18

SARAYU WALKS QUICKLY along a street perpendicular to her own, crowded with people looking into the windows of shops and those exiting from the el stop ahead. She checks her wallet again. She wouldn’t want Phil to pay for her dinner. She is done with that. She walks anxiously along a block of ethnic restaurants, Turkish, Italian, Asian, coffee and frozen yogurt, a couple of taquerias, all reflecting the people moving in and out of the neighborhood. Once, Scandinavian immigrants dominated, but the last Swedish bakery has closed.

Sarayu wants to get to the restaurant—she can’t help rushing—but she doesn’t want to be early. Phil is frequently on time, and she wants him to wait. It’s been two weeks since his wife, Linda, emailed Sarayu to tell her about the divorce, and to ask if Phil was with her. Of course he wasn’t with her. The email was a shock. “I know all about you,” Linda wrote.

Why did Sarayu open the email this time? Was it the heading, “a message from Phil Anderson’s wife?” Why do people open emails that should be left alone? Are they so easily manipulated by their inane curiosity, the reason why they get caught up in email scams and send money they will never see again? She had never seen herself that way.

“Is he with you? We are getting a divorce, which, of course, is partially your fault. It’s his fault too. Is he with you? I’m praying for both of you, for you are both sinners and you will get your just desserts.”

Sarayu did not believe the mumbo jumbo of Linda’s judgmental Christianity. She did not believe in paying for your sins. She was doing nothing with Phil. But she did believe that they were getting a divorce.

“Please do not contact me again,” she wrote in return to Linda’s email. She wanted to tell her to fuck off, but as a medical professional, she knew it wasn’t a good idea to antagonize someone who is crazy.

Now she was going to meet Phil for dinner. She took hours deciding what to wear. She did her makeup, washed it off, and did it again. She had picked the date and the restaurant. She knew that he would have to come all the way into Chicago, to come to her, something he had rarely done during their affair.

PHIL IS EARLY and self-conscious. Behind the maître d’s stand he can see his reflection in the mirror, and he moves so that he isn’t directly in front of it. A large man in a black open-collared shirt asks him if he can help. “I’m waiting for someone,” Phil answers.

“Do you want to wait at a table?”

“Yes.”

Phil follows him to a semi-secluded four top in the corner, not far from the kitchen. The maître d’ hands him the wine list and puts two menus down, and before leaving the table he takes Phil’s order for a pinot noir. The kitchen door pops open and Phil hears metal clank and the pop and rush of frying oil. He watches through the window at the front of the room, desperate for a drink. Then, finally, he sees her. She stops to smooth her skirt before pulling the glass door open.

A moment of glare from outside blocks her face from his view, and he can only see the top of her head, her dark hair in a halo of light. Then she moves and he can see the skin of her lips stretch in a smile. She has her hand out to him, as if to shake his, but he reaches for her cheek, awkwardly, brushing it with his lips. It seems to take her by surprise.

“I’m not late, am I?” she asks.

“No, no!” He smiles. He can’t help his enthusiasm; he is so happy to see her grinning at him. He doesn’t want to chase her away. “I think I am early.”

“I’m sorry you had to travel so far, but I like this restaurant,” she says.

He nods. After all the evenings they spent together, eating in hotel rooms, or even an occasional picnic along the river, far from his house, he has never known what her favorite foods are.

“I see you’ve already ordered something to drink. I know what you like. Do you know what I like?”

“I suppose a chardonnay. Tell me about your new job.”

She smiles and looks down at the tablecloth. Phil watches her large oval eyelids and thinks that they are smooth and beautiful.

“The hours aren’t always great. But I have stretches of free time to see people and I have a social life now. I didn’t have much of one before. I grew tired of the complications of traveling so much for work.” She smiles as she makes eye contact with him.

He feels she is in control of the conversation, that she knows what she is doing as they wait for the next thing to say. Sarayu appears more confident than he feels, though he could be wrong. Is she nervous at all, or sorry that they are here? He takes a moment to recover from these thoughts, and to concentrate on what he should say to her that would endear him to her, something small and even meaningless, not the real drama in his life, not his parting from his wife. He is brought back to the immediate. “Other than that, I hang out with friends. Nothing too exciting,” Sarayu says. “What about you? You are getting a divorce?”

Phil shrugs. “I don’t see much of my family right now. Jilly is still at school, and Isabel spends her time with her mom.”

“Linda?”

“The almost-ex? She stays out of the house when I am there in the daytime. She is getting her own place. The girls will spend the summer living in both houses. I may see them more.”

“Of course, it won’t be like it used to be. Your daughters are grown up. They don’t want to stay at home and hang out with their dad.”

Phil laughs and shakes his head.

“You know what I mean. Tell me you wanted to stay home all the time with your parents when you were a teen.”

“You’re right. I didn’t.”

She touches his arm lightly, then pulls her hand away. “Where is Linda looking for a house?”

“Same town. Same neighborhood. It’s a small town and she seems to have taken all of our friends.” He laughs to make it seem like a joke, when it really isn’t one. “It’s all fine. I’m busy with work and the vegetable garden. And keeping up the old workout schedule.”

“I can see you’re still doing that.”

“Keeps my mind clear.”

The waiter brings Sarayu’s wine, a basket of bread, and takes their orders. Normally this would be a time where Phil would make a toast, but to what? Here’s to admitting faults and moving on? So, he tells her about work and how difficult it is in the recovering economy to get businesses to sign maintenance contracts, to bring in new clients, that earlier in the year they had had to lay off two of the women in the office. By the time their food comes, they are on their second glasses of wine and Sarayu begins to pick at the food on her plate, something he has never seen her do. He is struck by this sign of vulnerability, the sort of thing he sees his wife do. He realizes that he has been talking too much, and that he has not told her that he is sorry for the way he treated her in the past. He looks up from his plate. She smiles in a way he remembers.

“I don’t mean to take up all the airspace,” he says.

She shakes her head as if to say that it isn’t a problem.

“Do you come to this restaurant a lot?” he asks.

“Yes. It’s only a few blocks from my apartment. My girlfriend used to date the chef.” Sarayu takes a small mouthful of food. She chews. There is another space in the conversation, and Phil watches her and waits for her to say something else. She looks at him, then down at her plate. “She is still friends with him, even though they don’t go out anymore. So, it’s not awkward when she comes here to eat.”

“That must be challenging,” Phil says.

“You know, I have regretted what happened,” he says.

She looks surprised. Her eyebrows crease. “Which part?”

She is angry, he thinks. “No, no! I don’t mean the relationship. I can tell by your face that you think I’m talking about the affair. I don’t regret that, except that it upset my wife. I regret breaking up.”

She drinks her wine.

“And I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t want to hurt you, and I handled it badly. But I didn’t know how to handle it.”

Sarayu puts her fork down. She sits back. “It’s not like you haven’t broken up with your mistress before.”

He is surprised at her retort. He didn’t see the punch coming and he didn’t expect her to have this attitude now that they were meeting to have dinner.

“And you didn’t do it on your own,” Sarayu says. “I was there as well.”

He begins to smile with embarrassment. “Yes, you were,” he says quietly. “But I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m so sorry I did.”

Sarayu looks at the small pile of food she has made on her plate. “I have never understood why people meet at restaurants over meals to discuss significant and unpleasant things. It ruins the meal. It ruins your appetite.”

“I didn’t want to ruin the meal.”

“Then what is all of this?” She spreads out her hands to show the length of the table. “This idea to meet? Was it your idea or mine? I don’t remember. I chose the day and time and place. And it isn’t like we used to eat out at many restaurants. You hid me away in hotel rooms.”

He shakes his head. “I am so sorry.”

“Am I supposed to sit here and listen to your divorce story and feel sorry for you? Am I supposed to take some responsibility for your wife wanting to leave you? Because whatever was wrong between the two of you was wrong before I came along.”

Phil has nothing to say now.

“I can’t do this.” Sarayu is looking him in the eye with an unwavering expression. “I thought I wanted to see you. But I can’t finish a meal with you.”

Then she begins to lose her composure, at first in a small, quiet movement as her locked gaze breaks and she looks at her hands in her lap. He expects her to rise up and leave the table, and he breathes deeply to prepare himself for this public rejection and embarrassment. Then she puts her face into her hands and begins to tremble. Her trembling accelerates. He looks at the leftover food on her plate, and when she begins to sob, he says to her, “Let me take you home. Just walk you to your apartment and see that you get inside.”

“I hate crying,” he hears her say into her hands. She is embarrassed.

He gets up from the table and walks to the maître d’ to pay. “I’m sorry,” he says as he signs the credit card receipt. Sarayu looks up and begins to wipe her wet face with her napkin. He takes her gently by the elbow and leads her out of the restaurant.

She doesn’t speak as they progress down the block. They approach her building. A cooling wind moves amidst the leaves on the large full trees. Sarayu walks upright. Her shoulders and bare arms are even. She leans into him, then pulls away. “It’s ok,” he tells her quietly. “I’m just walking you home.” He knows she probably feels humiliated, and it hurts him at the center of his chest. He is the reason for her discomfort.

THE DRIVE HOME feels long, but as he pulls into his driveway, he is thinking about Sarayu, walking side by side to her apartment, taking her hand as he said goodbye, he said that he missed her. Then, her whisper, a crackling voice, the kind that betrayed a terrible discomfort, she said that she still loved him. And they parted. At home, his daughter and wife are asleep. He goes to his bed, undresses, and climbs beneath the bedclothes. For the next four hours he falls into a deep and dreamless sleep, the kind he has not had for a long time.