Peril

STARK

To his surprise, he’d stayed the night, something he’d never done before, and which told him that new arrangements were being made, preparations for the moment, that something deep inside him had pronounced the last rites.

“You want to have breakfast?” she asked tentatively.

He shook his head. “I have an appointment.”

It was the only answer he’d ever given, but on this morning, with her eyes upon him so oddly, as if studying some previously unnoticed feature of his face, he felt a curious impulse to say more. “I don’t mean to be so aloof,” he said.

She laughed. “Aloof doesn’t begin to describe you, Stark.”

Her name was Kiko, and she was the only lover who’d lasted. And yet, even with Kiko, he’d maintained his usual distance. She called him when she had a free afternoon, which happened about once a month. They met at her apartment on the Upper East Side, a place that was always immaculately clean and smelled faintly of lavender. The bedroom was small but beautifully appointed, with Kiko’s own small paintings on the pale blue walls, flower gardens that had a vaguely sensuous feel to them, though in a chilly, refrigerated sort of way. Amid these motionless blooms they “did” each other, as Kiko liked to call it, then went their separate ways.

“My father’s pretty sick,” she said.

Stark had never met Kiko’s father, nor anyone else in her family, nor any of her friends. And so it surprised him when he said, “I hope he’ll be okay,” with an unmistakable sympathy.

“He won’t be,” she said.

“It’s like that?”

“Yes.”

He had no words for her, and so walked over to the bed, leaned forward, and kissed her softly.

She looked at him quizzically. “You’re in a strange mood.”

He stepped away and continued to dress.

She watched him somberly for a moment, then cocked her head to the right, almost playfully. “By the way, there’s something I’ve never asked you. Are Asians better? I hear guys think we are.”

He stood by the window, knotting his tie. Outside, a brief autumn rain had come to an end. “I don’t rank women by ethnic group,” he told her.

She propped herself up in the bed. Her hair lay thick as a blanket over her small and perfect breasts. She had flawless skin and gleaming oval eyes. Everything about her was perfect, particularly her forthright acceptance of herself, the utter lack of self-importance.

“Okay, so how do you rank them, Stark?” she asked.

“By how much I care,” he told her.

“You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

“So where am I on that list?”

“Second from the top.”

Something in her face changed. “We’ve been together for a long time.”

He gave his tie a final pull. “Yes, we have.”

“What’s our secret?”

“That we’re easy, I guess,” Stark answered. “That it’s no big deal.”

She drew her knees up and planted her chin on them. “That is so the wrong answer, Stark.”

He plucked his jacket from the chair across from the bed. “Maybe it’s time for you to move on, Kiko.”

She heard it, and he knew she’d heard it, the air of finality in his voice, its declaration, clear and ominous, that he’d turned a corner in his life, was taking no one with him.

“You’re not coming back, are you?” she asked.

He said nothing but only drew on his jacket and buttoned it.

“Can you at least tell me why?”

He walked to the door, then turned and faced her squarely. “Because you need to find someone else and go over the falls with him.”

“Over the falls.”

“You need to fall in love, Kiko,” Stark said. “Everybody needs to do that… just once.”

Her eyes glistened suddenly, and her long black hair trembled. “Good-bye, Stark,” she said.

At the door he wanted to look back but knew he shouldn’t. “Good luck” was all he said.