Nights Like This (14 page)

“How much does she love you?”

“Sometimes, I think she loves being in love. Sometimes I think she loves me more than anything else. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, actually, it makes a lot of sense. I think she loves you. But I think she knows the deal.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don't know but it sounds like she does. If she were in love with being in love, then she'd have a lot of different women. How many women has she had and I don't mean just slept with, but had in her life in the way that you've been there for as long as you've been?”

I thought for a moment. I pushed my hair back and studied the blur of white lines on the asphalt beside me. I put my feet up on the dashboard.

“Do you mind if I put my feet up?”

“No, do whatever the hell you want.”

“Except sleep.”

“Except sleep.”

I sighed. I thought about Anjali, about who had been in her life in the way I had. Since me, there had been no one. At least not that I knew of. I thought Anjali had had her fucks in the past few years. I knew she had stayed the night out every once in a while. But then the night she had almost proposed, she had told me she hadn't had anyone the entire time we had been together. And I knew that never once had she brought anyone home to wake up beside her in her own apartment. She had never allowed anyone into her place or into her life, at least since I had moved in. For an instant, I felt guilty. I looked at Vanessa, the sunlight dancing on and off her sunglasses.

“I think she loves me more than I have ever been loved. I think she loves me more than I have ever loved. And no, no one's been in her life as I have. Ever.”

“Sucks,” doesn't it?”

“What's that?”

“To have love like that and not be able to have love like that. You ever wonder why we sit there and ache for someone to love us and then, when we get it, we say, ‘Well, I didn't mean you….' It's strange the things we do sometimes, especially when it comes to love.”

“I guess,” I said. “How far are we from Philly?”

“We've only been driving for forty-five minutes. We've got a while to go Jess. You bored?”

“No, just wondering. Can I put the radio on?”

“It's broken. Sorry. Last convertible they had.”

“It's okay.”

“So what was your last relationship all about? Before your sugar mommy?”

“I don't know,” I said, “While I was in it, I thought I was in love. But looking back, I don't know what it was. I met her one night at a Halloween party and we started talking. Three months later, we were living together at her place and there was no looking back.”

“So what happened?”

“We were so eager to get there, to live together, to wake up and sleep together and when we got there, we just weren't happy. Sometimes if you don't go through the journey first, you have no foundation. Then you reach the pinnacle right? And there's nothing to hold you up. And then everything crashes down and it's the worst feeling ever. But sometimes I think we may have made it despite all that but….”

I stopped talking and swallowed. It was strange how I hadn't thought about those situations in such a long time. It was strange that sitting with Vanessa in a yellow convertible with a broken radio, I felt like crying for the loss of someone who had left my life so long ago.

“She had someone else,” I said quickly, “The whole time we were together, she had someone else. And I was stupid. I never figured it out. I know that wasn't the only reason we didn't work but I tell myself it was. It was the reason I finally left. And I'm grateful for that much.”

I knew that if I spoke another word, I was going to cry. Vanessa switched lanes and eased into a space between a charcoal colored 325i and a green Jetta. I didn't know if she was stealing a glance at me when she checked her side view mirror.

“Jess?”

“Yeah?” I said.

“It's okay, baby. You can let it out with me. Remember what I told you at the park when you closed your eyes? I told you, I got you. And that is always true. When you're with me, I got you. You can let go and know that I won't let go of you. You can cry. I do have a heart. And I do care about you.”

I looked out onto the road again and then stared at the car in front of us. I could see the driver, starched collar and all, moving his head as he talked. I guessed that he was on the phone, that through a wireless piece of metal and plastic, he was talking to someone he thought he loved. Someday, he would look back and not even remember this conversation he was having on the highway.

“It was the first time I moved in with someone, was faithful to someone, belonged to someone. And I'm not saying we were good for each other. But the thought of someone else, that just killed me inside. If she had just left, I don't think I would've cared as much.”

“Yes you would've, Jess. But you'll never know, will you?”

“I guess not.”

“How'd you find out about her?”

“I walked into our bedroom one day and there she was with this other person, this girl I didn't know. Later I found out it was an old friend, someone who had known her when I hadn't. And I found out through our friends, people who knew what was going on but never told me so as not to hurt me. Some bullshit for friends.”

“So she brought her to your home and had her in your bed just like that?”

I laughed despite myself.

“Yes, as bad as you make it sound, as stupid as that makes me sound, yes, just like that.”

“You weren't stupid, Jess. You weren't stupid. You were in love. A fine line.”

“Sure.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. I went in, ignored them and closed the bedroom door behind me before I left.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“How do you not react to that?”

Truth was that I had reacted. But I had reacted later, after I had walked around the city for a few hours, after I had let myself understand that she'd been fucking someone in our bed, the bed we slept in together, night after night, argument after argument. Regardless of the futility of our relationship, regardless of the fact we hadn't made love in a month, regardless of the fact that we slept facing away from each other and were careful to not even touch with a toe or a stray hand in the middle of the night, it was our bed, damn it. I turned the situation over and over in my head, the chicken and the egg: had she sought comfort elsewhere because I was not enough or had she decided to go to someone else despite my love? Did it matter? To me, it mattered more than anything. To this day, I do not know the answer to that question. When it arises within me, I lay it to rest saying it is past. But there are great questions born of mediocre lovers that we carry with us, without fail, I believe, for the rest of our lives.

“I reacted when I got home from walking around,” I said. “That's when I screamed and hollered and threw all four of her pretty martini glasses against a damn antique mirror, her prized antique mirror that she had paid way too much for. I broke anything with glass so I couldn't see myself in it. I broke the wonderful flatscreen, the computer screen, all the glass tabletops…there were two. And then I smashed the glass piping on the headboard, little by little. She watched me the entire time, not saying a word.”

“And then what?”

“She said ‘I never ever meant for us to get here. But here we are. So what do you want to do?'”

“And you left?”

“No,” I said softly so as not to cry and make a fool of myself.

“No, I held her and I cried and I said, ‘Did any of it mean anything to you?' She stroked my hair and then she pulled me away, looked in my eyes and said, ‘Don't ever doubt that I loved you and most of this, yes it meant the world to me.' I asked her where this love was exactly because most of the time, she acted like she hated me and she said she hated the situation, not me. So then I got up and I said, ‘It's over.' And then I breathed. And then I left.”

We were silent for some time.

“My girl cheated on me too,” Vanessa offered.

“Were you guys happy or were you just prolonging the situation?”

“I thought we were really happy. That's what I didn't understand.”

“How did you find out?” I asked.

“She came home pregnant.”

“What?”

I looked at Vanessa in disbelief.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. She told me one night while I was grading papers on the couch, French grammar, I remember. She stood there watching me and then she just blurted it out. ‘I'm pregnant, Nessa.' I thought she was joking around but then I looked at her and she was crying. She looked terrified. I sat her down and gave her some orange juice and a bagel with butter, toasted. I asked her what she needed from me. She said she needed to leave, to be with family and she was sorry. The next day I drove her from New York to California to be with her parents, to be there for her when she told them. Then I left and never talked to her again.”

“But why the fuck would you do that? Go to California, I mean?”

Vanessa turned to look at me. I could barely see the outline of her eyes through her sunglasses. She looked back at the road.

“Because I loved her. I loved her more than I had ever loved anyone. And it wasn't this baby's fault that she was a bitch. It wasn't her family's fault that she was fucked up. I didn't even want to know what happened or how it happened. I didn't care. All I knew was she had cheated on me and that our lifes had changed forever. I wanted nothing to do with her but I did owe it to her to make sure she was safe. Because I had loved her with everything I had. Love is not just the present but also a respect for the past and perhaps anticipation for a future. With her, it was respect for the past, for all the love we shared, for all that she taught me and took from me. So I did this one last thing, right, drove her to California and when I left, I fell to pieces and swore to myself that from that point on, it would just be random fucks.'

‘I'm not saying we didn't fight about it that night. We did. I'm not saying I was okay with it. I wasn't. But after a night of senseless accusations and wondering why and how and more why, I was tired. And at the end of it all, I felt the only thing I had to do was make sure she was okay. And I did.”

I was quiet. I waited for Vanessa to tell me more.

“I didn't wait to say goodbye to her. I could never have done that. So while she slept, I kissed her forehead, wished her the best and left.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing. That was that. And life goes on, right?”

“That's it?”

“It has to be. What else can you do?”

I closed my eyes for an instant. A kaleidoscope of scents passed me by. In the air, there was the scent of hot asphalt and skunk. Close to me, I smelled Vanessa's perfume. I breathed deeper and there was the fragrance of her hair, reminiscent of peaches, freshly washed and cut. I felt strands of wind across my face. Beside me, Vanessa kept driving, allowing me the luxury of time. I moved my fingers to the strap of her red tank. I stroked her shoulder. Her skin felt smooth and damp with humid heat. I opened my eyes and looked at my fingers against her skin, lighter than her color, a subtle shade fairer than her complexion.

“I wasn't sleeping,” I said.

“I know, princess.”

“Vanessa?”

“Yes?”

“Am I then just a random fuck? You said after your breakup that's all you decided to stick to. Is that what I am?”

“I am traveling across state lines to be with you for ten days. I have pursued you and held you and talked the night away with you. In fact, I haven't even slept with you. No, you are not a random fuck, Jess. You're someone that happened to me when I wasn't looking. And it scared me, scares me still. But the heart wants what the heart wants. And I fell for you the first time I looked into those beautiful dark eyes, just the color of the sky in a photograph I took once.”

The fact that Vanessa remembered my eyes as the color of the sky in that photograph made a chill go through me. Her words resonated in my head, in the air, throughout the immensity of the sky. I wanted to capture everything she had said and hold it so I could go back to it again and again. I kept repeating to myself the phrases I liked best. I smiled.

I could say that we talked the entire way to Philly and that is how I fell in love with Vanessa Sanchez. But that's not true. We didn't speak much the rest of the ride. I leaned on her shoulder, touched her body and softly kissed her neck sometimes. But for the most part, we didn't talk. But these were full silence where I kept thinking of her words and she allowed me that space. As she drove, we each looked towards summer horizons and dreamt, for the first time, of togetherness.

 

 

Our first night in Philadelphia, Vanessa and I spent the night drinking wine and watching airplanes. She had insisted on staying at the Marriot at Philadelphia Airport and since I had no preference, I had shrugged in accord. Vanessa had requested a room on the tenth floor facing the runways meant for takeoffs and landings. That evening, I was sitting in an overstuffed chair by the window when she came to me and sat on my lap. She kissed my face and my neck. She spoke to me with tenderness.

“What are you thinking, princess?”

“Nothing.”

That was and was not true at the same time. I wasn't thinking of anything significant, nothing that I found worth mentioning. But I was allowing the room to seep into my imagination, was thinking of how I would set up an apartment if I ever had a place I could call my own. Anjali's place was beautiful with leather sofas and antique this and deco art that. But, truth is, I felt as if I were living in someone else's museum. I wondered, for the first time in a long time, how I would set up my own place. I had my idiosyncrasies. I enjoyed decorations full of peacocks and color. But I didn't like swirls of marble priced at hundreds of dollars or framed splashes of color pretending to be precocious. As Vanessa kissed my skin, I was wondering what I would want if I had the chance, if I had a place to decorate with my whims and wishes.

“What do you want for dinner?” she asked.

“Anything.”

“What are you thinking about, baby?”

I looked at Vanessa, slants of afternoon sunlight making her eyes glint with mischief. I looked past her eyes as I sometimes did and saw the woman whom I would fall in love with, the woman who knew me enough to know I would lose my heart and find myself in Philadelphia. I can say now that I did both.

“You okay?” she said as she pushed my hair behind my ears.

“Yeah. I was just thinking about how I would set up an apartment. What I would put on the walls.”

“What would you put on the walls?” she asked softly as she kissed my temple. For an instant it felt like Anjali's kiss, soft and reassuring. I looked up at Vanessa, concentrated on finding her eyes and pushed thoughts of Anjali back to New York.

“I don't know,” I said. “Paintings. Or prints.”

“No, I don't think so.”

“No?” I asked.

I was still looking into her eyes, scared that if I looked away, she would slip away and thoughts of Anjali would seep in.

I was surprised that Vanessa had something to say about my taste in art. I was also surprised that she thought she knew me enough to know what I would and wouldn't put on the walls of my imaginary apartment.

“I think you'd put up photography.”

“Yours?” I asked teasingly.

“Yes, I think Poet's Walk would be up somewhere, probably above where you would sit and write. But I also think you'd find photos by different artists. I think it would move you more than reprinted oil on canvas by so and so.”

I grazed her chin with the back of my hand then let my fingers linger across her neck.

“How do you know what would move me?” I asked.

I looked at the runway that was laid out before us, the gentle gliding arc of a plane visible as it sailed to find ground.

“I saw your eyes when you were looking at my photos. You found something in them, something beautiful because you somehow understand them. And I think you understand photos that are true to heart, that are unique. I see you as someone who could be happy with walls that only you would understand. You would have art that you found beautiful, regardless of what people put on their own walls or expected you to put on yours.”

“I guess,” I said.

“That's what we're here to find.”

“Photos?”

“Conviction.”

“What?”

I was so confused I couldn't help staring at her, strands of her hair falling across her face.

“That's exactly it. You have no conviction. I never hear you talk of anything as a definite, as a ‘yes' or a ‘no.' Everything you say is an ‘I guess' or a ‘perhaps' or a ‘maybe' or an ‘I don't know.' What do you know, love, believe, know beyond belief? I think if you can find who you are, you'll have your convictions.”

“Or I'll have my convictions and then determine who that makes me?”

Vanessa laughed and then kissed my hair.

“That's exactly what I'm talking about, ‘determine who that makes me.' You determine who you are, figure it out. That's what I want for you.”

“Why?”

“Because I like you. That's why.”

Vanessa held my hand and I was grateful because the confusion inside me was rumbling towards a slight agitation. She didn't speak and neither did I. We sat watching the sunset against a tarmac horizon, the glare of a low flying plane catching our gazes. It was relaxing sitting by the window. No, this was no ocean view, no white beige beach sand here, but somehow, Vanessa had been right. Sitting by the window watching the ground and sky in unison, the soaring of planes, a distinct black horizon against pale blue air was relaxing and made me feel calm.

“When I was with Tiffany, the girl I told you about, she had this apartment with a fire escape,” I said. “This reminds me of sitting on the escape with her, watching New York beneath us, waiting for city lights to show up against a dark sky. I haven't done anything like that since I was with her.”

“Do you miss it?” Vanessa asked.

“I didn't. Until now, I didn't miss it. But now I'm happy to be here, watching planes with you. Does that make sense?”

“It doesn't have to,” she said.

I wondered why I never felt this peace with Anjali. It wasn't that I didn't like spending time with her. But, for example, if I were to tell her about a past lover, it would turn into an argument about whether I wanted to go back to her or if I still loved her and why I thought about her at all. She somehow believed that the past was obliterated with the coming of a present and so were all the people in it. Vanessa understood that we never lose the past but we file it away into the accordions of our minds. And sometimes when we play music inside us, a certain fold unfolds for a precise note and there's a past lover or a past place and we respect it and give it a moment's thought. This in no way negates or alters the present and Vanessa understood this also. And, most of all, she understood that we keep the present in our hearts, the past in our minds and that makes all the difference in the world.

With Anjali I felt as if I were always holding my breath and I could never exhale. I had to be careful what I said and when and how I said it. And there was a lot I could never say. Of course I enjoyed going out with her to plays and movies and dinners. But she was always living on what she was going to do, what she wanted, what was going to be. And I never knew how to think about the future because I never had plans for one. First of all, I never thought of the future as a destination because I knew too well that no matter what road you tried to take there, it could change at any time without your consent. Secondly, because I did not believe in the future, I had filled my future with things I did not want and I never had the courage to ask myself about the things I really did want. It was safer not to hope, I thought. So while Anjali rambled about her plans for her clinic, about wanting to teach at Albert Einstein, about how someday our relationship would be great, I listened but I didn't know what to say. All I knew was that I was going to take exams for a career I did not want but I did not know what I wanted besides that. I did not know whom I wanted or what I wanted. And it wasn't like I could ever tell Anjali that either. Could I tell Vanessa?

“Do you know exactly what you want?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“In life, do you know what you want, where you want to be in ten years?”

“I want to be happy.”

“That's it?”

“All I can say is I've learned that there's no fucking point in specifics. Ten years ago I thought I would be an advertising executive in Manhattan and I would fall in love with a guy who I ran into on the subway. Ten years later, I teach French and Spanish and desire women. I mean how the hell do you know the specifics? So why plan things that way?”

“Isn't that what ambition is?”

“For some people, I guess. For me, ambition is getting through the month with enough money for rent and having five new photos to sell. Ambition is teaching some kid how to conjugate a verb properly. That's ambition as I know it.”

“So what's my ambition?” I asked.

“To find a purpose,” Vanessa said softly by my ear. “To find conviction.”

There it was again, “conviction.” But I knew she was right. I had stopped trying to understand how and why Vanessa knew me like she did. She comforted me by knowing me like that, in a way that no one had ever known me, relationship or not, long time or casual meetings. I felt, with Vanessa, hopeful that something would come of me, that I would someday use a hammer to drive nails into a wall so I could hang what I considered art in a space that I called my own.

“There is another photographer I like,” I said shyly, not knowing whether my revelation would elicit delight or derision.

“Who's that, princess?”

“Gregory Colbert, the Ashes and Snow exhibit he did a few years back in Manhattan. I really liked that, especially his work with elephants.”

“I love his work!” she shouted.

She shifted so she could move closer, her hands in the air, animated, telling me more about the artist.

“I can't believe you went to that too. We might have been in the same room, looking at the same work.”

“Maybe,” I said as I imagined passing Vanessa unknown, without a glance only a few years ago. What if I had run into her then, met her. Would I have loved her? I was sure I would have.

“What if we'd met then?” she asked as if reading my mind.

“Fate that we met now,” I said wondering if I truly believed in fate, feeling as if I had to because otherwise, there would be too much randomness in the world.

“And I'm glad we met,” she said as she ran her fingers across my cheek and then, leaning cautiously, kissed my lips.

“You want to get something to eat?” she asked. “I was thinking we'd just go downstairs, get some sandwiches, have a few drinks at the bar.”

“Okay,” I said.

We sat quietly for a while as the sun set and we were surrounded by a musky darkness that would soon become night. I wanted to turn on a light because I could not tolerate the idea of sitting in the dark. I wondered why the darkness still intimidated me like it did and for a moment I started to ponder the idea. But I did not want to resort to pensiveness, not tonight, not while I did not know what the evening would bring. I kissed her shoulder. I tried to get up but she did not move.

“Wait, let me get up so I can get ready for dinner,” I said.

“Just trust that I got you,” she said, “Even if your heart's beating fast and you get scared because it'll be dark, you're not alone walking around Central Park, Jess. I found you then and I'll find you again. Just relax. Just trust me. You don't need the light.”

“I got lost in the dark once,” I said.

“Tell me about it.”

I held her as I spoke.

“I was walking home from a friend's house in Kolkata. I was about ten. And there was a blackout. I couldn't see a thing. I walked the wrong way, took the wrong turns and I was lost. I was alone and although there were people around me, I couldn't see them. I felt like I couldn't breathe. It was so dark it felt like there was weight on me. And then a hand touched me, grabbed for me and I ran and ran and cried and I was so scared. It took two hours for the lights to come back on. It took three for my father to find me and take me home. I can't explain exactly how I felt. But that's how I feel in the dark.”

“Like love.”

“How's that?”

How was she going to take the most frightening night of my life and equate it to what should be the most wonderful feeling in the world? But if anyone could, I knew Vanessa could. She was, after all, the princess of jasmine. So I listened to her, intrigued, without moving, without even breathing.

“You take some wrong turns, end up alone and scared and then, just when you can't breathe anymore, just when all your fears reach for you, you run and run and then someone you love finds you. Always. Today, it's me.”

When she kissed me, I needed her to kiss me. We stole hungry kisses in the glow of a sun now gone and I wanted to be nowhere else but there, with no one else but Vanessa. I needed her to hold me in an overstuffed chair, sitting by the window of a random hotel room in Philly. I needed her to make sure that I could withstand an evening when I was running away from darkness, from memories, from ghosts of myself.

I thought back to Anjali for a fleeting moment. Platonic I had said. But a kiss here and there wouldn't hurt anything. It wasn't like I was sleeping with Vanessa.

“What are you thinking about now?” Vanessa asked. “You're so damn distracted.”

I reached for her face and pulled her close to me. I kissed her once. I kissed her again.

“Just thinking of being conviction-less,” I said. “Let's go get some drinks please.”

She smiled at me. She traced my lips slowly with her thumb. This time when she kissed me, I thought only of her.