Valediction

CHAPTER 2

At six o'clock we were sitting at the counter in my kitchen sharing a victory bottle of Cuvée Dom Pérignon, 1971.

"Veritas, " I said to Susan. She smiled and we drank. My kitchen window was open and the breeze that blew off the Charles River basin moved a few of the outer curls on Susan's dark hair. It had been sunny all day, but now it was ominous-looking outside with dark clouds, and the breeze was chilly.

Between us on a large plate there was French bread and wheat crackers and goat cheese, milk-white with a dark outer coating, and some nectarines and a bunch of pale green seedless grapes.

Susan said, "I've taken a job in San Francisco."

I put the glass down on the counter. I could feel myself begin to shrink inward.

"I'm leaving tonight," she said. "I had planned to stay the night with you and tell you in the morning, but I can't. I can't not tell you."

"How long," I said.

"I don't know. I've thought about it for a long time. All the last year in Washington when I was doing my internship."

It began to rain outside my kitchen window. The rain coming straight down from the darkened sky, quietly, with a soft hiss.

"I have to be alone," Susan said.

"For how long?"

"I don't know. You can't ask me, because I really don't."

"I'll visit you."

"Not right away. I have to be by myself. For a while anyway, I don't want you to know my address."

Bubbles continued to drift up from the bottom of the champagne glass, spaced more as the champagne flattened, coming sparsely and with leisure. Neither of us drank.

"You have a place to stay out there?"

"Yes. I've arranged that already."

Her hair stirred again. The wind was cold now, and damp from the rain that moved steadily downward through it. One lightning flash flared a moment at the window and then, an appreciable time later, the thunder rolled in behind it.

"I called Paul," Susan said. "He'll be here in the morning. I didn't want you to be alone." I nodded. The curtains at the kitchen window moved in the cold breeze. Susan stood up. I stood with her.

"I'm going to go now," she said. I nodded.

She put her arms around me and said, "I do love you."

"I love you."

She squeezed me and put her cheek against mine. Then she stepped away and turned and walked toward the door.

"I'll call you," she said, "when I get to San Francisco."

"Yes."

She opened the door and looked back at me.

"Are you all right," she said. I shook my head.

"Paul will come tomorrow," she said. "I'll call you soon."

Then she went out and closed the door and I was alone with my soul dwindled to icy stillness at the densely compacted center of myself.