I Regret Everything (11 page)

Girlfriends were never something I was good at. Or boyfriends. Human relations were vexing. There was a picture of me in a school yearbook where I'm seated at one end of a sofa looking at the camera. At the other end two of my classmates are making out, totally oblivious of me. When I write a memoir, it's the cover.

I finished half the orange juice and produced the flask I had taken from my father's house, unscrewed the cap, and topped off my drink then poured some in Yoshi's soda. She was impressed even though that wasn't the effect I was going for. Just because my mother was a recovering alcoholic didn't mean I couldn't enjoy a cocktail. To get drunk was the idea. After a few sips that started to happen. Yoshi talked about living with her mom over the summer because her parents were divorced and she didn't like the woman her dad had married. Here was more common ground and there was yet another gap in the conversation I could have filled with some kind of personal revelation. That's when Yoshi said,

—So who was that dude who came to the class today? Do you know him?

It was important that Yoshi not suspect I held any feelings one way or the other for Mr. Best, much less that I thought I was in love with him. It wasn't something anyone else needed to know. So I made a point of pausing for the briefest moment before I opened my mouth to make sure there was no animation in my face.

—He works at my dad's law firm.

—Are you two a thing?

—What? No! He's as old as something that's really old!

So much for the cool approach. Did my voice squeak? Yoshi's expression was unchanged so I probably didn't sound like a complete idiot.

—So? I'd totally fuck him.

—I hardly know the guy.

—Would you?

—No!

The boys finished the video game and returned to the table. We talked about bands, websites, and where we wanted to live after we graduated: Lucas/Brooklyn, Dylan/Brooklyn, Yoshi/Los Angeles, Spaulding/Doesn't Know.

—So much for avoiding clichés, I said

—You're implying Brooklyn's a cliché, Lucas said. That's kind of judgy.

—I don't know, Dylan said. If I can see the Buddhists swimming does it matter where I live?

—I can totally see the Buddhists swimming in Brooklyn, Lucas said.

While the conversation was happening about half the contents of the flask was consumed.

When Yoshi and Dylan went over to talk to this guy they knew who played drums in some band, I was alone at the table with Lucas. He'd had a few drinks, too.

—So, you think we should hook up? My friend has a loft in Williamsburg and I have the key. We can pretend it isn't Brooklyn if you don't want to be a cliché.

I laughed and told him I secretly liked Brooklyn but was saving myself for marriage. It was hard to tell if he knew I was joking and just didn't want to get with him. That's when Yoshi and Dylan returned to the table.

—Some rando was creeping on me, Yoshi said.

If I had to guess, I'd say she was imagining that. But here's the thing, you never know. It's so hard to figure out exactly what someone else has really experienced compared with what they think they've experienced. It's all so subjective. Maybe some rando had been creeping on Yoshi. I kind of doubted it, though.

There was a party on Ludlow Street with a deejay from Atlanta who was recording with Kanye, did I want to go? I said I had to walk my dog or he'd poop all over the house. The disadvantage of going off meds that flatten you out is that when your feelings start to return it can get awkward. It was nicer to make something up as opposed to saying what I felt which was I'm not comfortable, this is making me anxious, and we're done for the night.

I
n a café on Rivington Street I sat at a window table and ordered a glass of sparkling water. The visit to Spaulding's class had been a wise decision. Seeing her in the collegiate milieu reinforced her youth. It was a helpful reminder to refrain from a reenactment of the debacle that had forced me to withdraw from the MFA program. After talking to the fledglings I had returned to the office and put in several more hours at my desk. Chemotherapy would begin the following morning and I needed to make sure my workload did not become unmanageable.

Since receiving Tapper's diagnosis and getting it confirmed by a dour oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering whose farcical walrus mustache made him no better at delivering bad news, I trudged to the office every day where an infinity of trusts and estates documents awaited. There were modifications in the morning, appendices in the afternoon. All thoughts of my potentially deteriorating health suppressed.

I wasn't sure what my reaction to the pretty poison was going to be. Would I be too feeble to change a light bulb, or would a relatively normal life be possible? To get some exercise, and because I didn't want to assent to the idea of extinction, I had decided to walk downtown. I passed a tent encampment in Union Square thronged with citizens waving signs, railing against the horrors of war, greed, and racism. It was vivifying to see people who assumed the world could improve.

The recently opened café had distressed wood floors and a pressed-tin ceiling that had probably been manufactured in Korea last January. There was a mahogany bar and behind it a dazzling array of spirits killed time in the soft amber light. I wasn't able to enjoy their company since I had sworn off alcohol for the duration of my treatment. When the waitress arrived, I thanked her for the sparkling water, took out my phone, and opened the poetry file.

A few stanzas and I was ready to march up to Union Square and offer my legal services that evening. There isn't a critic of my work harsher than I and after no more than thirty seconds spent scanning the lines all confidence drained. Spaulding had admired one of these poems but what did she know, she was nineteen. On the other hand, living in Europe had rendered her more sophisticated than the garden-variety American girl so perhaps my self-laceration was unjustified. Could I trust her assessment? Sipping the water, I pondered my situation. What was making me persist? My position at the firm was secure and a partnership likely. But was that the accomplishment for which I wanted to be remembered?

While I ruminated a text arrived from Spaulding.

Are you anywhere near the East Village?

The taxi dropped me off on East 7th. Across from Tompkins Square Park, a rowdy crowd of drunken frat boys erupted from a bar like a sweaty lava flow and oozed west. A delivery truck rumbled past and revealed a girl across the street. A blanket of hair swung down as she canted her head to the side and wobbled, holding the lamppost. In a bell of light was Spaulding. She unpeeled from the lamppost and took a few uneven steps toward First Avenue.

I watched to see what she would do. It did not look as if she could find her way to the corner. She shuffled a couple of steps to her right, then back to the left, a private dance to silent music. She put something shiny to her lips—a flask, how 1920s!—inclined her head back, and took a long pull before slipping it back in her purse. Spaulding was framed in the violet-hued window of a trendy boutique called Tiny Bubbles. Behind the pane were two mannequins in retro-punk regalia gazing eyeless toward the street. She didn't notice my approach.

“You texted,” I said.

“Mr. Best,” she said, drawing out the
r
in mister and extending the
s
in Best. She was a little drunk. “I hope you didn't mind. You killed it in class today. Thanks for coming. To class, I mean. And here.”

“Let me buy you some coffee.”

“I'm not drunk if that's what you're thinking.” She reached into her purse and removed the silver flask. “Want to go dancing?” She shimmied her shoulders and laughed. Then she belched. Which in no way compromised her attractiveness. “I do not have a drinking problem. My mother does.”

There was a whiff of whiskey on her breath. A nervous energy radiated from her, as if my presence had created a charge. When she unscrewed the flask, I grabbed it. This was a surprise. What mullah had appointed me East 7th Street Taliban? To retaliate, to be cute, perhaps to exasperate me, she put the cap of the flask in her mouth. I had a vision of her choking and me having to perform the Heimlich maneuver, failing, and being forced to inform Ed Simonson of his daughter's incomprehensible death on the sidewalk in front of the retro S&M mannequins in the window of Tiny Bubbles. So I stuck the fingers of both my hands in Spaulding's mouth, a disarmingly intimate act, and pried her teeth open. This made her gag—had the cap dropped into her esophagus?—but her mouth unlocked and I removed the saliva-soaked thing, wiped my fingers on my suit pants, screwed the cap on to the flask, and stuffed it in my pocket.

And then she threw up. Without warning a bilious blast spattered the sidewalk and would have caught my pant leg full-on had I not danced out of the way. She put her hands on her knees, doubled over, and I instinctively leaned forward and held her hair as another spasm shot forth. I slipped behind, not letting go of her cashmere-soft hair as, still bent over, she dry-heaved several times. There were flecks on my shoes. She spat to clear the detritus from her mouth then straightened up. It was disgusting but her damaged magnetism was sensual beyond measure.

She pushed her curls out of her eyes and looked at me apologetically.

“Well, that was elegant,” she declared. “I'm really sorry.”

When I silently pointed toward the corner, she dipped her head in a performance of chastisement and began walking. A few minutes later we were seated in a café just off Lafayette, the kind of place where the barista could do a Lucian Freud painting in the foam of one's latte. A group of NYU kids prattled meaningfully at a nearby table. I sipped black coffee while Spaulding emptied several packets of artificial sweetener into a quadruple espresso.

“I'm apologizing again,” she said. “Thanks for looking after me.”

When I asked her what she was doing in the neighborhood she said, “What's your favorite word?” This brought me up short and I didn't answer right away. “You're a poet,” she reminded me. “You should have one. Mine is darkling.” It was not a word I knew and I asked what it meant. “As an adverb it means in the dark and as an adjective it means menacing, but I like to use it as a noun even though it's not a noun in the dictionary.”

“So what does your personal noun mean?”

“It's like a kid who always sees shadows.” I nodded. A plausible definition. “Someone takes a ten-year-old darkling to
The Nutcracker
and she thinks all these charming children dancing around the stage are going to wind up divorced with substance abuse problems and Herr Drosselmeyer looks like a child molester.”

“Was that you?” Spaulding smiled but didn't answer. Again she asked if I had a favorite word. “I've always liked quotidian,” I said.

“Which rhymes with obsidian.”

“And the trumpet of Gideon.”

“And the bar at the Parker Meridien where I drank gin with a scholar Ovidian.”

The exchange happened so quickly it was like watching a close-up magician work with a deck of cards. Her internal rhyme was a delight.

“Ovidian?”

“Ovid? The ancient love poet? A scholar Ovidian.”

I laughed and she joined me before we both lapsed into slightly embarrassed silence. Spaulding sipped her espresso.

“Did you know Ovid's father wanted him to be a lawyer?”

“Nothing changes,” she said.

Reaching into her purse she pulled out a Moleskine notebook with something wedged into its pages that turned out to be a passport. When she began to write I asked if she always carried her passport.

“It's a habit I got into when I was living in Switzerland.”

“Because you might want to make a quick escape?”

“I used it to get into bars.”

Headlights blurred the window. The air smelled of expensive muffins. There were crumbs on our table from whatever the previous occupants had been eating and I cleaned them off with the back of my hand. She returned the notebook and passport to her purse, shifted in the spindly wood chair, and leaned forward. She asked me if the poetry collection I was writing was my first one. I said it was and told her about the novel I had abandoned and the piles of rejection letters.

“And that's why you became a lawyer?”

What was I going to tell her? That I became a lawyer because I didn't have the courage to run off with a woman I was in love with and pursue another kind of life? Should I have told her I had no idea I had been in love with this woman until the series of events that led to my withdrawal from graduate school was in the past, that I was a lawyer because it better suited my penchant for self-abnegation?

“Shouldn't you be home scribbling a sestina?”

This took her aback and when she asked in an attitudinal way if I was kidding, I told her no, not really. She drained the espresso and rose from her seat. What had I done? I couldn't let her leave.

“I read your poem.”

Her expression shifted, suddenly focused. It's always a crapshoot when someone offers her stuff for evaluation. Whether she really wants to hear what one thinks is impossible to know.

“I liked ‘Addicted to Beauty.' Slightly derivative, which is understandable.” She didn't convulse at derivative, a word no artist wants to hear. That impressed me. “You're scavenging and repurposing but the idea has wit. And ‘Last Christmas' showed promise.” She asked if I had any advice. “What you have that no one else does is Spaulding Simonson's voice. Cultivate that. If you think you might have gone too far, you haven't. A client of mine said something in another context that stuck with me. Be bold.”

“I'm not bold enough?” There were steel pins in her tone. The quadruple espresso had sobered her up. She was still standing, ready to flee.