“I’m not angry. Honestly, I’m not. But I’m also not a trap, Jack. I’m not a dead end you need to avoid. You know where the real prison is? It’s in your mind. It’s in your head. We live in our heads, Jack, and you can travel your legs off, but you’re still going to be right inside your brain when the day is done. You made me think it might be nice to have someone along for the movie, someone who might be next to you eating popcorn and watching the same show so you could discuss it and compare it later. But if that’s not what you want, if being free means watching the movie alone, okay, I get it. Good luck with that, Jack.”
Carefully, carefully, carefully, I walked out of the restaurant. I made sure not to storm out, not to show any impatience in my walk. Besides, I didn’t feel angry. I felt I had a hole in my heart, that’s all. I held my breath and pretended I was at the bottom of a pool. I kept my chin up and tried not to look right or left. A small part of my brain started sending messages and asking questions—Where is my backpack, where am I going, where is Constance, how can I reach her?—and at the same time, my head began to pound. I wanted to cry, but I wouldn’t let myself.
When I stepped outside, I realized it had become cold. Truly cold. And the mountains said it was almost time to go home.
29
I did not charge off and leave. Dramatic departures cost money, and I was down to the last pennies of my budget. Besides, I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go, how I wanted to get there, what the next step should be. We had a room in a cheap hotel, and I needed a place to stay. Simple as that. You have to have a roof over your head. That was the first law. It was time to be practical. I decided I didn’t hate Jack. I decided he had a right to be frightened by his friend’s illness. He had behaved badly by involving me, but he wasn’t the first person in the world to make a mistake. I had made plenty of mistakes. I told myself that I should be relieved. I had enough to do in New York. I had too much to do, honestly. Back in the room, I pulled out my iPad and answered every form, every request, every e-mail that waited for me while I traveled around Europe with Jack. I had simply lost focus, I reflected. Jack had lost focus, too, in his own way. We didn’t have to be enemies. It was all a simple question of emphasis.
I changed into my pajama bottoms and an Amherst hoodie.
Then I held my breath for a while again. It helped. Afterward, I propped up the pillows behind me and read Hemingway. Hemingway, I reflected, left his first wife for greater experiences. The greater experience was a woman named Paulette, or Pauline something or other. It was a question of emphasis. Emphases. Everyone had to decide where to put his or her money on the roulette table.
I turned off the lights a little later. I wasn’t sure I could sleep.
Jack came in quietly about an hour later. He used the flashlight on his phone to see where he was going. I kept my eyes shut.
“Can we talk?” he asked softly. “Heather, are you awake? Can we talk?”
I considered pretending to sleep, but what was the point of that? I reached to the lamp beside the bed and turned it on. Jack sat on the bed and put his hand on my leg. I shoved up into the pillows and tried to push my hair out of my face.
“That didn’t go so well,” he said. “The dinner, I mean.”
I shrugged.
“Do you think we can repair it?” he asked.
“I don’t see how. Not the way it was before.”
“I’m sorry I was ambivalent about going to New York with you. I don’t want to lose what we have. I’m drawn to you, Heather, but I’m scared of what that means. Here’s what I want to say: I was like you a couple of years ago. I cared about promotions and climbing the ladder, but one day Tom came to me and explained what had happened. I realized through his death that I hadn’t done the things I wanted to do. I know that sounds melodramatic, but I promised myself that I would never spend another day in an office. I asked myself if I wanted to change my life, if I could change my life. I took this trip, this mission to follow my grandfather’s journal in the hope that it would restore me somehow as it restored him. Then I met you.”
“Jack, I’m sure I can’t understand what it means to watch a friend die that way. Not really. But you have to understand that you’re free. You can do what you need to do. You don’t owe me anything.”
“It’s not about owing, Heather. I’m sorry I’m so bad at framing this conversation. I keep saying things I don’t mean exactly.”
“I’m listening, Jack.”
He took a breath. I could see he wanted to say things clearly.
“It’s not just about you exactly. It’s about work and getting back into journalism. It’s a whole range of things. It was Tom’s death, too. He had a shunt put in his chest and had a bunch of interferon pumped through his system. That went on a long time, and he was sick every day. It made me pretty gun-shy to watch that, Heather. It made me not trust the world. I’m afraid you got swept up in all those thoughts, but it’s that, not us.”
“I understand, Jack. You don’t need to explain yourself to me or to anyone. I think I’m going to head to Paris. We’re flying out soon, anyway, and my money is low. I already let Constance know. She’s coming up from Spain soon.”
“I’m coming with you. I want to be in Paris with you.”
“Not sure that’s a great idea.”
“We talked about being in Paris together.”
“We talked about a lot of things. I won’t kid you, Jack. I’m falling for you. I know it’s a cliché, but you take my breath away. You do. I don’t know if we would have been perfect, but I was willing to try. I didn’t see getting together with you as the end to anything. I saw it as a beginning. An exciting one. I want to keep traveling, Jack. I’ll be going to Japan and Indonesia … all over the world, really. Yes, I’ll be working, and yes, I will have to pay my dues at the office, but I’m happy to do that. It’s part of my life. I thought you might be part of that life, too. I hoped, anyway. But if it’s not meant to be, okay. It hurts, but I can accept it. I still love what we’ve had here.”
“I just need a little more time.”
“Time for what? That doesn’t sound very likely. Or practical. It’s just going to dig the hole deeper, isn’t it? I don’t want to give you an ultimatum, but I suppose we’re coming to the fish-or-cut-bait stage of things. It means too much to mean just a little. I can’t make it casual at this point. If we had met in a town in the States, we could have kept dating and let time help us decide what to do. But that wasn’t our fate, was it? We met on a train going to Amsterdam. Maybe spending so much time together, traveling, you know, maybe that raised the ante. Maybe it rushed things without our knowing it. I’m not sure. I’m tired of thinking about it, Jack. I have to go home soon. I want to see Paris one more time before I go because I’ve always loved the idea of Paris even before I saw it. But I don’t want to see Paris with you. Not anymore. Not if you’re coming to see me onto a plane. I don’t want to remember Paris as the place I went and broke up with a sweetheart. Remember a long time ago you asked me what I liked in Hemingway, and I said I liked his sadness? Well, I do like his sadness, but I don’t want to bring that sadness with me to Paris.”