13

Nothing at All

He was here and now he’s gone. He came and he left. We can’t love each other. We can’t be friends.

“You’ve changed,” he said. “You’re acting like someone else.” He was unhappy that I didn’t let him in, with his talk of friendship, so that he could kiss and cuddle.

“I want to protect our friendship.”

“But can’t friends—”

“Can’t friends what?”

“Spend time together?”

“No, only lovers can do that.”

“Don’t you love me?”

I didn’t say anything.

“I asked you something.”

“What’s the point? Why should you care if I love you or not? The only important thing is that you don’t love me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you only want to be friends.”

“What do you want to be?”

“Nothing at all.”

Rae came to see me and asked me to go for a walk with her. I went. She spoke about B.

“Everybody’s talking about B.,” she said. “He’s the most well-liked man of all our friends because he’s successful with women. He’s interesting, you have to give that to him. It’s never boring to spend time with him. Whatever he talks about, whether he’s being funny or serious, it’s always good to hear him talk.”

Rae spoke about B. and I thought only of A. I thought about him and the “nothing at all” that I let come between us. What did he think I meant by it? Would he come to see me again?

I tried to catch the tail end of what Rae was saying, and to guess at the rest that I’d missed while my thoughts were elsewhere.

Suddenly she blushed and said, “Why are you looking at me that way? You don’t think I’m in love with him, do you?” She scoffed, “You’re all the same! You can think what you will of me, I don’t care! I can fall in love with him if I want to, just to spite all of those married women. If men can have love affairs with married women, then I can have an affair with one of their husbands.”

“That’ll show them!”

“One way or the other.”

“More one way than the other.”

“But, my God!” Rae cried out dramatically. “Life is so boring! What are you supposed to fill it with? What about you, for example? What do you do with your time? Who do you spend it with? With books and books. All you do is read, read, read! You won’t find life’s answers in a book. Don’t you want to have a friend?”

“I have friends.”

“A good friend, I mean.”

“I have good friends.”

“What do they do for you?”

“The same thing I do for them.”

“And what do you give them?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Nothing! Nothing!” Rae exclaimed. “That’s what’s wrong with us! We give and we get nothing at all! We wilt before we bloom, we die before we’ve ever lived!”

I rushed home with the thought that I might have a letter from him waiting there for me. Rae didn’t hold me back. She gladly offered to accompany me for a while. A few times she looked back as she walked with me, lost in thought.

“Wait up!” A voice suddenly called out from behind us. We both stopped short, startled. It was B.

“Speak of the devil,” Rae laughed.

“Is that so? What were you saying about me?” B. asked, grabbing both of our hands.

“We won’t tell!” Rae teased.

“And you?” he asked, turning to me. “How are you? What are you doing today?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Well, nothing for you is something for other people. Are you the same naughty girl you were before?”

“The same as always.”

B. took out his watch, glanced at it, and asked if we’d help him kill an hour or so, walking with him.

“Why should we want to go walking with a married man?” asked Rae.

“Should I divorce my wife so I can take a walk with you?”

Rae burst into laughter. He went on showing off his clever repartee. He gave her a few compliments and watched me to see my reaction. I said goodbye to them and went home alone.

I opened my mailbox. Inside it was nothing at all.

B. came to see me. He came bearing many fresh flowers. They smelled so good!

“I’ve come,” he proclaimed jokingly, “to set the time for our love affair. So now it’s begun.”

“It’s started already?”

“Sure, it started at the picnic, didn’t it? Okay, maybe it didn’t. All the better. We can start it right now. It’ll go from now until, let me check my calendar . . . what is today? The first? Let’s make it until the end of next month. Is that enough time?”

“It’s a little too long,” I responded, smiling.

“If you knew how well I can love, you’d say it’s not enough. Let’s decide on the last day,” he said, taking out his fountain pen and thinking out loud. “What should we write in here? Well . . . let’s call it just what you said it was: ‘Nothing at all.’” And he wrote in his calendar: “Nothing at all.”

“Now we can start loving each other,” he said, sitting next to me.

“But . . . no touching,” I stipulated.

“No hands? What am I, a cripple?”

“A moral cripple, maybe, if you try anything with your hands. You’d do better to impress me with the power of your spirit.”

“I need to get to know your spirit better first. Where is it, that soul of yours? Show it to me!”

“Find out for yourself.”

“Alright. I’ll find it soon enough. It can’t hide from me. I’ve seen souls before!”

We went from joking to serious conversation. He told me beautiful stories about his childhood. We hardly noticed as the whole evening passed.

Maybe while B. was with me, A. was with Mrs. B. Why did I agree to let B. come back to see me again tomorrow? What can come of it?

I don’t have to look far for an answer. All I have to do is lift my calendar’s page to see: “Nothing at all.”