Granta 122: Betrayal (Granta: The Magazine of New Writing) Read online

  It was the Lower Manhattan that I liked in her – the way she’d sit with me over coffee and confide the intricate patterns in her life and then, on impulse, change her mind, turn the tables on herself, and say that patterns made for good stories but rarely meant anything – there were no patterns, we shouldn’t look for patterns, patterns were for regular people, not for us, we’re different, you and I, aren’t we? Then, as if she’d taken a wrong alley, she’d back up and say that her analyst disagreed with her. Perhaps he’d figured her out long before she could – which wouldn’t be the first time. I’m totally off track about myself, she’d add, throwing in unexpected zingers of self-deprecation that made me like her even more each time she brought herself down a peg, because it made her more vulnerable, because I loved the way she’d say one thing then sidle up to its opposite, because this unabashed tossing and turning with herself promised spellbinding fireside chats in some beloved, cosy corner of our invention.

  This was the young writer whose article on opera I had turned down months earlier. Yet I had picked up an inflection in her prose that was at once wry and brooding and, in my two-page, single-spaced rejection letter, had outlined the strengths and weaknesses of her piece. She shot back an email, saying she needed to see me right away. I replied just as quickly: I wasn’t in the habit of meeting people simply because I had turned down their work; in any event, I’d have very little to add to what I’d already written in my letter. All right, thank you. I wished her luck. Many thanks. Our tit for tat was over and done with in a fraction of a minute.

  Two months later, she wrote back to tell me that her piece had been accepted by a major magazine. She’d taken my advice and used all my edits. Now would I see her? Yes, I would see her. She bought me coffee in a place on Abingdon Square, across from the little park, she said, and not too far from my office. Both of us sat with our winter coats on. It had started to rain outside, and we ended up staying much longer than we’d planned, talking for almost two hours about Maria Malibran, the nineteenth-century mezzo-soprano. As we were saying goodbye and she was getting ready to light a cigarette, she said we should do this again, maybe real soon.

  We should do this again, maybe real soon stayed with me as I rode the train to Brooklyn that evening: bold and feisty yet unambiguously sweet. Was she asking me, Maybe real soon? Or was it a deft, roundabout way of saying No need to wait two months to meet over coffee next time? I felt like someone who’s been promised a Christmas present in June.

  I tried to nip the flurry of joy by reminding myself that her maybe real soon might easily be one of those open-ended deferrals thrown in to cover up an awkward leave-taking between people who already know they’ll probably never meet again.

  Or was it trickier than I thought? Was there perhaps a touch of affected diffidence in her implied next time? Had she already guessed that I’d say Absolutely yes! the moment she asked but wanted me to think she wasn’t sure I would?

  I never asked why I spent so much time mulling over her sentence on the train. Nor did I ask why I reread her piece first thing the next morning at the office or when catching myself thinking about her that night. But I knew I’d been 100 per cent right about her: a woman with that sort of a pen, spirited and glum in the same breath, just had to be very beautiful. I knew where this was going. I’d known it the moment I’d spotted her.

  On the same evening after we met, an email arrived. Dearest, it started. Not Dear. Suddenly I was someone’s dearest. No one had called me dearest in years. I loved it. I knew of course that I wasn’t her dearest. The line of men her age or a few years older with a better claim to the title was surely very long. Everything about her told me she was well aware of this. Dearest was also her way of thanking me for meeting her on such short notice, for helping her with her piece, for coffee, for talking to her about her next article on Malibran. Dearest for being so friendly. There was something so practised and easy, so sure-fire in her gratitude that I couldn’t help thinking there were many who had helped her in exactly the same way and who had become dearest because they’d given so selflessly – at first, to draw her closer, later when they were up to their knees in friendship and couldn’t step back to ask for anything else. Dearest was how she spelled the terms of your induction, how she kept you in tow.

  In her email that evening she told me it thrilled her to think that only .0000001 per cent of humanity knew who Maria Malibran was, and yet we’d managed to find each other, at this tiny cafe in, of all places, Abingdon Square – and with our coats on for two whole hours, she added.

  I was smitten. I loved And with our coats on for two whole hours, thrown in as an afterthought. So she too had noticed that awkward detail about our coats. Perhaps neither of us had wished to show we wanted coffee to last longer than fifteen minutes, which is why we sat with our coats on, neither daring to alter anything for fear of reminding the other that time was flying. Perhaps we’d kept them on so as not to show we were actually enjoying this and were hoping it might last a little longer provided we behaved as though it might at any moment come to an end. Or was this her way of telling me that we’d both noticed the same thing and that if we finally ordered two refills each it was because we were still wearing our winter coats, which gave us an alleged out in case we’d overstayed our time?

  Dearest. It instantly brought back how she looked at me and returned my gaze as though nothing else mattered in that small cafe. Dearest: how she made no secret of having read up on me. Dearest: the flattering barrage of questions – what was I working on now, what were my hopes, where did I see myself in five years, what next, why, how, since when, how come – questions I’d stopped asking myself but that were being now hammered at me with the reckless, searching whimsy of youth, tying knots in my stomach each time she drew closer to the truth, which I loved. Then there was her smile, her lips, her skin. I remembered watching the skin of her wrists, of her hands – it glistened in the early-evening light. Even her fingers glistened. When was the last time I’d had coffee with someone so beautiful who had things to say I couldn’t wait to hear and seemed totally riveted by what I’d said? The answer scared me: never.

  Not to be easily taken in, I forced myself to reconsider Dearest. It probably signified zero interest. It was the kind of over-the-top formula she would never have used on someone her age, and certainly not immediately after meeting him the first time. One used it with friends of one’s parents or with the parents of one’s friends when they became quasi-avuncular figures – an endearment, not a come-on.

  From Germany early the next morning came my friend Raùl’s email: Stop it. Learn to take things at face value. This was his response to my email where I’d managed to wring every conceivable twisted reading of what Dearest could mean. With no one to confide in, I’d reached out to someone who was far away enough not to ask more questions than I was eager to ask myself.

  That morning I wrote to her and said we should meet exactly a week later.

  Where? flashed her speedy reply. Same place, I said. Same place, same time it is then – on Abingdon Square. On Abingdon Square, I repeated.

  She arrived before me again and had already ordered tea for herself and the same double cappuccino I’d ordered the last time for me. I stared at the cup waiting for me on my side of the same table by the window. What if I’d arrived late or had to cancel? ‘You didn’t and you wouldn’t have.’ ‘How could you tell?’ ‘It’s so good to see you,’ she said, standing to kiss me on both cheeks, nipping the flirtatious banter I’d attempted. Had I gotten lost this time? she asked. No, not this time. Found the place easily enough. But I didn’t tell her that I missed wandering through the streets as I’d done the first time, that I was hoping to get lost again, if only to play back all that preceded our last two hours together. Would our meeting be the same this time as well? Or was I setting myself up for disappointment?

  Coffee lasted longer than either of us expected. Outside, she took out a cigarette. Obviously two-plus hours without smoking wa
s difficult for her. On the way to where we had separated the first time, we were stopped by two individuals speaking into walkie-talkies. They were part of a film crew. They asked all those on our side of the sidewalk to wait and remain very quiet. This was like a fire drill, she said. She hated fire drills. I liked the pretext of hanging out together a while longer in this kind of induced suspension. It gave our walk a dreamlike quality, as though we too belonged in a film. I asked one of the crew members what they were filming. Something from a 1940s novel. Old hotel sign fixed to a building blinking away – the Miramar – couple arguing on the deserted sidewalk, vintage Citroën parked aslant on the gleaming slate kerb. At a given signal, there was a sudden downpour of rain. All of us stepped back. Applause seemed called for, but no one dared.

  The director wasn’t pleased. They were going to have to shoot the scene all over again. Thank you for your cooperation. We were allowed to cross the street and go on our way.

  Did I want to go? she asked. Not really. Watching them shoot the same scene again was just another way of staying together a while longer. So we stood and waited for the cameraman to start filming again. Blinking Miramar sign, couple arguing, black old Citroën with its passenger door flung open, everyone waiting for the sudden downpour in this twilit film-noir setting that made me feel we’d stepped into John Sloan’s portrait of the West Village.

  When we separated it was almost eight o’clock. Next time we’ll have drinks instead, I said. You’re right; it’s way too late for coffee.

  Dearest, she wrote. She had started work on her essay on Malibran. I told her I’d once seen a long-out-of-print volume containing Da Ponte’s letters to the young Malibran. She should try to find it. Besides having been Mozart’s beloved librettist, the much older Da Ponte, living in New York in the early years of the nineteenth century, had helped launch the operatic career of the young Maria García. In New York, Maria would marry the Frenchman Malibran, twenty-eight years her senior. She kept his name but then left to find fame in Paris. The parallel thrilled me.

  Our third coffee was no different. She was already waiting at the same table by the window with my double cappuccino. We watched the snow begin to fall on Abingdon Square. This was a gift, I kept telling myself. So learn to be grateful and avoid asking too many questions, spoke my inner Raùl. Just take what is given, be in the moment, ask for nothing more, there may be nothing more. Part of me, though, couldn’t help but take sneaky peeks at what was waiting around the corner. ‘Maybe, if the weather changes, we’ll pick a day and visit Da Ponte’s grave in Queens,’ I finally said.

  Fancy Mozart’s librettist buried in Queens, she said.

  And in a Christian cemetery too, I replied. He was born Jewish but then converted. Maria García’s family was not really of Gypsy origin, but more than likely of Converso descent, I said.

  She knew a woman who claimed to be of Converso descent.

  Out came the story of an old, rather pious Catholic woman who on days coinciding with the Jewish high holidays each year made sure all the Christian images and icons in her house were turned to face the wall. I pictured an old, shrivelled abuelita dressed in perpetual black with gnarled, arthritic fingers. No, the woman held an important post at the State Department and was, I realized when told her age, not exactly that old.

  ‘When do you think we should go?’

  ‘Go where?’ I asked.

  ‘To the cemetery. Really!’ meaning, Where else?

  Could things be so easy, I thought, or was I missing something?

  I’d let her know, I said. I’d meant to say something like Some of us have jobs, we’re not all freelancers, but then suppressed it. Maybe early next week – but I avoided saying this too. I would have had to check my cellphone’s calendar and I didn’t want the formality of the gesture to cast a chill over what had all the makings of a spontaneous outing to Maspeth, Queens.

  But the silence and the time it took to say I’ll let you know had already cast a shadow over us. The unasked, the unspoken sat between us. Her bewildered look was the question, my silence the answer.

  When she continued to stare at me with that bold, confiding gaze that lingered on me as though she had more warmth in her heart than she wished to show, I knew that what had rippled between us was a disquieting instant of awkwardness and of opportunity lost. Perhaps we should have talked about it right then and there. Perhaps it needed bringing up. Neither of us said anything.

  We had met three times already and never once spoken or enquired about the other’s life. We had exchanged cellphone numbers, but we never called. Telephones were off-limits it seemed, and contact, other than through email, taboo. That we didn’t even mention this and preferred to glide over it in silence gave our meetings a guarded, tacit, over-the-transom but under-the-radar air. Her name never figured on my calendar, and mine, I sensed, never entered hers – though most likely for different reasons.

  Ours were the cobbled lanes; major arteries we steered clear of. On Abingdon Square the snow kept piling up and made me wish we could spend endless hours together in our coffee shop, do nothing but sit there and hope that neither made the slightest effort to lift the spell. Provided we stayed put, and provided it snowed, we could manage to meet like this next week, and the week after, and the week after that as well – she and I together at this same corner table by the window, with our coats bunched up on a third chair, knowing how lucky I was to be there, because I had never before had the chance to sit face to face with one of the most beautiful and most intelligent women I’d met in my life. And now it was given to me, and if neither had yet mentioned the drinks we said we’d have instead of coffee, and if neither brought up others in our lives, it was because we didn’t wish to alter anything or abandon this tiny, safe islet we’d found for ourselves. For me, it was the rarest thing on earth. For her? I couldn’t begin to know. One day I’d have to ask. And that day might be the last.

  Tread softly. Do nothing. Spoil nothing.

  Two days later my resolution gave out. Did she want to have drinks?

  My dearest, I’d love to. Let me get a couple of things out of the way. I’ll let you know.

  Early the next morning – what a good sign this was: I’m free tonight.

  Yes, but tonight isn’t entirely mine, I emailed back. I can do drinks but then I have a dinner to go to. How about six?

  Let’s make it five thirty.

  Fine, I wrote back, there’s a bar off Abingdon, not far from our cafe.

  So it’s ours now?

  On Bethune. All right? I ducked her humour but hoped that my abrupt reply told her that her meaning had pleased me and wasn’t lost on me.

  On Bethune it is, my dear.

  Seldom in my life had anyone been so wilful and acquiescent at one and the same time. Was this a sign? Or was she just the accommodating sort?

  When we met yet again a week later we ordered two Hendrick’s gins. ‘The rest of this week is not going to be good for me,’ she said. ‘Actually it’s going to be pretty awful.’

  Well, I thought, finally something’s coming out.

  The week wasn’t so hot for me either. I alleged dinners and cocktail parties that were excruciatingly boring, give or take a few people.

  ‘Give or take?’

  I shrugged my shoulders. Was she teasing me? Why was her week going to be so dreadful?

  ‘I’m going to have to break up with my boyfriend.’

  I looked at her, trying not to show how startled I was. Most people throw in the boyfriend to tell you they’re taken.

  I never knew she had a boyfriend. Was he that terrible?

  No, not terrible. They’d outgrown each other, that’s all, she said. ‘I met him at a writers’ colony last summer, we did what everyone does in these places. But once we were back in the city, it dragged – we fell into a rut.’

  Is it that hopeless?

  Why was I playing friend-analyst? And why the disappointed inflection in the word ‘hopeless’, as though the news pai
ned me?

  ‘Let’s say it’s just me. Plus –’

  She hesitated.

  Plus?

  ‘Plus I’ve met someone else.’

  I thought for a moment.

  Well, in that case, maybe you should definitely break up and clear the air between you. Does he know?

  ‘Actually, neither of them knows.’

  She levelled her eyes at me with a resigned, semi-rueful shrug of the shoulder that meant something like: Life. Can’t be helped. You know how it is.

  Why wasn’t I asking more prodding questions? Why was I refusing to pick up the hint? What hint? Why let her drop this bombshell and pretend I wasn’t even fazed? All I could say was: I am sure things will work themselves out.

  ‘I know. They always do,’ she replied, at once grateful that I’d left things vague enough and yet sorry, perhaps, that I’d dropped the matter a bit sooner than she might have wished.

  At seven she reminded me I had to be at a dinner party to dine with my give or take friends.

  I wished I could bring her along to such dinner parties. She’d have them eating out of her hand, women included. As we stood outside the bar, I stared at her, hoping she’d see how sorry I was that we were separating so early in the evening. She reached over to kiss me as she always did, on both cheeks. Without thinking, I found myself kissing her forehead, then hugging her. I felt the spur of arousal. This was not just in my head. And she had hugged me back.

  As I walked her to what had become the undeclared spot where we’d say goodbye, something told me that she should have asked about the dinner party. I had railed too much against dinner parties for her not to have made a passing comment. But she hadn’t shown the slightest interest even in asking where it was being held – for the same reason, perhaps, that I hadn’t asked a single question about the new boyfriend. Perhaps, like me, she too didn’t want to appear interested. On Abingdon Square, we took everything that had anything to do with the rest of our lives and turned its face to the wall. My life, her life, like everything that didn’t really bear on why we kept meeting here, we simply staved off, never brought up, put a padlock on. On Abingdon Square we led a spare, hypothetical life, a life apart, set between Hudson and Bleecker, between five thirty and seven.