The History of Us (28 page)

“In the flesh.” He was carrying a Starbucks cup, wearing an old T-shirt and shorts with a dramatic tear on one leg. A long thread dangled from the tear.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. She was still holding Wes’s hand. She couldn’t let go now. It would be awful to let go. Resisting the urge, she tightened her grip.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Noah lifted his coffee cup, as though to say he’d come for that. “I’m not teaching today, and there are no papers to grade yet. So I’m out wandering.” He had a sheepish air, as if she’d caught him doing something embarrassing, when she was the one who’d been caught.

“I’m just surprised to see you,” she said.

“Likewise,” he said. He looked at Wes, and then back at Theo expectantly. Theo introduced them, and then Wes had to wiggle his fingers free, because it was his right hand she was holding and he needed it to shake Noah’s. She put her own hand in her
pocket, as if to hide it. The two men said it was nice to meet each other, or she assumed they did. It was hard to hear over the blood thrumming in her ears.

“What are you two up to?” Noah asked.

“We were looking at the design school,” Theo said. “Wes was showing me around. I’d never been there—can you believe it? Yeah, it’s pretty cool.”

Noah nodded. “I’ll have to check it out.”

“Yeah, you should, you definitely should.”

Noah made a move, as if he was going to go on past them, as if he was going to go check it out right now. But then he stopped. “So how do you two know each other?” he asked.

Theo really wished he would stop saying
you two
. “We met in a bar,” Wes said, knowing, she supposed, that she wouldn’t want to confess the truth, at the exact moment that she suddenly felt compelled to do so. “Wes was my student,” she added.

Noah’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Theo said, trying to make a joke of it. “He was young and nubile, so . . . ” She and Noah both looked at Wes, as if he were on display, and Wes obligingly struck a pose, putting both hands on his hips. She couldn’t decide if she was gratified that he played along, or disgusted. “I’m kidding, of course,” she said. “We only just . . . I mean, we just met again. He’s not my student anymore.”

Noah nodded slowly. Theo was in agony to know what he was thinking, but there was no way to find out besides asking directly, which she couldn’t do, and which was no guarantee of finding out. “Josh is at my place,” he said to Theo. “I don’t know if you knew.”

“No, I didn’t,” she said. “Okay. That’s good.”

“He wondered where you were.”

“Okay,” she said again, which made no sense as a reply. If Josh wanted to know where she was, he damn well could have called her, so there was no reason for her to feel guilty, no reason for Noah’s tone to have that hint of reproof. “Well, I’ll call him,” she said.

“Great,” Noah said. “I’ll tell him.” He looked Wes in the eye and said, “Nice to meet you, man.” Wes said it back, and then Noah raised his coffee cup at Theo and went striding off as though he had some urgent purpose, which they all knew very well he didn’t.

Theo started walking in the opposite direction, just to move, and Wes fell in beside her. She didn’t notice the silence between them, so deafening was her embarrassment, her conviction that any slim chance she might have had with Noah was now forever and ever blown. “You could have told him you were staying with me,” Wes said after a block or so.

“Yeah, but it was already bad enough,” Theo said. “Jesus.” It took her a moment to notice that he’d stopped moving, standing in the middle of the sidewalk so that two chatting girls had to split to go around him. She went back to him. “What are you doing?” she asked, and only then did she really look at his face and register the anger there.

“That was him, wasn’t it,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. He resumed walking, not looking at her, and she fell into step beside him. She expected him to want to talk about it, to argue or plead. She was braced, her shoulders high and tight. But he didn’t say anything, and so neither did she, even as her initial agitation passed and she grew uneasy with his silence. With the grip of her own emotions loosened, she had
room to worry about his. He was angry, that much she knew, but what specifically was he angry about? He could be angry at the reminder that Noah existed, or at her for the way she’d acted and the things she’d said, or at himself for the way he’d played along.

She stopped walking and turned to him. “I want to buy you a treat,” she said.

“What?”

“Something you loved as a kid. A hot chocolate with whipped cream. Or a hot fudge sundae. A Happy Meal?”

He considered her, his expression serious. Did he see the offer for the apology it was? Did he understand she appreciated the happiness he gave her? “I’d take a hot fudge sundae,” he said.

They were the only people inside Graeter’s, and he got not just a sundae but an übersundae, complete with a brownie, multiple flavors of ice cream, and a name: the 1803. They sat at one of the little tables, in the old-fashioned ice cream parlor chairs, white, with curlicue backs. “I got this for its historical value,” he said.

“I see. I thought maybe it was because you admired the design,” she said.

“That, too,” he said. “My reasons can be complicated.”

“Most reasons are,” she said. The words felt overly significant, and after she said them she couldn’t meet his eye. She busied herself wiping a drop of chocolate ice cream from the table. When she looked up he was watching her.

“Do you want a bite?” he asked. He held up a spoonful.

She nodded, relieved he hadn’t taken the opportunity to delve into her reasons, because she’d have been hard-pressed to explain what they were. As he slipped the spoon inside her mouth
she closed her eyes. The ice cream felt good against the roof of her mouth, smooth, cold, sweet. He said, “You like being in love with someone who’s not going to love you back.”

She opened her eyes. He looked at her. “Why would I like that?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know.” He plunged his spoon back into the sundae, put a big bite in his mouth. That mouth had been all over her body, those hands, too. And he was kind, and funny, and smart, and everything she might have said she wanted in a man, if she were inventing one, and what’s more he seemed to understand her, and want her anyway. He was a little too young, perhaps, but as he kept saying he was not her student anymore. She wasn’t even currently a teacher. Did she not want him more because she already had him? Was that the problem? Was he right about her? How sad to imagine that what she desired most was to live with desire unfulfilled. He swallowed his bite, scooped out another, and offered her the spoon. “Have another,” he said. “It’s pretty fucking good.”

A
delaide was finally taking Josh to meet her friends, or in other
words, the rest of the company. The party was in an apartment downtown. He was driving, and she was in the passenger seat of his car, sitting upright, wearing a small, inward frown. He knew her well enough now to know what the expression meant. She was debating something, and after a while, when she was sure she knew what she wanted to say, she’d tell him what it was. In the meantime he changed the music on the car stereo, then changed it back again. He couldn’t find something to suit his mood, a phenomenon that always left him in a mildly agitated state. Sometimes he’d just barely register the tension in his body and mind, and then realize, with some relief, what was causing it—the wrong music. Tonight he was fully aware of the problem, but couldn’t fix it anyway. Maybe he couldn’t match his mood because he couldn’t decide what his mood was. So many things in his life were unsettling: camping out on the futon in Noah’s study, feeling cut off from his family, dating a girl who was still able to make him nervous, nervous enough that when Eloise had exiled them he’d quickly discarded the idea of going to her.

Adelaide turned her head to him. “When I introduce you,” she said, “how do I say your job?”

“How do you say my job?” He said it like he was more baffled than he was.

“You know what I mean. Do I say ‘Josh works for a company that makes apps,’ or ‘Josh is in business development,’ or ‘Josh works with computers’? Or what?”

“How about ‘Josh does something so mind-blowingly awesome I can’t tell you about it because your mind would be blown’?”

She laughed. “I knew I was setting you up.”

“Just keep pitching me those slow, easy ones.” He changed the music again. “How about ‘Josh is the John Lennon of iPhone software’?”

“I hope not.”

“ ‘Josh is a rock star,’ ” he said, then registered her last response. “Why don’t you want me to be John Lennon?”

“He was mean and he died young.”

“Mean? I guess he could be kind of mean.”

“I saw a documentary,” she said. “He was mean to his first wife.”

“But not to his second,” he said. “That’s the important thing. Plus, he was troubled in an interesting way, right?”

“I don’t want troubled in an interesting way.”

“What do you want?”

“You.”

“Is that your way of saying I’m boring?”

“It’s my way of saying you’re untroubled in an interesting way.”

“Ah. I’m Paul McCartney.”

“Okay,” she said. “So I should say, ‘This is Josh. He’s Paul McCartney’?”

“Yes. I knew we’d figure it out eventually.”

She stretched elaborately, even her fingers splayed, and yawned. “I’m nervous,” she said.

“Afraid they won’t like me?”

“No! Afraid you won’t like them.”

Josh wanted to believe her, but he wondered.

After all that, once they arrived and the introductions began, she made no effort to explain what he did. She just said, “This is Josh.” They reacted like they knew what that meant. This was a small kind of fame, but gratifying anyway. The apartment building was very cool—a days-of-yore type of place with wrought iron curling lavishly around the jerky, dignified elevator and great acoustics in the marble stairwells. The apartment belonged to Adelaide’s ex, Carlos, a fact which Josh had known all along, and which was, now that he was here, making him unaccountably tense. He did his best to relax. He made dumb jokes, and the dancers laughed at them. They smiled at him in a friendly way.

“He’s funny,” one of the girls said to Adelaide, and Adelaide said, with a comfortable pleasure, “I know.” Even meeting Carlos was not so bad. Josh was taller, so he had that going for him, and Carlos shook his hand without squeezing extra-hard or looking him in the eye too long or any other displays of manly challenge.

“This is a great place,” Josh said.

“Thanks,” Carlos said.

“It’s like an old apartment building in New York. The marble stairwell, and the elevator.”

“I know,” Carlos said. “It’s pretty cool.”

After that they ran out of things to talk about, both of them looking away, nodding to some inaudible beat. “Josh . . . ” Adelaide began just as Carlos said, “I . . . ” They both said, “What?” and “Go ahead.” And then finally Carlos said, “I should probably check on the ice,” and everyone smiled and made noises of humorous agreement, and he was gone.

“So,” Josh said to Adelaide, turning to face her.

“So,” she said. She raised her eyebrows.

So that’s your ex was what he’d been thinking, but he said, “I think he really likes me.”

She laughed. “They all like you.”

“Yeah, but he, he really likes me.”

“You think so, huh?” She reached up and joined her hands around the back of his neck, like they were at a high school dance.

“It was in his eyes.”

She lifted up on her toes—a ballet dancer!—and kissed him. “Aw,” someone said, and they broke apart and smiled, as if at applause.

That was the end of their moment in the spotlight, Josh’s big debut. That had been the wedding; the rest was the marriage. Everybody went about their business.

They talked about teaching, rehearsals, company class. They talked about performances they’d seen. They gossiped about other dancers. They talked about promotions. They all touched each other, all the time. As Josh watched, one of the women pushed another’s mouth up into a smile. Another was grooming her friend’s hair. He thought of a book he’d read about bonobos: the grooming, the bisexuality, the peaceful, indiscriminate fucking.

“Teri Metzger’s a principal now,” a woman named Nicole told Adelaide.

“They did it in midseason?” Adelaide said, surprised. “I wonder why.”

Josh didn’t wonder why. Josh didn’t know what they were talking about. He asked Adelaide if she wanted another drink—she didn’t, she’d barely touched the one she had—and slipped off to the kitchen.

Carlos was at the fridge, selecting a beer. He straightened, stood there with a bottle in his hand, frowning at the label, and then, decision made, pivoted and saw Josh.

“Hey, man,” he said, in an extra-friendly voice. “You need something?”

“Ballet lessons, I think,” Josh said and smiled to show he was joking.

“You want one?”

For a moment Josh thought Carlos meant a lesson. But he meant a beer. “Sure.”

Carlos handed him a bottle and looked around for the opener. It was on the counter behind Josh. They reached for it at the same time, pulled their hands back, and reached again—oh, we’re dancing now, Josh thought—but Josh got it first, and handed it over. Carlos smiled his thanks. Even the way he pried off the bottle caps was graceful, graceful and authoritative. “Yeah,” he said, “it can be tough to hang out with dancers. We try, you know. We say, ‘No more ballet talk,’ but then we backslide. Everybody’s always nervous the first time they bring somebody else around.”

“Because you’re worried the date won’t like the dancers, or the dancers won’t like the date?”

He shrugged. “Both. We’re a tight-knit group, and also the opposite sex thing can be weird. If you were a regular girl, would you want your boyfriend’s friends to be ballerinas?”

Josh shook his head.

“And Addy always says the guy thing is weird, too. Like some guys are weird because they think we’re all gay, and some guys are weird because they’d be happier if we were gay, you know, especially once they see where we put our hands.” He caught himself. “I mean, you know, it’s a weird thing.”