I was absurd.
Olly, olly, oxen free, I whispered five times, a hundred times, a thousand times. It was the come-to-base call from childhood, the signal we used to say the game was over, come out now, stop hiding. Jack didn’t hear me. Jack did not come in or stop hiding.
I ate a late lunch at a café off the common. I ordered more soup. Vegetable. The waiter brought it to me and asked if I wanted wine. I said no. I ordered a beer. I told him to bring me the darkest, heaviest, local-est beer he had in the restaurant. He smiled and nodded and hurried off. He was a short, runty man with enormous forearms. He put the beer on my table and nodded to indicate that he wanted to watch me drink it. I did. It tasted black and heavy, tasted of tree roots and dwarf toes, for all I knew, and I had never tasted anything better.
“Yes,” I said. “Beautiful.”
And that’s when Jack walked by the window of the restaurant.
*
I jumped up and leaned over a window table—a couple eating lunch leaned back, terrified, or annoyed—at this body that suddenly hovered over them. “Excuse me, sorry, excuse me,” I said in a rush. I tapped on the window. I tapped until I thought the window might break. But Jack didn’t hear me. He didn’t stop. His barn jacket disappeared in the crowds.
“Here,” I said to the waiter, spidering back to my table. “Here, I’m paying. Here.”
I threw money down on the table. The waiter began to dig through his pockets for change, but I didn’t wait. I ran to the door and pushed outside.
I sprinted after Jack. I ran as hard as I had ever run. I knew he could disappear in an instant. He could duck in a store or decide to go into his hotel. Anything could happen. But at least he headed for the town common, where the dancers kept up their constant movement. Going in that direction, he likely would watch the celebrations. It was nearly evening, and the light and noise drew us all toward them.
I caught him half a block away from the town common. I recognized his back, his walk, the shape of his neck and shoulders. I wondered how I could not recognize him, his body was so familiar to me. I circled out and away, flanking him so that I could see his face if possible. I didn’t want to run up to him and jerk his shoulder around, screaming into his face, Hello, Jack. Remember me? Remember the girl in Paris?
Maybe he was going to meet the other woman.
For a half a block, I walked on the other side of the road from him. It was easy to do. The crowds clogged the streets. He had no reason to look for me or to believe anyone observed him with special attention. The only reason he would turn to me was if I happened to be in the center of an explosion of noise. Otherwise, I blended in to the festivalgoers. I kept his pace. We arrived at the town common at the same time.
I stopped. So did he. We stood for a few minutes not moving. He kept his eyes on the dancers. I followed his eyeline to see if he sought anyone special.
How many times, I wondered, had I rehearsed this in my head? How many times had I been able to say this or that, just the correct phrase, that instantly cemented us together, made him understand the absolute error of his ways, of his entire thought process, so that he would crumple before me and beg me to take him back? My insides felt stirred and rattled, and I wondered if I could speak at all. I had never imagined this. I had never imagined how hard it would be to approach him. At the same time, I realized I still loved him. I loved every molecule of him, every glance, every fact of him.
I also saw that he was sick. He had thinned. His skin looked sallow.
Turn to me, I thought. Turn now.
And he did. As simple as that.
But his eyes passed over me. They did not see me. His eyes went back to the common and the dancers, and I held my breath, wondering how it had come to this. Was I going to let him go now? For the first time, it occurred to me—it truly, truly sank in—that I had an obligation, too. Maybe it was my duty to let him go. By approaching him, maybe I would infringe on his privacy, his right to leave the world on his own terms. He had a right to be left alone, and I felt foolish and selfish that I had never taken that into account at a level that I should have.
Destiny did play a part after all.
His height saved us. He looked again in my direction and, without fully meaning to, our eyes met. I watched the recognition bloom in his eyes. I made a vow, silently, that I would not advance toward him. I would not move a muscle. It was still within his power to walk away, and I understood, at last, that I would let him go if he did.
We looked at one another a long time. People danced around us, but they didn’t make any difference.
He moved toward me. I didn’t move. That was my promise to myself. I watched him coming closer, his face drawn now with illness, his body not nearly as solid as it had been. He had to stop several times to dodge around people, and then, miraculously, he stood in from of me. Jack Vermont. The man I loved beyond all hope or reason.
He lifted me and kissed me and held me. He spun me slowly, and I knew, I knew, that he had lost strength. I knew everything now, every word or thought, and I clung to him, kissed him over and over again. He kissed me, and he set me down slowly, and he kept kissing me, breaking away and kissing me again, as if kissing was thought, was breath, and what was the point of talking any longer? He was dying, and he had decided not to make me the steward of his dying. I couldn’t blame him.
“I couldn’t come with you,” he said, his lips near my hair, near my ear. “I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Forgive me.”
I kissed him a dozen times. A thousand times. I nodded.
“I know. I know it all. I know about Tom.”
“The leukemia is back,” he said. “That’s it in a nutshell. I had tests done before I met you, and the results came back in Paris. Not good. None of it is good.”
“Who was the woman?”
He appeared puzzled for a second, then smiled.
“It was my aunt. She came to see what my grandfather had discovered in Batak. She left this morning.”