“Okay.”
The moment he left, the room felt different, drained. I looked around. Something was moving—a moth, fluttering around the ceiling lamp. The lamp had three bulbs, each in its own glass lily, all blossoming out of a ceiling fan.
Ivan came back with a bottle of beer. “I think my mother finished the wine,” he said. “We drank most of it before. She was telling me I should have entertained you better. She said I should have taken you out.”
“You did take me out.”
He took a swig and proffered the bottle. I shook my head. “I can’t believe you want to go through this sober. Well, I think it’s your turn.”
I took a deep breath and tried to steady my voice. “Why did you tell me to get over you?” I asked.
He fixed his eyes on a point some five feet ahead of him on the carpet, as if the answer might be written there. “I always knew this thing between us was really delicate,” he said after a moment. When he said “this thing between us,” my chest constricted. “I always thought a time would come when you’d get fed up. I decided from the beginning that, when that happened, I’d let you go and not keep calling you. When I wrote that to you, I thought you’d decided to get over me.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I had to think that, from the way you were acting.”
“But if I’d already decided, why did you have to tell me?”
There was a pause. “That’s a good question,” he said. I felt proud. Then I felt ashamed for feeling proud. “I guess I meant it for myself,” he said. “I had to get over you. I felt really heroic doing it. I decided it was time to let you go, and then I did it.”
“It really hurt,” I said.
“I know that now,” he said. “I’m sorry. But you know, when I called and you wouldn’t talk to me, I was hurt. So when I wrote that to you—partly also it was a power thing.”
The breath caught in my throat. It had never occurred to me that power was something he would actually use, on me of all people. “Want me to ask another one now? So we’ll be caught up?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why were you so sure there was a time when I’d get fed up? Why did you think from the beginning that eventually you would have to let me go?”
“Well . . . partly it was because I knew I was leaving. I knew I was probably going to go to California, and I was definitely going to leave Boston. But also, I always felt that this thing is really hard for you. I always felt like it was harder for you than for me.”
“Why would it be harder for me?”
“Because you’re alone.”
It felt like being hit, like finding out that the worst thing I had ever thought was true. “What?”
“I mean, you grew up alone, you were an only child for a long time. This thing with talking, for example, is easier for me. I have a lot of sisters, I’m used to talking to them.”
It seemed to me that that wasn’t what he had meant. But I didn’t want to ask or know any more. “Your turn,” I said.
He nodded and took a swig of beer. “Why did you write what you wrote to me, when I was in California?”
I felt a shock, like when he had mentioned power, but this time the feeling was intoxicating. I felt it, his power—but like he was going to use it delicately—but not like he wasn’t going to use it. I undid the clip that had been holding back my hair, and it all fell into my face, so I clipped it back again.
“I had to get your attention,” I said. “First you had your thesis, and you didn’t write to me for weeks. And then when you finally did write, you were already leaving to go somewhere else. You were going away and I had to get your attention.”
“Well, you definitely got my attention.”
“I know.”
He laughed. “But you know, I still don’t understand whether you meant what you wrote—or whether you were just trying, like you said, to get my attention.”
I nodded. “I don’t know, either.”
He raised the bottle as if in salute, drank from it again, and then held it toward me over the bed. After a moment I took it. I liked the weight, the rough coolness of the foil-wrapped neck. The beer itself was bitter and watery, same as always. It was comical how exactly the same it was as all the other times it was beer.
“Your turn,” he said.
“Well—I don’t understand why you . . .” I took a deep breath. “Why do you . . .”
“Why do I what?”
“Why do you take the trouble?”
“Trouble?” He sounded annoyed.
“Why do you go through so much effort?”
“What effort? Are you asking why I go through the effort to spend time with you? Because I enjoy spending time with you. Is that what you want to hear?”
“You do?”
“Yeah, I do. Now it’s my turn, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So why didn’t you call me after you went to the village? Why didn’t you call me for more than two weeks?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You can’t not answer.”
“Because sometimes after I see you, I feel really bad,” I said. “It’s almost physically painful.” I touched my sternum.
He averted his face. “Now, this sounds like something I’m not used to hearing from you,” he said, and I could hear from his voice that he was smiling. He was happy that I hurt like that. And I knew I had felt the same happiness, anytime he mentioned feeling hurt by me. Why was it fun for us to make each other suffer? Did that mean it wasn’t love? Surely that wasn’t what love was?
In any case, once I had admitted that I felt physical pain, things went easier between us, time itself seemed to move more smoothly. Ivan asked what I thought about Hungary, just like Rózsa had. I said it was interesting. I said that some things seemed to tell me more about him, but other things seemed not related to him at all.
“That’s how I felt in New Jersey,” he said. “I wanted to learn something about you. But I didn’t learn anything. It was just suburbs.” Ivan asked whether New Jersey was an intense place, and how long I had known I wanted to be a writer. I asked why he had left Hungary to study abroad, and why his father thought he was selfish. He took off his glasses, and looked so weary and handsome.
Ivan asked why I thought it was so hard for us to have a conversation: we had avoided it all this time, and once we had forced ourselves, it had almost killed us.
I said maybe it was specific to talking. “We could do it over email.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We took turns, but basically you wrote something, and I wrote something else, and then you wrote something else. It was never really a conversation.”
“It was never really a conversation,” I repeated, thinking it over.
“It was better,” he said.
The moth, which had fallen asleep on the lamp, woke up and started zooming around the room. “You probably don’t want me to kill it,” he said.
“Go right ahead,” I said.