He pulled a chair close and began slowly swirling the amber liquor. Our knees were almost touching.
“I’ll tell him I was trying to find out what I could from you,” he said, “trying to help him out.”
“That you were using me,” I said, my thoughts breaking apart like a bad radio transmission. “That you were able to do that. Because of our past.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s a lie?” I demanded.
He laughed, and I had forgotten how much I loved the sound of his laugh.
“I fail to see the humor,” I protested. It was hot inside the room. I felt flushed from the Scotch. “If that’s a lie, Mark, then what’s the truth?”
“Kay,” he said, still smiling, and his eyes wouldn’t let me go. “I’ve already told you the truth.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he leaned over and touched my cheek, and I was frightened by how much I wanted him to kiss me.
He leaned back in his chair. “Why don’t you stay, at least until tomorrow afternoon? Maybe we should both go talk to Sparacino in the morning.”
“No,” I said. “That’s exactly what he’d like me to do.”
“Whatever you say.”
Hours later, after Mark left, I lay awake staring up into the darkness, aware of the cool emptiness of the other side of the bed. In the old days Mark never stayed the night, and the next morning I would go around the apartment collecting various articles of clothing, dirty glasses, dishes, and wine bottles, and emptying the ashtrays. Both of us smoked then. We would sit up until one, two, three A.M., talking, laughing, touching, drinking, smoking. We also argued. I hated the debates, which all too often turned into vicious exchanges, blow for blow, tit for tat, Code section this for philosophical that. I was always waiting to hear him say he was in love with me. He never did. In the morning I had the same empty feeling I’d had as a child when Christmas was over and I helped my mother gather up the discarded gift paper strewn under the tree.
I didn’t know what I wanted. Maybe I never had. The emotional distance was never worth the togetherness, and yet I didn’t learn. Nothing had changed. Had he reached for me, I would have forgotten to behave sensibly. Desire has no reason, and the need for intimacy had never stopped. I had not conjured up the images in years, his lips on mine, his hands, the urgency of our hunger.
Now I was tormented by the memories.
I had forgotten to request a wake-up call and didn’t bother with the clock by the bed. Setting my mental alarm for six, I woke up exactly on time. I sat straight up and felt as bad as I looked. A hot shower and careful grooming did not hide the dark puffy circles under my eyes or my wan complexion. The bathroom lighting was brutally honest. I called United Airlines and was tapping on Mark’s door at seven.
“Hi,” he said, looking disgustingly fresh and chipper. “You change your mind?”
“Yes,” I said. The familiar scent of his cologne rearranged my thoughts like bright shards of glass inside a kaleidoscope.
“I knew you would,” he said.
“And how did you know that?” I asked.
“Never knew you to duck a fight,” he said, watching me in the dresser mirror as he resumed knotting his tie.
Mark and I had agreed to meet at the Orndorff & Berger offices in the early afternoon. The firm’s lobby was a heartless, deep space. Rising from black carpet was a massive black console beneath polished-brass track lighting, with a solid block of brass serving as a table between two black acrylic chairs nearby. Remarkably, there was no other furniture, no plants or paintings, nothing else but a few pieces of twisted sculpture desposited like shrapnel to break the vast emptiness of the room.
“May I help you?” The receptionist gave me a practiced smile from the depths of her station.
Before I could respond, a door indistinguishable from the dark walls silently opened and Mark was taking my suit bag and ushering me inside a long, wide hallway. We passed doorway after doorway opening onto spacious offices with plate-glass windows offering a gray vista of Manhattan. I didn’t see a soul. I supposed everybody was at lunch.