“We will never be the same,” he says.
He kisses me anyway and it’s over-the-top spectacular because of all the talking and tension, but even if that hadn’t happened and it was just a regular old kiss it would have been great, because our lips fit like a lock and key, click-click-click.
I push him away. I laugh at him. “That’s fucked up,” I say. “Get out of here.”
“You’re right, it is,” he says. Hands up, submissive.
“I mean get out of this apartment. Really. I think you just should go.” I am accustomed to having my feelings and intentions be discounted by the world, but not in my own home. That’s intolerable.
“I’m sorry, I’m leaving,” he says, and he does. But then he comes back five minutes later and he doesn’t even say anything, he just walks in and kisses me, and it is preposterously good. All right, all right, take me, I think. Break the impasse one way or another. And I hate to tell you something so obvious but we are all the same lying down. On top of that, he and I are the same in our desires, which is to say when he slips a hand around my neck and squeezes it firmly while we look each other in the eyes it thrills me just as it thrills him, and when I slip my hand around his cock and squeeze it firmly while we look each other in the eyes it thrills him just as it thrills me, and when we smell each other and lick each other and push all of our parts together inside and out and our eyes are now closed and we are just feeling each other, we are the same, it is stupid how much we are the same, it is foolishness, that’s how it feels, and then it starts to feel really stupid, that we were both fools, because even though it feels fantastic, as soon as it is over, it is doom. He does not stay the night. He doesn’t even stay the hour. He looks aghast, and I feel the same. “This was wrong,” he says. “I don’t do this anymore,” he says. But I do, I think.
And that was the last time I saw him. No texts, nothing. We let each other go. I don’t know if it was worth it. I miss him. But I was never going to be what he wanted, and he was never going to be what I wanted. I was a girl but not his girl. He was a man but he was not my man. In that way we burned our love down.
Greta
My sister-in-law comes to town for a meeting and asks me to have lunch with her. I haven’t seen her in a year and a half, since I dropped my mother off with them in New Hampshire. It’s not that I’ve been ignoring them; I call every Sunday. I just figured they were doing their thing, being this tight little family unit in the woods. Once they were all here, now they are all there, and I’m the one who got left behind.
We meet at Balthazar, Greta’s suggestion. She used to go there all the time, boozy business lunches, hushed conversations at the bar post-work. I’d met her once or twice for the post-post-drink, witnessed the tail end of those meals, glittering media girls, their laughter tinkling like it was lined with crystals. An empty bottle of Sancerre in front of them. Introduced as her sister-in-law, assessed, and dismissed. Then Greta had a baby. The baby was sick. Shortly thereafter the magazine collapsed. They moved to New Hampshire. They have Sancerre there but I’m not sure it tastes the same. I’ll have to ask her.
Greta’s late. The hostess seats me at a banquette beneath a wall of mirrors, artfully mismatched panels, unevenly glazed together. Above me, the tin ceiling painted a chalky white, fans stirring gracefully. There is a general ceaseless swell of noise. A waitress arrives. “I’m absolutely certain I need a glass of Sancerre,” I tell her.
To my left sits an older man, bespoke suit, with gray hair like elegant snowdrifts. He’s flipping through the Wall Street Journal. And to the right of me, against the window, there’s a stylish couple. She’s much younger than him, has thick brown hair, a freckled, petite nose, lean, golden skin, a silver necklace beneath a black silk shirt, a martini glass in front of her. He’s in a pinstriped suit, dark-haired and glossy, Semitic, and is wearing an enormous, expensive watch. Together, they’re hunched, hushed, miserable. There are no new friends to be made here.
Greta weaves her way through the restaurant. She is dressed as an impression of her old self. All black, head to toe. Long, fragile, dangling gold earrings that fall to her shoulders. Extremely high heels that seem like no fun to wear, but that woman does know how to wear them. She’s put on a significant amount of weight, but she was so thin to begin with that she just looks like a normal human being now, with round thighs and hips and an ass and real breasts, with a little sag to them, and her hair is healthy, big, nearly animalistic. Her bangs, however, are a mess.
“Don’t get up,” she says, so I don’t, and I start to blow her a kiss from across the table, but it turns out she wants the human contact anyway, and she leans awkwardly across the table to kiss my cheek and reach out for what could, at most, become a half embrace, and it turns out to be just a pat on the shoulder, because as she leans she knocks over my water, and it spills on the table and my lap, so I guess the physical interaction wasn’t really worth it after all.
“I’m so sorry! I’m so, so, so sorry,” she says. “It’s nothing, it’s water,” I say as I dab myself with my napkin, and I feel this strange sort of victory, like whatever happens next I have already won lunch, or at least she has lost it. It’s not that this meal is a competition, that’s not what it is. I just need to feel like I have the upper hand.
A busboy comes and wipes up the table, and then a waitress slides a menu in front of Greta. “Get a drink,” I tell Greta. “Immediately.” She orders the same as me and then, without pause, a riveting, obviously delirious energy racing through her, launches in with the reason for her visit. “I’ve been doing contract work,” she says. “It’s boring, but it’s money, and when you’re working remotely you have to take what you can get.” The wine arrives, and we beg off ordering. “We’ll just need a minute to catch up,” I say. Here we are, two family members, catching up.
“I guess my days doing interesting”—air quotes—“work are over. Is this part of being a grown-up? Taking what you can get?” I don’t know what it means to be a grown-up. Or at least not her version of a grown-up. She’s waiting for a response. “Oh that wasn’t rhetorical?” I say. “You really want to know what I think?” She nods. “You’re doing what you have to do,” I say.
The waiter returns and we both glance at the menu.