still care. Or that they still do. Sometimes we turn from our past and look away in shame. But few of us let go. We find others. What’s hard is having to start all over again with the little that’s left each time.

She catches her breath, puffs, then looks away. She’s trying to ask me something.

“Is this new person better than Livia?”

“Better, worse, too soon — or too late to tell. Who knows.”

“You’re a funny one.”

She stubs out her cigarette halfway. She looks at me and then past me.

“I met someone.”

She met someone.

“You met someone?”

“Well, that’s not quite accurate. He’d heard about Dad and decided to call one day.”

“And?”

“He’d lost his wife a few years back.”

I must look either dumbstruck or totally vacant.

“So?”

“We were together once.”

“You were together once.”

I find it hard to think of her with anyone but the man I’d seen her with all my life.

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s nothing to understand. I used to know him long before your father. He went away West for a year, maybe more, he said. Then I met your father.”

She makes it sound so heartless, so savage almost.

“How did he take it?”

“Not well. He found someone out West and got married even before I did. Of course, I never forgave him. Never forgave him each time your father and I bickered, and we bickered all the time at first. Never forgave him when the ice I walked on cracked under me to remind me that Dad was just a man who’d been put there to tide me over.”

“And?”

“And nothing. We had a few dinners. He’s with his daughters tonight. But he said he might show up. Though with him, you never know.”

Now I understood the bottle of Champagne.

What did he want from her?

“Who is he?” I finally asked her.

“Listen to you. Who is he?” She smiles expansively, mimicking my tone. “Soon you’ll be asking what he earns or how he plans to support me.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that I worry.”

“For me? Are you sure it’s worry you feel?”

I shrug my shoulders.

“If it’s any consolation, your father knew. He knew from the very start. Now, thirty years later, this man calls. We’re widowers, he says. That we certainly are, I say. It took a lot of courage.”

“What are you telling me?”

“What am I telling you? It’s not as if you didn’t know things were a shambles here. I’m telling you that all the years I was his wife, part of me was elsewhere. All the years I stayed home and did homework with the children and took his mother to the doctor and was the partner’s wife at so many tedious banquets, and the years I helped with his wine parties, and the summers we all traveled together, and the nights I slept by him at the hospital after they’d scraped him clean of everything he had, poor man — all this time my heart was elsewhere.”

“Now you tell me?”

“Now I tell you.”

My mother stands up and fills a bowl with pistachios, obviously they’re meant for me. She brings another bowl for the shells.

“What is it that you two had that was so special?” I finally ask.

“We had the real thing. Or the closest to it — maybe even better.”

“And what’s that?”

She takes a moment, then smiles.

“Laughter. That’s what we had.”

“Laughter?” I ask, totally baffled.

“Who’d have known. But it was laughter. Right now we’re feeding off old jokes. In a few months we’ll find them stale. But put us in a room together and we start laughing.”

She stands up to put our cups and saucers in the sink. All that stands between us now is the bowl of pistachios and the bowl with shells.

The years she stood by him at the annual party and helped order the food for guests she couldn’t have given a damn about, and the years she beamed when he delivered his annual speech in rhyming couplets before the chime of twelve, the years and years of it without laughter.

“Do you miss him?” I ask.

“Why are you asking me like that? Of course I miss him.”

I look at her. She averts her eyes. I must have offended her. “Now look at you, you’ve managed to clean out this entire bowl in less than five minutes.”

She takes the emptied bowl and the one containing the shells. I thought she was going to empty the bowl and leave the other on the counter. Instead, she replenishes one with pistachios.

Left alone in the dining room, I stand up, open the glass door, and step onto the balcony. A mound of snow makes the passage difficult. It makes me want to summon old times for a second, see what it was like back then when we had guests and chilled the wine out here. Were those better days because he was still alive, or were they better because they belonged to the past? I want to think that Livia is with me now, or that he is right outside with me here in the cold, baring his soul about the grandchildren he wants, all the while looking past the windows into the living room, spotting his bickering wife catering to everyone but him, and beyond our windows to the neighbors’ party in the other tower. He had always known about her, though God knows if he’d ever cared or been able to put his finger on the demon that snuffed out his life but kept him alive so many decades later. And I’m thinking of the other Livias in my life as well, Alice and Jean, each trying to help with the wine tasting as best she could, laying out the bottles on the balcony after they’d helped me wrap the mystery labels around each one, while some of the guests kept guessing, the blind test always getting out of hand, which happened every year, the crowd agreeing that bottle no. 4 was as good as no. 7, but that no. 11 was the best, the usual suspects always disagreeing with everyone else, Father refereeing, some people no longer really caring, because the test was always a success, would always be a success, was just another way of putting a good spin on the certainty that part of us always dies in December, which is why it was the only holiday he celebrated each year, because the part that didn’t die by year-end was as thrilled with the extended grace period as he was that something like love had not entirely run out of his life, though where he went scrounging for it and where he found it, if find it he did, no one knew or wished to know; the black snows of yesteryear, I didn’t miss them a bit.

If I were a better son, I’d do what the father of that dying princess promised he’d do for his daughter each year. I’d bring out his old bones so that he might feel the winter sun again and shiver at the thought of good mulled wines and thick, warm butternut soups sprinkled with diced chestnuts, bring out his body to savor the elegy of moonlit snow as he dreams of an old Weihnachten world that went under and of a love that addled before its time. It didn’t addle, it never happened, he used to say, and for all he knew, the other woman never knew she was the light of his one short, unfinished life — a love most chaste, a love most chaste, Your mother never knew either, and no point telling her now.

Mother asks me not to dump the glass bulb down the chute. I lie and say I’d never dream of such a thing. How empty the apartment looks with all the doors shut now: How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become as a widow. I must bring Clara here.

One day, I’ll come to clean the place out, picking up the shards of her life, of his life, worse yet, of my own life here. God knows what I’ll find, what I’m not prepared to find. His alarm clock, his address book, his pipe tools. A large ashtray bearing his yellowed meerschaum pipes with their engraved turbaned Turks scowling like two bookends who can’t stand each other’s sight. His vintage Pelikan pen and Caran d’Ache silver pencil lying, like camp inmates in the same bunk bed, head facing toe, like a dessert fork and spoon, his lacquered lighter, and, first among them, waiting cross-armed, running out of patience, his horn-rimmed specs, probably folded ever so warily, yet abandoned without false pretenses at the last minute when he said, Okay, let’s go face that witch doctor now. I can just see the resigned admonition in his gesture when he placed his glasses right smack in the middle of his emptied, clean glass desktop, meaning, Now watch the fort and be good to others, which reminds me how he’d take out a twenty-dollar bill and tuck it under an ashtray before leaving a hotel bedroom, meaning, You’ve been good to me, now be good to the next fellow. He was good to things, good to people. Listened, always listened. Somewhere, I am sure, Mother has stowed away his wine tools.

I remember the care with which he laid them out one by one on the sideboard in the dining room, cleaning and polishing his huge collection of antique corkscrews and foil cutters, Mother saying in front of everyone he reminded her of a mohel laying out his tools for a bris. Last time I laid out my tool, tell me, where, in which land that was — Someone immediately interrupts and cracks a joke about Abélard’s tools and Abélard’s love. It was Héloïse did the deed, I know wherefrom I speak, my father says, Héloïse and wedlock. Laughter, laughter, and all the while we’re laughing together, there she is two-timing him, while sorrow addles his heart for someone he’d met decades elsewhere, a love most chaste. These were the words with which he marked time in that private little ledger where we measure what we lose, where we fail, how we age, why we get so little of what we long for, and whether it’s still wise to hold out for something as we sort the life we’re given to live, and the life not lived, and the life half lived, and the life we wish we’d learn to live while we still have time, and the life we want to rewrite if only we could, and the life we know remains unwritten and may never be written at all, and the life we hope others may live far better and more wisely than we have, which is what I know my father had wished for me.

“Who is this man?” I ask my mother.

“You’ve met him before.”

“What’s his name?”

“If you want to know, come before midnight.”

She smiles, but she still won’t tell me. There is nothing to say.

“Are you going to be all right?” I ask.

“I’ll be fine.” Lambent and resilient Mother. I’ve seldom seen her like this.

“You’ve never told me any of this.”

“No, I’ve never told you.”

A long silence, during which my mother makes a face at a bad pistachio.

“She must be a knockout.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know. You’ve been killing time here, haven’t you? You should leave.”

She was right. I was killing time.

I wish her a Happy New Year, just in case we don’t see each other tonight.

Yes, yes, she says, but she knows there’s hardly a chance I’ll show up. At least I hope you won’t. We hug. “I’ve never seen you like this,” she says.

“Like this, how?”

“I don’t know. Different. Good. Maybe even happy.”

On our way to the door, she turns off the light in the dining room, then in the kitchen. She’ll head back into her bedroom the moment she closes the door behind me, like Ulysses’ mother slinking back among the shades. This is what I’ve come to, she seemed to say.

I heave a sigh of relief when I finally shut the door behind me.

As usual, I reach into my pocket and hand the doorman his annual tip. The second doorman, who doesn’t know me, receives something as well, just in case Mother forgot to tip them.

•

The gust of wind that greets me as soon as the doorman opens the front door could not brace me more or stir greater joy. It shakes off the stuffy and oppressive torpor weighing on me ever since I entered Mother’s home.

I’ve always loved the lights of the city in the winter, the view of the midtown buildings towering over the skyline, the hail of brightness erupting like a galactic storm over Manhattan, while the sweep of weaker lights elbowing the old residential buildings on Central Park West speak of quiet, contented lives and quiet, contented New Year’s parties. I love watching the surfeit of lights blanket the city, something unseen and unrivaled since the night Pharos beaconed antiquity and mariners came out to watch, saying, There is nothing can rival this in the world.

If I were a good son, I’d have met Clara ages ago and brought her here. If I were a good son, I’d have picked Clara up earlier today and said, I want you to meet my mother, because I wish he’d been alive, he would have loved you. With her, for an instant, I’d walk into his study and disturb the restless sleep of his things: his Pelikan, his Caran d’Ache, his scowling Turks, his glasses, and she’d rouse them back to life, the way she’d shaken the slumber of my kitchen, my rug, my bathrobe and made me find love in my things, my life.

I’d bring her in, as in the old days, and, before introducing her to the guests, simply take her onto the balcony and ask her to help me cover the wine labels. What are we doing? she asks. We’re hiding the names of the wines. “I know!” she replies. “I meant, What are we doing?” I know exactly what she’s asking, even if for a while I’m pretending not to, because I find it no less difficult to tell her why I wanted to bring her to my parents’ home than it was to ask her to stop the car and take a quick walk with me to my father’s grave, because there are so many things I find so difficult to ask, Clara, because in asking the small and simpler things I reveal more than when I ask for the big ones. And if he’s not there to meet you any longer, well, let’s drop in anyway tonight, before you and I get naked together, and we’ll uncork Mom’s Champagne, and if staunch Don Juan happens to be there tonight, we’ll be a merry foursome as we toast the New Year and then rush back to 106th Street, leaving la Veuve Clicquot and good Dom Pérignon to sort out the good from the bad in their lives. In the cab, I hope you’re not zombified, I’ll say. I am so not zombified, you’ll say.

I am so not zombified. It sounded just like Clara.

Say it again, Clara, I am so not zombified.

I am so not zombified. Happy?

I am, I am.

The wine store where I’ve been hoping to buy a few rare bottles for tonight’s party turns out to be mobbed; the line horseshoes the length of the counter. I should have gone in with Olaf. He was right to panic this afternoon.

Skip the bottles, then. Flowers? I’ll send flowers tomorrow. Actually I should have sent flowers last week. Skip the flowers as well.

All I want is to ride the M5 bus as I’d done last week during the snowstorm, scarcely able to see anything outside, and yet grateful for the snow, which seemed to expire in exhausted, pallid puffs no sooner than it brushed against our widows. From time to time, through the lighted Riverside Park, I’d catch a glimpse of ice floes bearing down the Hudson like stranded elks quietly working their way downstream. Crick, crack, crack. Tonight I won’t even go to Clara’s apartment but will head straight to Hans and Gretchen’s. I’ll get off at 112th Street, as though by mistake again, try to lose my bearings as I did that night when I walked up the hill by the statue of Samuel J. Tilden and, for a second once again, think myself in France because of a St. Bernard, or because the city seems so strangely medieval tonight, or because a confluence of dream making and premonition has made me feel I’d stepped into a film of my own projection where snow falls so peacefully that everything it touches feels at once spellbound and imperishable. I’ll arrive at the party, be greeted by Gretchen, who never budges from the entrance door, hand my coat to the coat check, make sure I keep the stub this time, dawdle about in the living room by the piano before ordering a drink, stand by the Christmas tree exactly where I stood a week ago, and who knows, perhaps we’ll play at being total strangers, because she likes this as much as I do, and while she’s about to reach out to shake my hand, I’ll interrupt and say, Aren’t you Printz’s friend, to which she’ll say, And you must be the voice from last night’s télyfön? I am, I am. And we’ll sit by the same window, and she’ll bring me something to eat, and together we’ll roam from room to room in this large apartment and drink something light like punch, though we hate punch, and we’d head downstairs, as we did last time, through the crowded staircase, open the door leading out onto the terrace, and stand there together, watching the New Jersey shoreline, trying to catch the same beam circling over Manhattan and think of Bellagio, Byzantium, St. Petersburg, and remember we saw eternity that night.

I see the evening unfold before me as all wishes do when we know they’re about to be granted: the walk from the balcony to the kitchen, then upstairs to the greenhouse, Pavel and Pablo, the three Graeaes, and Muffy Mitford herself with two daughters no one can stand as my mind drifts past the mound by Samuel J. Tilden’s statue, past last week’s blizzard, past Rohmer or the small slate-roofed town of Saint-Rémy, which had risen before me on the borders of the Hudson to suggest a floating city invented for Clara and me.

I want to step up onto the balcony with her again and watch her stub out her cigarette in the snow, watch her foot kick it all the way down to the cars lining up in double-parked formation, watch the snow close in around us like luminous white hands, timeless and spellbound. And there would be so many temptations along the way. Rollo would surely parley for Inky again: For the love of God, woman! And who knows, Inky himself might show up to plead, lean, dashing figure that he cuts, as he’d lead her away to a corner unknown to most guests, and all I’d do then is stand and wonder whether I should intervene or simply stand and wonder, trying to make out if the thing between them has dissolved into friendship, or hasn’t dissolved at all, or whether she couldn’t care less if he hurled himself off the terrace, friendship or no friendship; friendship there’s never any after love, scorched love, burn all bridges and the docks along with them. We’d stand together among the others, and suddenly Clara would ask me to give her a couple of minutes and, joining Orla and Beryl in the middle of the room, would, without warning, start to sing an aria from Der Rosenkavalier, while I’m trying to look the other way, because I know myself, and one more second of this singing and I’ll burst out crying, and if I do start crying, well, let it happen, she’ll come up to me and let the same hand that had held me so savagely the other day rest on my face and say, This song’s for you, Printz, this my overdue Christmas present for the man who may just love me less than I love him. And I know myself and know I won’t be able to resist, but will rush her into the crowded coat-room and, pressing her against a row of perfumed mink coats, ask her point-blank: Do you want to have children with me even though I’ve no idea where my life is headed, yes or no? Yes. Do you think we’ll be happy together? Yes. At what point does this fantasy end? Don’t know, never did know. . Have I answered all your questions? Yes. Are you sure? I think so. She’d ask me for another minute, and I’d say Fine, and watch her run off elsewhere in the house, and then I’d wait and wait and wait some more, until it would finally dawn on me, as it had last week, that she’d simply disappeared. Inky. Of course! I should have known.

Which is when I’d make up my mind to leave, leave if only not to show how smitten and desperate I was, or how much I wished the evening had taken another turn. I’d ask for my coat, put it on, and quietly step out, then walk briskly to Straus Park, hastening my pace, in case she’d spotted me leaving and was rushing to stop me. Once in the park, though, I’d slump down and sit there, as I’d done all week long, hoping that Clara had indeed followed me to ask me why I’d left so soon. Is that what I’d want, for her to follow me and ask why I’d left so soon? Just me, I’d say, just me doing my usual letting-go-of-what-I-want-most, because the things I crave are so rarely given that I seldom believe it when they are, won’t dare touch, and, without knowing, turn them down. Like turning off your phone? Like turning off my phone. Like saying Too soon, too sudden, too fast when I’ve been shouting Now, goddamnit, like saying Maybe when I’m shouting I’ll go all the way, like not going to the movies when you knew, just knew, you fucking asshole, there was no way I wouldn’t have gone last night? Yes, I would say, like not showing up, knowing you’d never forgive me. So? So, nothing. I come here every night to think I’ve lost you, because every night feels it could be my last, and all I do here, without even knowing I’m doing it, is pray the day never comes when I won’t have been without you. I’d take this park a thousand nights in the cold and on whatever terms you please rather than never not see you again.

Double negatives, future anterior, past conditionals — what’s all this, Printz? Nothing, this is nothing. Just counterfactual stuff from my counterfactual life.

In Straus Park all I’d want to remember is my first night here or the second, or the third, or the night when I came back and stood dazed here after our kiss and could feel everything rise in my chest each time I looked over to the bakery and remembered how I’d pushed her body against the glass panel and kissed her, our hips pressed together, heeding an impulse I thought I’d been following all my life when, in fact, I’d been rehearsing it just for Clara, as everything was rehearsal, and deferral. Do you want us to stay together, or is this one of those bland, mushy-gushy friendships that spilled over into passion one evening when we’d both had too much to drink, tell me again, you sweet, bitter stoneheart, tell me again, did you wish that time stopped for you as well? Am I making sense to you? Am I what you want? Yes. Before you change your mind? I’ve never changed my mind, but if this is how you see me, then I’ve changed my mind — it’s you who can’t and won’t make up yours.

I’d stand there and think of the Magi with their heads ablaze who might show up tonight, their shuffling feet already sinking underground, saying, You shouldn’t be here, why have you left, why are you here? I’m here to think whether I should go back or stay here instead. And? And I don’t know. You feel with a forked heart, and your heart is a muted organ. In five years, as in Rohmer’s film, you’ll bump into her in a beach town in Europe, and she’ll be with children, or you’ll be with children, and you’ll watch and stare and draw the tally of all your might-have-beens. You haven’t changed, she’ll say. Neither have you. Still Printz? I guess. And you, Clara? The same. Still lying low? Still lying low. You remember, then? I remember everything. And so do I. Well? Well.

By the time I’m my father’s age with distemper in my soul and one chaste love to look back on, standing on a terrace thinking of wine tastings and of stubbed-out cigarettes free-falling to the ground and of parties across our tower that are always the real parties, will I have learned to live all this down, or would it turn into imperishable dream making all of it — from the day it stopped when it started, to the day it started when it stopped on nothing more than a baker’s wall one hundred yards from here, one hundred years from now, a hundred years ago. From a small park in Berlin to Straus Park in New York. The gas jets of a century ago and the unborn stonecutter a century from now, centuries apart. Immeasurable.

So what should I do now? Stand and wait? Stand and wonder? What do I do?

And it would be one of the lampposts in the park that would break the silence.

Did you expect guidance? An answer? An apology?

Go back, the voice would say; if I could go back, if only I could go back.

I’d know that voice among millions.

And from Straus Park I’d walk back to the corner of 106th and Riverside and watch the people upstairs leaning their backs against the windows as I’d seen them do a week ago, when it was cold outside and their candlelit faces beamed with laughter and premonition, all holding glasses in their hands; some, I could guess, leaning on the piano where the singer with the throaty voice made everyone sing carols. And I’d even say hello to Boris, who would know me by now, and I’d watch him stick his arm inside the elevator and press the penthouse button as he’d done last week, and no sooner would I be let into the apartment than there’d be a chorus of hellos. Well, what do you know, he’s back, Orla would say, I’ll run and tell Clara. No, I will, says Pablo, she’s upset with you, and standing her up last night didn’t help. We’re all headed to the Cathedral of St. John, want to come with us? And before I can answer, a Champagne flute is handed to me. I recognize the wrist, your wrist, your wrist, your sweet, blessed, God-given I-worship-your-wrist. “Ist ein Traum, this is a dream,” she says, “and the New Year’s just begun.”