Man Walks Into a Room (32 page)

HE STOOD WAITING
on the corner. He had arrived early, and now he glanced down at his watch and saw that it was past two o’clock. The air was cool and he shivered in his sweater. It had rained earlier and the sidewalk was wet.

When he looked up again she was walking toward him, a small figure in a light green coat. He had not seen her for a year, and his heart thumped in his chest. A few feet away from him she stopped, her face calm and still, pale in its frame of dark hair. He had often imagined the moment, had given it weather and latitude and a scripted exchange, but now all of that scattered, replaced by the irrepressible singularity of happening.

He smiled and stepped toward her.

Anna,
he said.

They walked along Amsterdam Avenue. She had given up their apartment and was living elsewhere, but they had decided to meet in their old neighborhood just the same. It felt like a long time ago that they had lived there, and he was surprised to find nothing changed.

You look good.

You too.

They laughed, relieved that the first nervous moments had passed. They walked slowly, passing familiar shops and restaurants they had probably eaten in together more times than either of them could remember.

Are you hungry?
she asked. They stopped in front of a small Italian place with a blue striped awning. Through the window they saw the diners inside, a couple sitting by the window, a man talking as a woman lifted her glass of wine. They stood on the sidewalk and looked at the menu, and for a moment they might have been such a couple. They might have gone in and taken a table, with time enough to talk about what to eat and drink, to discuss what they had read in the morning paper. Lifting the wineglass, moving onto more obscure topics, the climate in Norway, the conversation following the natural path of their joined effort. A couple with years of conversation between them so that now a single word stood in for vast themes, and small noises were sufficient to communicate subtleties of mood, and after all the talking they could lapse again into the mutual silence that was the foundation of their life together, at ease, the only sound being the clink of silverware against the plates.

But they were not such a couple, and so they turned away from the restaurant and walked on. The sun came in and out from behind the clouds. They headed east toward the park, moving side by side under the trees. The first green buds had already come out on the black branches. Conversation came slowly, the words they had planned to say replaced by the things they said. She had left her job and gone back to school. He was living in California, working in a library, renting a small house not far from the ocean.

You should come visit sometime.

Many times he had imagined it, walking with her along the beach
or showing her the view from Windy Top. But he knew now with certainty that it would not happen, and he felt the hope gently part from him like an escaped balloon floating up into the afternoon.

They walked for a long time, and then they stopped and sat on a bench. The clouds had gathered and turned dark, but neither of them moved to leave. The things they spoke of were of little importance. He had not imagined that it would be this way; he had thought that there would be many difficult things to explain and feelings to confess. But it was not so, and he realized now that he was glad for this, to sit and talk of things of little importance, as if they had all of the time in the world. He had imagined telling her that he loved her, but now he realized the declaration would sound flat, a wrong note struck in a simple song. To say it would be to disturb the care and stillness of what was unspoken between them.

The rain began in heavy drops.

Here,
he said, offering her his sweater.
Put it over your head.

She shook her head.

You’ll get wet.

So will you.

They rose and walked without hurrying. It was coming down hard now; the air held the smell of earth. When they reached the street she turned to face him. Her hair was wet and a drop of water ran down her temple. He took her in his arms and for a long while they stood like that, the taxis splashing past in the street. Then she stepped back, arms hanging at her sides. Her face shone in the muted light.

Take care,
she said.

There was so much he had not asked her, and something in him wanted to call out to hold her back. But the moment had gotten ahead of him, and he had no power to strain against it.

You too.

She nodded and her smile was soft. Then she turned to go. He watched her green coat disappear into the distance. The wind picked up and the traffic lights changed. He put his hands into his pockets, and with his face tilted down against the rain he walked away, a man with a past like any other.

EPILOGUE

I USED TO
walk down stairs and imagine myself falling and breaking my teeth. I actually pictured this, the hapless tumble and the blood in my mouth. On the subway platform I imagined the violent push that would come from behind and saw my body flung onto the tracks. If Samson were five minutes late to meet me I would start reciting catastrophes like the rosary. Whenever he took a plane flight I pictured the crash, rescue men pausing to lean against each other among the charred remains. It never occurred to me to mention these thoughts to anybody. It was a reflex, a protective measure as banal as knocking on wood. When Samson didn’t come home that first night, I felt surprisingly composed; I’d been rehearsing for this my whole life. And yet when it was all over—once they’d found him in the desert and he had the operation, once I’d brought him home and it became clear that the person I’d known wasn’t coming back—I felt disappointed to discover
that I had survived. The disaster I’d always feared had finally come to pass and still I was standing, so how could I go on in the old way?

One image that outlasts the others. One never knows what it will be. There was a day, six or seven months before he disappeared, one of those perfect days in late autumn, a championship of light. Already the leaves were almost gone, only a few stabs of color in the trees or scattered on the ground. We had borrowed a house for the weekend from one of Samson’s colleagues, a white clapboard cottage upstate with a view onto a lake. You could see it from the kitchen, a furrowed reflection of the sky. Samson poured himself a glass of orange juice and drank it down slowly, looking out the window. I came up and stood behind him. It was always, even then, a question of should I touch him. Something had to be crossed to get there. We watched one sturdy crow and then another land on the lawn. Otherwise there was nothing to disturb the stillness.

We took a drive and stopped by a path on the side of the road. There was a No Trespassing sign, but we ignored it. The sound of a hunter’s gunshots broke the distance. We ducked into a silo—you could see the sky through the gaps in the tin roof, and there were birds up there. Everything, parts I couldn’t have imagined would care, ached for some physical remark of his love. His mouth was cold and tasted metallic, like the season itself, if that’s possible. To me he always seemed like that, autumnal. Painfully earnest, with an awkward swiftness to the way he moved, a physical remoteness like he was already receding. I don’t remember who kissed whom. It was one of those lucid days in which you can see your whole life like a promise before you.

Later that afternoon we were lying in bed. We had just made love, him touching me as if he’d suddenly remembered that I existed and couldn’t get enough. The way he looked at me, his eyes as blue as I’d seen them. I remember feeling then that I would forgive him anything. Afterward we were lying wrapped in the sheets. He was holding me, his face turned to the window, and neither one of us had to say that the moment possessed the indelible weight of beauty. He said he wouldn’t mind always remembering this, lying with me and looking out at the lake. A wind had come up in the trees, and the branches were bending nervously.