Brad picked up on my hostility and tried to change the subject. “Are you dating anyone these days?”
“No, just fucking,” I lied again, for amusement. “Finally got rid of that old ball and chain, you know?” I was finding it hard to stick to my goal of being the bigger man here.
“That’s great for you,” Brad said, uncomfortably.
“Another scotch please!” I called out.
“You know, sometimes Lizzy gets pissed at me for the smallest things. Like the toilet seat—she’s mad if I leave it up, but she’s mad if I leave down.” He looked at me and shook his head. “She says my aim isn’t good enough.”
I actually felt sorry for him. “Listen, you’re gonna have to learn to piss sitting down. It’s part of being married. It’s actually kind of relaxing, like a little break.”
“Really?”
“Totally.”
My second scotch came. I drank it faster than the first.
“You know, I forgot to tell you that Lizzy found another box of your pictures and some rolls of undeveloped film. She said she wanted you to come by and pick them up since we’re . . . you know . . . trying to prepare the spare room.”
Jesus. “Okay.”
He checked his phone. “Shit, we have Lamaze class soon. I gotta go, man. Want to come up to the apartment and grab that box?”
“Sure, let’s go.”
We walked the few blocks to the apartment, hardly speaking along the way. Once we got to the building, I shuffled behind him into the lobby. The two scotches, combined with the weirdness of being in my old building, suddenly hit me. “You know what, Brad? I’m just gonna wait here for you to bring the box down.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’ll wait.” I smiled weakly and took a seat near the elevator. A few minutes later, he returned with a dark gray plastic tote.
“Thought you said it was a box?”
“Uh, yeah, it was, but Lizzy took everything out of the box and put it in here for more efficient storage.”
“More efficient storage?”
He could barely make eye contact with me. “Yep.”
I was sure Elizabeth had gone through the entire box and thrown half of it away. I wasn’t surprised. “Thanks, Brad.”
“See ya, buddy.” He slapped me on the back as I turned to walk away.
Once I got back to my loft, I sat on my old leather couch, turned on U2’s “With or Without You,” kicked my feet up on the plastic tote, and closed my eyes. I imagined that I had built a life, not just a career. I imagined that my walls were covered with pictures of my family, not animals from the fucking Serengeti. Taking a deep breath, I leaned forward and opened the tote.
It was everything from that time, preserved in black-and-white photographs. Grace and me in Washington Square Park. At Tisch. In our dorm. In the lounge. Grace playing the cello. Grace naked on my bed, taking a photo of me, the camera masking her face. I ran my finger over it. Let me see your face, I remember saying. Grace and me in Los Angeles, playing Scrabble at my mom’s house. My mom teaching Grace how to throw pottery in the Louvre. Grace sleeping on my chest as I looked up into the camera.
Slowly, I took each photo out of the tote. The last photo I pulled out was taken on the day I left for South America. It was what they call a “selfie” now. Grace and I were lying in bed, looking up into the lens as I held the camera over us and clicked the shutter.
We looked so happy, so content, so in love.
What happened to us?
At the bottom of the bag, I found a cassette tape and an undeveloped roll of film. I removed it from the canister and held it up to the light. It was in color, something I rarely used back then; it wasn’t until I started working for National Geographic that I used color on a regular basis.
I got up, set the roll on the counter, popped the cassette into an old tape player, and drank until I passed out, listening to Grace and her friend, Tatiana, playing a violin-and-cello duet of “Eleanor Rigby.” They played it over and over, and each time, at the end, I could hear Grace giggling and Tatiana shushing her.
I fell asleep with a smile on my face, even though I felt like one of those lonely people they talk about in the song.
THERE WERE STILL a few film-processing stores around downtown. The PhotoHut was long gone, but I found a camera store on my way to work the next morning and dropped off the mysterious roll of film.
When I arrived at the office, I spotted Elizabeth in the office kitchen, near the coffee pot. “I thought you’re not supposed have caffeine when you’re pregnant?” I said.
“I’m allowed to have a cup,” she shot back as I brushed past her. I smirked and walked toward my cube. I could feel her walking behind me, her ballet flats shuffling against the carpet, kicking up electrical currents. She had a habit of dragging her feet.
I flipped on my computer and turned to see her standing behind me, waiting to acknowledge her. Her hair was sticking up, floating off her shoulders from the static electricity. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What?”