This Book Does Not Exist (3 page)

And then eventually we would have to say goodbye.

There were tears. Always tears. While I held on to her in the subway and the airport, until against every wish I’d turn away, I’d go, with barely enough time to make it through security. I’d walk through the metal detector with tears smeared on my shirt. I’d leave, I’d fly away, I’d try to keep her face and her touch and her smell in my mind until the next time they would be real.

As time went on, the situation became volatile. The stress of affording plane tickets and managing schedules was one thing; getting upset with each other because we wanted the other person to be there when they couldn’t be was another. Naomi was a voice on the phone, a series of characters in a text message, an emoticon in an IM, a profile picture on
Facebook
next to a comment left on my status. She was all of these things to me far more regularly than she was a living, breathing human being. If we encountered a cold spell or had an argument, we couldn’t simply look into each other’s eyes, cuddle on the couch, and feel that everything would be okay. We hung up the phone and
got dead space followed by nothing
. We were separated even further by time zones. She went to sleep. I stayed up to debate our future with the night. Even when we were together, fights would often materialize as the crush of the departing flight drew near.

There was also the paranoia.

Nights Naomi went out until 4 AM I knew she could cheat on me and I would never know. I assume she had similar thoughts about me, but we never discussed it. Relationships need implicit trust. Usually she would call me no matter what time she got home, but some nights she wouldn’t. I spent a few of those nights without sleep, thinking she was with someone else. When I talked to her in the morning she’d invariably tell me she passed out before she had the chance to call. I wanted to believe her, but it was difficult. My imagination was an expanding universe of possibilities – and perception is never far from reality.

I debated sometimes, and I suspect Naomi did too, if it would be better for both of us if we broke up. But I loved her more than I ever thought I could love someone, and she loved me just the same. And that’s how we lasted to the day she called and said she wanted to move to LA.

At first I thought she was joking. I must have said “really?” at least ten times. She
responded
“yes” over and over until she finally told me to stop saying “really?” or she was going to change her mind and not come. I was overjoyed. Living together would alleviate the issues. The problems created by distance would die.

When I asked what happened to suddenly make her want to move to LA, she simply said it “felt right.” Her lease was about to be up. Her job was becoming less and less interesting by the day. If we wanted to try to have a future with one another, now was the best time.

Over
the next few weeks, we worked out her moving plans. She’d fly – she didn’t own a car – and she wouldn’t bring a lot with her. She’d ship some things she needed, but largely we would start anew. Together. We’d look for an apartment near UCLA, where she had a lead on a job doing PTSD research. Everything was thought out.

Then one morning Naomi called me before dawn to talk about med school.

She began by telling me most of her applications were due sooner than she had thought. She needed to start working on them now, before she got to LA. I wasn’t sure why this mattered. She had already taken the MCAT. I knew she did well and that she wouldn’t have to wait to retake it. But then she went on to tell me what I didn’t know – that she wasn’t sure she could go to any of the med schools in Southern California.

In other words, Naomi called to say there was a chance she’d have to leave LA within the year.

I tried to understand.
She knew her field. I didn’t. But I was confused. Why couldn’t she go to USC or UCLA? According to her, neither had the perfect program. She insisted this didn’t change anything for us. She still wanted to move. She wanted to be with me. She said so repeatedly. She just needed to let me know something difficult could happen and, if it did, she asked me to make her a promise – that I’d go with her, wherever she went to med school, no matter the city or state.

This was a promise I wanted to make. I really did.

But I didn’t know if I could.

I was earning enough money to survive by writing the blog, but my screenwriting career – my real dream and the whole purpose for me being in LA – was a work in progress. I had come to Hollywood to make contacts, to get my scripts read, to take meetings, to be at the epicenter of the industry, where I needed to be in order to break through, and that hadn’t happened yet. Nor could I predict when it would
.

Still,
I made the promise.

I told Naomi I would leave with her if it came to that. I said so with the hope that things would work out. So much could change in a year. I refused to let us break apart. Not now. We had come so far. Projecting certainty was for the best, I told myself. And I was right. By doing so, I allowed us to avoid a major crisis. Everything remained on track.

A few days later, I took my 23-year-old brother Tim – who had just moved to LA to be an assistant at an art gallery – to a house party.

The party was in Santa Monica, at a two-story apartment leased by the writer of a then yet-to-be-produced indie romantic comedy based on his own failed relationship. It was crowded and lively so Tim and I looked for empty space. We navigated upstairs, where we ran into my acquaintance Joe and briefly wished him happy birthday before grabbing cans of PBR and walking out onto the empty balcony.

Gradually,
as the apartment continued to fill up, people trickled outside with us. Most of them happened to be women. Tim was single. Naturally, little bits of interaction ensued. People don’t always believe we’re brothers because I look like our mom, and he looks like our dad, so we riffed off of that, sometimes lying and saying we weren’t brothers because it was easier that way. At one point, primarily because of how congested the balcony became, I ended up talking with a girl who resembled a brunette version of Kirsten
Dunst
. She was next to me with nowhere else to go. We exchanged hellos. It would’ve been awkward not to.

That initial exchange of pleasantries evolved into a conversation about shared experiences. She was a grad student in the Media Studies program at USC. We talked about our ambitions, about how I wanted to be a screenwriter, and about how her thesis was progressing. Coincidentally, she wanted to be a writer after she got out of school, too. What kind of writer? Every kind of writer, she said. She wanted to do it all.

While we were talking, it came up that “Kirsten” (she never gave me her name) had a boyfriend in DC. They were having problems. I told her what Naomi and I had been through over the past year and a half and that in a few weeks we were finally going to be living in the same place. We survived, I said. You can too. I thought it would help her to hear that.

Eventually, I excused myself. Inside, I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I remember being upset with my hair and trying to fix it until someone knocked on the door. When I made it back to the balcony, Kirsten was gone. She left with her friend Jessica, a tall blonde snowboarder Tim had been talking to. They told him we should meet them at a bar two blocks away from the Third Street Promenade.

A few minutes later, Tim and I left the party without saying goodbye to Joe. Tim plugged his iPod into my car stereo, and we listened to
Eraser
while driving drunk, deeper into Santa Monica, towards the ocean.

Renee’s was a blur of sequences and images. The bar was crammed full of people. I unexpectedly ran into my friend Matthew while knocking against bodies to get to the back room, where I found Kirsten bathed in red lighting next to a bookcase outfitted with strange hand painted dolls. I don’t know where Tim and Jessica went. One way or another, we all ended up outside the bar after last call with some guy named Curtis, who was trying to ingratiate himself with Jessica, and then before I think I really realized it, we were all walking back to her apartment.

Jessica’s apartment
was a miniscule studio, maybe 100 square feet total. The only places to sit were the floor and the bed. There were six of us. Jessica must have been drunker than I realized if she actually believed it was a good idea to bring all of us inside.
Expectedly,
she took the bed. Curtis planted himself next to her. I sat on the floor and slumped against the wall. A few feet away, Kirsten slipped down to the carpeting and moved close to me. The space between us was taken up by a presence, that imaginary thing that can be tactile when it’s meaningful. She was quiet, confidently pensive. If I had to guess, I would say she was wondering if I was thinking about her.

Tim was sitting in a chair at Jessica’s desk a couple strides away from where I was on the floor. He called Jessica over to show her something on his
Facebook
profile. When I turned to see what it was, I made eye contact with Kirsten. I kept looking at her and she kept looking back, and neither of us looked away, and at that moment I knew I could have her if I wanted her.

Almost unconsciously,
I turned away.

Time passed, and Tim came down to the floor. I leaned in and said, “My girlfriend’s going to wake up in New York in like an hour. We need to go home.”

So we did.

Back at my apartment,
I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. When the temperature was one notch away from scalding, I stepped inside. I let the water pour down on me, and I thought about what this moment would be like if I had slept with Kirsten and about what would come next, if Naomi would be able to tell something was different when we talked, if I would make excuses for what I did, or if I would hate myself. Would I have told Naomi the truth, or would I have said nothing and tried to hide it? Did Kirsten want to have an affair with me? A
one night
stand? Would we start dating if Naomi and I ever broke up?

Done with the shower, I toweled off and climbed into bed. Sleep came before I could answer the questions.

Neither Tim nor I ever saw Kirsten or Jessica again. Tim gave up on Jessica when she didn’t accept his friend request.

Naomi booked her flight on June 22
^nd
, the same day she gave two weeks notice at work. She forwarded me the itinerary: United flight 64 leaving CLE on July 19
^th
at 8:54 AM and arriving at LAX at 11:35 AM. She decided to fly out of Ohio so she could move her furniture back to her parents’ house after her lease ended on the 16
^th
. She would spend the eleven days between exiting NYC and entering LA with them in
Daventry
. She was never very close with her mom and dad, but she had recently been making an effort to shorten that gap. The distance between them was as an effect of resentment – Naomi believed their marriage had been broken since she was born. In her mind, she would have been better off if they had gotten a divorce.

I offered to fly to New York help with the move, but she maintained it wasn’t worth it. She could handle everything on her own. Of course she could… And she did. The move went as anticipated. I didn’t talk to her until she was on the road to Ohio, but when I did, she sounded excited about how close we were to the first day of our new life together.

Over the next couple of weeks, we texted more than we talked because of how often she was with her parents, but I came away with the impression she was enjoying herself. No fights with mom and dad. No reason to complain.

Two days ago, on July 19
^th
, I woke up to a text that read, “Today’s the day :)”

Her plane had already taken off so I didn’t text back. I did sit-ups while my coffee
brewed and re-arranged a couple areas in the bedroom to create
a
extra space for her belongings. I still wasn’t sure where we would fit the boxes she mailed – although I didn’t understand why none of them had showed up yet. Naomi wasn’t concerned, and I stopped bringing it up because I know I have a tendency to over-worry.

At 11:10 AM, I put on my sunglasses, walked out of the apartment, and locked the door. I hurried to my car with the attitude of the child I once was, a little kid on my way to the arcade.

I made it to LAX at 11:30 AM. I parked and went to the
United
terminal. I watched as people with Cleveland Browns and Cavs T-shirts and hats came down the escalator into baggage claim. I had memorized what the experience of seeing Naomi’s face again, after so much time apart, was like from all the flights I’d taken to New York. I wondered if she would be different coming off a one-way flight, if her usual enthusiasm would be supercharged.