Harry’s unexpected seizure had frightened me more than I first realized. I walked faster and faster, trying to ignore a growing wave of panic, finding it increasingly difficult to breathe. Finally, unable to catch my breath at all, I had to stop and lean against a building in an effort to calm myself down. I could feel my heart pounding more and more fiercely. Little rivulets of sweat began forming in the palms of my hands. I felt hot and dizzy, as if I were going to faint. Hugging the building, my body pressed tight against the cold concrete, eyes squeezed shut, gasping for air, I prayed for this anxiety attack to go away. Gradually, mercifully, it abated, and I was able to continue. Shaky at first, finding my steps one at a time, I soon broke into a trot and then began to run. I couldn’t wait to get back home to my little apartment, my comfortable, well-ordered refuge.
Panting and disheveled, I rounded the corner of my block and stopped dead when I spied a tall, thin, familiar figure lurking around the entrance to my brownstone. At precisely that moment, the street lamp in front of the building lit up. The figure turned his face toward the light. I recognized him: it was John Noland.
What in hell was he doing here now, tonight of all nights? Our date wasn’t until Tuesday. Of course I knew what he was doing here. It was so like him to show up unannounced, particularly after we’d made a specific plan to see one another, so like him to catch me off-guard, to rattle me so that once again he’d start with the upper hand.
Well, I said to myself, I won’t let him see me. It’s as simple as that. I just won’t go inside for a while. I turned around and walked swiftly back to the corner, hoping he wouldn’t catch a glimpse of me. I had no intention of confronting him in my present state, looking the way I did and feeling as fragile as a foal. That was not my plan. I knew exactly the way I wanted to look when he first laid eyes on me again after all this time, and it wasn’t like this. He wasn’t going to do me out of my careful grooming, my composure, my air of detachment, of mild amusement. He wasn’t going to catch me unkempt, out of breath, frightened of life, and death.
I’d had visions of what our first meeting would be like. They went like this: Calling for me on Tuesday, John would ring the buzzer in the front hall, and I’d keep him waiting just a short while to show him I wasn’t overanxious. Then I’d buzz him in. I’d listen to him walk upstairs, the familiar loping walk. I’d be at the front door, wearing a new dress, one I’d bought specifically for the occasion. A discreetly revealing dress to show him I hadn’t lost my figure. I’d have on makeup, slightly more than usual, though not a lot, just enough to cover up time a little. My attitude would be light, cheerful, and, above all, disinterested.
We’d engage in a bit of small talk leavened with a few nostalgic innuendos, and then I’d suggest coolly, “Shall we go to dinner? I have to make it an early night.” On the pretext of getting a sweater just in case it was chilly in the restaurant, I’d leave John to look around the living room, to soak up the warm atmosphere I’d created for myself. He’d always said he admired my taste and the knack I had for making things cozy. I’d let him see that some things hadn’t changed.
We’d go to dinner. He’d take me to one of our old haunts downtown.
“Oh, yes,” I’d say, over cocktails, “life’s treated me very well. All things considered, I’m quite happy.” And I’d be thinking to myself all the while, “I survived you, didn’t I . . . ?”
We’d drink a little too much wine, reminisce a little too intimately. He’d reach over, take my hand, gaze into my eyes and tell me nothing had changed. I’d stroke his cheek for a fleeting moment, pull my hand away, and say that unfortunately I had to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning, “Could we please go?” Dropping me off at my apartment he’d say, “How about a nightcap?” I’d kiss him on the cheek and reply in the sweetest voice imaginable, “Another time.” He’d clasp my arm, not wanting to let me go. I’d pull away, run up the stairs of my brownstone, turning to look at him one last time. I’d smile wistfully and go inside.
That was how I pictured our next meeting, and I wasn’t going to be cheated out of it, or at least a version of it, that easily. I wanted John to see me at my best, my coolest, and most prepared, not catch me off-guard, looking like hell, feeling anxious and derailed. Not after all these years. I wanted my moment—the moment in which I proved to him and to myself that I’d triumphed over his memory, and all the memories he represented, that I’d survived and survived well. That moment was going to be mine to savor, on my terms, not at his convenience. And it was going to be on Tuesday night as planned, not now.
However, it was not so easy to tear myself away. In spite of all my plans for Tuesday, I was riveted by the sight of him. I kept watching him from a distance, hoping he would turn his face toward the light again. It was too dark to tell how he really looked. He was blurred, indistinct, floating like a shadow. He continued his vigil, showing no signs of leaving. Finally, I retreated, walking slowly around the block, hoping he would go away.
The streets were almost empty. Gone were the Saturday afternoon strollers, the tradesmen locking up their stores, the last-minute shoppers carrying home bags of groceries and the odd bunch of flowers. In their place, the night people were beginning to creep out here and there—people who seemed to be waiting for something, anything—an event, a fight, an accident—to shape the pattern of their lives for the next few hours. I watched a cat chase a large brown cockroach on the sidewalk. I felt a subway rumbling beneath the concrete. A wailing siren shredded the air. A man in rags, carrying two tattered shopping bags, darted out in front of me, yelped, and ran away. I jumped back, lost my balance, and steadied myself against a parking meter, where I waited for a time, trying not to inhale the exhaust fumes from the cars whizzing by. All around me was that combination of energy, danger, and hopelessness which is the atmospheric brew of big cities.
When I came around the block again, John Noland had gone. Thank God, I whispered, breathing a sigh of relief. I mounted the steps of my brownstone, lead-legged, my head aching. I opened the door to the entrance hall, longing to lie down. I didn’t even bother to get my mail, which I could see through the slot, crammed inside its brass box on the wall. Bills, circulars, catalogues, most likely. They could wait. Everything could wait until I’d had a hot bath and a good night’s sleep. I put my key in the second door.
Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. I whirled around. “Hello,” said the low, insinuating voice I instantly recognized. There was the familiar face in front of me.
“John! You scared me to death!”
He smiled that winning smile of his. I felt weak and unsure of myself as he dangled in the dimness, an old memory beckoning me back in time.
I squinted, trying to bring him out of the gloom into sharper focus. I saw he hadn’t really changed that much over the years, except that his features seemed starker now. His skin was less supple with age. There had always been a monastic austerity about John. He was tall, thin, angular, and slightly stylized, like the carved apostles on Gothic cathedrals. I used to tell him he would have made a good model for the Crucifixion. Even now, he looked monklike, despite his blue jeans and red flannel shirt, open to the middle of his chest. He still possessed those grimly handsome, sunbaked, ascetic looks which had attracted me to him all those years ago. And there was still that impish glint in his expression which, I knew from experience, could suddenly harden into cruelty for no apparent reason.
“Hello, Faith.” His lips were a smudge in the murky light.
I knew he was studying me. That was quite like him. He was adept at gauging my reactions to him by staring at me until I became so self-conscious I revealed myself in some awkward way. Then he’d pounce like a jaguar, clawing my confidence to pieces. I thought to myself: you bastard, you instinctively knew you’d catch me at my worst. He must have known damn well this wasn’t the way I wanted to present myself to him, not after all this time. But there I was, standing in front of him, exhausted and disheveled, looking just as pathetic as I possibly could. In fact, I hadn’t felt or looked quite so terrible in years.
I raised my hand in a vain effort to smooth back my hair. John intercepted it, held it for an instant, then kissed the palm. I felt the flick of his tongue on my flesh.
“You look beautiful,” he said, as if he’d read my thoughts.
“Rubbish.” I pulled my hand away from him. “I look like a rat on a wheel, and you know it.”
He laughed. I began trudging up the stairs.
“What happened to Tuesday?” I said wearily.
“I wanted to surprise you,” he answered, walking so close behind me I could feel the heat of his body.
“Why?”
“Turn around and let me look at you.”
He put his hands on my waist, stopping me mid-step. It had been so long since I’d felt a man’s hands on my body, I froze. His hands pressed firmly on my sides. I relished the moment longer than I should have, giving myself away. When I tried jerking free at last, he held me fast, speaking to me in a patronizing tone.
“Stop . . . Relax . . . You’re like a scared rabbit.”
I wriggled around to face him. I was one step above him, but because he was so much taller than I, we were now the same height. We looked into one another’s eyes. He continued holding my waist.
“Go away, John. I’m exhausted. Come back on Tuesday, will you? Like we planned.”
“How’ve you been?” he said.
“Fine. I’m just tired.”
“You’re trembling.”
“Yes, well . . .” I heard my voice crack.
“Aren’t you glad to see me?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“No?” He seemed amused.
“I don’t know, I—”
He kissed me gently on the lips.
“What don’t you know? Hmm? What don’t you know?”
I was stunned. I hadn’t kissed anyone in God knows how long.
“Jesus, John!” I cried, jerking away.
He looked startled, then wounded.
“What?” he asked ingenuously. “What?”
“You think you can just—” I gave up, too exhausted for anger. “You haven’t changed one bit, have you?”
“Make me a drink?” he said impishly.
“No.”
“A cup of tea?”
“No.”
“Love?” he whispered, suddenly leaning in.
“John, you are the limit. You really are.”
“Just a drink then. Be a sport.”
“No. Look, I’m not ready for you. Come back on Tuesday. We’ll have a nice dinner somewhere, talk, catch up.”
“I’m all caught up . . . Aren’t you?”
“What’s wrong with doing things as we planned for once?”
“Doing what things?” he said suggestively, his whole manner coated with a come-on I pretended to ignore.
“Why is it that having a date with you, even an encounter, always turns into a game where you get to make up all the rules?”
“Is that what you think?” He looked genuinely dismayed. “Well then, I’m sorry. The truth is I couldn’t wait to see you, that’s all. I got so excited hearing your voice again. I was just carried away, I suppose. I thought it would be rather romantic. Anyway, I apologize. I’ll go.”
He released me. Suddenly, I felt panicked. There it was—the old pattern repeating itself: I reject him, then I feel abandoned. I felt torn between wanting him to leave and longing for him to stay.
“It’s just that I wasn’t expecting you now.”
“Don’t worry.” He stroked my cheek.
I inadvertently raised my hand to his, following its path along my skin.
“I’ve missed you, Faith. Have you missed me?” I nodded. “Come on then,” he said, putting his arm around me. “Let’s go upstairs.”
John insinuated himself back into my life as though he’d never really left it. We chatted easily and flirtatiously over a bottle of wine. He complimented me on my apartment, stroked Brush, whom he’d never met, asked to see the photographs of my most recent work, remembering the leather-bound album in which I kept a record of the jobs I did. He seemed interested in me, in what I’d been up to. I got out the album and showed it to him. Thumbing through it, he said my technique looked as if it had improved—not that it needed to, he added mischievously. We both laughed at the double entendre. There was nothing at all forced or awkward between us, no residual anger or recriminations. Still, I was wary. I asked him what he’d been doing and he was appealingly modest, saying he was up to pretty much the same things as always: traveling, writing, lecturing. He said people were taking more of an interest in him these days. He said he was winning more awards, being asked to give interviews, and speaking for hefty fees. “Standards must be higher at last,” he joked.
Underneath John’s easy banter, however, I sensed danger. It was as if an old, rusty door were slowly creaking open, and though fearing what I would find behind it, I kept wanting desperately to look.
Quite casually, John started running his index finger up and down my arm as we spoke. He began to massage my neck. Closing my eyes, against my better judgment, I let his powerful hands sway me back and forth in a compelling rhythm. How easy it would be for him to kill me, I thought. And then I caught myself. Why was I thinking of murder? An image of Cassandra flashed through my mind. I snapped open my eyes and quickly pulled away.
“Why so skittish?” John said. “You used to love being massaged.”
“I-I’m afraid,” I stammered.
“Afraid?” The thought seemed to amuse him. “Of what? Me?”
“Maybe. Or myself.”
“Come here,” he purred. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“No? You did hurt me once.”
“You hurt me too,” he replied somberly.
“Yes, but you used to get so furious, so violent. Sometimes I thought—” I stopped myself.
“What?”
“No, no, nothing.”
“What? Tell me.”
“All right.” I drew a deep breath. “Sometimes I thought that you wanted to kill me.”
“Really?” he said, arching an eyebrow.
“Did you ever?”
“What? Want to kill you?”
“Yes.”
We looked hard into each other’s eyes for a long moment.
“Not literally,” he said, smiling.
“But you used to get so angry. You hit me, remember? Do you think you ever could kill anyone, John?”
“You mean, aside from myself?” he said.
His answer amazed me.
“John, do you really think you could kill yourself?”
He shrugged. “I’ve thought about it. Hasn’t everyone?”
“I haven’t—not seriously.”
“Well, you’re lucky.”
We sat in silence for another moment. I hadn’t realized, all those years ago, what a melancholy man he really was.
“Yes, probably,” he said, after a time. “I probably could kill someone if I had to. If it was them or me.”
“I mean a woman,” I said, “a woman you were involved with.”
He looked at me quizzically. “Why are you asking all these questions, Faith? Do you have murder on your mind?” he said lightly.
I got up to pour myself another drink.
“Oh, I don’t know. The subject seems to interest me lately.”
“Quite a subject, murder.” He didn’t seem to take me seriously.
“Murder,” I said, refilling his glass, “and passion.”
He grabbed my wrist. Some wine spilled out of the bottle. Brush leapt off the couch and slunk away to a corner. John pulled me down to him and kissed me deeply on the mouth. I tried to free myself, but he kept a firm grasp on me, refusing to let go.
“John, no—please!” I protested.
He took the wine bottle from my hand and rested it on a table nearby. Standing up, he enveloped me in his arms. I was frightened, and yet the fear was exciting. I felt how much he wanted me, and that made me want him. For a while, I kept on resisting, but his passion and persistence wore me down. Finally, he lifted me up and carried me down the hall. I clung to him, kissing him, licking his ear, burying my head in his neck, whimpering that we shouldn’t be doing this. He paid no attention, slamming the bedroom door behind us with his foot. I heard a small cry from Brush, wanting to get in. Then he threw me on the bed and lunged on top of me. I was his now, and we both knew it. We struggled to undress, not wanting to forego a second of contact with one another. He tried to undo my bra unsuccessfully.
“You never could figure out how that thing worked,” I laughed, starting to undo it myself.
John was too impatient. He yanked the bra down around my waist and began massaging my breasts. I pushed my pelvis up against him and started undulating slowly until passion overwhelmed the two of us.
We fucked, and fucked hard. John slid his hands under my buttocks and gripped them tight, lifting me up, fusing our hips together. He pushed deep into me. I wrapped my legs around him tightly, trying to cement him to me while he swung up and down, over and over, like a madman on a rocking horse. I could see the muscles of his neck straining in taut relief underneath his skin. I began to watch him more closely as he sucked my nipples and licked the sweat off my body. He seemed absorbed in a private fantasy, devoid of tenderness or even connection. His performance struck me as more of a feeding frenzy—trying to sate long years of hunger in a single feast. As we went on, my excitement drifted into detachment. I pretended to have an orgasm so that John would come. At his rough, frantic climax, I saw myself as Cassandra Griffin, impaled on the bed with a knife through my heart.
“Great,” John said, rolling off me with a grunt.
He kissed me and dozed off. As I lay next to him, I felt the familiar loneliness. His presence now was crude and harsh. The aging man lying next to me now, with his fitful snoring accompanying a restless sleep, was hardly the brilliant lover of my dreams.
I thought of the time one summer, years ago, when John and I had gone swimming together in the ocean off Amagansett and I’d gotten caught up in a riptide. John had a rubber raft. I called out to him to help me.
“Don’t panic!” he cried. “Just tread water and let it carry you.”
“I’m being carried out to sea!” I screamed. “Swim to me on the raft! Help me!”
“Don’t panic!” he yelled.
“Help me, John, please help me!”
He started swimming toward me on the raft but stopped short at the edge of the swirling foam.
“John, please, come get me—!”
“I’ll get caught up too . . . Just don’t panic—”
“Throw me the raft! Please!”
“It won’t reach you. Just relax. You’ll drift back in again.”
I felt as if a great cold serpent were wrapping itself around me, dragging me out to sea. The more I struggled against it, the farther out it pulled me.
“Listen to me, Faith—float! Just float! Let it take you!”
I reached out for John but he was much too far away. So I did what he said—I floated, just floated, closing my eyes and letting the water take me where it wanted. The tide carried me out so far that John’s bobbing raft was just a speck on the horizon. I drifted for what seemed an eternity, certain I was going to die. And then suddenly, just as suddenly as I’d been caught up, I was released. I felt myself being carried back to shore by the slow, heaving motion of the waves. Out of the riptide’s grasp at last, I swam frantically to the beach, scrambling up out of the water, collapsing on the blessed sand, exhausted and crying.
I looked up. There was John, standing above me, blocking the sun.
“You see? I told you not to panic.”
“You bastard.”
He knelt down, stroked me, kissed my face, my hair. I turned my head away, feeling drowned inside.
“There was nothing I could do,” he said. “Honestly. You weren’t in any danger. The tide comes around again. All you have to do is float with it, not panic. I couldn’t have helped you, Faith. Don’t you see, you had to do it yourself. I couldn’t get to you. You see that, don’t you?”
“John,” I said finally, turning to him once more, “why didn’t you come out and float with me? You had the raft.”
His expression flickered slightly. “You want too much.”
“Or too little,” I replied.
That was one incident. There had been others. Ugly moments where he’d threatened me, even struck me, then repented in a frenzy of passion and regret. I skimmed over them in my mind, glancing at them fleetingly, as if they were traffic accidents involving other people.
John rolled over and got up out of bed. He walked over to the window and stood naked in front of it, his back to me, staring outside.
“John?”
He didn’t answer. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the shadowy wall, bracing himself with one hand, head bent forward, his profile outlined by lamplight.
“John?” I said again.
“Hmm?” he replied, after a time.
“What are you thinking?”
“Nothing . . . I’m thinking about your view,” he said.
“I don’t have a view.”
“That’s what I was just thinking.”
“John?”
“Hmm?”
“Where’s your wife?”
“We’re separated. I told you.”
“What was she like?”
He turned and glared at me.
“I’m not going to answer those questions,” he said harshly.
His response didn’t surprise me, nor did it frighten me. In fact, he no longer frightened me. I looked at him as I might have looked at some intricate, outdated object, the exact function and purpose of which had been lost over time. Lacking any further investment in him, and no longer compelled by a feeling of danger, I decided to play with him a little.
“It feels strange, doesn’t it, John?” I said.
“What?”
“Us being together again.”
“Hmm,” he replied without conviction.
“Don’t you think?”
“What?”
“It feels strange.”
“I haven’t really thought about it.” He sounded vaguely irritated.
“Let me ask you something. Did you ever wonder what it would be like if we got back together?”
“No,” he said, glancing out the window once more.
“No?” Despite my newfound detachment, I was vaguely stunned by his response. “You mean you never thought about me?”
“I thought about you. But I’m not a planner.”
“A planner?” I repeated, not quite understanding what he meant.
“I don’t plan things,” he said.
“But when you think about things, don’t you imagine how they’re going to be?”
“No. I just think about them, that’s all.”
He faced me directly and squinted his eyes.
“I’m sorry I can’t be the way you want me to be,” he said.
“What do you mean, John?”
“You want me to think in a certain way, behave in a certain way, say certain things.”
“No, John, I don’t. Not anymore.”
“Oh yes you do.”
“All right,” I said, playing along. “Let’s say I do. Is there something wrong with that?”
“It’s naive,” he said, turning back to face the window once more.
“Really? How?”
“Because we’ve just established our connection. We’ve just done it—”
“By making love—?” I offered.
“That, yes. By being here. Together. This is our connection.”
“What’s wrong with talking?”
He raked his fingers through his hair impatiently.
“I hate words,” he said dryly.
“That’s a drawback for a writer, isn’t it?”
Closing his eyes, he massaged the bridge of his nose.
“Very funny,” he said, clearly unamused.
“John,” I continued, “I want to know about you. What you’ve been up to all this time. All these years I’ve thought about you, I felt somehow you were thinking about me too. I want to know what your wife was like. I want to know if she reminded you of me. What did she look like? Do you ever see her? Do you have any children?”
I could see him growing more and more irritable. I knew I was getting to him and I rather enjoyed it. John crushed out his cigarette and sat down on the bed.
“Do you want to meet from time to time?” he said casually.
“What do you mean?” I feigned surprise.
“I mean get together from time to time. Like this. Have dinner, you know . . .”
I pretended to think for a moment, as if the idea had caught me off-guard.
“I don’t know,” I said. “What’s from time to time?”
“Whenever we feel like it.”
“Nothing regular?”
“No,” he replied uncomfortably.
“So,” I went on, trying not to sound sarcastic. “Maybe once a month, or once a week, or once a year? Just whenever?”
“We can play it by ear,” he said.
“I’m not a musician, John.” I smiled perfunctorily.
“Well, listen, I’d like to very much,” he said, sweetening his tone a bit, “if you would. Why don’t you think about it? I should be going.”
I swallowed hard. This was unexpected.
“Going?”
“I have to get home. To pack.”
“Pack?”
“I’m heading down to the Amazon for a few months,” he went on. “Researching a new book on the rain forest.”
“Um . . . What about Tuesday?” I said, trying to restrain myself from an unseemly outburst. “We have a date, remember?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he replied matter-of-factly. “I won’t be here.”
“What?”
He cupped my face in both his hands, holding it as if it were a precious object, kissing me gently on the lips.
“You haven’t changed,” he said.
I pulled away. I really didn’t give a damn, but I wasn’t going to let him off the hook so easily.
“Let me get this straight, John. You knew you weren’t going to be here on Tuesday?” I pretended to be incredulous, when, in fact, this was so typical of him. “I mean,” I continued, “you just came here to get laid or what?”
“Stop it, Faith.”
“I can’t believe that was your single motivation. Knowing you, you could get laid a hundred places—”
“Stop using that expression.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to offend your delicate sensibilities. What I can’t figure out is why?” I said.
“Why what?”
“Why bother?” I was genuinely curious.
“I wanted to see you again. I needed to see you again,” John replied.
“Why?”
“I don’t know why!” he snapped. “Does everything need a reason? You wanted to see me too. Do you know why?”
“Yes, in fact, I do,” I answered calmly.
My attitude seemed to annoy him.
“Why?” he said, glaring at me.
“You look really annoyed,” I said, smiling back.
“Just answer the question, will you?”
“Why I wanted to see you again? Because I wanted to understand why you didn’t succeed in killing me.”
“Jesus!” he sighed. “We’re back to that again, are we?”
“I don’t think we ever really got away from it,” I said. “I guess I wanted to see why I survived where others didn’t. And, in a curious way, I guess I wanted to see if I survived, because, you see, living doesn’t necessarily mean one has survived.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t interest you anyway.”
John picked up a sock from the floor. I watched him, fascinated with his catlike movements. He bent down on all fours.
“John?”
“Yes?” he said, from his hands and knees as he retrieved the other sock from under the bed.
“There’s something I have to tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“Stop dressing for a moment. This is something I always wanted to tell you and never really had the courage to.”
Socks in hand, he paused, looking at me with renewed interest.
“You love me,” he said perfunctorily.
“No, it’s not that. I told you that, a lot. It’s something else.”
“What?” He seemed wary.
I paused a second. For effect.
“John,” I began slowly, measuring every word, “I don’t think you’re a great writer. I never have.”
For a moment, he seemed unable to react, unable even to move. He threw the socks on the bed, then reached down and swiped up his shirt from the floor, putting it on in short spasmodic gestures.
“Thank you!” he said coldly.
“You’re welcome.”
I smiled at him the next time he glanced at me. He nodded curtly, buttoning each button of his shirt with exaggerated precision. Except for his shirt, he was naked from the waist down. His long thin legs looked like two poles under a tent.
“I don’t believe you,” he said at last, stepping into his pants and pulling them up around his waist. He tucked in his shirt and zipped up his fly. In his wrath, he missed closing the belt buckle the first time around.
“About what?” I said, studying his new awkwardness. It was like watching a specimen fluttering around in a jar. I knew I had him.
“You used to tell me I was a great writer,” he said, sitting on the bed to put on his socks.
“People say all sorts of things when they’re in love.”
He stood up and turned to face me. Dressed, he looked less threatening.
“I am a great writer,” he proclaimed. “People all over are finally recognizing just how great I am. I don’t really care what you think.”
“Oh, well, good.”
He hesitated for an instant.
“Just out of curiosity,” he went on, “what is it about my writing you don’t like?”
“I thought you didn’t care what I thought,” I replied nonchalantly.
“I don’t. I’m just curious.”
“All right then . . . In my opinion, it’s too safe.”
“Safe?!” he snarled. “I risk my neck for my books!”
“I know you do,” I replied sympathetically. “But there are no real emotions in them. They’re not about people, they’re about ideals. And,” I sighed, “you’re always careful to be so fashionable.”
“Fashionable?!” I could feel his anger rising.
“ ‘Politically correct’ is the current expression, I believe.”
“Hell hath no fury, perhaps?” he said with a sneer.
I thought about this.
“I don’t feel scorned, John,” I said, after careful consideration. “Just a little bored. The truth is, it really doesn’t matter what I or anyone else says about your writing. In your own heart of hearts, you know you’re second-rate. What other people think—for good or for bad—is irrelevant. You’re just so angry you’re not one of the greats.”
I could see the sides of his cheeks moving as he ground his teeth together.
“What if I told you I didn’t like your painting?”
I shrugged. “You never told me you did like it. In fact, when we were together, you never talked about my work at all, only your own. I was amazed when you asked me so much about myself tonight.”
“Clearly, it was a mistake,” he said humorlessly.
With that, he grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and left.
“Thanks for the memories,” I called out just before the door slammed.
The next morning in the shower, I heard John leaving a message on my answering machine. When I got out, I played back the tape.
“Faith, John,” it said. “Call me, please, it’s important. I don’t want it to end like this. It can’t end like this, do you hear me?” His voice sounded scratchy.
He left a number. When I finally returned his call that afternoon, a woman answered the phone.
“Hello?” she said.
“Is Mr. Noland there?” I asked tentatively.
“No. Who’s this?”
“Oh, this is just an old friend. Who’s this?”
“This is Mrs. Noland. Who’s this?”
I smiled, shook my head, and hung up, thinking that could have been me.