When the door shut behind him, the cat darted into the bedroom to reclaim the bed and I could feel Vadis’s presence unfurl in the apartment.
“I like what you haven’t done with the place.”
“Wine?” I offered.
“Yes, please. Is it white?”
“It’s red.”
“Either way.”
I cracked the cork so that half of it got jammed in the neck of the bottle. The only way out was down, so I drowned it with a chopstick.
“Watch out for shards,” I said, handing her a glass.
We were silent for a moment, curled up on the sofa. Vadis scraped at her nail polish with her teeth. She told me she was bored of her love life, that it wasn’t part of her the way it was part of me. She said she envied me my string of boyfriends. Not in the way married people envied it, but the reverse. To Vadis, I was a relationship person, the conventional one. Then she began grilling me about Amos. Where had we gone? Did he give me a reason for being at the restaurant? I told her we had a drink, that we fought but not really. What else was there to say? The world did not spin off its axis. She strummed those long fingers on the back of my sofa.
“There is one weird thing,” I said.
She sat up straight as a rod.
“I wound up at the same spot last night and guess who was there?”
“Morgan Freeman?”
“Was that just on the tip of your tongue?”
She shrugged.
“Willis Klee.”
She snarfed her wine onto the sofa cushions and it dribbled down her peasant blouse like a dainty nosebleed.
“Vadis!”
“Sorry. Willis Willis?!”
“You remember Willis? Ten points for you.”
“I listen.”
“Yeah but no, you don’t.”
She got up, wet some paper towel over the sink, and began blotting her chest. The water hit a spoon and splashed everywhere.
“Olympians I will always remember.”
It’s not that Vadis was an unkind person but she could never be confused for a curious person. Wanting to encourage this behavior, I told her about my conversation with Willis. I had not told her about the abortion when I had it. We weren’t as close then; she’d just started working at the magazine before her party, the one where I’d met Willis. But now Vadis hung on every detail, desperate for as much of a transcript as I could reproduce. When I was through, she sank back into the sofa as if she’d been tossed there.
“As you know,” she announced, “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Did I know that?”
“I believe you were meant to run into both of them.”
“And now I have.”
I used her knee as support as I got up to retrieve the wine.
“And how does that make you feel?”
I spun around. She was patting her shirt, waiting for a response.
“I don’t know. I feel like time passed and certain boats came by and I didn’t get on board. Or else I wanted to be on a boat but was pushed overboard and so, sure, that makes me reflect on the seaworthiness of the boat I’m in now and it’s just all very nautical.”
“You have so much difficulty letting go of the past,” she decided, wheels turning. “Like, more than anyone I know. Like with the matchbooks.”
“People keep matchbooks, it’s a decorative choice.”
“Everything gets stuck in the craw of the consciousness with you.”
“Did you knock yourself on the head on the way here?”
“It’s like the Cranberries said: Do you have to let it linger? Do you have to, do you have to, do you have to—？”
“No?”
“No. Let’s go out. It’ll help.”
“I don’t need help.”
“It’s nice out.”
I checked my bare wrist. I wanted to be here when Boots got back. I was practicing equilibrium, maintaining a balance between putting him first and putting my own whims first. Most couples seemed more self-regulating than we were. They knew when it was okay to be absent the day their other half returned from a trip and when it wasn’t, they referred to each other as “halves” without vomiting into their hands. They knew when it was okay to stay out all night with an ex-boyfriend and when it wasn’t. We never knew. So I erred on the side of obligation. Which was doing no one in our relationship any favors.
* * *
Vadis’s pussy willows drew stares on the subway platform. She put her arms through the straps that held them together. Strangers assigned cultural meaning to the bundle of twigs and their transporter and were uncharacteristically understanding when the pussy willows got caught in the subway doors. Uncharacteristically understanding when they got popped in the eye. One woman offered to give Vadis a seat but we stood, our bodies swaying. It took me a minute to notice how quiet she was being.