I’m just waiting ’til the shine wears off.

“Do you want to watch a movie? We have one of those video screens back there.”
“No, I’m ok,” I say, tucking into the backseat of the car.
“You sure? We have Ice Age 2.”
“No, I’m good,” I say.
“It came with the car,” Russ says.
“Obviously.”

I am nervous about carsickness, so I try not to focus on the sun going down over the shooting landscape. Angry scratches of clouds mar the sky. I think it is no coincidence that the turning of the trees makes me ill. As they shed and die for the winter, I am reminded of often feeling the same.

I am amazed at how young I feel in this situation. John is twice my age; Russ is 76. They think of me as a teenager and I bow to this, curling up in scrunchy socks that are as thick as boots, ponytail bouncy and high.

“Eat this,” Russ says, handing me a granola bar. “Fiber.”

For old people, ‘fiber’ is a complete sentence. Like how some people use the word ‘breathe’ as an entire thought – it’s a compulsion, a demand, and a plea all in one word. There is an implication and an understanding that goes along with the word. Fiber.

We are on our way.

–

Their house in the Poconos is small and messy, and the most random mishmash of styles crams the living room. They are pieces from every home, every stage of their lives: the gilded opulence of Russ’s past, beachy florals from the Hamptons house that burned, odds and ends from designer and artist friends. A glass cabinet of porcelain clowns and dogs. Dusty cassette tapes litter the house; Barbara Streisand everywhere. Leopard print and seashell lamps exist side by side, opposed and unhappy.

Russ immediately turns on the television and finds an exercise infomercial, which stands in for gay porn in a pinch. He starts hooting and hollering about the exerciser’s pecs while John unloads the car. The whole weekend will be like this – Russ the star, John the stagehand.

Eventually, the TV gets stuck on Degrassi so that’s what we watch. Russ falls asleep under a fluorescent red afghan within minutes of the opening credits. When he wakes up, John has gone off to bed and I’ve been engrossed in the September Vogue (“Who is that fat bitch on the cover?” are the first words Russ says when he wakes up.) With excessive amounts of creaking and groaning, He pulls himself upright on the couch.

“I feel very strange lately” he says. “I don’t have anyone to talk to anymore, just you. I can’t talk to John, he doesn’t understand. Everyone I know has died of AIDS or emphysema. Only two remain and I don’t like them.”

–

I sleep like heaven. There is no noise, there is nothing. There is no reason to get up in the morning and there is certainly no purpose in getting dressed. We all appear in the kitchen around noon and John makes eggs benedict. After we eat, they go back to bed. It rains all day. The hours slip through my fingers. I don’t know how I pass the time, but I do.

We reappear in the kitchen for dinner, still in our pajamas. John goes back to bed and again, I find myself on the couch with Russ. The house is very still, save for a cuckoo clock that praises every passing hour. Russ sits in his massage chair and watches TV, nodding off every so often. When the chair clicks off, he wakes and makes me sit in it. The nubs move up and down my back, feeling mechanical and pitiless. I hate it.

“It will help you,” he promises. “Your soul needs it more than your back.”

–

Russ’s young lover, Jeffrey, calls. Jeffrey and John treat each other they way one treats an extra five pounds or the sight of a small cockroach scurrying under the baseboards – denial sets in. The fact that Russ has a young lover isn’t a surprise to me; I wouldn’t expect anything less.

Russ puts Jeffrey on speakerphone and introduces us. “She’s like a teenager,” Russ says of me. “She’s sitting here like in jodphurs and a sweater, looking like Kate Hepburn.”

(For the record, I have on black leggings and a long t-shirt.)

“She’s getting over her ex-boyfriend,” Russ says.
“Wait, is that the guy I met at lunch a few months ago,” Jeffrey asks.
“Oh, right. Yes, that’s him,” Russ replies.
There’s a long pause and then Jeffrey says to me, “Honey, you and I have never met, but I have to tell you something about your ex-boyfriend…there is something deeply upsetting about him. I was troubled for days after meeting him. He is nothing; there is nothing behind those eyes. That guy is a shell. He is an empty soul.”

–

Around one in the morning, Russ goes into one of his psychic trances. I swear in the moment that I will remember every word, but as is typical when he goes into a trance, so do I. His eyes become impassioned and his voice tumbles into a sweet growl.

“You need to stay away from him. Don’t ever go into a room alone with him.”
“Because it will be too painful?”
“No…not that…I see…he’ll rape you.”

Russ has yet to be wrong about his premonitions.

He snaps out of it and makes me sit in the massage chair again. We watch True Blood and I pretend he never said what he said. The thing is, Russ probably doesn’t even know that he said it. So it just hangs in the air — the sleeping, speculative rape.

–

The next day is warm and sunny. I go for a run on a seemingly endless straight road, so straight that it’s impossible to get lost and so endless it’s impossible to decide when I’ve had enough.
When I get back, I stretch by the koi pond. Russ joins me, sits on a bench and pulls the dog into his lap.

“Just forget him,” he says.
“I’m trying,” I joke. “It’s a little hard when you keep bringing him up.”
“I’m not bringing him up – he’s there. And you’re not trying. He’s here because he’s on your mind. I’m in there too. But it’s time to forget him.”
“I am…I will.”
“He is like these oak trees, the leaves falling all around and the acorns. Only for a
short time in the fall…beautiful. The rest of the year, it’s just mulch. I see it. I forget it. You do the same.”

–

At night, John sleeps and Russ sees things. He sees future bits and past bits. The past bits are all very real, and are all things I never mentioned. He describes to me a man I will marry. He is tall, blonde, and someone I already know. This could be one of two people, and I’m really ok with either. I must look sad because he says, “He was not the one for you,”
“I know that,” I say sleepily.
“Help me up, please?”

I stand and pull Russ to his feet, and all the moaning and groaning that goes along with it. He shuffles to the stairs in his tight sweatpants, slowly ascending the first few steps. He pauses and looks to the side, confused. It’s like he’s been struck in the head. He appears puzzled and calm all at once. He nods slowly and faces me. He looks through me. His eyebrows clench together behind smudged gold-rimmed eyeglasses. Russ’s lips part pensively and he says, “He can’t let go of you. He remembers that you made love. That will stay with him – not the memories you hold. Only that you made love and it was the first time he’d ever done that. He was thinking of it tonight, actually.”
Another pause. I’m waiting for another insight, practically frothing for it.
Russ thinks hard, knits his brow, and says, “My ass hurts.”

–

Now its just open road and open eyes
And right where the water meets the sky
Is where I’ll hold you my dear
No you’ll never be so near
As when my eyes
Are on
The horizon

And its true my hearts a mess
Oh but it was never really clean I guess
I have said all I will confess
To you

–

I wrote this piece three months ago. Reading it now, it doesn’t make sense anymore. I don’t even remember writing it. That is good.

For every door you open, seems like you get two slammed in your face.

 It starts with ‘Untitled (Cowboys)’, a photograph by Richard Prince. This piece hangs in the V&A and when I see its rollicking effect and gritty grain, I feel I’ve been tapped on the heart. It’s late May and whatever homesickness I felt before is nothing compared to the melancholy I feel now. This is when I realize it’s not about a photo in a museum or a preoccupation with you or the ghost of us; it’s just about going home.

 

I begin to obsess over visions of Americana – buttery pies of primary-colored fruits swimming in melting vanilla ice cream. Country music. Small town swimming pools and the way they sound from a distance – that detached, hazy noise of abandon.

 

These taper into visions of New York – dozens of birthday parties for semi-friends at the Magician. Spaghetti at my favorite Italian restaurant in the West Village. Mary-Kate Olsen getting off the elevator at Barneys, her giant head and sunglasses bobbing as if attached to the ceiling by puppet strings. The cat I had to leave behind, sitting in the window, watching the ships on the Hudson.

 

I know I want to go home. I don’t know when I’ll be able to, but it’s on the horizon and I’m moving deftly towards it.

 

–

 

Istanbul is legendary. The city always looks like a downturn of a delightful party; it is caught in the pale tatters of former opulence. Over three days, we eat, drink, dance, and cause commotion. 

 

The flight home means four hours, fifteen of us, countless mini bottles of wine, and one of the best memories of my life.

 

If you haven’t been on holiday with Brits, you haven’t been on holiday.

 

–

 

My friend and I sit outside to eat, despite the ever-consistent chilly London air. It is June and it is freezing. We curl up in our chairs and try to enjoy the fact that, at the very least, it is not raining. For once.

 

On the subject of men and marriage, she leans back and rests her fork and knife on the edge of her plate.

“Food for thought — one in three marriages ends in divorce,” she says. “The odds are not good, darling. If you went skydiving, and just before you jumped, you were told that there was a 33% chance you would die, would you still jump?”

“It depends. Is divorce like death?”

My friend looks at me and says dryly, “I don’t know, but do you really want to find out the answer to that question?”

 

We quietly eat our grilled figs with a crisp Muscadet and look past the houseboats, eyes settling on bulbous, cartoonish trees that live on the south bank of the Thames.

 

–

 

In late July, the email comes. G_____, a something-nothing-sometimes-maybe-one day is finally getting married. After five years of dancing around the idea of giving us a shot, he’s decided to give someone else a shot. And this is fine. This is good.

He wants me to come to the wedding in October. That’s when I decide – I will go to New York for it. No. I will go to New York for it, and I will stay there.

 

–

 

A few days later, Laura arrives on the tail-end of her semester and travels in Europe. I am her final stop and when I see her at the airport, we both cry. She is resplendent and shining and I can only hope that I look that way towards the end.

 

We go out in east London and select a random bar for drinks in the middle of a Friday. I can’t believe it when I see him there, the Italian I swore I’d never see again. And there he is, seeing me. Our eyes meet and I nod, wave. So sheepish. Because the last thing I ever said to him was, “This never should have happened. Please go away. This was a mistake.”

 

He waves me over and we sit with him and his mates. Before long, things are as they were and I’m allowing him to caress my leg and whisper to me in words I don’t understand. I’m able to pretend that this is ok until he says, “You know, the last time I saw you, you said some words that hurt me.”

 

These are words I understand and dread.

 

“About that,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“You said we were a mistake. I don’t want to think that you believe that.”

 

How do you tell someone that they were a drunken diversion and a warm body and a placeholder? The advice I received from a friend rings in my head: “Bridge, just get it over with and sleep with him. Someone has to be the first one after the breakup, and it had better be someone meaningless.”

 

–

 

“C____.”

That’s all I have to say – his name, in that tone, and he knows.

My boss C____ closes his eyes and covers his face. All I see is the tip of his pink tongue, caught between his pale lips.

From behind his hands, he says quietly, “You’re not.”

 

I sigh and say, “I have to. It has nothing to do with you or this job and it has everything to do with England.”

“Please tell me you’re not. I need you here. The office needs you here. Let’s pretend you didn’t just say that and go back to our work. Hm, think I’ll make a tea. Tea?”

“C____…”

“You need to stay. How can we get you to stay? Money is the obvious answer. But that’s not it, and I know it. We need to…we need to make you fall in love. That’s it. I have four weeks to find you a man and make you fall in love.”

I laugh and wish it were that easy.

He says, “This is precisely why I’ve been avoiding you all week. I was afraid of this.”

“Well, that didn’t help matters,” I say. “I thought you were being a twat.”

“See, this is why I need you here. To hear you say, with your American accent, twat.”

“I’m sorry. This is my six week notice,” I say.

“Bridge…if you’re in a life raft and you know that someone else in the life raft is prone to shooting big fucking holes in it, you either sit really far from that person, or right next to them. Remember that.”

 

I have no idea what he’s talking about, but know that someday, I will need to know that information.

 

–

 

As soon as I decide it’s over, it begins. The process of melting into my environment and actually living starts. I sometimes run into acquaintances on the street, the way I always did in New York. I befriend three lovely girls who are warm and they open their lives and homes to this American stranger. I find pockets of the city that are special to me. Then I share them and make them special to others. Life in London unwraps and bares itself. It is raw and naked and it is whatever I want.

 

I am endlessly busy with friends and visitors. I begin to make plans and pack. Kate visits and it is like being at home, which is strange, because Kate and I haven’t lived in the same city in years. So it’s just that being together is like being at home.

 

My birthday approaches and I’m amazed at the way it’s embraced – the girls throw me a dinner party and shower me with gifts.  Several other parties and dinners hover around my birthday, and I am grateful for it. Because two things were supposed to arrive on my birthday and didn’t – you, and our baby.

 

–

 

Two weeks later, I’m back in New York.

Four weeks later, and I’m here – I’m home — and it is right now. It is all right now.

And I would do anything to see you again.

Ten years ago, a boy said to me, Is there a phone in here that I can use?

No, I said snottily. There is not.

 

Val and I continued rifling through the vanity, extracting old maroon lipsticks with cracked cases and grubby, flaking makeup sponges. The pads of our fingers turned shimmery blue and green and gray as they brushed against the broken eyeshadows in the bottom of the drawers. This was our thing – we’d go to parties and pillage the makeup drawers of the unfortunate parents who’d left town for the weekend. Or, in this case, the ill-fated neighbors who’d asked a graduating senior to housesit while they were on vacation.

 

There’s a phone right there, he said, pointing to the messy bed.

Indeed, there was a phone there, sleeping between the tangled sheets.

So use it, then, Val said while flicking her cheeks with pink blush.

 

The boy used the phone and left. When he opened the door, the sounds of the party charged through – it was the noise of an old Outkast album, screaming girls, and growling young men. And cars, there was the noise of cars pulling up outside. We had graduated high school earlier in the day. I was seventeen.

 

Hours later, Val and I were leaving. Dirk from the football team had already slid an empty beer bottle up under my shirt and between my breasts, and Jeremy from Spanish Honor Society had declared his heartfelt love for Val after vomiting in a potted plant. High school boys were so not our destiny, me and Val. We had jobs in mortgage banks and wore push-up bras. We dated men who got off on our youth and innocence. High school, and specifically graduation from high school, was an optional extra, and we’d made the very conscious decision to immerse ourselves in it one last time, knowing we’d never look back.

 

The boy who had used the phone now stood on the porch with a friend. They definitely didn’t attend our high school.

 

You’re crashing, Val says as we pass them. Are you even seniors?

No, the boy says. We’re juniors at Creek.

Naughty, naughty. Don’t let the football boys know, I chide.  They will bury you in the yard.

 

Val and I go to her car, an old 1961 Valiant and open the doors. The boys follow us like puppies. We learn that they have the same name, spelled differently, and they are best friends. One is stocky with dark hair. The other one is angelic – blonde, tall, sinewy. This one will be mine.

 

–

 

He calls two nights later. It is close to midnight. I tiptoe into Mother’s room and kneel beside her as she sleeps. Father sleeps like he’s dead, hands folded neatly on his chest.

Mom, I whisper and I can see her slick pink eyelids moving in the darkness.

Mom?

Hmmm…?

That boy called. I’m going to go watch a movie with him, ok?

Suddenly, she’s alert. She turns her head ever so slightly and peers at me, saying, Go. Just don’t tell your father.

 

–

 

We sit close on the couch and pretend to watch a movie. We kiss and I rub his hands in mine, wringing them into malleability, until they are warm and soft and limp like little dying mammals.

 

We are the first ones through the doors of McDonalds when they open for breakfast. Over pancakes, coffee, and McMuffins, he says to me, This was the best night ever. When I propose to you someday, it’s going to be over pancakes at McDonalds.

 

We say goodbye. I drive around the corner to Val’s house, and hoist myself down into the window well of the basement, cupping my hands around my eyes and putting them to the glass. She is fast asleep in bed. I knock gently and she gets up, slides the window open, and lets me in. We crawl into her bed and before we fall asleep, I tell her that I’ve fallen in love.

 

–

 

Our parents, seeing that we are inseparable, don’t really try to keep us apart that summer. At the same time, they don’t really acknowledge that they are allowing their teenage lovers to have sleepovers every night. Every day is the same. We work our day jobs and I go to his house where we listen to music and lay on his bed. His parents have adopted me into the fold of their family. My parents begin to think of him as a son. We beg to have the other go on family vacations because we can’t bear to be apart. On a camping trip, we make love in a tent beside his parents tent. On a roadtrip, we make love in the back of the van while his mother drives. Away at my brother’s baseball tournament, we sneak off into the woods and make love on the prickly, lumpy ground.

 

In the fall, I turn eighteen. He gives me a gold ring – the tiniest chip of a diamond on the skinniest gold band. It is inscribed on the inside with a secret message. He slides it onto my left hand ring finger.

 

He wants to be a firefighter. I want to be a writer. My beautiful firefighting husband-to-be. We name our phantom children, future pets. We pick our house, a rambling ranch house west of downtown with a weeping willow in the front yard. It is, in the most exquisite and clichéd way, a summer of love.

 

We will be together forever, forever, forever.

 

Then I go away to college and nothing is the same again ever, ever, ever.

 

–

 

He sees me through eating disorder therapy.

We watch my house burn down and he holds me while I cry, tears cutting through the black soot that covers my face.

We had arguments about how much I’m not eating, and about the friendly backrubs I receive from boys at the college dorm. By late winter, he’s on the outs with his parents because he’s failing school due to spending so much time on the road, sneaking off in his car to drive up to campus. We talk about to running away to Mexico and fail, laughably so.  

 

On Valentine’s Day, we sit on the carpet in his bedroom and cry as I break up with him. Our lives are too different – he’s in high school – when he actually goes to school – and I’m in college. College means college men, and well, he is still a boy.

 

–

 

In the grandest of gestures, he makes a poster with photos of me. It displays my height, weight, eye color, hair color, and a description of my personality.

 

The text, in short, says WANTED: My girlfriend back.

 

He copies it hundreds of times and plasters the campus, enveloping the university and entire student body in his love for me.

 

–

 

A few years pass and we don’t speak or see one another.  I am living on my own in a ground floor apartment with a crooked, crumbling concrete slab for a patio. One night, late, I’m in my local Target, staring blankly at a display of folded t-shirts and then he’s right there.

 

Hey.

Hey.

 

It turns out he lives next door to me and we never knew it. He’s in a relationship and has a baby on the way. I am very much a loner, spending all my time working and seducing strange men. 

 

We have officially drifted., just two bobbing boats on the same sea. Except his boat appears to have a motor, and mine, just a heavy anchor.

 

–

 

Three more years pass, and I’m ending another relationship. Again, my idea.

 

Somehow, I end up at his house. He says my dress reminds him of a flight attendant, so I peel it off. We go to bed together, one last time. I bleed all over his sheets. The next day, I move to New York and never look back.

 

–

 

It’s been five years and two months when Mother calls and giddily tells me that she had an interesting visitor at work. A friend of my forgotten sweetheart stopped by and gave Mother a phone number. My past is once again within my reaches.

 

Except not. He’s in LA. I call him anyway and leave a voicemail.

 

He calls the next day and we talk. It is warm and lovely and it feels like a treasure, a relic. The warmth of his voice wraps around my undone life, attaching all the floating pieces and parts with sticky tenderness.

 

We send a flurry of photos back and forth. We have changed so much, yet we get on the same. He is covered in tattoos and has a daughter. I am thinner and stupidly living on another continent. He is a cop. I am confused. He’s just ending a two year relationship. I’m still coming to terms with the end of mine.

 

My mom was so happy that we found each other again, he says. She made me promise to call the moment we hang up.

Mine too, I say and I laugh because it’s so true.

 

I have tried to find you so many times, he says.

Me too, I say and it’s true.

 

I wondered about you so often. Googled you, stalked you on MySpace, Facebook…

Me too, I say and it’s true.

 

I know this is weird, but I can say without hesitation that I’ve only been in love once in my life, and it was with you, he tells me.

I’m spread across the sofa but this sends me upright. I want to say it, say me too. But no, I have been in love twice. I have loved many, lusted after many many many, but I can say without hesitation that I’ve been in love twice. And fuck if that doesn’t burn, I don’t know what does.

 

We’re about to hang up when he says, One more thing, and I know this is totally inappropriate but I don’t care.

What?

Best sex I ever had.

 

I smile and say, Me too.

 

–

 

We hang up and breathlessly call our moms.

 

 

I guess out of the blue, you won’t cross my mind.

Another dress – you’ve all seen this one a million times. A marled blue cotton jersey with gray polkadots, short puffed sleeves and a low scoopneck. When it falls apart – and it’s already begun to do so, ripping around the seams under the bust – I will fall apart too. But it’s seen too much and given me its all, so when it chooses to die, I will just have to breathe slowly and accept that it’s gone.

This dress saw the entire country. I fell in love in this dress. Atop a cliff at Big Sur, a hippie took our photo just ten minutes after I realized I was in love with you, and probably always would be. I look scared in the picture, stock-still and startled to the core. You’re holding me but my body bows out from yours at the hips, like I knew not to get too close.

I look like, Holy God, this is fuck-it-all real.

Later, we made love in a field behind a barn. 

–

I said goodbye to my best friends in this dress too, the lot of us crammed around a dinner table comprised of card tables and tablecloths, with you by my side but not really there at all. When the photos of that night came ‘round, I see that you were slumped in your chair, looking like a tired old rag, trying to make sense of how this happened. How you ended up at my going away dinner without the courage to turn off the stove, kick everyone out, and help me unpack my suitcases.

–

I just got a chunky raise, a promotion, and a bonus in this dress. I’ve been at my job for forty-five days. I’m guessing this has little to do with the dress and more to do with the fact that I’ve managed to find a niche for myself in this little company. My boss sends me hilariously snide little emails, just to me, about the people he can’t stand. Several times a day, he motions me into his office and says, Close the door.

This is when life gets good, when your boss says to close the door and it is so he can confide in you, not chastise you. 

When in the middle of an afternoon, you receive a text message from your boss and it says only one word:
Cock.

And you know precisely who he’s talking about and why. 

–

I have  a date in this dress. His name is Paul and he works in finance and everything about him is tidy and smart. Paul’s hair is trim, cut short and simple. His suit is sewn into slim gabardine columns for arms and legs. His nose is thin, his mouth is small, and both are shaped the way noses and mouths should be. They look drawn in by an amateur and wholly uninspired artist, someone who learns to draw from a book and  believes a nose is two straight lines; a mouth, three curved ones. 

Do not be confused – I like these things about Paul. Because for what he lacks in his beautifully bland face, he makes up with mind-boggling behaviour.

See, Paul is a dick. A real dick.

I know he’s a dick when we first meet. And when I agree to a date. And then he’s a dick when we meet up for drinks. He’s a dick when he hands me my wine, and later, when we walk to another bar. He’s a dick for the first three hours of our date. He’s a dick partially because he’s just quit smoking and is on the gum, but also, he’s just sort of a dick. He blames it on being from Yorkshire. I blame it on just generally being a dick.

By now, it’s become a challenge – I am going to un-dick Paul.

I decide that catching him off-guard is my best tactic, so I ask him if he believes in ghosts. He laughs in my face. I ask him if he believes in aliens. He scoffs again. I asks him if he believes in fate or in coincidence.

Suddenly, Paul softens and he tells me about how, ten years ago, he was travelling in Australia and he met a guy in a hostel. It turned out that he and the guy were both once in love with the same girl back in England. They became friends for the night, and the next day, they slid into their backpacks, said their goodbyes, and Paul went north while the other guy went south.

Months later, back in England, Paul ran into the girl that they were both once in love with. He asked her about the guy he’d met in Australia. Her face went white and she told him that the guy had died. Drowned, actually. In Australia.  In fact, he drowned that very night after he and Paul parted ways.

Paul tells me this story at a pub near Piccadilly Circus, and when he’s done, the candle on our table mysteriously extinguishes itself. 

He looks up at me and says, Shit, I haven’t thought about that in a long time. You asked the right question.

And that’s how I un-dicked Paul. 

–

Here is an example of a day without you:

I wake at ten and make an egg and a whole-grain seeded muffin with butter and jelly, and some coffee that Molly brought me from New York. I put cinnamon in it, just like they do at Florent. I open the window and sit at the table. 

Clean the kitchen, sweep the floors, wipe the lipstick note from the mirror and replace it with a new one: Call Dad.

Shower and then do some arm exercises with weights before running to the Tesco for paper towels. And look, strawberries are two for one. Exactly what I need. I go to the wine shop and get a bottle of rioja for the party later. Back at home, I make a  big tub of strawberry and rhubarb compote to eat with thick yogurt and runny honey. I never knew that the only reason people add raspberries and strawberries to rhubarb compote is because without the pink and red fruits, rhubarb compote looks, at best, like vomit. Now I know, hence the need for strawberries.

A pasta salad with feta and fresh dill and some tomatoes left over after a dinner date last week. I chop vegetables and sing along to Carly Simon. 

Walk over to their little mews house and we have a barbeque. We all eat sausages and chicken and bruschetta and the sun comes and goes, popping out from behind clouds just long enough to warm my skin and make the wine go straight to my head. The trains pass every twenty minutes or so and sometimes we yell above their noise, but sometimes we just wait. My surrogate London family are about to start a family of their own – T___ is just days from giving birth, and this makes me happy for them but sad for me. 

A man arrives from having played polo all morning. He has chosen to wear white jeans to play polo, a bold choice if you ask me, and the inner thighs are rubbed filthy, as is the outside left leg. No one else seems to notice. 

One woman, a garden designer, climbs up on the railing that looks over the train tracks. I see her reaching out toward a tree that grows there, fingering the leaves, holding them softly and petting them like they are bunnies or kittens. She says something about the tree, but she says it in Italian. However, I know it’s about the tree because she is gesturing wildly toward the branches and leaves. Her Tretorn sneakers dig into the brick ledge of the balcony as she picks a wild blueberry from the pot by the railing and inspects it.

You don’t speak Italian, do you, the polo player asks me.

No, I say. But I’m pretty sure I know what’s going on. 

Oh good, he says. So you know that she just said, I am sick of living in this world. Goodbye!

We eat ice cream with fresh fruit while a little boy walks around with an iPod cord and uses it like a stethescope on everyone. He holds one end to his ear and places the other end on our hearts or wrists before announcing, Bene!

And to some, a solemn and quiet, Bene.

He holds it to T___’s pregnant belly and proclaims, Bene bebe. 

I get a sunburn and freckled but I don’t care.

Two arms pull me into the garage; two lips kiss mine. All this, in secret. 

I call my father and he cries about a poem I wrote for him five years ago; I cry because he cries. I do believe that he reads it every day. It’s framed on his wall – it’s a long fucking poem, so long that it had to be framed in two parts. 

He tells me that everyone who read it cries. 

One lady couldn’t even finish it, he says.

Perhaps I’ve already written whatever it was I’m meant to write. If five years ago, I was able to write something that moves the stodgiest old people to tears, have I already peaked?

That is enough for today. It’s all so ripe and full without you. I’m not, but life is.

 

 

I miss the catch if they throw me the ball.

The dress is navy blue and it was dirt cheap at Forever 21 two years ago.

 

I see it hanging in the wardrobe and when I button it onto my body and tie the sash, I look down to see that I don’t fill it out anymore. I take it off and add a padded bra. Marginally better.

 

I wore it on our first date. Your hands were sweaty and as you pawed at me in the taxi, the cheap cotton wrinkled into a state from which I assumed it would never return.

 

One dry clean later, I wore it to the Caribbean where we got sunburned and held hands for six days straight. On the seventh day, you stung my feelings into a state from which they would never return.

 

I wore it again a few weeks later to our housewarming party after I moved in. It was the 5^th of May, and it was my four year anniversary in New York. We made tacos and beat a piñata. My brother tied a scarf around my eyes, spun me to the point of sickness, and handed me a stick. We all beat the piñata to the ground, bashed it in so good, and carried away the toys.

 

I see now that there is a slight chance everything after the Caribbean was against my better judgment.

 

–

 

We all go to Borough Market and see and eat everything. Stinky cheeses, herbed boar sausages, salted caramel ice cream. Cinnamon truffles. A lusciously soft brownie with cranberries. Prosecco. There are giant goose eggs with hay still stuck to their shells. Oysters. Odd-shaped strawberries. Tiny jars of crème caramel with little wooden spoons in them. Tiny tomatoes that taste like tart little flowers. Every kind of bread, vegetable, morsel, we talk about them all.

 

Once we’ve decided on the perfect combination of flavors, we meet in the churchyard to eat and compare. We try and share everything, even the hand-patted butter, which T__ samples using the tab of a Coke can.

 

He comes and meets me for an espresso. This is our second date-but-not-a-date. He speaks to me in Italian and when he sips his macchiato, the foam and cinnamon lick at his nose. He wipes most of it away, but not all, and I decide that this is ok.

 

My new favorite thing is people who eat with abandon. You haven’t felt true love for your friends until you’ve seen them devour a chocolate ice cream cone, leaving a cocoa ring around the mouth, or bite into bruschetta, tomatoes dropping to the floor, oil dribbling down the chin.

 

–

 

I go with Em to a house party in South Hackney. There is a deejay set up on the landing of the stairs and people dance up and down them, a vertical runway. The house used to be a nursery school, so the rooms are painted candy colors and the doors all have little narrow windows in them. The bathtub is full of ice and beer, the aluminium cans of Carling reflecting the watermelon pink of the walls.

 

In the kitchen, Em points at the long tubes of little white plastic cups and says to me, This is bullshit. I want to be at a party with big red and blue Solo cups. This is fucking bullshit!

 

America, the beautiful. We miss you.

 

There’s a bearskin rug in front of the fireplace and someone rolls it up when the Talking Heads come on the speakers. Everyone dances, forty and fifty people in this big house, dancing with their cups and cans. Em tosses about wildly and wonderfully.

 

White wine splashes over the rims of cups as everyone steps about to the music. We douse the carpet in a medicine of merriment and unwieldy arms. The room churns and churns and I could be in any city in any corner of the world right now, but I’m here, dancing. I wonder if I’m having more fun than you. Not just now, but in general.

 

Immediately, I realize that if I’m wondering about this or about you at all, then I’m definitely not having more fun than you.

 

Then a new song comes on and everyone goes bananas, including me, and I think, Yeah, I’m absolutely having more fun than you. Yeah. I always did.

 

–

 

Rows and racks of vintage dresses surround me. I move between the rails, fingering the fabrics, admiring the beading, gasping at the lovely necklines and skirt shapes. Table upon table of pins, baubles, hats, bags. I pull a beautiful wiggle dress from the 1950s from the hanger – it’s teal with a tiny Egyptian print and pearls at the sleeves. When my eyes fill with tears, I feel more like myself again. Finally, I’m enjoying things I thought had changed about me, and that was terrifying. I thought I’d never again see the beauty in an enamel belt buckle or tattered glass-beaded bag again.

 

I go to the tearoom and order a cup of Earl Grey and a scone with cream and jam. I’m spreading it thick and sipping my tea when I get a text from a girl I met the night before, the one with the white sailor cap and red lipstick and a boy’s name.

 

She writes:

Mix ¼ bag self raising flour with a bit of salt and about ¼ block of butter. Chuck in a handful of sultanas and a few spoons of sugar, then stir in some buttermilk til you get dough. Let it stand for a bit. Then pat the dough out onto a floured surface and cut out the scone shapes. Bake them for about 15 mins on a tray at about gas mark 7 – easy! Scones!

 

Love it. Love everything about it.

 

–

 

He comes over and when I open the door, he’s shiny from the heat and smiling broadly. He holds bags of groceries, which quickly turn into a meal of spaghetti with prawns and toasted garlic bread. He talks to himself in Italian and in French as he cooks, tossing ingredients about, willy-nilly and unmeasured. When he opens the spaghetti, he doesn’t rip the plastic apart like a mortal – he slams the package vertically on the countertop and it pops open, noodles bursting forth like a hundred stiff fingers.

 

We turn the scaffolding outside my window into a balcony, taking our wine out there and standing among the tools left behind by workmen. It’s warm and still light out and we kiss a lot more than we should.

 

He is so Italian, and thus, I trust nothing that he says. His words are refined, poetic, and they are also rehearsed and precise. He knows what he’s saying. And everything he says is attached to a curvy mouth, heavy-lidded eyes, and shiny black curls. There is nothing trustworthy about this man.

 

When he compares me to Goya’s “La Maja Desnuda”, I laugh and laugh and pretend I’m somewhere else, with someone less silver-tongued. What should be effortless and easy becomes tiring.

 

I want to sleep, but I can’t.

 

The next morning, there is a note. Bits of it are in Italian and French. I start to translate it, and then I lose interest. I pretend instead that it says:

You are lovely; let us never see each other again.

 

And I’m okay with that.

I don’t dream about anyone, except myself.

I’m led into the confessional booth and sit in the small chair. There are candles and incense burning and the whole tent smells overly sweet. A man sits across from me, in another little chair, and when he speaks he puts on a phony Southern accent. He cleanses my palms with a wet cloth. 

Jus’ saaay whatever ya need ta saaaay, he says.

I swear I can hear his east London accent seeping through on the hard consonants. 

See, this is why performance art never works. It’s almost always impossible to forget the performance part.

I giggle and wait, finally mumbling, I don’t know.

He encourages me to speak; to confess. He keeps rubbing my palms and I think of the line of people to get in here. I had better confess, and I better do it soon.

Finally, I spit out the words:

I hate this country. I never should have moved here.

Oooookkkkkaaaaay, he says slowly. Whyyyyy?

I pause, try to think of a reason. What comes out is this:

I hate…I hate everything.

(It’s the best I can do under pressure.)

He looks surprised, and he ties a tag to my wrist. I look at it in the light when I exit. 

It reads: Wrath.

I’ve been marked.

I’m led to another dark booth and handed a sign. Immediately, I turn it around and read what it says.

Flashbulbs go off. One, two, three. When I exit, I’m handed a polaroid. It develops slowly, tigerstripes of color melting into solid shapes. The picture is of me, reading the sign. I know that I was supposed to hold it like a placard, like a badge. But there I am, face obscured, reading the sign I was supposed to be showing. My impatience having gotten the best of me. My curiosity having won out. As always.

The sign worth reading and not showing, it said:

It’s all in your head. Seek professional help.

I think that’s always something worth keeping to yourself.

–

He orders for us both, and he does it in Italian. He and the waiter go back and forth in a language I don’t yet know, doing what I assume is a light debate over menu items – what is best, what is fresh, what not to order. I sit there, all American and not caring, and eagerly await the food and wine to come, ordered by a real Italy Italian and not a fake New Jersey Italian…you know, like you.

Have you ever just known that someone was for you? he asks me.

Sure, I reply, completely devoid of desire to get into this.

Because, if I were to answer honestly, I might have said something like, I knew he was for me the moment I saw him. The first time we kissed. The next time I saw him and every time after that. Yesterday. Today. RIght now. Despite it all, still, right this second. Watching you eat all the colors of the Italian flag, I think mostly of him and how he’s for me.

But I say nothing, instead asking, What about you?

Yes, he says. One time, I had this girlfriend. We sat in her kitchen one night, talking, and out of nowhere she stood up and asked if she could make me a sandwich.

 

I wait for him to go on. He doesn’t. Instead, he refills my wine glass. 

That’s it? I ask.

That’s it, he says.

A sandwich.

Yes.

Don’t all women do those sorts of things? 

No.

They don’t…bake you a coffee cake on Sundays? Hem your trousers? Leave you a love note in the pocket of your overcoat?

No. For those things, I would need an Italian girlfriend, he says casually. And even then…I’d have to be incredibly lucky.

The clarity is overwhelming. I feel like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. Oh my God. I’m an Italian girlfriend. And you never appreciated it.

–

He spoonfeeds me dessert. I feel ridiculous and free.

He pays the check. I feel grateful.

He gives me his jumper and his arm as we walk. I feel warm and silly.

He sees me home. I feel comfortable.

–

Look, I say as we near my building. I know you have a girlfriend; I met her.

Did you shake her hand, he asks.

Actually, I think I did shake her hand. Not that it matters if I did or if I didn’t. I won’t do this. 

Do what?

I won’t be the one who causes problems, I say.

You’re not.

I’m not what – the one or causing problems?

Neither. Both. Do you want to talk about this all night, he asks.

No.

–

 

You stand here, he said, putting me against the arched doorway of the kitchen. 

He stands opposite me and says, Now I’m going to kiss you.

It has been twenty months since I’ve kissed another man. His mouth feels square in mine. He is not you and I remember how I woke up this morning, sad, back in that place. It happens sometimes – every four days or so, I wake up melancholy and wistful. Typically, it arrives overnight, in dreams, and I just can’t shake it when I open my eyes. That’s all; that’s all it has to do with. Nothing else.

–

Before he leaves, he asks when he’ll be able to read some of my writing.

Four hours. It took him four hours.

It’s taken you a year, nine months, one week, two hours, ten minutes, forty-three seconds. Fourty-four seconds. Fourty-five.

You would probably never ask. After I was your dutiful Italian girlfriend. After I left you love notes, hemmed your trousers, baked you all variety of edibles, charmed your mother, helped you with your taxes, redid your resume, organized your closet, bought you special soap that wouldn’t irritate your face…

After all that, you never fucking asked. 

–

He left his jumper hanging over my kitchen chair. It’s still there, a beacon of things (not) to come.

 

Watch your step along the arch of glass.

 

I think about that day, and how quickly I was able to bounce back. Resilient isn’t a strong enough word to describe it. At one in the morning, I was high out of my mind, wearing an off the shoulder black dress that was highly inappropriate among hipster kids who hadn’t showered in days. I was with an ex-boyfriend who didn’t want to be so, he wanted to be more – again – and I was keeping his advances at bay, while keeping very close indeed his generosity and strangely opposite-sex-alluring presence. I had never been so popular with other men as when I was hanging on the arm of my ex-boyfriend.

 

And then he snapped. The coke had finally wrapped itself around his brain and squeezed tight, that light and careless feeling dissipated and the lights all went blue. He loomed in the dark, big and menacing, grabbing at my wrist and twisting it. The other man who was talking to me looked completely torn – does he save this girl he’s only known for ten minutes, step between her and the wild-eyed monster, or does he disappear?

 

This other guy, the poor thing, opted for feigned ignorance. Too cool and too New York to be bothered by something so minor as domestic violence and a pending drug shakedown, he just ordered us another round.

 

My ex-boyfriend said, “Keep ‘em coming, though this slut will probably fuck you anyway.” Naturally, the guy chose this moment to exit.

 

My ex-boyfriend jostled me into a dark corner and demanded I give him anything valuable from my purse. This meant money and drugs. I said no – was I really being mugged right now?

 

It might have been hours or minutes – that’s what happens – but I seem to remember escaping and running through the Lower East Side in vintage pumps and a tight gown. He chased me for awhile and then called obsessively, leaving me dozens of messages ranging, hilariously, from “you slut! I hate you!” to “I refuse to stop caring about you”.

 

At around three in the morning, I ended up at a dirty East Village bar. Seeking solace, I went looking for James and knew precisely where he would be at that time. I found him in the basement, exactly as I thought, long curly hair disheveled from yet another night of drinking himself into a stupor, sucking on a cigarette despite the smoking ban. He held me as I told him what happened and promised to walk me home when I expressed fear.

 

Later in my bed, I came down hard. I knew my ex-boyfriend was sitting outside in his car, so I buried under the duvet and wished I didn’t have a problem – I wished I didn’t have any problems. I wished for the night to be over.

 

In an hour and a half, the night was over. The sun came up as always.

 

Shell-shocked, I got up and dressed. I had coffee and walked to the antiques market. That’s where I met Sam and his chapped lips. He smiled at me and followed me back, said hello while we perused chipped porcelain dog figurines and crushed ladies plumed hats.

 

He asked me on a date. I said yes.

 

I got on the 1 train uptown to go to a roof party. On the way, I met an attractive older woman. She asked me on a date. I smiled and said no, thank you.

 

At the party, I met a man with a camera and a past-looking mustache. He asked me on a date. I said yes.

 

We went out that night. We went out lots of nights, all summer. We played and laughed and had awkward moments and all the things that are fun and confusing about dating. The thing that happened with my ex-boyfriend tiptoed from my head as the days got longer and warmer. My assumed resilience was astounding.

 

Then I went to Denver. Then the motorcycle crashed into my windshield. Then the girl flipped over the hood and lay comatose in the intersection. Then I saw the shoes of the girl; they’d been ejected right off her feet upon impact. Then the driver tried to run from the scene. Then I sat on the curb, wearing the same vintage pumps I’d worn a few months earlier when I ran from the scene. Then I wanted to run away in them again.  Then I knew I wasn’t resilient at all – everything that happened had left my memory, and settled into my bones. Then I went home.

 

Then the accident moved into my rattled brain and began its persistent song in my ears. (It still sings there, a raw and burning sfogato soprano that knocks against my eardrums. It is the song of a lifetime, of a memory I’d sooner forget – a single ringing note that masks all others. )

 

Then, within days – still bruised and buzzing – I met you. You said hi. It was so simple, I couldn’t believe it. I felt saved. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t want to run.

 

You did.

‘Cause it’s all right, all right to see your ghost.

 

She comes to my door and knocks, my new neighbor. I’m not dressed so I make her wait while I hunt for a t-shirt, and finding only a mangy one, throw it on and answer the door. Bread is burning in the toaster and the washing machine rumbles angrily in the closet. The stereo is on at top volume. She looks confused and looks past me, down the hallway. So much ruckus for one little person, yes, I know.

She grins and her gums are big and distinct; they are like the fleshy pink gates to her throat.

Hi, she says cheerily. You’re –

Right, and you’re Polly. I remember. Hi.

Hi! Soooo, I wanted to let you know that we’re going to be building a few cabinets upstairs, so it might be a little loud.

That’s totally fine, I say. How’s it going up there…you and Ed, right?

Right! We’re good, it’s good!

She keeps looking behind me and down the hallway. It takes all of my restraint to not say, No, just me in here. It’s just me.

We chat a bit and she suggests we share wireless internet, split the bill. I imagine Polly and Ed carefully counting out seven pounds and sliding the fat coins under my door on the first of the month. I imagine myself sitting on the couch alone and hearing the coins scratching along the hardwood, all seven of them, jingle-jangling against one another. I feel backed into a corner, because while it feels silly to accept seven pounds from a neighbor every month, it feels sillier to say no.

Maybe we could go grab a drink sometime, she suggests.

Polly, I would really like that, I say.

–

I knew they wanted to be my friend. When I met them, she stood on the balcony above and he came walking down the street with a box. Their big day, moving day. I’d already lived here two weeks, so I’m just the girl downstairs, the sweet one who joked about not having a cup of sugar to lend, and both their sets of parents laughed and smiled. The goofy singleton downstairs, that’s me. 

–

Tonight, she stands in my doorframe and I ask, So…are you guys married?

And then she laughs. She laughs and shakes her head like I’ve just said the most disarming, cutest, sweetest,  kindest thing in the world. A big, gummy, happy and embarrassed laugh. 

I think, Oh shit. Oh, sweetie. I know that laugh. 

–

That laugh, it’s the laugh of a girl in love and is living with her lover, so certain that it’s only the beginning. A girl who recognizes that the world recognizes her love. It’s the laugh of someone who is so thick with love and sex and lust that it just takes over everything else like a sugary glaze. It’s the laugh of someone who thinks she’s about to get married. Maybe not tomorrow or next month, but soon. Very soon indeed.

I’ve been you, Polly. Fuck, who am I kidding? I’ve been you twice. The first time, three years. Didn’t work out. The second, a year and a half. Didn’t work out.

I know that laugh so well. I’ve laughed that laugh. The fake modesty and the self-assuredness of it all. I’ve heard it spill forth from the mouths of my friends and that’s when I knew they were in love and that’s also when I felt most afraid because we were all about to lose one another and we were about to lose ourselves.

Some of us did lose ourselves. Be honest. I count myself among them, too.

–

I have not kissed. I have not fucked. I have not held hands, or been on a date. I have not let go of the idea that, in the eyes of God, we are perfect. The prophet said so, but only I listened.

–

You call and we talk. It’s been a month or so. Now, on the phone, you’re good at being what you’re not – confident and settled and concerned. My stomach turns to knots and I wonder if it was better when we weren’t talking. I squint into the sun, feeling wrinkles forming in the corners of my eyes, and holding the phone to my ear, I suddenly I feel old. I feel tired. I feel like giving you one-to-three word answers, and so I do.

 

 

The night does funny things inside a man.

 

It arrived in the form of a roll of film. You sent me a package – some things I left behind, and some things you threw in, like a cookbook and a bag of coffee from my favorite cafe in New York. That was all nice, but you didn’t even put in a note. Not even, Hello. Here is some stuff for you. Goodbye.

Nothing. No note. But there was a roll of film, undeveloped. I found it rolling around the bottom of the box. I had no idea what it was. I carried it around for two weeks before dropping it at the photomat. In stories and on TV, it would be a love letter in photographic form. Or scenic shots, and the final one would be you, holding a sign that says, I’m Sorry. Come Home. I Love You.

Sometimes my life feels like it exists in stories or on TV, but not with you. Never with you did it feel that romantic or unreal or ripe with surprises in that way.

But think about it, the promise or disappointment that lies within the plastic casing of a complete roll of 35mm film…

The result could be anything. They could be great snapshots. Or everyone could look fat and bloated. They could be overexposed, perhaps even in an arty way. Maybe the photographer cut people off at the neck and the result is 24 unflattering photos of bosoms. The photos could all be a cloudy gray – maybe the film didn’t catch on the spool. 

Maybe they tell a story. A beautiful story about a boy and a girl and a love so full and dense and fleeting that it bloomed atop a cliff at Big Sur and died somewhere between a Caribbean beach and the first snowfall of Manhattan the following winter.

Or maybe it’s just two dozen photos of cats. That’s what I got when I had the roll developed. Two dozen shoddily taken photos of our beloved cats.

It’s not the cats that interested me, however. It’s the background that I find riveting. These photos, taken in our – excuse me, YOUR – apartment. Once upon a time, these would be evidence of our domesticity, our babies in our home. 

But they’re just photographs of my cats in your house. The filth and the complete removal of me. That’s what amazes me. 

About the photos, aside from the cats:

Photo one – the soap dispenser I bought. All the knives on a magnetic strip; one is dirty. Crumpled foil and takeout bags on the counter. A bottle of open wine. Did you drink that alone?

Photo three – the bathroom. I see you’ve taken to wearing your contacts, as there is a bottle of saline front and center in the cabinet. You look so handsome with glasses, my love. One toothbrush in the holder. And you got new towels. They are reflected in the mirror. They look like the  ones I bought in Paris and have in my new flat. Congratulations; we still share a mind.

Photo four – you should wipe the drain. It’s disgusting.

Photo five – the plant in the living room is dying. And that chair is not suitable for people to sit on without a cushion. Without the cushion, it’s merely a skeleton of a chair. I guess you pulled it out for company. I see the Christmas lights I strung around are still up.

Photo six – oh, you unearthed the weird wax pyramids that you hid when we lived together. Now they’re placed all around the windowsills. It’s like you were waiting for me to disappear so you could resume your strange fixation. I have four words for you, darling: They won’t heal you. And three more: They’re just wax.

Photo eleven – is there cat litter everywhere or just everywhere in this photo? Sweet love, are you living in squalor? You moved my armoire to the other side of the room. It’s chockfull of books. How did you manage that? I presume you went through the drawers. Maybe you flipped through my books and smelled them. That’s what I would do.

Photo twelve – there’s the broken coffee table. How long did it sit cracked against the wall before you took it out? Or is it still there? I want that stepstool back. How, exactly, did it get out of the closet – where I know I left it with the rest of my things – and into the kitchen?

Photo seventeen – cat litter scattered around the front door. Welcome!

Photo eighteen – I’m sorry you’re cold without me there to warm you. Three duvets layered on the bed, that’s how I know. That green one has a come stain; wash it before you bring a girl home.

Photo twenty – trash all over the countertops. Orange juice containers, and a bag of takeout. I know exactly what that smells like.

Photo twenty-one – cat food on the kitchen floor and a dirty, crumpled paper towel in the corner.

Photo twenty-two – glad you’re making use of my shelves. Your toys never did belong in the living room. 

Photo twenty-three – you’ve taken to keeping all the lights on and the blinds pulled up, even at night. More wax pyramids. I guess you bought more, more for the healing.

Typically, I wouldn’t be so critical and analytical, but I’ve never seen the manifestation of my own erasure. Have you? The mutilation of giving myself over to someone else and to domesticity. Flipping through the photos, it’s like watching myself slowly disappear. 

And now I see why we’re not together – you don’t give a shit about anything. You didn’t appreciate that I believed in the best of you – the best of us – and wanted to make our life beautiful. 

I walked slowly down North End Road and looked at the photos, one at a time, without breathing. I came home and locked my door and looked at my perfect flat and danced and cooked and ate and sang. I caught a dirty fruitfly in my hand and released it out the open window.

 

 

The lesson you must learn, no one could ever teach.

 

Stuff I never told you and am sorry about.

I was never just a cocktail waitress. Sorry.

That guy with the beard and the glasses that called all the time, just to talk. He was an ex-thing. Yeah, you met him several times, too, and you thought we were just friends. I never lied to you about it, I just never told you the truth. Oh, and I stopped seeing him for you, when we decided to be exclusive. But I only slept with him .5 times. That’s point-five, as in half. I can’t explain that part to you, though. Sorry.

I think you’re weak. Especially your heart and your immune system. Sorry.

Your vanity exceeds your attractiveness. Sorry.

A friend of a friend once met you and she said behind your back, That guy? Wow, I always thought she could do better. Sorry.

I backslid on my drug-free promise. Just once, but I did backslide. And it was with that guy with the glasses and the beard. You were out of town. The next day, I felt so bad I built you a sideboard with my bare hands as I came out of my coke funk. Sorry.

More than five, less than a hundred. Sorry.

I hated most of your sweaters. Sorry.

Your fucking pretentious book collection was embarrassing and your massive stockpile of vitamins was weird. Sorry.

My friends don’t want to be your friend. Sorry.

I think I loved us more than you loved us. For that, I am so goddamn sorry.

And looking back at these, my greatest sins with you, they are so small and so silly. Many of them are planted the rage and sadness of this aftermath. Fuck, I did right by you, didn’t I?

–

You remind me of my sister. I miss her when I’m around you, she says and I am happy for that. Her sister has been a subject off-limits until now and I embrace the opportunity to speak of her. I never got to meet her sister, but I always felt her around me.

The world lost her a few years ago when she decided to end it all.

As they say in the cemetery: Life’s cares are o’er; she rests.

And although we never met, I felt her often. Her books and fossils and stones, they dotted our apartment; she freckled our love. I know now that the two things I felt there – one was dark and ominous, and one was light and loving. She was the latter. The former, it was something else. A forewarning, perhaps. 

I saw her sister once. In the living room, I was on the couch and she stood beside it and looked at me. Her face was dirty and her blonde hair matted. She watched me for a long time and then disappeared. 

I never told you that either. Sorry.

–

Lunch is in a pub, crabcakes over a salad. Traditional Sunday roast for her husband. Wine and beers for me and her husband, and she has only water because she’s due in eight weeks. Her belly is big and round and hard and they know nothing about my ghost belly. 

I forgot what it’s like to be happy and to have fun. To talk about things other than you and moving to London, and to have people see the purity of me. No one has made me feel that worthwhile since I sat at dinner with Kate and B__, long before I met you, and B__ said, Why are you single? You’re a catch. I don’t get it.

And the way Kate and B__  looked at me, they meant it. They wanted happiness for me (and for everyone). I’ve not felt that way again, like someone really saw my heart beating beneath my chest, since. Not until yesterday.

They make me feel that way. They regale me with stories of their flawed courtship and their happy ending and I know that they know that I’m ingesting every morsel, hoping the same for you and me, but that’s okay, they just keep on with the stories. 

They smile and after lunch, the husband insists on ice cream. We take their convertible to get ice cream, and then we walk around Hyde Park and go see paintings by an old woman. When we talk about the art, they listen to me. You never did. You told me what I was seeing and how to perceive it, and stupidly, I trusted you. I never saw the beauty of art with you. I only saw what you saw.

We walk through the fields, not on the sidewalks, and I am hyper-aware of everything. Of the waxy grass under my feet, and this couple who knows me not at all and does not judge me, and ice cream that your weak stomach could never handle. And of me. The me that your weak stomach could never handle.

I forgot what all of this is like. 

Tonight, I ran. I put on clean white sneakers and I went for it. I forgot what it’s like to run until I ran. I ran so fast and hard and I hit a dead end and then I turned right around and ran out of it, faster and harder than I’d run into it.