IAN LEFT POPPY sitting in the corner of the couch with her face in her hands while he stood up to walk to the kitchen to get her a glass of water.
I’m so sorry, he said, heading back toward her. His voice had the flat unreverberating sound emitted by someone who knows that the only words available to him are useless clichés, however true they might be. His face was pale and strained, nervous and determined. He could not believe that he was in this situation, and his amazement at the circumstances made him seem robotic and unconvincing.
I know this seems crazy and completely out of the blue, but I promise you it’s the best thing for both of us. I love you. I know you don’t believe me right now, but it’s true. Please, can you please let me see your face? Poppy? Poppy. The last thing in the world I would ever want to do is hurt you. Please, Poppy. Please believe me.
He sat down on the couch and with the water in one hand he tried to touch her arm or stroke her hair. She batted him away. He was putting the glass very gently on the coffee table when Poppy lifted her head and pulled one elbow back as if she were stretching a bow. It wasn’t something she’d ever done before except perhaps in a nightmare and now it surprised her with its ease. She furled her fingers into a fist and raised her arm up high and put her weight behind her shoulder and slammed her naked anger against his back and hit him and then she did it again.
They fell onto the couch. Ian was trying to restrain her, but he could not. Poppy knelt above him with her forearms grasped in his hands and her face reddened with fury, her eyes vivid blue. Her wide eyes, usually searching, now glared. Her expression not its typical, gently mocking self. She shook her head and the brown bangs of her short haircut flew to the side. The line of her long clean neck straightened. She began to kick. She pressed her full weight into his hands and kicked into his shins, into the couch, sending a pillow onto the floor. She bent her bony knee into his thigh and tried to knee him with her other leg in his groin. She was flailing like an enormous bird. Ian only held on more tightly. She writhed until his arm buckled and he let go of her for a moment. She fell onto his chest. They jerked on top of each other. Then his breathing slowed and they stopped moving. Ian wrapped his arms around her while she cried. When she pulled away and got off of him and stood up she knocked over the glass and swept her hair out of her eyes and went to the bathroom.
She splashed her face with icy water until she could not feel her hands. She sat on the toilet with the lid down and took a number of deep breaths, studying the pattern of small black and white hexagonal tiles on the floor. When she had calmed down she went into the living room and scooped up her bag and her jacket and fished around in her pocket for some keys and dropped them on the rug. Then she slipped her feet into her low suede boots and told Ian what she thought of him and left the apartment and didn’t wait for the elevator but instead ran down the eleven flights of stairs.
On the sidewalk Poppy marched with a steady step and the wind ruffled her hair and she moved her lips the tiniest bit while she talked in her head. It was going dark outside, violet bands of light sliding between the buildings. Shapes massing in shadows like old twentieth-century film negatives thrown on top of one another. Weaving red taillights drawing quickly disappearing arcs and lines between the otherwise disconnected people. Night didn’t fall in New York so much as rise, the saturation deepening, the volume lifting, the energy elevating and heightening people’s consciousness of themselves, their sensations or their thoughts, depending on who they were.
What were you thinking? she thought.
You were thinking that he was cruel and that this was the worst thing that had ever happened to you.
That was smart, have a temper tantrum and behave like the teenager you are which is probably why he wanted to end it to begin with.
Would you just forget about him? He’s pushing forty. Well, he should pick on someone his own age.
Poppy stopped at a corner and waited for the light. She could feel the doubts accumulating and dispersing through her mind and body, and beneath them, a deeper river of pain like a second nervous system, an even-more-hidden network of hurt. The idea that this was the worst thing that had ever happened to her was ludicrous. She had lost her mother when she was six. This was just a reminder. So why the searing heat in her solar plexus like a sword being slowly pulled out? This had to stop. In her mind she stood with Ian on a high rock, and miles below them pooled a glassy ancient lake. There was no sound at this altitude, on this craggy cliff of sublime remove. A glowing white sky behind his head. She looked at his face, the fine tracings of lines around his gray eyes like hieroglyphics, letters of another alphabet. If only she could read them she would understand so much. But she couldn’t. They didn’t mean anything. That’s what I must seem like to him, she thought, meaningless. Then she raised her arm and put her hand on his chest and pushed him. He fell soundlessly down and that was it.