Eat Your Heart Out (7 page)

“Not for long, I'm almost done,” says Sam, holding his cigarette to show her.

He takes off his big brown coat and places it on her shoulders gently. He doesn't want to hurt her. For some reason, he tells himself to be careful.

“Oh my God, thank you.”

Grace shivers. Sam puts his arm around her, to keep her warmer. He looks down at her, drowning in his coat.

“Better?” he asks.

“Yes, better. Your arm feels nice,” she whispers.

“Thanks.”

He never wants to move it.

“Sam?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think I'm brave?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I think you're brave too.”

“I want to be brave,” he says again.

They stand, so close together, for a few moments. Grace isn't really present, but for Sam only this moment exists. He knows it will end soon.

He puts his cigarette out.

“C'mon, it's fucking cold. Let's go in,” he says.

“I think we
should take more shots,” says Grace.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure, you puss.” She doesn't need another drink. He knows he should stop her, but he doesn't want to.

“Two tequila,” says Sam.

“Four! I'll buy,” she says, leaning over the bar.

“Okay, four,” he says, looking at her softness. He lets himself look for longer than he would usually.

“I think I should break up with Luke.”

“Yeah?” he says, not letting anything float to the surface.

“Yeah, I hate him.”

The bartender slams the shots in front of them. Grace takes a twenty out of her bra and puts it on the bar.

“If you hate him, then you should,” says Sam.

Grace slides two shots in front of Sam, takes the other two. She brings one up near her face, making a toast.

“To breakups.”

“Cheers.”

They take the shots, in rapid succession, without breathing, without blinking.

“Motherfucker,” says Grace.

Grace winces. This surprises Sam. She never lets herself wince when people are watching.

“Now who's a tough guy, huh?” he asks.

Sam doesn't wince. The shots don't even burn going down. They taste like water.

“Sam! I love
this song!”

“Me too.”

“Let's dance, Sam!”

“I don't dance.”

“Oh, come on, it's me, and you're drunk, and nobody's here.”

Sam looks around the bar. It's empty. When did everyone leave?

“Please, Sam? I love this song.”

When she's standing there she looks so beautiful. Her hair has fallen, and she looks drunk, and happy, and finally relaxed enough to be herself. Sam is overcome with a furious desire to touch her, to hold her, to be against her. He wishes he could tell her how he feels. But words don't ever fit how he feels for her. He thinks then that maybe some things are meant only to be felt, forever unspoken and misunderstood, lonesome and unfair.

Then he looks at her again. He can't stop himself.

He grabs her and pulls her close. She falls into him. Her hands find his shoulders, and he holds her waist. They move with an intimacy usually saved for when they are alone. Grace rests her head on Sam.

He thinks a new Sam is born when he holds her. The brave Sam. The Sam he wants to be. The man who doesn't breathe in him alone. They continue to sway, now cheek to cheek.

She feels so soft.

When the song
ends, Sam doesn't let go of her. They stay, folded together, standing in the bar.

She speaks.

“Sam, I think I need to sit down. Can we sit down?”

“Yeah, let's sit down,” he says.

Grace is unsteady on her feet. Her dress has slid off her shoulder. She pulls it up. She touches her face.

“I look crazy. I'm going to the washroom.”

“You don't look crazy,” says Sam.

“Stop lying.”

Sam smiles at her, and he's certain she can feel him watching her walk away.

Sam sits slumped
on his chair waiting for Grace. He can't feel his legs beneath him.

He's going to tell her.

Be brave, Sam.

Forget Lily, forget everything, forget everyone.

Be brave, Sam.

Tell her. Go on, love her.

Love her forever.

Grace comes back to the table. She sits down. She looks like she's been crying.

Be brave, Sam.

“Grace, I . . .”

“Sam, I have to go.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I'm just really fucked, and Luke just texted me back and apologized and I just have to go see him. I'm going to just take a cab home. I'm just really fucked. I need to go to bed. I'm really fucked. I don't feel well.”

She gets up, and so does he, but the sound is sucked out of the room.

“Sam, tonight was really fun,” says Grace, but she sounds like she's under water.

“Yeah, it was really fun,” he can feel himself say, but he's surprised when it comes out of his mouth.

It echoes.

“It was really good to see you, I really missed you,” she says.

“You too.”

All he can hear is his own voice in his head. Be brave, Sam.

“I have to go, I'm so fucked, I'll call you tomorrow,” she says.

“Do you need me to walk you out?”

“Nah,” she says as she throws her coat on, graceless and uncoordinated.

She hugs him,
and kisses him on the cheek.

“Bye, Grace.”

“Bye, Sam.”

And Grace leaves Sam just how she found him; alone at a table with half a drink.

Be brave, Sam, he says to himself once more.

All he can hear is his heart beating; the noise he sat there making, not daring to move, not even when the room goes dark.

To Marianne, forever ago.

There isn't a day that goes by when I don't think of you.

When Amy smiles at me, the morning light hitting her face, having left some in shadow, I see you lying next to me. There is something about her expression, the sadness under her skin. You both share a vulnerability brought on by sleep.

Amy, that's my girlfriend.

I see you when I'm not looking, when I don't expect to see you at all. A woman passes me on the street with hair like yours. Is your hair different now? A friend at work talks how you do. I eat lunch with her, ask her questions I want to ask you. Amy falls asleep in my arms when I'm drunk and I drift into the arms of elsewhere.

Elsewhere holds me.

With all the time, you've become two-dimensional. You are like a photograph, not close enough to touch, bent and worn. Pictures are criminal. No one ever looks like themselves because no one even wants to, but still these images of you tunnel into me and stick like the cavities in my teeth.

Why can life only be understood?

We were twenty. We walked through the concrete, suffocating streets of the city and you wore a flowered scarf. You'd got it from your grandmother. Pink with red flowers. I thought it was ugly and I told you. You wore it because you loved her smell.

I know she's dead because I saw the obituary you posted on Facebook. I wrote you to tell you how sorry I was. You never wrote back. You didn't have to, but I felt so bad about what I'd said about the scarf.

I wonder now if you searched in vain for my obituary, curious if I was dead or alive, if you ever needed proof that I existed once and no longer.

I keep seeing that scarf. It won't leave me alone.

In the park, you told me you were sad. I asked why. You said the worst loss was the kind you could feel happening.

I didn't know you were talking about us.

I have become a person I never thought I'd be.

It was summer turning into fall and it got dark earlier than we expected. We sat on your wood floor, no furniture, no bed, no money, nothing at all, and even though you were sad, we laughed until we cried.

Do you remember any of that?

Did I make that up?

Were we happy?

I forget how your voice sounds. The hours we spent talking—and I can't remember your voice.

Do you sometimes think that if we'd taken a left instead of a right, if we'd stayed home instead of going to the bar, if we'd seen that movie, if one small thing was different, we'd still be together? If we'd met later, if we'd met earlier, if we'd never met at all?

Why can life only be understood backwards?

I tell Amy I love her. It's not how I loved you. I can't decide if that means I don't love her at all. No one's like you, but with a touch, a gesture, a sound, you're right here, all over me again. I wonder if it's in the way they make me feel. If all those feelings began and ended in you, trickling away like water down a drain.

Is the man you're with like me?

Why didn't I just try? Why didn't I stick it out? Why didn't I listen to you?

I'm writing this too quickly.

I thought I saw you about a year ago. It was Christmastime, and your hair was shorter. The woman I thought was you was carrying a briefcase. But you got lost in the rush hour crowd of the New York City subway. Since then, I've wondered if I'll ever see you again. Sometimes I get off at that stop for no reason other than that you might be there. What would we talk about? How would I speak to you? What would I say?

“Do you really carry a briefcase?”

Do you remember when we made love for the last time? You asked me not to look as you got dressed. You said I didn't have to ask you the same because you couldn't see through your tears. I asked if we shouldn't have and you just shrugged and asked, “What else were we going to do?”

You hated me and I knew it. The war had begun and ended, and we walked around each other like refugees or burn victims; armless, only half a head of hair with ugly, graphed skin.

I got that letter you sent me a year later. I should have replied. I didn't because I had just gotten your hairs off my fucking pillowcase.

Do you remember those nights when we would watch three movies in a row? You started smoking weed with me because you couldn't sleep. Do you still have insomnia?

Do you still only order poached eggs and bacon at restaurants?

Do you remember when your dad told you he felt no emotions? Only anger and never sadness? He said the world offended him and no other thing? And I told you that anger was a useful emotion and that obviously anger is just how he relates to everything. You looked at me, disgusted. “That's not the point.” And then later, you told me, “My father feels profound sadness all the time and that's why he said that. That's the only reason anyone could say something like that.”

You asked why I couldn't be more of a human being, and I tried to argue with you about the existence of aliens.

I knew then that your father was your child. I realized that I'd missed the point too late, but I did realize. What does that count for?

I have these notions about you. You live quietly but happily. You have a child. Getting dressed and you wonder if I'd like what you are wearing. Your kid cries in the other room. You make him breakfast. You dance in the dark.

Have you gotten what you wanted?

You are not just a physical being anymore: skin, bones, blood. You are composed of thoughts, ideas, feelings; all that I gave away long ago. You are a myriad of things that probably have nothing to do with you. I hate you for it.

I know it's my fault that so much time has fallen between us. I didn't want it this way.

Is time passing this fucking fast for you too?

I'm sorry for writing you. I'm sorry I'm asking you so many questions.

There's just one last thing I want to know.

Do you think of me?

“'Bout ye?”

I remember those words because I'll never forget them, not in one million years.

It was September 1971. I was sittin' in a pub, this real shite-hole in Belfast. I don't know why I keep having to say
in Belfast
, not like I ever left the place. It was my first time there because our usual was closed. It was well into the night and I wanted a final pint, but I couldn't get the attention of the waitress. Your woman was too busy slabbering with some wee bastard, but I was busting for one, like. So I went up to the bar and ordered it myself.