Nights Like This (19 page)

 

 

When I say that I remember the days in Philadelphia distinctly, I mean I remember what she wore, how she smelled depending on what soap she used to bathe. I remember the feel of her skin depending on whether the day was humid or hot and whether we were sitting indoors or out. When I say I remember those days, I remember the sound and inflection of her voice, her laughs and occasionally, inappropriate snorts when she laughed too hard. And I remember her tears at times when she let them slip from her bittersweet eyes to the perpetual pout of her mouth.

The two days that followed our night at the jazz bar, there was a storm full of fury, crackles of lightening and infinite rain. We did not venture out anywhere those two days, pretending that we could not when, in fact, there were many cessations that would have allowed us an outing or two. We spent those two days together, in our room on the tenth floor, watching nonsense shows on television, making love and eating meals ordered through the luxury of room service. We played with the journal, deciding on whim to write lines back and forth instead of talking for an afternoon, seeing how long we would last without uttering a word. It was during that time that I saw Vanessa cry and it was my turn, for the first time since I had found my squatting stranger, to be a tender lover.

Even thinking back, I cannot say what moved her to cry but I do remember the genuineness of her emotion and, despite her embarrassment or stubbornness, her inability to stop herself. It was one of those moments of knowing Vanessa that I remember being scared to love Vanessa, feeling overwhelmed by her capacity for hurt, realizing that the place within her for sadness was so full and feeling inadequate. I did not know if I could ever be enough to take her hurt away from her. And I did not know if I wanted to spend a relationship trying. From all my experiences with broken people, I had learned that they stayed broken, despite my efforts to put them back together and start anew. Not to say that I had ever entered a relationship with someone who was shattered. But I had always ended up befriending the broken hearted and that had made me careful never to love anyone that was too sad for me to make a difference.

But Vanessa wasn't consumed with grief beyond a point of no return. She was, simply, sad. And I was sad for her. And I wanted to be the tender lover that not only wiped her tears away but also banished the thoughts from her mind that had made her cry in the first place. I had told her that I could walk away from a woman when she was crying unless it was Anjali. And that was and still is true. What I learned about myself was that I could not walk away from Vanessa crying either. What I was slowly discovering was the truth that I should have understood then, laying beside her in a room invaded by thunder; my footsteps would always lead me towards her. Truth was I could never walk away from Vanessa.

What I would do once I returned to New York I couldn't even begin to imagine. Where would my footfalls lead? I couldn't ever abandon Anjali but then I couldn't leave Vanessa either. I tried not to think about it as I lay next to Vanessa that morning, her warmth consoling my tortured soul.

We had woken to a day so dark that we thought it was night or at the earliest early evening. There was a slash of lightening that cracked the sky in half and then disappeared. I thought Vanessa was asleep but as soon as I moved to get out of bed, I felt her move as well. She turned towards me and placed her arm across me as if to tell me to stay with her.

“Good morning,” I said, “If that's what this is. It's so fucking dark, you can't even tell.”

She said nothing. She nuzzled her head against my neck and kissed my skin.

“What's the matter?” I asked.

“Just stay with me, Jess. I just want you to stay here with me. Don't move.”

“Okay.”

I stayed in bed with her. I lay still, not moving regardless of the friction outside our window. The lightening seemed to rest for a while but there were rumbles of thunder that grew more frequent, more ominous.

“Jess, have you ever been sad?”

Had I ever been sad? Yes, yes I had. I didn't want to laundry list events of sadness in my head because what I had found to be true was that once I started to think of all that made me sad, I stayed sad, lost in thoughts that I shouldn't have thought in the first place. So without saying anymore about the demons of sadness, I kissed Vanessa's forehead, her lips and then her neck.

“Kiss me everywhere, Jess.”

I grazed my lips across her neck slowly, effortlessly, enjoying the feel of her skin. She arched back slightly, inviting kisses across the length of her slender neck, her body shifting under the sheets. I ran my fingers along the seamless places along her body, the indentation by her clavicle, the enticing curves of her breasts, and the strong muscles of her abdomen. I kissed her everywhere I had touched her and felt her fingers on my back pushing me downwards as if she wanted me to fuse and melt into her body.

“Are you okay?” I whispered to her.

“I think so.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Sad things.”

“Like what? And why?”

“Like people I knew.”

“I don't want to hear about your exes and their dramas,” I said as I tried to roll away from her.

Her hands pressed down on my back not letting me move, not letting me leave her.

“Not thinking about my exes. Don't you ever just think of sad things that have happened?”

“No, I don't. I try not to think of anything once it's passed. I live by that, always have.”

I didn't have much to say after that, partly because I did try to never think of past happenings and also because I wondered ever so slightly what sad moments were swelling in her thoughts.

“If you want to tell me, you can,” I said.

“I used to know this girl in school,” she said, “and one day, on a day like this when it was stormy, I remember I ran out of class to go to my dorm and she yelled after me that she wanted to talk to me. I told her I'd talk to her the next day. There I was, standing in the rain and I didn't want to talk to her then. She committed suicide that night. And I never knew what she wanted to say. Did she want to ask me about an assignment? Or did she want to talk about something else? I never knew. And when it rains like this, I think of her. Sometimes, I think I can see her in the clouds when lightening strikes across the sky.”

“Were you close to her?”

“No. And I know that sounds terrible. But I wasn't close to her. I didn't really know her. But I remember her. And I remember her voice for that instant asking to talk to me. What would she have said to me? Maybe I could have saved her.”

“But if you didn't know her, I doubt she was looking to you for anything that deep. Don't you think?”

“I don't expect you to understand.”

“And honestly, I don't,” I said. “But I do understand that it makes you sad and for that I am really sorry.”

And I was. I remembered a card Anjali had given me once when I had been really devastated about something I no longer remember. It was a little cartoon puppy with a frown standing by a swing while other dogs were in the grass not too far away. The caption said, “When you're lonely, I'm lonely.” Then there was the same puppy standing with fountains of tears spilling over his paws as he stood with bloodshot eyes. The caption read, “When you're sad, I'm sad.” And when I opened the card it said simply, “So stop it already.” I felt Vanessa's sadness and while I didn't understand why she was thinking of the demise of a nearly random stranger, I felt the sadness she held inside. I felt the fear that made her hands hold me as if she would float out of the bed through the roof, into the darkened, thundering sky if I weren't lying on top of her, securing her onto the bed.

“When it rains, I like the sound of it on the windows,” I said, “I like to listen to it and watch it. I think I'm calmest when it rains.”

“Are you completely happy when rain falls?”

“Yes. I'm peaceful and happy, listening to it.”

“I wish you could give me some of that,” she said.

I held her close to me for a long time, memorizing the pattern of her hair fanned across the pillow and the steady rhythm of her breathing. I felt at peace with her. Most times in my life, no matter what I was doing, I had a feeling that I was due somewhere else, that a place was waiting and I just hadn't arrived there yet. Lying in a bed with her at that moment, I felt as if I was just where I was supposed to be. If there were a pattern in the stars or a plan somewhere in the otherwise soulless universe, then this was it.

I became fearful, in a moment, of losing her. I imagined that somewhere in time, I might look back at that night as one that we had shared. I would talk about her in the past tense, referring to her habits or her sudden departures into past sadness that she had known. And at the end, I would miss her and wonder why I couldn't have stayed just a little longer in the bed with her, kissed her more, talked less.

“Are you sleeping?” she asked.

“No, just thinking.”

“About what, baby?”

“About a day when I don't know you anymore.”

I heard her sigh. But she did not correct me. I knew she wouldn't. Vanessa was pragmatic. She understood the fragility and ephemeral nature of relationships. She wouldn't play the games we played. She wouldn't talk of forever or next year or next month because she knew that it was language meant to fill spaces between two people who are with each other, knowing that they are not there for any definite length of time. I had come to believe at that point in my life that everyone had a departure. It just depended on who left first, the one I loved or the one who loved me. But I could not talk of these things with Vanessa. She would refuse to contradict me. She would agree with me and I did not want anyone, especially her, to reinforce my belief in departures.

We lay in silence. I listened to the rain. I could only imagine what she was thinking. I wondered if she was even noticing that the rain made sound. I closed my eyes and wished that I could capture the moment, that precise one when I could hear the thunderless rain and feel Vanessa's body rise and fall under me. I wanted to capture the scent of her. In all the times and all the women, what I remembered a woman by was her perfume or her shampoo. And those scents, if they ever found me again, opened the doors wide for me to reminisce about times that had passed. They took me back to moments I wanted to relive and experience in all their sounds and sights and tastes. Vanessa smelled that night faintly of Romance. Her hair smelled like the smooth flesh of peaches, towards the center where the pulp is ripe, where the scent is strongest.

I fell asleep like that, lying on top of her, silently enjoying her. I awoke to her kissing my neck, stroking my back, asking for some tenderness, perhaps.

“Jess,” she whispered to me.

“Baby. You okay?” I said.

“Hmmm.”

“What are you thinking, baby?”

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

I smiled as I ran my fingers through her hair.

“I'm a Neruda fan too,” I said.

“You don't think I understand, Jess. But I do. The fear of losing you. The end of this time we have together.”

“But you act like there's nothing to fear,” I said.

“I fear losing you every day I am with you,” she said.

Then she kissed the ridge of my ear and whispered, ‘Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her.'”

“Through nights like this,” I said, “I hold you in my arms and the soul is satisfied that it has you.”

She started making circles on my back with her fingertips. My mind full of poetry and my own reality, I soon drifted into a dreamless sleep, aware only that I lay next to a woman I knew I loved.

 

 

 

I wish I could say that every night that we spent in Philadelphia was promising or that every night we spent in Philadelphia made me believe more in the possibility of our togetherness. But that wasn't so at all. After the rain had passed and we had made love so many times that the bed sheets were perpetually damp and limp, the sun shone. I was relieved that we would be leaving the dullness of rain and what had started to feel like the smallness of the room. I did not know then that when we are sometimes in the best of situations, we wish to get out of them because we notice the pettiness that surrounds them. I could have thought then of how safe I felt wrapped within her while rain fell and thunder threatened us. I noticed instead the musty smell of the room, the wrinkled sheets, and the notion that we had been contained within the same four walls for over 48 hours.

It was only later that I thought of how much I would miss that night were I never to have another night with her again. How I would ache to close my eyes and listen to autumn rain and perceive her fragrances every time I awoke from a gentle sleep. And time came, as it often does, that I missed her and our two nights that became lost in the crowd of a thousand and one others. I remembered her so vividly at the times I thought of her thereafter that if I closed my eyes and held a peach half, I could almost feel her hair tickling my neck and teasing me under my chin.

The next morning in Philly, after our duet of rain, we decided to amble downtown again with intentions of finding a club somewhere in Philly. I showered first as Vanessa stretched herself across the bed, twisting and grimacing as her muscles tensed and relaxed. Even when I was finished and had dressed, Vanessa lay in bed, smiling at me.

“Can't we just stay here for a while?”

“It's been two days. So I'm going to say no. Get up. Take a shower. Let's get out and do something.”

“You could do me.”

“Nice,” I said, “really nice. Get up, get showered and get dressed.”

Slowly and hesitantly, Vanessa rose and went to the bathroom. She shut the door behind her.

As I sat on the bed, I played with the corner of a sheet that was beside me. I was folding it into a triangle then a square. It was then, during my folding feats with the sheet that I heard Vanessa's cell phone ring. I walked to her side of the bed and picked up the phone from the side table, not once realizing that it wasn't my place. I didn't even think before I answered it. I didn't realize that I was not at the point in her life where I could offer answers for her or, for that matter, even to her.

“Hello?”

“Vanessa?”

It was a deep, rich voice. It was a man's voice.

“No, she's busy right now. Can I take a message?”

He exhaled loudly. I waited.

“Yeah. Just tell her that her husband called and she should call me back as soon as possible at the house.”

“Okay.”

He hung up. I stared at the phone in my hand, the screen blinking DANNY over and over. “
Yeah. Just tell her that her husband called.”

I heard his voice ringing in my head, echoing within me and I didn't know what to think. Had Vanessa ever said she wasn't married? She had said only that she had her own fucked up situation. But I had assumed she had a fuck buddy, a “turn to when you're turned on” friend. But a husband, that changed everything. Didn't it? Were women a hobby for her like collecting photographs or random memorabilia? Was I a pastime, not a lover, not a soulmate but just a whim, a fancy…a random fuck?

None of those things could be true, I told myself. She had committed herself to me with such genuineness, such tenderness that somewhere it all had to be real. But did it? How real was anything we shared when after it all she returned to a rich voice, a home, a husband? But then her home was a studio in the East Village. There had been no trace of him there. Unless, of course, I cared to recall that someone had called her then too. Someone to whom she had said “I love you.” Had that also been him?

I sat on the bed and rocked myself back and forth slowly, gently, as if allowing the realization to hit me that everything had just changed. But had it really? If he were that much of a husband, then how could she have been in Philadelphia with me without a worry? Or maybe she was worried. Did this have anything to do with me?

Did this really have anything to do with me? I still had Vanessa here and she was willing to be here. The entire trip had been her idea, not mine. If I wanted, she would fuck me as soon as she came out of the shower. If I wanted, she would fuck me all day. But, I started to wonder, would Vanessa fuck him all day too? Maybe to her, lovers were like meals. Maybe sex was hunger and she used me like she used him to satiate herself.

I imagined this man with a deep voice, his words strong and clipped. I imagined his palms grazing her body, his fingers reaching inside her to open her for his pleasure and I wanted to vomit and explode at the same time. I started pacing the room.

It wasn't just the image of her fucking him that made me sick. It was the image of the non-fucks. It was the image of him talking by her ear, making her smile. Did they hold hands? Did she tell him all those fears and hesitations that she never told me? Had she bought him a journal? A shirt? A tie? Had she committed herself to him? Was I just…was I to her what Anjali was to me? Was I just a convenient lover? I felt tears in my eyes and became disgusted with myself, with her and with Philly. Fuck Danny.

I went to the window and tried to find comfort in my tarmac sky as I had the first day. I was searching for a place in the horizon that would comfort me when Vanessa walked out of the bathroom.

“I'll just take a minute to get ready,” she said.

I turned and walked to her. She was wrapped in a towel and was trying to make a turban upon her head with another. Like she's a fucking genie, I thought. I remember thinking that as silly as it was. I gently placed her phone on the bed.

“Your husband called,” I said.

I said it as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. I waited for her to explain.

“How dare you pick up my fucking phone? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

“Who am I? Who the fuck am I? You invited me here. You asked me to come here. You made me believe you wanted me. And you're a fucking lie.”

“I do want you. Never said I didn't. Didn't want you going through my shit. Didn't think I had to explain that.”

“What the fuck, then? The fucking phone rang. I answered it. I'm not the one lying about being fucking married.”

“I didn't lie.”

“I'm not the one…”

“Fuck you. You're doing the same shit. Just because I have a piece of paper and he has a dick doesn't make it any different than what you got going on with your sugar mommy.”

“Like hell. It's totally different.”

“Why?”

“Because we're not married. And because you knew about her the minute you stepped into my life.”

“You use her money, stay in her house, fuck her, but that's right, there's no fucking piece of paper. So that makes it all different. And you never told me about her, I guessed. You never told me shit.”

“Don't give me that bullshit,” I said.

I walked to the window and looked out. I felt as if my gaze could cut through the glass. As I stared at the tarmac, the colors of the sky and ground blurred and I felt myself crying. I felt myself shaking. More than anything, I wanted Vanessa to hold me and tell me that she loved me and that he meant nothing to her. More than anything, I wanted to know that she was my Vanessa. I was in love with her. And I was scared that I would lose her because I knew that you always lose the girl you're in love with. The rest, the fuck buddies, the bar buddies, the dance buddies, those never seem to be lost. But the girl you love, her you lose. This much I knew.

“Jess.”

Her voice was low and she was standing behind me. I was embarrassed because I knew she knew I was crying for her. And I didn't want her to know that.

“Yes, Danny and I have a history. We're married, yes. But it's not what you think.”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes, but not like that. He's my best friend from way back when.”

“What the fuck did you marry him for?”

“I don't have to justify this to you or to anyone else. I am trying to tell you though as best as I can that things are sometimes not what they seem. That's all I'm going to say about it. And that should be enough.”

I turned around and, even through my tears, I saw her face clearly. I looked into her eyes. I wanted her to believe that I did deserve to know. Whether or not anyone else did, I did. I loved her. And I wanted to believe that no one else could ever love her like I did.

“Tell me you love me. Tell me you don't share Philly with him or make love to him or want him. Tell me you don't tell him your secrets. Tell me!” I almost screamed.

She pushed back my hair. The tip of her tongue was touching her upper lip and she looked up towards the ceiling. I thought she looked beautiful.

“I will tell you. Sit and I will tell you. And no, I don't do those things with him. Ever.”

I sat on the overstuffed chair we had shared our first night in Philly. She sat on my lap. She smelled like juniper berries. I imagined a Bath and Body bottle in the bathroom, still wet with tiny soap bubbles.

She played with my hair. She rested her chin on my head. She kissed me and I took her tongue into my mouth hungrily as if I were suddenly greedy for her. I think I loved her more because I knew there was someone else to love her. It made no sense.

“Truth is, Danny and I were always, always the best of friends. Danny was always, always in love with me. He was the first person to say he loved me. He was the first person to know that I slept with women. He was the first person to know that I desired women and not men. He was the first for everything.”

“So you married him?”

“Let me finish.”

She took in a deep breath and then stroked my cheek with the back of her hand. I pulled away.

“A few years ago my father was very ill. To my father, my getting married meant he felt safe that someone would take care of me. Danny was there for all of that. Danny took care of Papi. Danny got him his meds and stayed with him and I think Papi fell in love with him because next thing I know, he's telling me how wonderful this man is.

Danny loved me. He promised me he'd find a way to make everything better for me. Danny promised we would get married and then we would say I had a job offer in New York and I could move here and start a life all my own. And every few months he would make a pretense to come see me. And eventually we could get a divorce saying things didn't work out. But at least my father would know I tried.”

“And that's what happened?”

“That's not how it worked out, no. No. I mean he lived up to everything. But he won't give me a divorce. He thinks I'm in love with him but scared to say so. He's waiting for me to go home to him. He will not grant me a divorce.”

“Did you fuck him?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it does. Here you're pretending you're in love with all these women and there you are fucking him?”

“Because sexuality is that rock solid? Because what we're fighting for is a right to be with a certain gender? You should know better than that. Because sex means just one thing? We have sex for only one reason? Seriously, Jess? Are you that naïve or are you just angry that you're not the only one that has someone to go home to?”

“So you fucked him and you liked it?”

“So I love him as my best friend and he did all this for me and yes, yes I allowed him to make love to me.”

“What the fuck, Vanessa? Like you paid him back?”

“If that's the way you see it, then yes.”

I didn't want to talk to her. I felt sick. I felt as if there wasn't enough air in the room for me to breathe. I concentrated on the fabric on the arm of the chair until it blurred and there I was, crying as I imagined some man with a rich voice kissing her in all the places I had kissed her.

“I want to go outside,” I said.

“Then go.”

I looked at her as she rose from the chair and opened her turbaned towel. Her hair spilled like silk onto her bare shoulders and across the white of the towel in which she was wrapped. I felt my throat constrict. I felt myself throb for her. She was beautiful. And she was mine.

“Love, Jess, is not always about ownership or about one story. It's a lot of different things. I do want to divorce him. But I never want to hurt him.”

“So you sleep with him instead?”

She turned around to face me. Her hair swayed with the movements of her body.

“What is it with you? That's what's bothering you? You're intimidated because I slept with him? Let me tell you something, you should be intimidated not because we shared a fuck but because I love him enough to do that although I am not in the least interested. I allowed him to touch me and have me. I allowed him to make all his fantasies come true. That's what should scare the shit out of you. Because I
want
to fuck you. I'm more attracted to you than I could ever imagine being attracted to Danny. Difference is I love him more than I can ever imagine loving you.”

She stopped my heart. I physically felt it stop at that moment. And it was then that I started to feel as if I were spiraling down from a height. It was then that I realized that if there were any threads that held us together, they were unraveling and we could never find the patterns that they had made ever again. It was then that fear returned. It was then also that I started to miss Anjali.

“I love you, Vanessa,” I said softly because it seemed the right thing to say. It seemed the only sentence that could possibly redeem us, spiral back time, place us in a blissful state of oblivion devoid of past lovers and past mistakes.