I push my chair back from my desk, stretch my back. I’ve been correcting papers for what feels like ten hours. I pick up the phone and call Peter at the office.
He answers after one ring. “Hello, gorgeous. I’m missing you.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing you’re seeing me very soon. I’m done here. If I have to read another obvious undergraduate essay on ‘Feminism and Colette’ or ‘Homosexual Apologism in Gide,’ I may have to shoot myself. Do you want me to come up to your office and we can go together?”
“I have to finish this piece. Best meet there in case I get stuck.”
“Don’t get stuck. I hate these things.” Crowds of art-parasites pretending the emperor is wearing clothes. Peter’s parents are flying into town for the opening of the Whitney Biennial, and we’re meeting them there.
I hear him light a cigarette, inhale. “Just because you don’t like conceptual art doesn’t mean the rest of the world is wrong.”
“Three words: Michael. Jackson. Bubbles.”
“My mother says the show is meant to be very ‘political’ this year.”
“Where are they taking us for dinner?”
“Somewhere nice. They’re looking forward to seeing you.”
“They’re looking forward to seeing you. I’m the woman who kidnapped their son and brought him to live amongst the savages.”
Peter laughs. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Promise.”
I get off the local train at Seventy-seventh and Lex. It’s a perfect spring evening—the golden smell of honey locust, brownstones taking in the last of the sun. Around the corner from the Whitney, I sit on a stoop and change my running shoes for a pair of flats, put on some red lipstick, adjust my boobs up and out a bit. I’m wearing my favorite pale blue linen cocktail dress, but the neckline is a hair too low, and if I don’t lift and separate, my boobs end up looking like a baby’s bottom.
The Whitney is a madhouse, the concrete bridge to the entryway thick with bodies, an express train at rush hour. I’m not even inside, and already I’m pissed off. At the door, a woman hands me a button that reads I can’t imagine ever wanting to be white. I grab a glass of wine from a passing tray and head into the crowd. If there’s a fire, I will be trampled to death.
We’ve arranged to meet Peter’s parents at the elevator bank, but they aren’t here yet. I find a bit of open space on the wall and lean against it, slug down my wine, watch the beautiful people shoving their way across the room. A dark-haired waiter carrying a tray of champagne moves away from me into the throng.
“Can I grab one of those?” I say, but he doesn’t hear me above the noise. I tug his sleeve to get his attention before he is swallowed up. The tray slaloms in his hand, and for a second it looks like he will lose control of it, but he manages to follow its sway, keeping all of the full flutes upright. Not even a slosh.
“Idiot,” I hear him mutter as he presses forward without letting me take a glass of champagne from his tray.
I know this voice. “Jonas?”
The waiter turns, scowls at me. It’s not Jonas.
As I watch him walk away, a sadness comes over me, a disappointment I didn’t know was there, a gut-punched feeling—as if I’ve been given a pardon on my death sentence and then, seconds later, been told it was a mistake. It’s been four years since the coffee shop. Since Jonas kissed me that way. Since I ignored the message he left on my mother’s answering machine the next day, knowing—as I erased it, as I toasted a bagel, as I brought Peter coffee in bed—that Jonas was what might have been. Maybe even what should have been. Knowing it was too late.
Peter is what is. Our life together is good. Great. In love with the realness of each other—with toilet plungers and morning breath and running to the bodega to get me Tampax, falling asleep to Letterman, yelping at wasabi. But none of that matters right now. I reach into my bag and pull out my wallet, thick with receipts I need to throw away— taxi drivers’ cards I take rather than hurt their feelings and admit I’ll never call, a few old photos, a maxed-out credit card. My fingers feel around the recesses behind the window pocket where my hideous license photo stares out at me. I pull out the folded paper napkin. His number is faded but still legible.
There’s a pay phone in the lobby corner near the gift shop. Jonas answers on the fourth ring, and this time I know the voice is his.
“It’s me,” I say.
Silence. The din of the lobby behind me is deafening. I press the telephone receiver hard against my ear, plug my other ear with my index finger, trying to create a bubble of silence. “It’s me,” I say again, louder this time. A man enters the Whitney wearing a pink vinyl suit; the woman on his arm is a head taller, dressed in a Chanel jacket and sheer stockings that do nothing to hide her nakedness underneath. I watch them air-kiss their way across the lobby.
“Jonas? Are you there? It’s Elle.”
I hear him sigh. “I know who it is. Are you drunk-dialing me?”
“Of course not. I’m at the Whitney.”
“Ahh,” he says. “I thought you were in London.”
“We moved back. I thought I saw you just now. There was a waiter. I was so sure it was you.”
“No.”
“I know. You’re there.”
He waits for me to say more.
“Anyway, I was standing by myself in this crowd of assholes in vintage Fiorucci, waiting for Peter, and I thought—”
“—you thought: assholes . . . Jonas. I never returned his call, but I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear from me in the five minutes before my boyfriend arrives.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” I say. “I’m calling you now.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
He is quiet on the other end of the phone.
Behind me, there is a cloud of sound.
“Fine,” he says.
“Thank god. I was worried you were going to keep sulking.”
“I was. But apparently I have the backbone of a snake. How are you?”
“I’m good. We came back last year. I was homesick. It rains in London.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“Peter got a job at The Wall Street Journal. We live on Tompkins Square Park, so I look out at green. And junkies.” I pause. “I wanted to call you back.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“You asked me to choose,” I say.
Jonas sighs. “I asked you to choose me.”
The operator interrupts, asking me to please deposit ten cents for the next three minutes. I feed a dime into the slot, wait for the reassuring chunking.
“Anyway,” Jonas says in an “I want to get off the phone now” voice, “I’m working, so I’d better get back to it.”
“Can I see you?”
“Sure. You have my number.” There’s a retreat, a coolness in his voice, and I feel a sudden acute panic. I haven’t lost him yet, but I know in every atom of my body that he’s about to shut the door.
“How about tomorrow?”
“Week after next is better,” he says.
Across the room, I see Peter and his parents pushing through the crowd, heading for the elevator bank. I turn my back, so he can’t see me. “For what it’s worth, I called because I was so excited when I thought that waiter was you. I was so happy. Then he wasn’t you, and I couldn’t think of anything else except I needed to see you right that second. It couldn’t wait. I couldn’t breathe if I didn’t hear your voice immediately. I still had your number in my wallet. I walked over to the pay phone. I dialed.”
“That’s sounds a bit dramatic, even for you,” Jonas says.
I laugh. “Yeah, a bit. But it’s true.”
“Then come now,” he says quietly.
Peter looks at his watch, scans the lobby. I duck down behind a large man in a purple tuxedo. If I can slip out the side door before Peter sees me, I can call him from the street—tell him I’m feeling too sick to come. I can go downtown to see Jonas and be back at the apartment before Peter gets home. The big man turns, stares down at me as if he is looking at a small, blinking mouse. His face is painted in clown makeup.
“Good evening,” he says. His voice is high-pitched, like a little girl’s.
I smile up at him, trying to act as if squatting in a crowd is perfectly normal. He cocks his head, considers me, lipstick-red clown mouth pursed, before moving on. I hear my name being called. Through the window Clown Man has left in his purple wake, Peter has spotted me.
“Oh good,” Peter’s mother air-kisses me on both cheeks. “We were beginning to worry.”
“I dropped my keys,” I say to Peter.
Peter’s elegant father stands next to him, thick silver hair brushed back, Savile Row suit. He looks older than the last time I saw them. Tired around the eyes.
“You must be jet-lagged.” I give him an awkward hug. Even after all these years, Peter’s parents still intimidate me in their properness, their adherence to a mysterious Upper-Class Brit code of manners. As much as I have tried to learn its rules, whenever I’m with them I have the feeling I am making a faux pas. And worse, I don’t know what the faux pas is.
“I had a bit of a nap at the hotel,” Peter’s father says.
“We don’t believe in jet lag,” his mother says.
“I thought I was late. I ran all the way from the subway. Almost killed me.” Peter gives me a big wet smooch. I can feel his mother’s eyebrows raising. Public displays of affection are definitely frowned upon. Almost worse than visible panty line.
“It’s the cigarettes,” she says. “Eleanor, you really must make him stop.”
“I’ve been here,” I say. “I went to the ladies’ room.” I pause, trying to think of some excuse, anything that will get me out of here. Jonas is waiting. If I stand him up, he will not forgive me again. Peter takes my hand.
“Shall we go up?” His father pushes the elevator button. “We booked at Le Cirque.”
The elevator begins to rumble down. I listen to its approach, knowing it’s now or never. “I’ll meet you up there,” I blurt as the doors open. “I need to use the bathroom.”
Peter looks at me, confused. “I thought you just came from the bathroom.”
“I’m feeling a bit ill,” I say. “Tummy.”
“You do look flushed.” He reaches out to feel my forehead, holding the elevator doors open with his free hand.
“If you aren’t feeling well, Eleanor, you should go home. No use getting the rest of us sick,” Peter’s mother says.
“Mother.”
“She’s probably right,” I say. His mother looks so thrilled by her petty triumph that I almost feel absolved.
“Then I’ll come with you,” Peter says.
“No. Stay with your parents. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
The elevator dings impatiently.
“Peter,” his mother says. “Other people are waiting.”
“Go,” I say. “I’ll see you at home.”
I wait for the elevator doors to clang shut before running out to the street and hailing a cab.
Jonas is outside his building, hands in his pockets, staring up at a scraggly tree boxed into the sidewalk. I almost don’t recognize him. He’s still Jonas, but he’s broad-shouldered now, muscular: a man man. I follow his gaze to a large hawk perched on an upper branch.
“It’s a redtail,” Jonas says. “Must be hunting rats.”
“How disgusting.”
“Still,” he says, “a bird of prey in Greenwich Village.”
“That could be the title of my stepmother’s memoir.”
Jonas laughs. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Manage to make me laugh even when I hate you.” He looks at me, gaze direct, no lies behind his water-green eyes. “To be honest, I was hoping you’d gotten really old and fat. All doughy and English. But you look beautiful.” He frowns, runs his fingers through his dark hair. It is long again, wilder. He’s in his work clothes, jeans and T-shirt covered in paint. He smells of turpentine. There’s a smear of ocher on his cheek.
I reach out to wipe it off, but he stops my hand midair.
“You have paint,” I say.
“No touching.”
“Don’t be stupid.” I put my arms around him, don’t let go. It feels good to be close to him. When I step away, there is wet oil paint on my linen dress.
“That’s all I meant,” he says.
“Shit. I liked this dress.”
Far down the street I see a couple crossing at the light, arm in arm. For a second, I think it’s my father and Mary, and a rotten, crumpling feeling clenches my insides.
“What?” Jonas asks.
“I thought I saw my father,” I say. “I don’t speak to him anymore.”
“What happened?”
“He put Granny Myrtle in a home. Against her will. She died the next day. She called me. She was so scared and alone. I tried to get there, but I was too late. I’ll never forgive him.”
Above us, the hawk takes wing, chasing after a smaller bird. I watch it circling in. “I lied to Peter and his parents. Told them I was feeling sick to my stomach.”
“Sorry,” he says. But I can see in his eyes it makes him happy that I lied to Peter so I could see him.
“Don’t lie to me,” I say. “It’s pointless.”
He smiles. The truth of everything between us. “I was thinking we could grab some beers on the corner and walk down to the river.”
The windows of my father’s apartment are open. Someone—Mary, obviously—has attached tasteful window boxes filled with trailing ivy and white geraniums. Jonas and I walk, arms entwined, through the narrow cobbled streets. Down Perry and across West Street to an old pier littered with desiccated dog shit and crack vials. We find a cleanish spot and sit down. Legs dangling over the edge.
“I thought it would be romantic, but it’s actually kind of disgusting,” Jonas says.
“I forgot how much I like you.”
“Same,” he says. “I kind of hate everyone else.” He hands me a beer. Opens one for himself.
“I’ve never seen you drink before. Funny,” I say. But it doesn’t feel funny, it feels sad, all the things we have missed.
“Yes.” He slugs his beer. “So many things.”
We sit in silence, watching the current. A small pink plastic spoon drifts by. Baskin-Robbins, probably. There’s no awkwardness. No tension. Just familiarity—the bond between us that nothing will ever replace.
Jonas looks down at his knee, rubs at a paint stain. “I wasn’t expecting your call. I think I thought . . . I waited a long time. And then I stopped.”
“It was too hard,” I say.
“And now?”
“I don’t know.”
He drains his beer, reaches for another. “So, are you planning to marry this guy?”
I look away from him. Behind us, on the West Side Highway, traffic has come to a standstill. In the near distance, I hear the rise and fall of a siren. A taxi driver leans on his horn, a pointless gesture, like pushing the elevator button again when it’s already lit. Another driver honks at him for honking, shouts, “Fuck you, moron,” out of his window. A quarter mile behind them, I watch the circular flashing light of an ambulance trying to wedge its way forward between the grudging cars.
“Maybe.” I sigh. “Probably.”
He stares out across the heavy river. “Promise you’ll warn me beforehand.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t surprise me. I hate surprises.”
“I know. I promise.”
“Mean it.”
The sun has set, leaving behind a fiery orange sky. Pylons that once held up the long-gone piers stalk out into the river in rows of two, black against the burning sky.
“It’s painfully beautiful,” I say.
“Just so we are clear,” he says, “I will never love anyone the way I love you.”