Chapter 16
Aqua was pacing in front of Kat’s apartment.
His pace was done in tight two-steps-spin-180 two-steps-spin-180 formation. Kat stopped on the corner and watched for a moment. Something was clutched in his hand. Aqua kept looking at it—was it a sheet of paper? He kept talking to it—no, Kat thought, more like arguing or even pleading with it.
People gave Aqua wide berth, but this was New York. Nobody overreacted. Kat started toward him. Aqua hadn’t been to her apartment for more than a decade, so why now? When she was about ten feet away from him, she could see what was on the sheet of paper he had bunched up in his right hand.
It was the picture of Jeff she had given to him over two weeks ago.
“Aqua?”
He stopped mid-stride and spun toward her. His eyes were wide and just past the northern border of sanity. She had seen him talk to himself before, had witnessed a few of his paces and tantrums, but she had never seen him look so . . . was it agitated? No. It seemed more than that. It seemed pained.
“Why?” Aqua cried, holding up Jeff’s picture.
“Why what, Aqua?”
“I loved him,” he said, his voice a wounded wail. “You loved him.”
“I know we did.”
“Why?”
He started sobbing. Pedestrians now gave him wider berth. Kat moved closer. She opened her arms and Aqua fell right in, putting his head against her shoulder and continuing to cry.
“It’s okay,” she said softly.
Aqua kept at it, his body racked by each new sob. She shouldn’t have shown him the photograph. He was beyond fragile. He needed routine. He needed sameness, and here she had gone and given him a picture of someone he cared deeply about and never saw anymore.
Wait. How did she know Aqua never saw Jeff anymore?
Eighteen years ago, Jeff had broken up with her. That didn’t mean he had given up all his friends and connections, did it? He and Aqua could still be in touch, still doing what friends do, hang out, grab a beer, watch a game. Except, of course, it wasn’t as though Aqua had a computer or a phone or even an address.
But could they still be in touch?
It seemed doubtful. Kat let him have his cry, there on the street. He pulled himself together, but it took some time. She patted his back and cooed soothing words. She had done this for Aqua before, especially after Jeff left, but it had been a long, long time. In those days, she had both taken pity on him and been angered by his reaction. Jeff had dumped her, not him. Shouldn’t Aqua be the one comforting her?
But, man, she missed this connection. She had long ago mourned the loss of this friend, accepting the yoga-teacher relationship as being the only one he could reasonably expect to give. Right now, holding him like this, she fell back and yet again felt the pang for all she had lost eighteen years ago.
“Are you hungry?” she asked him.
Aqua nodded, lifting his head. His face was filled with tears and snot. So was Kat’s blouse. She didn’t care. She started welling up too, not just for the loss of Jeff or what she and Aqua once had, but just from physically comforting someone you care about. It had been so long. Much too long.
“A little hungry, I guess,” Aqua said.
“Do you want to get something to eat?”
“I should go.”
“No, no, let’s get something to eat, okay?”
“I don’t think so, Kat.”
“I don’t understand. Why did you come here in the first place?”
“Class tomorrow,” Aqua said. “I need to prepare.”
“Come on,” she said, holding on to his hand, trying to keep the plea from her voice. “Stay with me a little while, okay?”
He didn’t respond.
“You said you’re hungry, right?”
“Right.”
“So let’s get something to eat, okay?”
Aqua wiped his face with his sleeve. “Okay.” They started down the block, arm in arm, a rather bizarre-looking couple, she guessed, but again, this was New York. They walked in silence for a while. Aqua stopped crying. Kat didn’t want to push him, but then, she couldn’t just leave it alone.
“You miss him,” she said.
Aqua squeezed his eyes shut as if wishing the words away.
“It’s okay. I understand.”
“You don’t understand anything,” Aqua said.
She wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she went with “So explain it to me.”
“I miss him,” Aqua said. Then he stopped, turned, and faced her full-on. When he looked at her, the wide-eyed look had been replaced with something akin to pity. “But not like you, Kat.”
He started to walk away. She hurried to catch up.
“I’m fine,” Kat said.
“It should have been.”
“What should have been?”
“You and Jeff,” Aqua said. “It should have been.”
“Yeah, well, it didn’t happen.”
“It is like you two were traveling down separate roads for your whole lives—two roads that were destined to become one. You have to see that. Both of you.”
“Well, clearly not both of us,” she said.
“You travel down those life roads. You choose journeys, but sometimes you are forced to take another route.”
She really wasn’t in the mood for the yoga woo-woo right now. “Aqua?”
“Yes?”
“Have you seen Jeff?”
He stopped again.
“I mean, since he left me. Have you seen him?”
Aqua tightened his grip on her arm. He started to walk again. She stayed with him. They made the right on Columbus Avenue and headed north.
“Twice,” he said.
“You’ve seen him twice?”
Aqua looked up toward the sky and closed his eyes. Kat let him take his time. He used to do this back at school too. He would talk about the sun on his face, how it relaxed and centered him. For a while, it had even seemed to work. But that face was weathered now. You could see the bad years in the lines around his eyes and mouth. His “mocha latte” skin had taken on the leathery cracking of those who live on the streets too long.
“He came back to the room,” Aqua said. “After he ended it with you.”
“Oh,” she said. Not the answer she’d hoped for.
Because of how he was, Aqua had always been in a single on campus. The school tried him with a roommate, but it never worked out. Some were freaked out by the cross-dressing, but the real problem was that Aqua never slept. He studied. He read. He worked in the lab, the school cafeteria—and at night, he had a job in a fetish club in Jersey City. Sometime in his junior year, Aqua lost his single room. Housing insisted on putting him with three other students. There was no way that would work out. At the same time, Jeff had found a two-bedroom on 178th Street. Serendipity, Jeff had called it.
Aqua was tearing up again. “Jeff was destroyed, you know.”
“Thanks. That means a lot eighteen years later.”
“Don’t be like that, Kat.”
Aqua may be confused, but he hadn’t missed the sarcasm.
“So when was the second time you saw him?” Kat asked.
“March twenty-first,” he said.
“What year?”
“What do you mean, what year? This year.”
Kat pulled up. “Wait. Are you telling me you saw Jeff six months ago for the first time since we broke up?”
Aqua started to fidget.
“Aqua?”
“I teach yoga.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’m a good teacher.”
“The best. Where did you see Jeff exactly?”
“You were there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You took my class. On March twenty-first. You aren’t my best student. But you try. You are conscientious.”
“Aqua, where did you see Jeff?”
“At class,” Aqua said. “March twenty-first.”
“This year?”
“Yes.”
“Are you telling me that Jeff took your class six months ago?”
“He didn’t take the class,” Aqua said. “He stayed behind a tree. He watched you. He was in so much pain.”
“Did you talk to him?”