Old Friends

“So what do you think?” she asks, sitting across from me wide-eyed and terrified.

“What do I think?” I repeat. I’m totally unprepared for this.

---

I haven’t seen her in at least a year, and other than the occasional online exchange, we haven’t had any real contact since that random beach outing last summer when she called to see if I had any interest in an F-train journey to Brighton Beach.

“Brighton Beach?” I asked at the time, flippant in my tone, “why would I want to go there?” Now that I think about it, perhaps our entire relationship has been a series of her asking me questions and me asking them back.

“There’s a beach! And it’ll be fun because you could go around speaking Russian to them. Dah! Niet!”

“It’s such a creepy beach,” I said groggily, my voice having the tonality of an overworked attorney lying on his back. “I don’t want to speak Russian to anybody.” I was getting whiny. “I’m not going. Let me sleep.”

But I went, the way I always seemed to give into her whims. Maybe from weakness, maybe from boredom.

Maybe from a little bit of both. The same thing happening this time around, with her calling me out of nowhere to suggest that we “grab a drink.”

I didn’t ask why this time, I just made sure to ask if everything was OK. Her tone was strange and the contact itself was unexpected.

“I just want to see you,” she assured me. “We haven’t seen each other in a long time. We always used to hang out!”

She sounded genuinely disappointed but spoke in exclamation marks, so there was nothing unusual about my using them when I went over the conversation in my head. But why the sudden nostalgia, I wondered, why the sudden need for an in-person meeting to replace the textual status quo of the last several months?

At some point there was us having the fling, an otherwise uneventful and unmemorable foray into satisfying the latent sexual tension that seemed, prior to consummation, the only magical respite available in light of the boredom and anxiety that was our post-college world. Noncommittal encounters without the promise of anything more led to wrong decisions with third parties and the unsurprising crash into jealousy. We tip-toed around substantive conversation, preferring, instead, the dance of head shakes and shrugs. And so it all ended as could be expected, with a flush of tears that evolved into a cold peace and drifted, eventually, into the finality of the last few years, a distance acquaintanceship that completely relied on revisiting the past. Every interaction since had become referential of our history, the majority of sentences beginning with a “remember when” and concluding with the silence of stares that was us trying to claw through the muddled weight of that memory.

Almost immediately afterward she replaced our lack of definition with a very clearly defined relationship, a boyfriend made of a guy she met at some house party in Chelsea. I only found out about it after they had already been dating for a few months, her casually inserting “with my boyfriend” into a conversation about summer vacation plans.

“Your boyfriend!? What? Who?” I didn’t hide my surprise.

“Yeah! I didn’t tell you? We’ve been going out for a while now. Hmmm. I thought I told you.”

I didn’t believe that for a moment. “Pretty sure I’d remember something like that.”

“Pretty sure you often don’t remember things unless they have to do with you.”

That part I gave her, but really, she hadn’t told me.

My first reaction was anger, and I claimed the anger had to do with not being informed about this sooner. But really, that was a little bit of me fooling myself. Immediate follow-up emotions included annoyance, frustration, confusion, a little day trip into not giving a damn, back to regret, insecurity, and then the inevitable – acceptance.

“I really like this guy,” she told me.

That one seemed especially aimed at me, or maybe I was reading too much into it. I began wondering why I was so bothered. Did I want to date her myself? Completely irresolute about anything (as usual) and somewhat scared that my mind was tricking me into wanting her because she was suddenly unavailable, I convinced myself that this “relationship” of hers couldn’t possibly last, that it was just too soon after everything between us had imploded. But that was a couple of years ago, and boyfriend of the month turned into boyfriend of the quarter-decade, while I proceeded to forget that it ever made my head spin.

---

“Well?” she continues, small hands pressed tight around the mug of coffee on the table in front of her, too small to wrap around it. I try not to look at them.

“I don’t know.” My jaw is unlatched and hanging all dramatic, leaving me with this open-mouthed look of shock. “This is sudden, isn’t it?”

“Depends on what you mean by sudden? Sudden how? We’ve been dating for over 2 years.”

“You’ve been dating for over 2 years?” I feign ignorance.

“Yes! Don’t you even remember when I started dating him? Literally a couple of months after – You know.

After everything.” She repositions her hands on the mug and looks down at it, contemplating a sip. There’s something clumsy about the motion and as she re-crosses her fingers, I can’t avoid noticing the ring.

“I actually never understood that,” I begin, and then immediately grimace, realizing my mistake only when it’s already too late to take it back.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“What? You can’t just start a sentence like that and then decide not to say anything.” She takes her hands off the mug and drops them onto her lap, the ring dropping out of sight. She leans forward the way she does when she gets vehement about something, or at least that’s the way I remember her being.

“I can do whatever I want. It’s my sentence.”

“Come on. What? Understood what? Me dating him?”

I have the momentary thought that, in general, they never really made sense to me as a couple. There was always something misaligned about their interactions, the way she was playful and flighty and the way he responded by giving her a scolding look of Wall Street Journal seriousness. He was just some gallery manager who tried, unsuccessfully, to downplay his lack of a sense of humor by dressing exceptionally trendy. I didn’t really know what she saw in him or how they managed to stay together as long as they had. But here, I guessed, was the proof of something stable and strong in their relationship, this bobble head of a diamond that was now swallowing her hand.

“No,” I correct her and my own flow of thoughts. “I never understood how you started dating him so soon after us.”

She leans back and crosses her arms.

“You said it yourself,” I continue, “how you were already going out with him only a couple of months after everything. I always thought that was very quick, and it really surprised me.” I stop and consider my next words. “And then, and then you only tell me about it months after that, when you guys are already seeing each other for a while. That’s weird isn’t it?”

“Well,” she answers, “I didn’t know how you’d take it. And two months after isn’t a short time.” She sounds a little defensive.

“You didn’t know how I’d take it because why?”

“Because, as you can see, it still upsets you.”

“It doesn’t upset me,” I check myself. “I’m just saying.”

“Look, what did we have?” She’s starting to go into the counter-attack and she’s leaning forward again, elbows on table and hands rising and falling like a conductor’s. “Nothing really. We didn’t have anything.

Why would I need to wait any longer?”

“I don’t know. People take some time for themselves after a relationship falls apart. It’s the healthier thing to do.”

“What relationship?” Her voice gets loud enough so that the people sitting next to us in this closet of a café glance over, but immediately return to their newspapers and laptops and act as if they’re not actually paying attention to every word we’re saying. “What relationship?” she repeats, quieter this time. “You didn’t even want to date me!”

“That’s not true,” I say, and honestly I suddenly can’t remember how everything happened, the past rolling itself into a smooth sphere of time without blemish or mark.

“What’re you talking about?”

I glance over her shoulder to one of the photographs mounted on the wall. It’s part of a small exhibit of shots by a local photographer. In it a woman sits in a bathtub with her legs pressed up to her chest and her arms sinking down into the water, obstructed by the white ceramic. She rests her head on the caps of her knees and tilts it towards the lens but doesn’t look directly into it. She’s thinking about something, her wet hair falling in front of her mouth, her lips slightly open, as if she has something to say but doesn’t have anyone there to listen.

“Tell me,” she persists.

“Forget it,” I answer, turning my attention away from the photo. She’s looking at me and spinning the ring on her finger, twisting it back and forth. “It doesn’t matter.”

Slowly, she releases her ringed hand and lets it rest soft and flat on the table in front of us. She turns it over and lets it linger, exposing the ring’s banded underside, the deep creases of pink in her palm. And then she takes it back as suddenly as she has offered it, using it now to raise the mug take a sip of coffee. “Cold,” she says, exaggerating a wince of displeasure.

I smile to myself and nod. “I have to be honest, I’ve never really liked the coffee they have at this place.”

“Then why come here?”

“The atmosphere.” I point around us. “I think I just enjoy the energy.”

“Funny. You haven’t changed so much.”

“So,” I move the conversation, getting us back to why we’re here, where we started, “I should say congratulations. I don’t think I’ve said it yet. Have I?”

“No, but thank you,” she accepts politely.

“You’re like a real adult now.”

“I am!”

“Are you going to invite me to the wedding?”

“Of course! Why would I call to tell you in person and then not invite you to the wedding?” She forces a laugh and shakes her head. She’s looking at me and I suddenly notice the edges of her eyes, the crows-feet that weren’t there the last time I remember seeing her.

A life lived smiling, I think to myself, and suddenly she’s the same girl I’ve known for all these years, the one who split bottles of wine with me while we lay on my dorm room rug watching VHS tapes on a tiny 15” TV screen, the one who lead me on walks around the City so she could photograph sewer plates because she liked how different they all looked. And once, red-eyed and disheveled, I think I remember her sitting next to me on a bench in Tompkins Sq. Park and not understanding why or how things had fallen so far, plummeted away from us, below our feet and the puddle stained asphalt, and deeper still, through the silt and New York City granite and digging further into the ground until the whispers dimmed into distant points of muffled sound, until they vanished altogether.

She makes a motion for her tattered handbag composed of multi-colored fabric strips and patches as it hangs from the edge of her chair. Pulling out a cell phone she checks a new message.

“I have to go.”

“Your lover calls?”

“He texts.”

“So much gets lost in a text.”

“Don’t be so dramatic. This is just to coordinate where we’re meeting for dinner.”

“I’m just being difficult.”

She pops the cell phone back into her bag and slings it over her shoulder, rising from the table. I stand to meet her, to see her off, to send her back into the street with a hug and, I guess on some level, a mild appreciation for telling me everything in person, for spending time with me, the two of us alone, perhaps for the last time.

I’m a good half-foot taller and as I pull her in towards me and lower my cheek to her’s I realize that she’s much shorter than I always imagine her to be. Hair brushing past my ear, her warmth against me, there’s that smell of rose water that she always carries, something I only identify because that’s what she told me it was when I once asked. The embrace is casual, a light wrapping of arms across bodies that feels as if it could slip away as simply as it has come, until I feel the pressure of her tightening around me, greedily, for just a second, just long enough to notice.

“Enjoy the rest of your day,” she tells me as she’s moving towards the door, sliding out of the way of some tourists with subway maps and French conversation who are just coming in from the outside.

“Thanks. Enjoy dinner.”

“Thank you.” She holds the door open, letting in the new October chill. A couple of underdressed people look up at her with annoyance. “We’ll chat soon.”

I nod. “OK.”

From inside I see her hailing a cab on the sparse street that barely ever sees any, but sure enough one stops almost immediately. Her body is framed inside the car, brown hair and fair skin, light red lipstick coloring the space just below the profile of her nose, all wrapped in a yellow outline. I keep looking at her as she talks with the driver. And just as soon as she finishes, right before he presses down on the accelerator and whisks her away, she turns her head back in my direction, catches my eyes searching for her from beyond the glass of the car window and the steps of the café and its paned door, and smiles.