I used to have a recurring daydream about the night I met Max. I was the one making it recur, which made its frequency less compelling. Still, it had that same vivid remove from reality that unconscious dreams have. I saw myself on a film loop, almost getting hit by that bus before Pierre’s party. Each time, I stepped into the street. Each time a different man yanked me to safety. Whoosh. Yank. Whoosh. Yank. The hair blows across the face. Whoosh. Yank. The worried male expressions come into focus, one after the other, panic followed by heroism. I had the fantasy while in the shower, while at work, while at the dentist’s office. I was ashamed of the antiquated scenario of it. I am not some helpless woman who lives in a tower. Should I not be the one yanking myself to safety?
It’s just that sometimes you really need a bus pointed out to you.
Max looked even taller than I remembered after only two weeks away. And perhaps because we were in a temple, a place where people had come to learn and recite and be reprimanded by God’s law, I could feel myself in trouble. Deep trouble. Principal’s office trouble. He looked like he was about to eat me.
“Max?” I repeated.
I tried to will my feet to move. Modern Psychology once did a sidebar on the oversimplification of dividing a fear response into “fight or flight.” This duality left no room for the most common choice: freeze. Most people react to fear with stillness while the heart races and the mind disassociates. They close their eyes and hope the danger passes. Which is what I did. But when I opened my eyes, I was still in this room. Max, stone-faced, walked over to the far wall and returned with two metal folding chairs, which he kicked open.
“When did you get back?”
He looked tired and tense, like he’d just gotten off a flight. He gestured and I sat in the chair across from him.
“That’s your question?” he asked.
“It’s a question. Did you—were you in San Francisco?”
“You want to know if I lied to you? That’s cute.”
“Boots—”
“Don’t. Do not.”
“Max! Did Clive kidnap you? He does that kind of thing now.”
“Yes, I went to San Francisco,” he said, avoiding eye contact. “For two days. I got the contract, incidentally.”
“Congratulations.”
“Oh, shut up.”
I fought to keep my cheeks down. “Shut up” had a long run as the most scandalous phrase available when we were kids, before the full plumage of curse words were introduced.
Now that the lights were on, I could see a platform at the far end of the room with little cubbies, perhaps once used for Hebrew School, now filled with yoga mats, rolled up like Ho Hos. There was also a perfectly made bed and, on the shelf above it, the sculptures Boots had been selling online.
“What in the fuck is going on? Are you the last one?”
“The last one of what? Of the Mohicans?”
“Max.”
“I don’t know where to begin.”
“Maybe start with why you’re here. Or how you know of this place. Or how you got in. I’ll go first: Me, I scaled a dumpster.”
He looked at me as if he were looking straight through me, out the door, out the building. It was the look of someone who wanted to get on a bus and circle the globe until they died. After what felt like a long time, he resumed focus.
“I’ve been here, you idiot. Every night you’ve been here, I’ve been here. Every night you’ve been out, doing God-knows-what with your ex-boyfriends, I’ve been here. Sometimes alone, mostly alone. Sometimes I order takeout, which sucks because getting in and out of here is a thing. Sometimes I sit with these crazy-ass rich freaks in lotus position. They really like to meditate. And don’t worry, Jin used a fresh suction cup on you.”
“What?”
“After she was done with me.”
“I feel like I’m having a stroke. You’ve been sleeping here?”
“Clive said it was better if I sleep here.”
“God, he’s so insane,” I said, trying to pry his anger off me.
“It’s not so bad. Honestly, it’s nice to give my sinuses a break from the cat. I was about to head back to the apartment to meet you because I know tonight’s your last night. According to Vadis, at least. Then I heard a thud and there you were. Here you are. Which is how I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That I’m about to get dumped. That’s how it works, right? I see you in here, it’s bad news for Max. Max is in the past tense now.”
“Well, at bare minimum, he’s in the third person. So that’s not good.”
“Nope!” he said, pulling a stick of gum from his pocket and chewing violently.
“I have so many questions.”
“You look like a homeless person, by the way.”
I wiped the back of my hand against my forehead. My fingers were black from prying open the window. I had attic dust on my face.
“You don’t even like Clive. You’ve never liked Clive.”
“Lola,” he said, snapping, “keep the fuck up. I hired Clive.”
I felt as if I were above us, that we both were, watching these versions of ourselves, confused and incensed respectively. My major organs were competing to exit through my throat.
“Come again?” I croaked.
“Clive offered to help me and I took him up on it.”
“Help you with what?!”
He looked around for a place to put the gum, then decided to jam it underneath his seat.
“Max,” I scolded reflexively, and he gave me a look as dirty as I’d ever seen.
“A few months ago,” he began, splaying his hands on his knees, “I was cleaning out the hall closet and I moved this shoebox. It was heavy so I opened it and it was packed with all these letters and shit. There was this card that played a song, and I thought, huh, maybe this is where Lola stockpiles cards to give to people. My mother does that. But that’s when I started reading the letters. Some of them were breakup notes, some of them were nothing—meet me here, see you at eight, nice shoes, let’s bang—but you saved them all. And I know women do that. Sorry to be gendered, don’t leap down my throat. But you printed out emails from the 90s. The box was lined with ticket stubs and scrap paper and it was … intense. Like hoarding intense.”
“I can’t believe you went through my stuff.”
“Yeah? Call The Hague. Believe me, I have no interest in reading about how some random douchenozzle thought your eyes were like planets, but you do. Once I opened that box, it seemed like splitting hairs to suddenly care about your privacy. I don’t know, maybe I felt like I’d earned it. Not looking seemed like a convenient morality.”
“Like how Julia Roberts won’t kiss Richard Gere in Pretty Woman.”
“Don’t make jokes.”
“I wasn’t making a joke, I was making an analogy.”
“I know we agreed not to talk about our pasts. I know it was my idea. And it’s not the box, the box is not the end of the world. It’s what the box represents. I’m not the moron you think I am. I could sense you pulling back. You nearly went off with that crazy chick from the wedding. Or you wanted to. If I’m honest with myself, and trust me, I’ve had lots of time to be honest with myself, I’ve sensed you were a flight risk since the night we met, when I saw you kissing Pierre on the balcony.”
“You saw that?”
“And I feel like I’ve been trying to show you I’m a good fit for you ever since.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
“About Pierre?”
“About everything that came after Pierre.”
“Maybe I didn’t want to rock the boat or see how easily you’d throw me over. I don’t know, it’s all just very … very…”
“Nautical.”
He nodded and lowered his head. His watch was too big for him, but he centered the face on his wrist anyway, as if it would stay. I imagined what this room looked like when it was full, with dozens of members sitting there with their eyes closed, maybe some with laptops, googling, coding, cracking, manipulating. Like the call center at Esalen in 1969. Max slept alone in this room after they’d all gone.
“So around the same time as the box,” he went on, “I get this email from one of my buyers and he wants me to bring him a couple of pieces in person instead of paying for shipping. He bought three and he’s downtown so I say okay. And he has me meet him at this annoying fusion restaurant down the street. And I walk in and there’s fucking Clive. Then, out of the bathroom, comes my second-favorite person in all the world—”
“Vadis.”
“Honestly, you’d been acting so weird, my first instinct was that you were secretly on pills and they wanted to stage an intervention. But then I was like, well, why wouldn’t Clive just use his real name?”
“Because he didn’t want you telling me you were going to meet him.”
“Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Normally, I don’t like to give Vadis ammunition but you’re kind of the only thing we have in common. So I said something wasn’t right with us because it wasn’t. Like you weren’t cheating on me exactly but you were stuck and I couldn’t unstick you. Then she turned to Clive, who said, and I will never forget this: ‘What if I can unstick her for you, Maxwell?’”
“The exes’ pact is not in blood. You could’ve talked to me.”
“I don’t particularly like being reminded of your capacity to end things. Haven’t you ever asked yourself why I don’t like talking about these people? It’s because they’re chapters so what does that make me? Chapters end, that’s what they do. And you could have talked to me, too. At any time.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it? What were you going to say tonight? Were you going to confess to being half in love with every asshole in this city but the one you’re about to marry? Sounds about right. Clive showed me his ‘menu.’”
“I saw it too.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I completely did.”
“Lola,” he sighed at the arches, half smiling. “Okay, imagine a Russian nesting doll. I’m the bigger doll around you and Clive is the bigger doll around me. You’re ‘The Classic,’ yeah?”
I nodded.
“I’m ‘The Grand Sweep’: The chance to get your partner to get over their exes, once and for all, by having them confront and release their ghosts. That’s the one Clive is testing. We used me and your box to put a list together. It’s not rocket science. I mean, it’s not science science either.”
I puffed out my cheeks, sputtering as I exhaled, driving my fingers through my hair. Was this the most romantic or the most psychotic thing anyone had ever done for me? Was there a difference? Max stood like he was preparing to pace but kicked the leg of his chair instead, which squeaked against the floor. He wanted to be physically away from me. He hopped up on the platform and sat on his bed, which was more of a mattress with a lamp beside it, the kind of setup that wanted for a bachelor. Beneath the lamp was the glass hand. I was taken aback by how glad I was to see it again.
“Why would you torture yourself?”
“Because it wasn’t supposed to end like this!” he yelled.
“You can’t control other people.”
“No shit. You should write that down. Did you fuck any of these guys? Don’t tell me.”
“I did not.”
“I told you not to tell me! There’s a world in which you could have said no. You could’ve said, ‘Sorry, Clive, I don’t need a victory tour of the past.’ Vadis was like, oh, don’t worry, Max, oh, she just needs to get these dudes out of her system. And I wanted to believe them because I love you. But as someone who loves you, I know you better than these people. Your hang-ups aren’t in your system, they are your system. You think I don’t notice how you shut off when my friends tell college stories, like it’s so pathetic when your entire brain is old stories? Why would I torture myself? I don’t know, Lola. Why would you?”
“You were testing me. This is fucked up.”
“Yeah, well, right back at you. You know, I think most people go around praying to not be shaped by the bad things that have ever happened to them, by the people who hurt them. A normal person tries to take responsibility for their own choices. But I don’t think you’re normal. And I love you and it sucks.”
I said nothing, only watched him for a stretch of time as we moved through the dips in the silence, making ourselves at home in it before we ricocheted back into discomfort, talking in circles. It’s unfortunate, I thought, how some of the world’s most productive conversations are breakup conversations. People think, “If only we could have talked like this the whole time, things would’ve been different.” But you couldn’t have. That level of honesty requires a resoluteness achievable only by being within spitting distance of the exit. I didn’t know I was being watched. But Max had watched. He had seen me with an authority that I could never access.
I looked at the glass hand, an approximation of my hand. It looked funny on the floor, like it was attached to a glass body, reaching up from the grave. He’d been sleeping next to it this whole time.
“So yeah, sure, I’m the last one. Now what’s the answer to my question?”
“Which question?”
“Do you want to end it? Do you just not love me back?”
The lights blinked, giving off a crackle. The building was a hundred years old, okay, but how many gurus does it take to change a lightbulb? Still, the distraction was good. Good for me, who was being presented with a question, good for Max, who could look elsewhere while I took my time answering it. I found myself very badly wanting to touch his face, to pretend I knew where his pressure points were, but I didn’t move.
“Of course I love you,” I said.
It did not sound great. It sounded like habit.
Soon after we met, when I realized Max had an air of permanence to him, I introduced him to Clive. The three of us went to see a comedy show, which, in retrospect, was a horrible idea. The itinerary included ten minutes of waiting in line in the cold, stomping in place, an hour of Clive monitoring him to see if he laughed too much or not at all, and then twenty minutes’ worth of perfunctory martinis, over which no significant information was exchanged, save for the revelation that Clive and Max were both a little color-blind.
“Cool,” Max decided.
Not that there was a better response to be had, but I wanted him to shine for Clive. When the truth was that Clive should’ve been putting in the effort, making Max feel welcome. At work the next day, Clive came into my office, pulled up a chair, and sat there in silence until he could stand it no longer.
“I like him.”
“Good.”
“It’s clear you won’t harm each other.”
“That’s a shitty thing to say. It’s a relationship, not a Hippocratic oath.”
But he was right. Do no harm. That’s how we became a couple, grafting onto each other’s life until our nights apart became rarities. But somehow, I’d convinced myself this was a bad thing, that the stability was turning us into two beige fabric swatches who humped on occasion. But it was never a bad thing. And if I did feel bored? And if I didn’t like his friends? All I had to do was tell him. Why hadn’t I ever just told him? Most mistakes get made slowly, almost imperceptibly, over time. They do not hinge on a moment of epiphany. But I wanted to be with Max, I had always wanted to be with him. Because this desire had never caused me any grief, I did not know until now how much I wanted it.
“I do love you,” I said, this time feeling the weight of the words.
I walked over to the platform and sat on the corner of the bed in case he didn’t want me there.
“I mean,” I said, correcting myself, “I love you.”
There was a pinch of tears in my eyes.
“I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you and I don’t think you’re a fabric swatch.”
“What?”
“I’m an asshole and I just really love you. I’m sorry.”
I sank into myself and cried, giving myself over to the kind of full-bodied hysterics people rarely “burst” into. Normally there’s some kind of emotional on-ramp but this was a flash flood. I could not look at him, knowing the contents of the list in my pocket, detailing his flaws as if I had none. I couldn’t seem to close my jaw, which was unhinged in self-pity. My nose was dripping. I may have drooled a little.
“Please don’t break up with me,” I said, shocked at my own wretchedness.
“Jesus, okay,” he said, rubbing my back, trying not to gloat.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sniffling, my head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry I shut you out and lied to you and got caught up in a weird expensive cult. That was wrong.”
“It’s not a cult.”
“Are we sure?”
“No.” He laughed. “Jin told me that Clive was trying to get everyone to call him ‘Shepherd’ for a while there.”
“That’s not how he tells it.”
“No shit,” Max said, laughing.
For the first time in a long time, I looked at him as you’re supposed to look at someone you adore, like at any minute you will be asked to sketch that person’s face.
“Lola, I know you love me. But all I’ve ever wanted was for you to love me more than you’re sorry. All I’ve ever wanted was for you to talk to me instead of about me.”
He pressed his finger against a raised mole on the back of my neck. I never see it, I just cart it around on my skin like a barnacle.
“I have a whole relationship with this mole. Sometimes, when you’re asleep, I stay up and commune with the mole. Like not molesting the mole. Just sorta talking to it.”
“What do you talk about?”
“What do you think we talk about?”
He pulled me closer and kissed me, telling me I tasted like salt and snot. But I could still smell him. The familiarity of it made me want to fall asleep in his armpit. It also, for the first time in months, made me want to fuck him. The room was getting lighter from the outside now, the sun groggy through the arches. I looked at my phone: 5:30 a.m. I’d never seen the Golconda in daylight. I had the sensation of emerging from a matinee.
“Clive needs better lighting in this room,” Max said, looking up. “It’s like a police station in here.”
I took advantage of this exposure of flesh, putting my face against his neck. He held my hand, squeezing it intermittently. Then he turned the hand over as if jiggling a doorknob. The ring. He was looking for the ring. I could sense him doing the calculus: Having the ring was better than having lost the ring, but having lost the ring was less of an insult than purposely not wearing it. He furrowed his brow. His skin was warm on mine.
“Is there any chance we can talk about that later?”
Then, as if they’d taken Max’s critique to heart, the lights crackled once more and went out.
And that’s when we heard the crash.