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AC gave me another hug.

“Now piss off and watch porn. Maybe if you’re lucky, Tristan will come back.”

He shook his head. “Don’t tease me.”

I really looked at him then. “So it’s true.” He paled, but said nothing, looking even more frail than he had before. “Shit. Well, that’s both of us screwed then.” I leaned my head on his shoulder. “Look me up in New York. We can reminisce. About the good times we never had.”

A spasm of worry crossed his face. “You won’t write about this.” It was almost a question.

I patted him on the back. “You really don’t get it, do you? But why would you? Why would anyone?” I opened the door. “Take it easy, ok? Dave will know how to get in touch.” I walked a step out, then turned back and pushed the door back open. “I really won’t write about you,” I whispered, “as long as you won’t laugh about all this.” I kissed him on the cheek. “Take care. Ciao.”

I walked through the lobby with surprisingly good balance and dignity, I thought. I was tempted to order another bottle on the way out, to keep me company in my polyester haven out by Heathrow. Tariq was still in the car, dozing. I suddenly felt bad for keeping him up, away from wife and kids, while I got drunker with some famous people. Famous. For what? My head hurt.

Tariq shook himself awake, and started the car without a word. We pulled off into the night, heading for the M4 out to Heathrow. I watched the darkened houses go past, people sleeping, hopefully peacefully. Nothing mattered. That was their world. Not mine. I got to do the overview.

Chapter 25

I was finally alone. Alone on the plane, as much as I could be alone with 300 odd other people around me. Most of them just looked resigned to spending the next seven or eight hours crammed into their seats. I thought about when plane travel used to be more like a voyage, an adventure rather than an ordeal, and people were excited about the newness, the speed of it all. Now plane rides, even transatlantic ones, felt more like bus rides. “Familiarity breeds contempt” popped into my head, and with it, the painful reality of trying to guess where Tristan was at this very moment. I didn’t figure it was that hard—passed out across the silk bedspread that was supposed to be ours, a blond head, or two next to his. Had he even noticed I was missing? Or was he just grateful I hadn’t caused a scene?

When Tariq had dropped me at the hotel, both of us were too tired to really say anything, but his “good luck miss” seemed both sad and genuine. Maybe he had been hoping too that he’d get a call while we were driving, instructing him to turn around. But nothing came. No texts, no phone messages, nothing waiting for me at the check-in desk. Just the bland smile of the uniformed man assigning my seat and handing me back my passport, wishing me a good flight.

And now, as I looked across the person next to me, to watch the plane make its turn into the runway, feeling the thrust of the engine rumbling through the metal into the seats, the hotels and buildings starting to rush past, the bumps on the runway juddering the plane as we went faster and faster, beyond that point of no return—what was it called again?—and then the nose lifted up, and we had left the ground, racing into the sky and banking, quickly, horribly, to keep the flow of planes taking off going. I watched the green and grey of England sinking away from me. Had I just made the biggest mistake of my life? I could have stayed there, stayed with Sarah, written the article, headed back—or not. I could have stayed there. Now that Tristan was obviously a memory, I didn’t know whether I’d get more jobs or not. Would it help me or hurt me, that fleeting connection? I listened to the hum of my thoughts, rattling on about practicalities as though they were considering someone else entirely. I barely noticed the tears starting to flow, one after the other, until one dripped off the end of my nose. I wiped them away, hurriedly. Great. Crying on the plane. Add it to my list of clichés, like sleeping with the star and flirting with the boss. What next? Rehab? Botox? Adoption? But all the words meant nothing. They just served to drown out the endless hum that was filling up more and more of my head.

He’s gone. You won’t have him. You tried and you failed. He’s gone.

The memory of waking up with him at Sarah’s, my head nestled into his muscled, pale shoulder, rushed up at me like a car crash, and I found myself gasping for air as I grabbed at my seat belt and made for the bathroom. A stewardess tried to stop me, but I made the gesture as if I were about to throw up and she let me go. Less to clean up, she probably thought. And I did feel sick. The pain in my side was sharp and unclean, like a rusty knife wound. I locked the door and counted how long I probably had to stay in here before they started banging on the door. This was nice, sitting on the toilet seat, my head on my knees, breathing in the strange deodorized smell of the blue chemical that they flush with, trying to not think. Stopping thinking. Stopping feeling. That’s all I needed to do. But write the article. Make some money. Go out with Dave. Keep alive.

I wondered, for a moment, if it was really worth it. If this was it…was all the effort really worthwhile, seeing as it all led to nothingness anyway? Through the blackness of my thoughts, I felt like I could see Tristan’s eyes, looking at me. He looked disappointed. I had to stop this. He had cared. Maybe he just couldn’t care. He wouldn’t be the first guy who found it easier to walk away than figure things out. Or woman. He may have been a no-show, but I was the one who skipped out. Somehow, oddly enough, that made me feel better. I was still in control. Right?

I got up, and washed my hands and wiped the towel over my face, and went back to my seat. The stewardess looked at me quizzically, and I nodded what I hoped looked like thanks for her bending of the rules. I felt like some kind of out of place animal in the midst of all these people that apparently knew where they were going and exactly which kind of pretense they were willing to live by. Maybe that was the problem. For a little while, all their rules seemed all right—as long as Tristan had chosen to be with me. Or maybe his attention made me feel like I could break any rule and it wouldn’t matter. But you couldn’t live like that, could you, depending on someone’s love to feel like that? Or could you? Love, that feeling of completion, did it make you weaker, or stronger? Could life contain “curtains hanging in the window,” “I’ll light the fire”—all those combinations of domestic bliss, made even stronger by the fact a man was singing about them? Did women even sing about domestic bliss? I couldn’t think of a song. The only thing that popped into my head was Joni Mitchell waiting for a car “climbing, climbing the hill.” That was betrayal and suspicion. No curtains and warm fires there.

Moot point, I told myself, accepting a glass of champagne from the stewardess. Thank god for business class and for drinking mimosas without the juice and only raising the smallest of eyebrow twitches. It didn’t matter. Time for hard honesty. I loved him. He was beautiful, sculptured, intelligent perfection. Cooler than you. A fantastic lover. Smart, witty, sexy. Fine. With just the one little flaw—he was like every other man in the universe and he wanted his woman to be airbrushed and flattering, distant, cold and pretty like a china doll. My canvas was a little too rough. I cared a little too much. “Try not giving a fuck” worked really well. Too bad I could only pull it off intermittently. Why did I have to do that? I thought, but I knew the reason. Cool to be cold. Of course.

I tried not to down the whole glass of medium-quality business class airline champagne all at once, figuring I needed at least fifteen minutes before I could ask for a refill. I turned on one of the TV shows on offer,
Lie to Me
, and tried to become involved in the constructed story line. He would have known, right? Whatever his name was on the show. The guy. He would have looked at Tristan’s face in the club, as he looked up at me, and he would have known exactly what that expression meant. There would have been none of Trevor’s uncertainty. Or mine. Coke on, then off, the lap. Now there was a seduction strategy with merit. I giggled out loud, and my seat mate looked at me, dismissively, and curled up further towards the window. What a prize I was. A crying, rushing out of her seat, drinking at 9:45 a.m., cackling witch-like creature. No fucking wonder, then.

I looked like hell. I hadn’t slept all night, lying on the sheets staring around at the plump rectangle of the airport hotel room, with its bank of fake mahogany veneered drawers that no one ever used, and the grey square of the TV. The windows went from dark to grey to a white mist and it was time to go. I left the room virtually as I found it. So why wasn’t I tired?

I’d lain there, thinking of all the times we had been together. Tristan. The poet. The artist. But masculine, proud, taking his place, a strutting peacock. I thought there was a heart under there, He’d made me feel beautiful. Intense. Super-charged. I could deny it all I liked. Pretend. And I’d always know that I was lying, lying, lying to myself. The lies we tell ourselves, just to get by. Passing, just enough not to be questioned. I stared into my glass. No answers.

But the TV show was almost over, which meant the waiting period was over as well. I touched the steward on the sleeve as he passed by. In my best possible “you’re here to respond, but I’m indifferent to the reality of that and what it means, as well as what asking for a refill at 10:15 a.m. implies” voice, I inquired about the possibility of more. “Of course, madam,” he said pompously in his best “I may be the steward and a floating waiter but I get free travel and the chance to sleep with my boyfriend in Singapore regularly so fuck you” voice.

And it was all back to normal. The games. The unreality of reality. Oh fuck, I missed him. I wondered if it was too late to text Sarah when we landed and ask her to send me the sheets. Had she run the wash already? Probably. Did I have anything of his? Nothing. He had been, as promised, very careful.

I settled in to watch another episode about the ambiguity of truth. No more tears.

Chapter 26

New York. Again. It was busy, loud, bright, brighter than London. People walking fast past me as I climbed out of the cab. It made me feel dizzy, like I was about to be struck and whirled around, like a character in some farce. Big trucks clattering over potholes, making noises like mini-explosions, honking, sirens. I felt like the kid in the Stevie Wonder song, and I almost looked around for somebody sidling up to me with some drugs to deliver. But I’d made the decision, and here I was. Forget that I had no idea what I was supposed to do now that I’d made my grand gesture. Well, there was work. I had the notes. Obviously, I knew how to use them. The question was, could I think about him for hours, professionally marginalizing my sidebar comments, pretending I didn’t give a fuck, beyond some hipster admiration? And as I pulled my suitcase down my street, grateful that it was somewhat quieter here than on the avenue, I wasn’t even sure I could pull it off.

As I turned the key in the lock, I listened out for any sounds that would reveal the presence of my lovely roommate, Alice. I was not in the mood. The last thing I wanted to do was have to give some superficial blow by blow, when I knew just looking at me would give the game away. So I opened the door slowly, trying not to make the floorboards creak or bang the brass knob against the wall, and hoped that the silence meant she was out. Then I could reintroduce myself to the world on this side of the pond, post-jealous meltdown, without having to give a running commentary. I tiptoed in. So far nothing. Thank fuck for that. I left my bag at the door, and headed towards the kitchen, thinking that a cup of tea, before the usual bath and attempt at a nap, would be just the thing. I turned the corner and my breath caught in my throat.

There, on the table, was a large, no, huge, bouquet of roses. They had some paper and ribbon wrapped around them from the delivery, and the large vase was a cut above the usual utilitarian florist pot. I inhaled, and their scent was delicate but strong, swirling towards me on the breeze from the slightly open window. I just stood there and stared. The petals were an intense color, a deep, shadowy shade of damask red. I still hadn’t moved. Was there a card? Was this the peace offering I’d been dreaming of every minute since I’d run out on the whole thing? I almost didn’t want to look. It was better to live in the possibility. For this moment, it was like gambling. Your lotto ticket could win, the ball could fall on black, that next card would be the one. I wanted it to be right, so much. Come on. Let me dream, just for now.

No point in dragging it out. I thrust my hand blindly into the stems, perversely satisfied when I was badly scratched by one of the long thorns in the center. There. A card. A ribbon. I pulled my hand out, walked to the other side of the table so I could read what it said. I didn’t want to untie it in case it was for Alice, while all the time I could hear myself saying, please, don’t let them be for her, don’t let them be for her.

And there, in someone’s neat florist script:

We missed you at lunch. He’s sorry, you know. So am I. Don’t give up, my dear. In New York end of week. Will call. Love Trevor
     

I sank into the chair. All I could think of was the line from
Persuasion
: