He answers after one ring. “Hello, gorgeous. I’m missing you.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing you’re seeing me very soon. I’m done here. If I have to read another obvious undergraduate essay on ‘Feminism and Colette’ or ‘Homosexual Apologism in Gide,’ I may have to shoot myself. Do you want me to come up to your office and we can go together?”
“I have to finish this piece. Best meet there in case I get stuck.”
“Don’t get stuck. I hate these things.” Crowds of art-parasites pretending the emperor is wearing clothes. Peter’s parents are flying into town for the opening of the Whitney Biennial, and we’re meeting them there.
I hear him light a cigarette, inhale. “Just because you don’t like conceptual art doesn’t mean the rest of the world is wrong.”
“Three words: Michael. Jackson. Bubbles.”
“My mother says the show is meant to be very ‘political’ this year.”
“Where are they taking us for dinner?”
“Somewhere nice. They’re looking forward to seeing you.”
“They’re looking forward to seeing you. I’m the woman who kidnapped their son and brought him to live amongst the savages.”
Peter laughs. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Promise.”
* * *
—
I get off the local train at Seventy-seventh and Lex. It’s a perfect spring evening—the golden smell of honey locust, brownstones taking in the last of the sun. Around the corner from the Whitney, I sit on a stoop and change my running shoes for a pair of flats, put on some red lipstick, adjust my boobs up and out a bit. I’m wearing my favorite pale blue linen cocktail dress, but the neckline is a hair too low, and if I don’t lift and separate, my boobs end up looking like a baby’s bottom.
The Whitney is a madhouse, the concrete bridge to the entryway thick with bodies, an express train at rush hour. I’m not even inside, and already I’m pissed off. At the door, a woman hands me a button that reads I can’t imagine ever wanting to be white. I grab a glass of wine from a passing tray and head into the crowd. If there’s a fire, I will be trampled to death.
We’ve arranged to meet Peter’s parents at the elevator bank, but they aren’t here yet. I find a bit of open space on the wall and lean against it, slug down my wine, watch the beautiful people shoving their way across the room. A dark-haired waiter carrying a tray of champagne moves away from me into the throng.
“Can I grab one of those?” I say, but he doesn’t hear me above the noise. I tug his sleeve to get his attention before he is swallowed up. The tray slaloms in his hand, and for a second it looks like he will lose control of it, but he manages to follow its sway, keeping all of the full flutes upright. Not even a slosh.
“Idiot,” I hear him mutter as he presses forward without letting me take a glass of champagne from his tray.
I know this voice. “Jonas?”
The waiter turns, scowls at me. It’s not Jonas.
As I watch him walk away, a sadness comes over me, a disappointment I didn’t know was there, a gut-punched feeling—as if I’ve been given a pardon on my death sentence and then, seconds later, been told it was a mistake. It’s been four years since the coffee shop. Since Jonas kissed me that way. Since I ignored the message he left on my mother’s answering machine the next day, knowing—as I erased it, as I toasted a bagel, as I brought Peter coffee in bed—that Jonas was what might have been. Maybe even what should have been. Knowing it was too late.
Peter is what is. Our life together is good. Great. In love with the realness of each other—with toilet plungers and morning breath and running to the bodega to get me Tampax, falling asleep to Letterman, yelping at wasabi. But none of that matters right now. I reach into my bag and pull out my wallet, thick with receipts I need to throw away— taxi drivers’ cards I take rather than hurt their feelings and admit I’ll never call, a few old photos, a maxed-out credit card. My fingers feel around the recesses behind the window pocket where my hideous license photo stares out at me. I pull out the folded paper napkin. His number is faded but still legible.
There’s a pay phone in the lobby corner near the gift shop. Jonas answers on the fourth ring, and this time I know the voice is his.
“It’s me,” I say.
Silence. The din of the lobby behind me is deafening. I press the telephone receiver hard against my ear, plug my other ear with my index finger, trying to create a bubble of silence. “It’s me,” I say again, louder this time. A man enters the Whitney wearing a pink vinyl suit; the woman on his arm is a head taller, dressed in a Chanel jacket and sheer stockings that do nothing to hide her nakedness underneath. I watch them air-kiss their way across the lobby.