The first time I ever met Franklin was when he came to the apartment one night. He came over to see Annie of course, who was my roommate, also my best friend and the only person I really thought I cared about. She and I shared this little place near the university with two bedrooms, a small balcony and a piano in the living room. The piano was an object of luxury, an instrument neither of us knew how to play. Annie, because she had never learned, and although I had taken lessons as a girl, I had forgotten everything.
That night started the same as any other. Annie and I were in her bedroom. She was sitting on the bed while I was lying on the floor. Lately we’d been spending practically every night of the week this way, just passing the time, doing nothing of any consequence—sometimes reading poetry aloud from magazines, or talking, drawing, taking pictures, or making little works of art. We were always in Annie’s bedroom because there was a warmth to the place. It was like a manifestation of her personality. Annie’s room had a charming, cozy, sedate atmosphere. I remember it retrospectively as if it were lit in a rose-coloured light. But as I was saying, we were doing almost nothing that night when all of a sudden we heard a noise at the window. It was a small but definitive sound, as if of something sporadically hitting the glass. Annie went to investigate. She stuck her head out the window and I heard her speak to someone. She explained it was Franklin, standing below.
I try to remember when the first time was that Annie spoke to me about Franklin. It must have been something said in passing, something practically whispered, some insignificant detail thrown into an unremarkable anecdote. Then over a course of days, of maybe weeks, his name must have come up again, but always in a casual way. Always: Oh and of course Franklin was there. Or: I bumped into Franklin on my way out the door. Or still: Then Franklin sneezed so loud that people ten rows ahead of us turned around to see. It was all very subtle, very under the radar. Though, if you asked Annie, I’m sure she’d remember it differently. Probably she would tell you that I was always distracted, forgetful, that I never could grasp all the details of this, nor of anything else for that matter. Still the impression remains, that when I finally realized she was seeing this boy, that she and he had become involved, I was left with a feeling that Annie had been, for some reason, keeping me in the dark. Finally, I asked her once and for all who this Franklin guy was, but she only rolled her eyes.
Now here was Franklin standing three storeys down in the parking lot, throwing pebbles up into the night. But why pebbles? I wanted to ask. After all, wasn’t there a working intercom? Was he trying to be romantic?
Looking back I can say that the answer is no, Franklin wasn’t trying to be anything. I didn’t know it yet, but Franklin did a lot of things differently, and it was not because he wanted to appear different, not because he tried to be different. Sometimes you have to wonder about a person, how would they behave if they could be left alone. I mean, if they could be utterly, completely alone, what would they do with themselves? And how would they do what they did? I think that in such a case, Franklin would do things more or less as he had always done. He would stand in front of empty buildings throwing pebbles up at bedroom windows belonging to no one.
Annie went downstairs to let Franklin into the building. I went into the kitchen to fill a glass with water from the tap. I had a vague feeling of apprehension, and I didn’t know whether it was nervousness about the fact that soon I’d be meeting someone, or whether I was in some way upset about a stranger’s intrusion into our night. Maybe I was only bewildered, because after all it still felt strange to me that Annie could be dating someone. I had simply never considered her as a romantic or a sexual being. She was so friendly and had so many friends. She was always making friends with people everywhere she went. Honestly, I thought it had to be awkward to have sex with anyone, and Annie seemed only too natural, too comfortable with nearly everyone she met.
I heard them come in the door. I was on my way down the hall when Franklin and I crossed paths. He hardly acknowledged me. It was as if we were in a hotel, each on our way to our separate rooms. And the hall was only dimly lit, so I didn’t get a good look at him. I could see that he was older than Annie and me by at least a few years. He was thin, not very tall, and had a mop of dark, curly hair. He wore a ragged, knitted sweater which billowed unbuttoned away from his body, so to avoid running into him I found myself practically pressed up against the wall. I almost spilled my water, in fact. Then Annie came gliding in after him. Without a word she guided Franklin into her bedroom and closed the door. I was left standing for a moment in the hall. I thought I could hear them laughing, but what did I know? Maybe they were crying, I thought. Or maybe they were fucking already.
After a while I went into my own room. I was supposed to be studying for a mid-term exam I would write in the morning anyway. The exam was for a literary survey course called, “An Introduction to the Novel.” I went to my desk and sat with the novel we had been reading most recently, A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. Beyond holding the book though, I didn’t really know what to do with it. I didn’t know how to study properly. I opened the book, turned a few pages, then somehow an hour went by, and when Annie came into the room she found me running my finger over the surface of the water in my drinking glass. She knocked at the door, even though it was open, and told me that she and Franklin were going for a walk.
Do you want to come along? she asked.
Maybe, I said. Where are you going?
She told me they were going to take a walk to the end of the street and get high. Of course I wanted to go, but I’d also promised myself that I’d try not to smoke anything tonight. If I wasn’t going to be studying, the very least I could do was to try to keep a clear head for the morning. Back then I was a real pushover when it came to smoking pot. If somebody offered it to me, I couldn’t refuse, not once the thought had entered my head. Sometimes if I only caught the scent of it, say as I was walking on my way to a class—and it could be the middle of the afternoon, but if there was a hint of marijuana in the air—it made me want to drop everything, to drop off the face of the Earth and get thoroughly, miserably, blissfully stoned. Because for me the high was all in the smell. The high was in the taste of it on my mouth. I told Annie that yes, I wanted to come.
I was introduced to Franklin at the door. He was surprisingly formal about it. As he shook my hand—and I think he even made a slight bow—he said, Charlie. It’s really great to meet you. Annie’s told me so many things.
I thought I ought to say something equally kind, but I didn’t know what. After a moment, my hand still in his, I blurted out, Franklin. It’s really great to meet you too. Annie’s told me so many things.
Annie snorted. Oh jeez, she said.
We left the apartment and passed quietly down the carpeted hallways, but it was only once we had left the building I realized that Franklin wasn’t wearing shoes. At first I thought maybe he’d forgotten them, either upstairs or at home, so I asked. Franklin chuckled and told me that he hadn’t forgotten them.
Annie said, Franklin isn’t wearing shoes, as if that was any kind of explanation.
Is it because you’re trying to toughen up the soles of your feet? I asked.
Actually, there is no real reason, Franklin said. I stopped wearing shoes about a month ago just to see what it would be like, and I’m not wearing them now because I want to see how long this will go on. I suppose in a way I’m waiting for something to tell me when to stop.
Or to tell you when to start, I said.
Franklin chuckled again. Yeah, he said, that’s right.
We slowly made our way down the street to where it dead-ended into a cluster of trees. It was only March, but it had been unseasonably warm recently, and some of the buds on those branches had already burst. It was a dark night, and while walking we didn’t say anything more, only every so often Franklin quietly cooed, sounding just like a pigeon.
After smoking we spent a while talking. We talked about Franklin, about Annie, about the two of them together. Franklin asked me about myself. He wanted to know what I was studying, and did I like it, and if not, where did my interests lie. I don’t remember how it came about, but I think at some point we talked about the poet Pablo Neruda. Had I ever read any Neruda? And what did I think of his works? I remember Annie had one of his books, a slender volume of his poetry. So when I think about Pablo Neruda today, I think about Annie’s hands. I think about her hands holding onto that book, her little hands, and then about her little feet, and I think of how in some ways she always was so small and delicate. When I think about Annie today, I think here is someone who deserves to be loved. When I think about Pablo Neruda I see only anger and a hard masculinity. I see a brutal aggressivity lurking there beneath his most sensitive lines. When I think about Pablo Neruda, I think here is the spirit of something willing to beat a woman into the dust. But then what did I know? And what was important? Standing there at the end of the street, what mattered was that we were getting along. Of course, Annie was thrilled to see her new boyfriend and her best friend hitting it off. Franklin mentioned that he’d be leaving soon to go travelling through Europe. Annie was hoping to join him there sometime later in the spring. Franklin said I shouldn’t expect to see him again since he would be leaving so soon. And thanks to a streetlight, I had managed to get a good look at his face. He had a high brow, clever eyes and a slightly hooked nose. He had the features of a hawk, I thought. And actually, that’s one way to think of him—as a hawk who coos like a pigeon, or as a man who doesn’t wear shoes. And I mean that figuratively, whether or not he really is wearing shoes.
Two weeks later Franklin was gone and although I knew it didn’t make sense, I felt as if he’d left me behind. I was sad to see him go, but it was something more than that. It didn’t often happen that I met someone I could relate with as easily as I related with him. Franklin was unique, and I had felt a kind of chemistry between us, so it was sad to see him slip away, headed in another direction, headed off and out of my life. As for Annie, who in this situation really had been left behind, if she was hurt, she didn’t show it. She was just her usually kind, effusive self.
One night she dragged me to a party hosted by one of Franklin’s friends. As it happened, most of Franklin’s friends had by now become Annie’s friends as well. The party was at a girl named Julia’s house. Actually, it was at her parents’ house which was in one of those wealthy, labyrinthine-like neighbourhoods built against the shore. So many of Franklin’s friends seemed still to be living with their parents, I’d noticed. I thought it must be because they had grown up in this city, unlike Annie and I who were strangers here and still sometimes felt lost.
On the night of the party we rode our bicycles down those long and winding roads. We circled traffic roundabouts, passing under massive cedar trees. It was incomprehensible to me that Annie should know where we were going, but she led the way and I followed. It was an easy ride downhill all the way toward the sea, and after twenty minutes, we arrived at the house.
We parked our bikes against the garage and walked around the side of the house. In the backyard there were a dozen people or so, some standing over a barbecue, some smoking cigarettes in the dark. I thought it must be a new moon since I could hardly see anyone’s face. Only an errant feature here or there displayed, such as a pair of lips or half a nose glimpsed in the cherry-glow of a cigarette. Annie and I tried mingling. We joined into conversations. But all the while it was as if people were speaking in a foreign tongue. We felt disoriented, overwhelmed, and by the time we finally made it into the house, we didn’t know who we’d been talking to or what had been said, so we worried we had been somehow compromised. It was as if we had suffered a memory lapse, as if we had given something away without keeping track of what it was and of who it had been given to. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if we hadn’t already smoked so much pot, but as it was, we thought we needed safety so we found the kitchen and made a kind of mental fortress there. What I mean is that we set up camp. The kitchen was bright and clean. We took out the bottle of wine we’d brought and planted it like a flag on the granite counter. Then we took turns drinking, swigging straight out of the bottle. We found that the more we drank, the better we felt, and soon we were feeling so good we had even started laughing at ourselves. That’s how Julia found us, standing in the kitchen and laughing. She seemed delighted to have found us at all.
I’m so glad you came, she said and gave Annie a hug. Then she turned to me and introduced herself. She gave me a hug too saying, It’s really great to meet you.
Julia, it’s so great to meet you too. Annie’s told me so many things.
Julia smiled, but she looked confused.
Annie said, Pay no attention to her. She’s drunk and stoned.
I smiled and shrugged.
Julia laughed. Then she turned more deliberately to Annie. I didn’t see you come in, she said. Oh, and I love your sweater, by the way. Did you get that second hand?
Here she laid her own hand onto Annie’s sleeve as if she hadn’t ever felt knitwear before, and the next thing I knew, they were talking at length about a person I’d never met. I left them and wandered off to inspect another part of the house.
It was obvious Julia’s family had money. Their house was large and tidy—well taken care of, but in an impersonal way. I spent some time on the staircase looking at her family photographs. Then I went into the bathroom and opened the cupboards to see what was hidden inside.
I heard music coming from the living room. In there I saw that all the furniture had been pushed against the wall, and in the middle of the room people were dancing, some singly, others in pairs. I felt embarrassed to have stumbled into this scene, but I couldn’t turn around and leave. It was like I was being watched. And was I being watched, I wondered. I made my way deeper into the room, skirting the dance floor and finding a place on the couch. It wasn’t long before a boy sat next to me. At first he offered me a gin drink, which I accepted, but then we couldn’t find any glasses. Instead, he let me pull on his flask, which was something I had only ever seen done in movies. I told him as much, and he took it as a compliment. We spent the next twenty minutes talking, and although the boy kept saying he wanted to know all about me, he talked mostly of himself. He had nothing very interesting to say. He kept insisting he had never heard of Franklin Turner, and I kept insisting he had.
It’s likely that you wouldn’t remember him. Probably to most people he isn’t remarkable, I said.
By now the boy seemed to be losing interest, but he asked me if I wanted to dance.
I told him I didn’t know how, but he said, It’s easy, I can show you. All you have to do is move your body.
I told him I didn’t want to learn, that my head was already full of so many different things, and that to learn anything at this point would mean I’d need to sacrifice something else.
Are you being serious? he asked
Deadly serious, I said. I’m just not sure it’s the right thing to do, to make such a sacrifice tonight.
Do you want to get out of here? he asked.
God yes, I said, and I stood up to go, but then so did the boy. Oh, I said, now I see what you mean. But that would mean learning something new.
The boy asked me if I was a virgin. I told him it was awfully rude of him to ask, and finally broke away from the boy and the living room. Back in the kitchen I found Annie still talking with Julia. I came up next to them and instinctively reached for our bottle of wine. At that moment I felt just such a terrific thirst for a mouthful of wine, but our bottle was empty. There were others though, other bottles, several of them lined up on the counter. There were whites and reds and bottles of booze, so I took a red and uncorked it.
Just as I was raising the bottle to my lips, a girl came in, saw what I was doing and screamed, Is that my fucking Chianti?
I was so startled that I dropped the thing. It landed without breaking, but the force of its impact against the floor sent a streamer of wine up into the air, which hung for a moment before raining down over everyone and everything. There was a long silence during which Annie, Julia and the girl all looked to me, as if for an explanation.
I sighed. You know, I see this primarily as an issue of private ownership.
Nobody said anything, so I cooed like a pigeon. Annie laughed so hard that she fired a mouthful of water out of her nose.
Afterward I offered to tidy up, but Julia brushed me off. I apologized instead, both to the hostess and to the girl. Annie apologized once more to Julia on my behalf and we excused ourselves, went out the back, through the yard and around the house again. It was slow going as we rode our bicycles home. It was uphill all the way.
Annie left for Europe in May. She would be gone for ten weeks, and in that time she would keep in touch by writing emails regularly. She would write them as if they were letters, making them long and sentimental, the first coming out of Amsterdam. Annie wrote that she had landed the day before and that Franklin had come to meet her at the train station. He looked good, she wrote. He seemed happy. He seemed genuinely glad that she was there. Later that afternoon, after getting acquainted with the city together, they had gone and eaten magic mushrooms. And that day was like a blossom, Annie wrote, like an opening in the very heart of hearts, with all of life expanding outwards, past and future outwards both, growing from a singular point. Simple objects resonated, she wrote, with significance, and no city ever looked so good. In the evening she and Franklin had had a dispute with the owner of a hotel. They had already planned to stay the night and had reserved a room at a given rate, but now the owner was demanding more money. Franklin made a big scene of it, yelling at the man and even kicking the desk, but really it was only a joke. Together they stormed out of the hotel, laughing, hollering, slamming the door. They slept that night in a public park, lying in the grass under the trees.
Sometime later Annie wrote me an email from Greece saying she and Franklin had fallen in love. Now every night before going to sleep they took turns reading to each other. They were reading out of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. Have you ever read Rilke? she wrote. It really is something else. It feels like nourishment, like something fulfilling, exquisite and sensual. It’s like a slice of melon, perfectly ripe. Annie even went on to quote some lines they’d been reading the night before: It is good to love, because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being, that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.
Following her suggestion, I did try reading that book, but I didn’t get far. Something about it bothered me, annoyed me, made me angry. Because here was Rilke, a formidable poet, writing letters to a younger one, saying how, for instance, we are alone in the deepest, most important things, saying how one person never can know the life of another one, and should therefore never try to guide or to counsel. While on the other hand here was Rilke, an older poet, playing mentor and teacher, playing wisdom itself, laying his own conception of life heavy-handedly onto the younger one. It was just so very hypocritical, besides the fact that I didn’t care at all for the way he wrote. It annoyed me that with Rilke everything needed be so deep and meaningful. So potent, grave and so full of ache. I put that book aside, but then a few weeks went by and I thought I might try and give it another shot, if only for the sake of Annie. This time Letters made me feel so sick and mad that I ended up tearing the book in half. I mean, without thinking, taking it in my hands and tearing it along the spine, and more or less instantly any feeling of sickness and anger was gone. But now I had these two halves of a book, so I did what anyone would do and put them on a shelf, after which I thought about Annie. I thought about her and her being in love. I thought that maybe when it came to this book I had overreacted in a way. I had been hard on Rilke, and by extension, had been hard on my friend. But that was as much as I thought before I had to turn my attention to other things. Right at that moment, my own life was in the midst of being flipped and turned around. With Annie in Europe, I hadn’t been able to afford to keep the apartment, and so had to pack up my things. I took a few boxes that Annie had left behind and brought them to a friend’s for storage. But there was nowhere to store the piano.
The piano belonged to Annie, so I asked her what she wanted done with it. At first I didn’t get any response, so I tried calling her parents. I thought that maybe because it had been a gift, they might have some idea of what I should do. I got her mother on the phone, but all she could say was that I ought to talk to Annie about it. I tried writing to Annie again, and this time she wrote me back, but still she forgot to say anything about the piano. Finally, it was almost the day when I had to leave, and still I didn’t know what to do. At the last moment I arranged to have the piano sold and used the money to pay off the last of our bills. I boarded a Greyhound bus and rode it inland overnight, over the mountains and into the flatland town where my mother lived.
It had been a year since I’d left this town, and although my coming back was only meant to be temporary, it felt like I had failed at something. If I had managed to do better, I thought, if I had done things somehow differently, then I wouldn’t need to spend the summer at home.
The town was smaller than I had remembered it. My mother’s house was smaller too. I felt like Alice in Wonderland when she winds up stuck in the rabbit’s house, afraid that if I moved too suddenly my limbs might burst out the windows or the door. At night I would walk through the house, moving slowly from room to room. I would stop along the way to study objects, each item so familiar, but also like something I remembered from a dream.
Most nights I would need to leave the house. At one or two o’clock in the morning I would go out through the patio door, quietly easing it shut behind me, always careful not to wake up my mom. I didn’t have any reason to be sneaking out, I just didn’t want to explain myself, to answer questions about where I was going or what I was doing and why whatever I was doing needed to be done at such an unusual hour.
On those nights I would walk to the river, find a bench to sit on and roll a joint. I would drink a cup of tea at the coffee shop on the highway, which was open all night. Sometimes I would wander streets at random, going up and down, past houses, parks and the landmarks of my youth. Every place I went was quiet. The town was calm, vacant, so I felt as if I were walking on a stage. Everywhere was lit artificially, the streetlights bearing onto summer leaves, the shadows cast like puddles that I went stepping in and out of.
Pretty soon the days began to resemble one another. I realized I didn’t have any friends. Most of the people I’d known here had by now left and hadn’t returned, and all those who remained had become disconnected socially. That, at least, was my impression of things. But the truth is I didn’t really make any effort. I wasn’t looking to find anyone. After all, sleeping all day and walking through town every night stoned wasn’t a life that I wanted to share with anyone. I wasn’t looking for company. I was more or less killing time.
The problem was of writing to Annie. It was a problem because multiple times every week she would send me a description of where she had been, and her emails were full of feeling and inspiration. But what could I offer her in return? What could I give to her? What did I have?
One night I thought I must be losing my mind, being certain I heard the wind calling out my name. At the time, I was near the high school, passing through the fields out back when I heard it. I turned this way and that, looked all around, but there was no one there. I strained my ears and thought, Oh shit, because there it was again. After what felt like a long time of standing like a duck in the field, I spotted someone in the distance. Whoever it was was waving their arms in the air, trying to get my attention. This person was on the bleachers by the baseball diamond, and as I started in that direction, he started toward me. Only when we were close did I realize it was Paul, someone I had known in high school.
First he asked what I was doing out here. I said that I could ask him the same thing. Instead of answering, Paul started to laugh.
I’ve seen you lately out and about. At first I wasn’t sure it was you, but nobody else I know ever walked like that, said Paul.
Walked like that? What is that supposed to mean? I asked.
Paul just laughed again.
Paul and I dated, but our relationship had been a mistake. We weren’t friends before we dated, so it was never clear if we even liked each other that much. We used to argue all the time about stupid things, and we never spent any time alone. I felt like he was dragging me out just to parade me in front of his friends, though not because he thought I was beautiful or pretty, or even nice, but to show them that here was a girl who would follow him, who would go wherever he wanted to go and do what he wanted to do. Since then though, something had changed in him. Something had softened. He looked tired, but he was smiling.
We left the field behind the school and wound up walking together, wandering until we found a picnic table in a park where we sat and rolled a joint. After smoking, Paul told me a little about his life. He said he had started working in his uncle’s automotive shop. He was only an apprentice so he did a lot of menial work, things like rotating tires and changing oil, filters and fluids. He told me that at night he didn’t get much sleep. When he got home from work he’d typically smoke a bowl and have something to eat, then he’d lie on the couch for a while and try not to think about anything.
I asked, What do you wind up thinking about?
I think about all fucking kinds of things, Paul replied.
So it doesn’t work? I asked.
What doesn’t work? It’s all the same. Nothing, everything. The problem is that I can’t help going out at night, driving all around, moving in circles with circular people. Everybody’s always getting drunk and high, and the next thing I know it’s five in the morning and the birds are out making a racket. I’m lying in bed, but I can’t get to sleep. That’s when I start to feel sick. I panic and I wonder how I’m going to do it again and again and again. I mean, if I really can’t sleep, what’ll I do tomorrow, and then tomorrow after that? How can I get through it? Where’s the end of it? How can I function? It’s pretty miserable, and that is by far the worst part of my day.
What’s the best part of your day? I asked.
The best is when I do get to sleep, when for an hour or two I get to be totally wiped off the face of the Earth. I don’t dream about anything. I don’t see anything, hear anything. I don’t think. I don’t even feel anything.
I laughed. I’m sorry, I said. I know I’m not supposed to laugh.
It’s fine, said Paul. I get it.
We stayed in the park until Paul said he had to go. I went home but was too stoned to sleep. For a while I lay in bed and, while watching the daylight grow at the window, thought about the difference between nothing and everything.
When the sun came up, I was still awake and finally felt like I might have something to say, something worthwhile to write about, so I got out of bed and went straight to the computer room, but by the time I turned the computer on, waited while it booted and opened my email, I had lost whatever it was. I had wanted to write something about Paul, to tell Annie what it had been like running into him, and what it had been like to have dated him, and what it had been like to have grown up in this place, and what it was like to be back. But now, I figured, what was the point? I challenged myself for a moment to vividly remember something of my childhood, to remember really anything, but it all felt jumbled and blurred. What was any person’s history worth, I thought, if poorly depicted and poorly defined?
Annie had now returned from Europe, but instead of going back to the city, she had taken a job at a fishing resort located someplace north, up the coast. She told me it was isolated, lonely, remote, by which she meant to say it was beautiful. Her job consisted of helping the mostly wealthy visitors of the resort as they entered their boats in the morning. She loaded their tackle and coolers, their rods and reels. Her shift began at five in the morning and she would push them off into the mists. Annie described herself as standing on the docks in her Cowichan sweater, wrapped up and bundled against the cold. Later, the sun would rise over the bay and dispel the mists, shortly after which the boats would start to make their ways back in. Annie would catch their ropes, tie their knots, help the boaters and their gear ashore. Then, once everyone was off the water, Annie’s shift was over. She was usually off in time to catch brunch at the bistro, she explained, and for the rest of the day she was free.
I feel happy, Annie wrote. I’ve been reading lots and writing some too. I’ve met all kinds of people. Some are guests who have come and gone, others stay longer, mostly other staff members.
In one of her emails Annie mentioned the name of Elliot Lamn. She put it like this: Elliot’s here.
Elliot was a cook at the resort, but he was also a student at the university. Last spring I’d seen him on campus and pointed him out to her several times. I’d said: He’s over there, the one with the black hair, the round face, and when he smiles you see his teeth.
He’s got teeth like a woman, Annie said. He’s got little round teeth like a woman.
I told her I was in love with him.
For a while I was seeing him everywhere, all over campus, wherever I looked. He’d be standing in front of the library or sitting by the fountain reading a book. He was waiting in line at the sub or standing at a bus stop talking with a friend. He even turned up in my Intro to Anthropology class. It was a lecture class with a large number of students. I always sat a few rows behind Elliot, off to one side, but I never spoke to him. I never even came close. It was only through a mutual friend that I learned his name.
Now Annie was writing, Elliot’s here. Saying, Elliot and I have become friends. Telling me that at the end of his shift they would sometimes meet one another in the banquet hall. The place would be dark and deserted. They would lie on top of tables and talk, looking at the ceiling. Apparently this resort was near the place where Elliot had grown up. Annie wrote that his parents still lived in a cottage somewhere nearby and that he’d told her he would take her there, some weekend soon, and that they would walk in his mother’s garden and spin records in his father’s den. Annie wrote, I’ve told him everything about you, and as you can imagine, he’s very intrigued.
According to another one of her emails, this resort and the whole of the northwest coast was a place of both beauty and of significance. Annie wrote, You can’t help feeling the weight of it. The way the hours progress, or fall, or crash like waves against the rocks. Whenever it rains here, there’s a deluge and it isn’t possible to be outside so everyone gathers together, all the visitors, all the staff. We sit in the bistro or the lobby bar. We eat, drink, sit and talk, play cards and other games. And then it’s like worlds have collided. You realize that everyone here has found their way through wit and happenstance to this place. To be sitting here, most of us far from home… Every so often though, each of us peels ourselves away from the group. We see out the windows, through the curtain of rain. We look and see the great, grey, dismal, desperate sea and we are practically broken then, each of us. We are temporarily crushed. But always we return, we come back to the room, back to the food, the drink and the din. We come back to the voices, back to the faces, back to the others around the table.
From my seat at the computer, I turned to look out the window, but since it was dark, I only saw a wane reflection of myself against the glass. Now it was time for me to write, but I struggled, wondering what I should say.
Dear Annie,
I figured out recently that if instead of walking in circles I decided to walk in a continuous, straight line, and that if I only kept walking indefinitely, I might make it out to the ends of the Earth. I mean, I know you really can’t walk to the ends of the Earth, but what I realized is that life could be as simple as a march down the length of a singular road. You just walk until you can’t anymore. You walk until you die.
As for me, I’m too scared to try it. I go out, but I stay within the limits of town. I always eventually turn around, go home and get back into bed. And then inevitably it’s already morning. And the sky is already turning blue. And I can’t get to sleep for the birds…
For the next school year, Annie and I found a different place to rent. This place was a house, a big old house, so big in fact that it made us laugh. There was so much more space than we would ever need, more than we would ever be able to use. There were four bedrooms, a kitchen, dining and living rooms, even a basement downstairs and a sprawling yard out the back. We could have had roommates, other friends, but we decided to keep it all to ourselves. It was a kind of luxury, and one we could afford because the house was cheap. It was cheap because it was a little run down and out of the way, standing at the end of a long road full of farms and fields, all set against the edge of the woods.
I came into the city on a Saturday afternoon, but because of some confusion I wasn’t able to get into the house. Annie would be in the next day, and only then would we meet the landlord, hand over our cheques and be given the keys. In the meantime, I had a duffle bag and a knapsack that I carried from the bus station onto a local bus that brought me to the end of our road. I started walking, but it was almost an hour before I finally arrived, only to find that the previous tenants were still packing up their things and loading boxes into their vehicles. I stood on the road for a while and watched, then decided that the best thing to do would be to hide my duffle bag somewhere nearby and make off in the direction of a park I knew to be close by. I hoped that there I might be able to find a place to sleep.
The park was on a piece of property along the waterfront, so for a time I sat on the beach and watched the evening slowly coming on. I lay on a log and tried to rest, but time and again I was interrupted. People came by walking dogs, couples came strolling hand in hand. Finally, before it was dark, I decided to leave. It was getting cold by the water anyway, so I decided to move, to walk back into the city, and once there, to make some plan as to what I should do.
I spent that night trying to find a place to close my eyes. At some point, I gave up and bought a tall cup of sugary coffee from a convenience store and took it to a bus shelter where I pretended to wait for a bus. From the shelter I could hear the sounds of a party not far away. I could even make out the smell of liquor and cheap beer hanging in the air. Later some guests of the party started filtering by on the sidewalk, small groups of boys and girls, most likely students like myself. Some of them tried to tell me that it was too late, that the bus wasn’t running anymore. I shrugged, and so they repeated themselves. It’s like, three in the morning, they said. Don’t you get it? Some asked me where I was going and invited me to walk with them. I told them I wasn’t going anywhere, that I was just waiting for a bus, but these people were drunk so they quickly lost interest. They walked off and left me alone.
The next day, dawn was unusually bright. By ten o’clock I had made my way back to the house, which was when Annie was supposed to arrive. Yesterday’s tenants were gone, but it still didn’t feel right for me to approach the place, so after pulling my duffle bag out the neighbour’s hedge, I sat on the opposite curb and waited. Eventually a minivan pulled into the driveway and a short, bald man stepped out. I wondered if he had noticed me, but he didn’t give any sign that he had. A few minutes later there was another minivan in the driveway. I saw Annie coming out of the driver’s side and a boy I didn’t recognize came out of the passenger’s side, and then the three of them—Annie, the boy and the landlord—stood in a circle, shaking hands.
At first I didn’t do anything. It was like I had forgotten I was meant to be part of the scene. I was tired after a sleepless night, and it was surreal to see Annie. There she was, just a hundred yards away, standing, talking, shaking hands, moving through the world with her trademark cheeriness and confidence. It occurred to me that this was more or less what she had been doing these last few months. Moving through the world and living her life, in a brilliance of mornings such as this. Suddenly I missed her so terribly that I didn’t even bother with my bags, I just stood from the curb, crossed the street, climbed the driveway, and then before anybody knew what was happening, wrapped myself around her in a great big, ridiculous, needy hug. Next came the introductions, to the landlord and to the boy, who as it turned out was Annie’s younger brother. He had come for the ride and to help Annie move. Tomorrow he would return the van, which belonged to their parents. For now though, her brother was grinning. Annie was laughing and asking where I had come from. I gestured vaguely towards the road. The landlord admitted he had noticed me earlier but said he hadn’t known what to make of me.
The rest of the day consisted of us being shown throughout the house. Cheques and keys were exchanged. Papers were signed. Annie, her brother and I moved a few things into the house. All of what we owned so far barely made a dent in the space. Next, we made a trip to the grocery store, then to the mall where we arranged to have our home phone and internet connected. We bought a dish rack and a bath mat, then stopped along the way at a liquor store. Back at home we made a large meal, set up a table on the back porch, and ate dinner as the sun went down. We stayed up late drinking wine in the dark. When I finally went to bed, I had a hard time winding down. I tossed and turned for a while, thinking how everything was different now. From just yesterday, into this. From the life I’d been living these past few months, into this. And what is this? I wondered, drifting off to sleep.
In the following days I met Elliot for the first time. It happened when Annie took me to visit his place. He and his roommate Chris had rented a two-bedroom suite on the ground floor of a townhouse. Upstairs was a young family with a newborn baby whose nursery was right over Elliot’s room. We spent a while listening to the baby cry, and to the mother as she tried singing it to sleep. On his desk, Elliot had a pile of paper clips, so while we were sitting there I twisted and bent them into animal shapes. I made two elephants, a few giraffes and then a handful of trees which I arranged into a kind of forest scene. Of course, I was only doing it to avoid having to talk—to avoid having to look Elliot in the eyes—while the baby cried above us.
Later that night Elliot and Chris came to our house. Chris was sullen, quiet. He gave the impression of having been dragged along. He hardly spoke a word, even as we drank wine and smoked a joint to try and break the ice. Meanwhile, Annie and Elliot talked to each other like a pair of old friends. They spoke eagerly about people in the city, people they somehow knew in common, as if they had so much catching up to do. As usual, I drank too much and the wine went straight to my head. At one point in the evening, Elliot and I wound up in the kitchen, just the two of us, standing in a nook by the sink, close because of the fact that the cupboards didn’t allow much room. And who knows what we said to each other. Maybe we talked about cigarettes, and about how I had started smoking them recently. Elliot thought it was a dumb thing to do, for someone my age to start such an awful, nasty habit, but I tried to convince him that maybe it wasn’t dumb, not if you really thought about it, and not if you considered the reasons I had for having started. I went on to tell him what those reasons were, certain that he was coming on to me, showing me a kind of interest that went beyond what I was saying as I talked and talked.
Soon it was September and we were into the beginning of classes. The days already seemed shorter and the nights were growing cold. By then the initial excitement of being back again had started to fade, and once it had faded, once I was able to see things more for what they were, I realized that something had changed between Annie and me.
At first I noticed little things that I hadn’t ever noticed before. How Annie projected something of a special significance onto our friendship, how she acted as though we alone were in on a conspiracy together, as though we alone were able to recognize and communicate the cosmic absurdity of life. Maybe in the past I’d enjoyed this game, but now it struck me as an affectation. That a woman in the grocery store would be buying apples all the way from Peru, that a professor in his middle age would admit he had never read a poem he liked, or that wild poppies would grow and bloom out of cracks at the side of the road—these foibles and miracles were what Annie would use to try and bind us together asking: Do you see this? Now I couldn’t help but feel these were nothing more than regular occurrences, simply ordinary, completely mundane. And her insistence that they carry a significance had become annoying and bothersome.
It was like Annie and I were stuck on different pages. It was like we had skipped a beat and the rhythm had been broken between us. The trouble was that we never happened to speak about it, although she must have recognized it too. It remained as a kind of embarrassment, looming on the edges of our friendship.
Then something happened one Saturday night around the middle of the month. Annie, Chris, Elliot and I went to a party. Chris was his usual sullen self, but Annie took it upon herself to try and coax him out of his shell. She spent the whole night dragging him around and introducing him to the people she knew. Meanwhile, Elliot and I snuck away on our own.
The party was in a large house that had about ten different people renting rooms in it. We spent a while snooping, going into people’s bedrooms and opening drawers. I was glad to see Elliot could get into this, exploring people’s personal spaces without them knowing it, studying the objects they kept, but without any inclination to steal or disrupt anything. Eventually we wandered outside into the yard. In a dark corner there was a tree with excellent low-hanging branches for climbing. We hoisted ourselves up and perched there side by side. We leaned together, pressed our bodies and faces together until finally we kissed. Then Elliot told me that he and Annie had fallen in love. He told me what a beautiful person Annie was, how genuinely good, how tender and human and warm. Then we kissed again, so hard this time that I split my lip.
And what about Franklin? What had happened to him?
By now I understood that he and Annie weren’t together. As for what had happened, or when it had happened, nobody told me anything. It occurred to me that Annie and I never spoke about things that weren’t light and easy. On one hand it didn’t surprise me that she’d never spoken about her breakup with Franklin. On the other, it seemed odd that in all the time she’d been without him, and in all her emails and the words we’d exchanged, she never mentioned anything.
Franklin was around, though. He was living in the city, with his parents, and going to school. At least once he had been to the house, only a few nights after we had moved in. Apparently he and Annie were still friends, and still saw each other now and again.
By chance, Franklin and I were enrolled in one of the same courses, The Existential Philosophers: Their Lives, Their Works. The professor was an older woman, small and thin, with a biting intellect. Franklin and I both admired her and grew to appreciate the course. There were two time slots for it though, one early in the morning, the other immediately afterward. Franklin always went to the early class, and even though I wanted to see him, I was never able to pull myself out of bed.
One afternoon around the end of the month, Franklin turned up at the door to our house. I was alone, not expecting anyone, and so I was confused when I opened the door and saw him. I told him Annie wasn’t home, that she had gone out somewhere with Elliot, but Franklin said he was here to see me.
Still confused, I invited him in. We wound up in the living room where there was a couch, a small side table and a lamp, but otherwise no other furniture, no adornment of any kind. Franklin said, I love what you’ve done with the place.
I figured he was joking but explained the philosophy we had followed in dealing with the size of the house. Annie and I didn’t own enough to fill the space, but rather than to leave rooms entirely empty, we’d decided to spread ourselves and our possessions, however thinly, throughout. This way we could say we were living here, that we were in touch with every part of the house. In lieu of any response to my explanation, Franklin took an exaggerated stride across the living room.
I suddenly felt awkward. I asked Franklin if he wanted to step outside, if he wanted to climb onto the roof. Walking through the kitchen and out the back, I explained that I’d been sitting on the roof sometimes to smoke. There was a ladder in the yard which I had propped against the wall.
Did I tell you I’ve been smoking cigarettes? It’s only because I like to smoke, I said, but I don’t always want to be high.
Franklin nodded, then we climbed up the ladder to a more or less flat spot on the roof where we could sit with our legs hanging over the eaves.
There’s a reason I’m here, Franklin told me.
I lit a cigarette. I didn’t offer him one.
I want to ask you something, he said. I want to ask if you’ll be my confidant.
I confessed I didn’t know what that was.
A confidant is someone you can tell your secrets to. It’s someone you can trust, someone who will listen to what you have to say.
So, I said, it’s like a friend.
It’s like a friend, said Franklin, but one of a particular kind.
Okay then, I’ll do it, I said. I will be your confidant.
Franklin took a deep breath and started to talk, first about his travels in Europe, saying it had felt good being with Annie then. It had felt right, he said, and he’d known he was in love with her. But then she’d needed to come home and Franklin had wanted to travel on, so he had seen her off at an airport in Lyon and then travelled back to Greece to spend time on the islands there. Now that he was alone, Franklin said it had felt right and good to be alone. It had felt right at first in Greece, and then on into other countries. Then after Europe, coming home, it had still felt right and good.
Franklin spent the summer working idly at a part-time job in the city, and for a whole two months, he and Annie were barely in touch. Franklin had hardly written to her, and never once tried to get her on the phone. He had more or less forgotten her and, he said, forgotten he had ever been in love with her. In the meantime, Annie was broken-hearted, but then she met Elliot and they became friends. Then late one night at his parents’ house, while God only knows what record played, she and Elliot kissed and fooled around, and she forgot all about her love-sickness.
As soon as I saw her again, I remembered that I was in love, said Franklin. It only took a few minutes, really. I only had to see her move, to see her speak, and then it felt real all over again. I realized that it had been foolish, silly of me to forget. I asked her if we could start over again.
But she said no, I said. Obviously.
Why obviously?
Well, it seems she’s in love with somebody else.
With Elliot. Yes, it seems that way.
I asked Franklin, Have you ever met Elliot?
Once, he said, but it was brief. He’s a very handsome man.
After that, we fell into a short silence and the world around us was silent too. I remember thinking that this was the silence that falls between people who understand each other perfectly, when between them there’s nothing more that needs to be said. I pointed into the neighbouring yard.
Over there is a kid who’s maybe eight or nine years old, I said. Just a little boy, and he must just be learning the trumpet. His parents make him practise in the yard, so I’ve seen him out here a handful of times, standing in a very formal way, with a posture that someone must have taught him in school. He looks very proper, steady and focused. He lifts his horn, holds it up, presses his lips into it, and then he blows a single note. He brings his trumpet down again, takes a breath, then raises it up, and it’s the same thing all over again, but a different note. Over and over again. It’s really weird and an amazing thing to see. It’s something I can’t quite figure out. I mean, he’s doing this for hours at a time, playing just a note at a time, one after another. It’s as if he’s trying to make a perfect sound, but there isn’t any music, you know? There isn’t any music to keep him going.
I lit another cigarette. Still Franklin didn’t speak. There was another silence, and I remember this time thinking that maybe we didn’t understand each other, that maybe we were only two people, terribly separate and far apart.
Will you be my confidant? I asked.
Franklin hesitated, and immediately I regretted having asked. It was as if, for having done him the favour of listening, I now expected that favour returned.
I kissed Elliot, I said. Or maybe he kissed me, who knows?
If Franklin was at all surprised, it didn’t show. Calm and sensible, he asked, When did this happen?
It was two weeks ago.
Does Annie know about it?
She doesn’t, I said.
Franklin asked, Is it going to happen again?
We decided it wouldn’t, it shouldn’t, it won’t.
After a while, as if he was thinking out loud, Franklin said, I wonder if we could ever be friends.
I thought we were confidants, I said.
We are, but I meant with Elliot. I wonder if he and I could ever be friends.
Franklin and I stayed on the roof for as long as it took for the sun to sink and for shadows to grow and smother the yard. Mosquito bites bloomed on our arms and legs.
Do you want to get high? I asked, throwing away the cigarette I had just lit. These don’t always do it for me.
Franklin said he wasn’t smoking pot these days. He explained that he was trying to keep a level head. When it was time for him to go, we climbed down the ladder and I walked him again through the house. At the door, he shook my hand. I laughed.
I probably haven’t shaken hands with a man since the last time I did with you, I said.
But Franklin didn’t laugh. He just stood there, and after shaking my hand he thanked me. For what exactly, I wasn’t sure.
Sometimes I wondered what Annie saw in me. She had so many other friends and could have been living with anyone, but she turned to me, she chose me, and I just didn’t understand. As a person, I wasn’t the type to appeal to Annie’s sensibilities. In other friends and in the stories she told, in the worlds she’d conveyed in her letters, I could never find any trace of myself. It caused me to wonder if she even knew who I was, or if she’d maybe been mistaken at some point along the way. Really, we had only known each other for a few seasons now, and although we’d been close, we’d never seen each other change or grow. At least, not until now, I thought.
It was obvious our relationship was coming apart, and although I blamed myself, I didn’t feel regret. In truth, I didn’t care. I blamed myself only as a matter of course, because something or somebody had to be blamed, and I didn’t mind really, bearing that cross. I felt such a bitterness toward her and was constantly annoyed with the fact that she didn’t notice, or that she refused to see what was happening. Out of the blue she’d turn to me and say: Elliot’s very intrigued with you. She would say: Elliot likes you. He talks about you all the time.
As for Franklin, I didn’t see him as often as I’d like. When I did, it was only in passing. Him coming out of the early session of our course on the existentialists, me going into the later one. I wanted for us to sit together and talk. I tried to stop him in the hallway to say hello. I would try to make a joke, but our conversations were always clipped and full of hesitation. Franklin was distracted. He looked sad. He looked uneasy, like he didn’t want to see me. I didn’t take it personally. I figured I reminded him of things he would rather forget.
The days were short and the nights were long. I was staying up late, and the rains came. On Halloween I dressed as a doll with my hair tied into a bun, my cheeks and lips painted red. Elliot was Humpty Dumpty. He’d given himself a paunch and wore suspenders with a helmet painted white like an egg. I remember Chris’s costume too, although I thought it was a lazy one. He went dressed in his regular clothes, but with a carved-out pumpkin on his head. We went to a party that night, and at some point someone pulled the pumpkin off his head, and smashed it to pieces on the living room floor. I remember Chris standing over the remains of the pumpkin looking defeated, overwhelmed at the senselessness of what had happened. But the party was like that—things got broken, drinks were spilled. The neighbours complained about the noise, and eventually felt they had to call the police. I mean, it was a sloppy night, one that brought out the worst in us all.
Now, I scratch my head, wrack my brain, but try as I might, I can’t remember anymore how Annie was dressed. At any rate, I remember that she was morose. This wasn’t a party well suited to her. It wasn’t suited to anyone, but especially not to Annie since it jarred against her notion of the basic decency of others. That night she wound up drunk. She fought with Elliot. He tried to kiss me several times while she was out of the room, but I dodged him. I took the high road, insisting that he did too. Eventually Annie said something about walking to the ends of the Earth and disappeared. Only later I learned that she wound up puking by the side of the road and falling asleep on a neighbour’s lawn.
Soon the police arrived and started emptying bottles, dispersing the crowd. Annie was gone. Chris was nowhere to be found. And then, just as I was wondering what I should do, Elliot grabbed me by the hand and led me down the driveway into the street. He didn’t let go of my hand, but kept pulling me down the street, away from the party, away from the noise.
What are we doing? I asked him.
I don’t know for sure, he said.
I told him I needed a pack of cigarettes, and so it was decided he would walk me to a store, but it quickly became apparent we weren’t headed for a store, nor to any place in particular. We wound up wandering and talking about Annie. He talked about their relationship, how it hadn’t been good in a while. That it wasn’t working anymore was obvious, but he said that Annie refused to admit it. Later we had found a little beach and were sitting on a log together, tight together, close as a way to stay warm.
Do me a favour. Do to me now like I did to you before, I said.
What’d you do to me before?
I resisted you, I said.
I kissed him, but he didn’t resist. Instead, we pressed into each other, trying to get as close as was humanly possible. We pressed into each other urgent and hard, like separated lovers coming together at last.
That was the end of something, like the unravelling of a story that had gone on too long and had become awkward to tell. There were no surprises here. There was nothing to hide and no lessons for any of us to carry away. It was like a ringing of bells and nothing more.
After it had come to light what Elliot and I had done, Annie left the house and took a leave of absence from her classes. She left the city and stayed for a while with her parents, at least until she was well enough to return. She even had herself excused from writing several of her midterm exams, and I had to wonder what excuse she’d given, or whether the university had simply accepted the truth, that she was suffering yet another broken heart.
One Friday night, as I was sitting in the living room, Franklin came by the house with no other reason but to see me. I told him about an email that Annie had sent in which she’d mentioned she was having thoughts of killing herself.
And what did you respond to that? Franklin asked.
I told her I was scared, I said, scared to hear her thinking that way.
So you lied?
Of course, I said. Anyway, she’s being ridiculous. She doesn’t really want to end her life, she’s only saying so because to her it’s a novel idea. What she doesn’t understand is that everybody thinks about it, practically all the time.
You think about it?
Of course I do. Everybody does. But I’m not going to do it, and neither will she.
If you don’t think she’ll do it, then why lie? asked Franklin.
Well, I said, what’s the point of rubbing salt in her wound?
Franklin seemed to think about this. But, he said, in some way isn’t your dishonesty the wound she’s had to suffer?
Sure, but Annie doesn’t really want honesty. She can’t even be honest with herself.
It does seem unlikely she would ever kill herself, Franklin said. But it is probably for the best you didn’t tell her that.
It was an honourable lie, I said.
Sure, if such a thing as honour exists.
We went on like this for a while, talking in the living room, sitting at opposite ends of the couch. I had my legs curled up beneath me to keep my feet warm. Franklin, on the other hand, was wearing his coat. He had both feet planted on the floor as if he were sitting in a waiting room. After a while, he suggested we get stoned.
I thought you were off it these days, I said.
Was I? Franklin asked and shrugged.
The trouble, I explained, was that I had had a cough all week, and what had started merely as a tickle in the throat had moved and settled into my chest. So, I didn’t want to smoke. But I did have some butter in the fridge which had been infused with cannabis. It was a gift to Annie from one of her friends, which she had intended to use to make brownies. In her absence though, I told Franklin, I’ve been spreading it on crackers and eating it as a regular snack. I could make us some crackers, I told him.
How about a smoothie? Franklin countered.
Twenty minutes later we had ingested the drugs along with some berries, banana, honey and almond milk. Now we wondered what to do with the night. Franklin wanted to meet up with friends, but I didn’t want to see anyone. I still didn’t know any of Franklin’s friends, and didn’t want to be introduced to them. It made me wonder about the nature of our relationship, but to my mind, Franklin existed as someone outside of all social context. He was someone who had fallen into my life, someone who had found his way, unattached, into an otherwise empty house.
Franklin dialled several numbers but couldn’t get a hold of anyone. I was relieved. The truth was I would have been content for us to spend the whole night in the living room. Franklin suggested we go for a drive. He had his father’s blue sports car parked outside in the driveway, and since I couldn’t readily think up an excuse not to go, that’s what we did.
Franklin started driving and I felt nervous because I didn’t know where we were going. He drove into the city, over a bridge, into the industrial zone, then downtown and beyond, following the coast. He took us onto the highway and then off it again, and while we weren’t talking and while I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, I realized that the anxiety I felt had to do with Annie and Elliot. It was in the background of every moment now, this feeling that life could be dangerous, that people could be hurt, could be damaged. That I could be responsible. Who knows, I thought, if Franklin and I might not do something reckless.
After driving aimlessly for an hour, we left the city, and it was only then that I felt relief. A physical warmth came over me, a comfort growing from the pit of my stomach. We headed north up the coast, through an old-growth forest, winding at the foot of a mountain.
We drove for many hours and only started talking again as the landscape changed. Franklin, seemingly unprovoked, told me about a woman Nietzsche had loved named Lou Andreas-Salomé. Nietzsche had even proposed to her, but she hadn’t wanted to get married. In fact, she’d been opposed to it on philosophical grounds. So, the two of them had a falling out. Later Salomé married someone else and then had an affair with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
Even though she’d been married, Franklin explained, by the time of the affair, she’d already been celibate for a number of years, in accordance with her philosophical principles. Rilke though, at least for a while, changed all that. He was fourteen years younger than her and their affair lasted almost three years. Salomé was the one to break it off, but the two of them remained close. They shared an intimate friendship lasting well over a decade.
What intrigues me, Franklin said, is just how fitting it is to each of those men.
What do you mean? I asked.
Just how in keeping it is with who they were. Can’t you picture, for instance, Friedrich retreating with a broken heart, defeated and embittered, fleeing into seclusion to philosophize with a hammer? And Rilke, on the other hand, staying close to the woman, close to the situation, potentially painful, but also beautiful and apparently potent?
Apparently?
Judging by the friendship they forged from it, said Franklin.
Okay, I said, I get it. But my question is, who was she?
Salomé? She was a writer, a poet, a philosopher.
I didn’t say anything then. I thought that something must be missing from the story, but I couldn’t guess what it was.
Franklin asked if Annie knew that I was still seeing Elliot. He said, Elliot is a very handsome man. You two would make gorgeous babies.
It’s true, he’s a good-looking man, I said. I rested my head against the window.
We drove until we reached the next town, several hours up the road. Franklin pulled up at the local rink where there was a hockey game being played between teams made up of teenage boys. We went in, bought coffee in Styrofoam cups and sat with the other spectators. These were mostly parents of the players, also groups of friends and girlfriends. Franklin chose to side with the team in blue and cheered them exuberantly. He called out: Let’s go boys! Let’s take these bozos to the cleaners! No one else in the place was shouting and pretty soon the players themselves were looking up in our direction.
During a break in the play, Franklin told me he had kissed Julia.
You remember Julia? he said. She’s an old friend. You went to her house for a party last spring.
Right, I said. Of course, Julia. The girl with the enormous eyes.
I never noticed before. I guess you could say her eyes are big, Franklin said.
Not big. Enormous. Her eyes are these grand, spectacular things.
I’ve known her since the first grade, Franklin said. She’s been one of my oldest, closest friends. Then, I don’t know why, but I wound up kissing her yesterday.
And what was that like? I asked.
It was a little bit strange.
A week or two later, Annie came home, and things were almost as they’d been before. For a few days, we were back to being friends, spending evenings talking about nothing, being stoned together and getting carried away.
One night we had an idea to trace every shadow in one of the rooms in the basement. The room was full of junk left over from previous tenants. It was the only room in the house that was full, packed to the rafters with boxes, books, rusted pots and pans, old bicycle tires. Whenever we turned on the light, all this junk would cast an array of shadows over the walls and the floor. We went in there with a box of sidewalk chalk and spent a few hours tracing the shadows. It felt good to be working together, with nothing more between us than our concern that we might not have enough chalk to finish. When we were done, we emptied the room to see the effect of our work. Annie took a few pictures, but then she said she was tired. She went to bed and I waited, then after I figured she’d fallen asleep, I slipped out the back of the house and started the long walk over to Elliot’s place.
When I arrived, I told him all about the shadows, the chalk, about working with Annie. Looking betrayed, he asked me how I could do that. To be Annie’s friend, and then the next moment be pulling back the sheets on his bed?
I don’t understand, he said, whether you’re cheating on me, or cheating on her.
I don’t think I’m cheating on anyone.
But you are lying, he said.
He was right, but by now all of this had come to seem so inevitable to me, so unexceptional, that more than anything else, I felt tired of it. Could I have been gentler, perhaps more considerate? Sure. Could I have chosen to behave in a different way? Of course. But what was the point? These things had already fallen into place, had taken shape, and who was I to resist?
All I’m doing is putting one foot in front of the other, I said.
In Elliot’s room there was a tape deck with a few cassettes that he and I had played over and over. One was Billie Holiday singing “All of Me” and other songs. I knew then that these songs would be drilled into me, that years later I would hear them and be taken back into Elliot’s room. Whenever a cassette needed to be flipped, we took turns. One of us would get out of bed and cross the room to the stereo. And at that time it was no small thing to be naked, standing, while the other one watched. When it was my turn, I padded quickly and nervously over the floor. I stood at the stereo with my back to him, and when I turned, he was sitting up watching me. I stood there practically frozen.
You look good, Elliot said. You’re a very beautiful girl. Even more so, the more I get to see of you.
The first time we slept together we brought all the blankets down onto the floor. When it was over we brought them back to the bed. Elliot started the cassette and I fell asleep, only to wake up hours later as the sky was already blue. For a moment I felt such a deep sense of satisfaction, and I knew that whatever would happen in life, I would do anything, would give anything to feel this way again.
Things quickly degraded between Annie and me. Sometimes she would come to my room, knock at the door, and when I didn’t answer, come in anyway and find me lying on the floor. Evidently she wanted to talk. Or, she wanted me to talk. But what did she expect? Some kind of an explanation? Some display of remorse?
The truth is I didn’t feel any remorse. I knew I probably should, but whenever I went looking, it just wasn’t there. So Annie would lie down next to me, both of us on the floor, neither of us saying anything.
Once, after I thought she’d gone to bed, I got ready to leave the house again, but this time Annie met me on my way out the door. Standing in the entrance together, I could see that she had an umbrella in her hands.
You should take this, she said. It’s going to rain.
I shook my head. I don’t need it.
But it’s going to rain, she said.
If it rains, I’ll get wet. I’ll be fine.
I walked the length of our road for half an hour before the sky opened up, at which point I turned and went back home. When I got in, she was sitting in the living room.
I didn’t expect you back, she admitted. I thought, you know…
I know what you thought, but I was just taking a walk.
Annie sighed, but it was more like a groan. Sometimes I’m still so mad at you, she said.
I nodded.
You sold my piano.
I looked up at her, ready to laugh, but I could see it wasn’t a joke.
A few days later she left again.
It was December now, and time to prepare for exams. Franklin and I got together once or twice with the goal of studying the existentialists. We met on campus, found a quiet spot, opened our notes and books, but inevitably fell into talk of other things. Our relationship had cemented itself, had evolved into something independent of Annie. We were getting along. We enjoyed each other’s company.
On the night before the exam, Franklin invited himself to the house. He suggested we spend the evening studying, then get a good night’s sleep, and in the morning drive to the university. Since Annie was away, Franklin would spend the night sleeping in her room.
He came by just after dark, toting an overnight bag. The first thing he wanted to do was to put his bag away in the room. We opened up Annie’s bedroom door, turned on the light and went inside. Franklin took a few steps, then fell face down on the bed. He took a deep breath and sighed.
As usual, Annie had somehow managed to make her bedroom nicer than the rest of the house. The room was comfortable and inviting, and although she hadn’t been living here in weeks, the place was still fragrant and warm.
Franklin sat up on the bed. He said, I know I told you I wasn’t, but I think I’m in love with Annie again.
Really? I asked. Since when?
Since maybe just now, he said.
I turned away and started poking around the room, looking for a distraction. On the window sill was a photo of Annie’s parents and her younger brother. Next to it was a long grey feather and a bluish, small, round stone. On the wall next to the window was a calendar still set to the previous month.
I lifted the page, and speaking over my shoulder said to Franklin, She’ll be coming back in three more days.
Will the two of you be able to sort things out?
I didn’t answer. When I turned around I saw that Franklin had a book in his hands, Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. He started reading out loud.
It is good to love, because love is difficult. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. But learning time is always a long, secluded time ahead—is solitude, intensified. Loving does not mean at first merging, surrendering and uniting with another person—for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished and still incoherent?
I read that to Annie once, Franklin said after a pause. It was when we were in Greece and she was so wild about Rilke. We used to read it to each other every night before bed, and in the morning we would talk about what we had read. I asked her about that particular passage but she said she didn’t remember it. She said she must have fallen asleep.
Franklin continued to read from the book, but quietly, only to himself.
I wish she wouldn’t come back, I said. Again, I had turned away from the bed. I didn’t know if Franklin was listening. I’ve spent the last three nights with Elliot, and I’ll be with him again tomorrow, and I just can’t tell you how good it is just to fall asleep in his bed. I woke up this morning and I didn’t need to worry about Annie or about anything else. I didn’t need to hurry or sneak around. It’s like, how can I describe it? It’s like I’ve almost got something, something so basic and ordinary, and like it’s almost real. I can hold it, almost, just as long as she doesn’t come home. For as long as she’s away I can pretend that it’s mine and that it really exists.
I turned and saw that Franklin had swung his legs off the bed.
We should study, he said. Then he started taking books out of his bag.
We spread our notes on the kitchen table and tried for a while to study. Franklin started coughing, though, complaining that there was too much dust in this old house. Before I could say anything, he went into the bathroom to blow his nose. I even heard him splash water on his face.
After that we tried to go on studying, but Franklin kept coughing and getting up. He rubbed his eyes until they were red, and it became clear we wouldn’t get anything done.
Maybe it’s for the best, said Franklin. I don’t think I should stay here tonight after all.
Really? I said. You’re going to go home?
It’s because of the dust, he said.
The next thing I knew Franklin had packed his things, had grabbed his bag out of Annie’s room and was on his way to the door. He paused on the landing only long enough to say goodbye. And just like that, he was gone.
I never believed it was Franklin’s allergies that drove him away that night, but I can’t say I know for sure what it was. Maybe he was overwhelmed and didn’t want to sleep in Annie’s bed. Maybe I had finally offended him. Maybe I had hurt him with my callousness, set against the woman he loved. Anyway, that night he behaved in a way I had never seen him behave before. He shut himself off, he ran away and left me standing there, without an explanation. Maybe it was just the dust.
After Franklin left I tried going back to my study notes but the effort didn’t last very long. Eventually I packed up my things, turned out the kitchen light and went around turning out every other light in the house. Finally, I wound up sitting in the living room. There was enough glare coming in at the windows that I could sit in the dark and still see fairly well. Not that there was anything to see.
I had some pot in my dresser, but I figured if I wasn’t going to study, I shouldn’t get stoned. I lit a cigarette instead and let the ashes fall into a pile on the floor. There was a bottle of wine in the kitchen, so I thought I might have a glass of that. I put on some music and had another glass. I went for a walk and brought the whole bottle along. In the end, I spent half that night sitting on the living room floor, drinking wine and drawing shapes with the tip of my finger in a mixture of ashes and dust.