Nevermind her hug: I can’t describe what she smelled like except to compare her scent to those old cartoons in which some magical fragrance tendril-hooks some unsuspecting character’s nose to literally lift said character off his feet and pull him through the air. I took a deep breath of Veronica Sawyer and would have followed her anywhere. Anywhere then was to her old Toyota Camry, where I waited while she got in and unlocked the passenger side door. I settled into the seat, buckling up with my manila folder of manuscript pages on my lap.
“Is that the precious cargo?”
“It’s the first part of my novel.”
“Are you excited?”
I was, but I was also distracted by thoughts of Angus inspired by the sight of the beautiful girl beside me. I swallowed. “Yeah. Totally.”
***
One of the few great things about small towns is that everything’s relatively nearby; the post office was basically down the block and around the corner, clerked by a sweet blonde woman with a quick nose and a hint of a drawl even as far north as we were. Veronica knew her better than I did—they attended mass together sometimes—and so they chatted while I addressed the envelope to a Manhattan office I probably could have gotten to, leaving from my apartment, inside of an hour.
Veronica’s voice over my shoulder: “You’re shaking,” and then her light touch on my forearm. Veronica’s fingers: long and slender, pianist’s hands in want of ivory, and still, too—a subtle but nonetheless distinct contrast to my own trembling grasp. The fingers in which I held my pen: shivering, while my palm sweated like a prom. My own jitters worse than any first-date nerves I’ve ever had, but then again I’d never been on a first date with Veronica.
“You shouldn’t be so nervous. You know it’s good.”
I shrugged. “Easy to say. Less to believe. What if she doesn’t want it?”
“You give up. If this woman doesn’t want it, nobody’s going to.”
“Um. What?”
“Exactly. Even just the idea is so foreign you don’t really know how to process it. If this woman—whoever she is—rejects what you send her, you send it to the next person on whatever list you’ve made. And if you don’t have a list yet, you make one. Because not a single agent is the only one out there, so you keep sending them letters until you find one who wants to read it all and then falls in love with it and then wants to represent it, because one of them is going to. And in the meantime, you go up to the counter and you pay to send this particular one what she wanted.”
Which is what I did, and then we returned to Veronica’s car. I waited while she unlocked my door, and then, as she started the car, I took a deep breath while buckling my safety belt. My breath stayed for a moment, filling my lungs and my head and my heart, before it came out, hanging in the air great and hopeful.
Veronica smiled. “You needed that.”
I stared straight ahead at the brick-wall exterior of the Post Office. “You realize I might never have to do that again? She might ask for the whole manuscript, and then represent it, and then even sell it.” I’m pretty sure I meant it to come out happy, but I wouldn’t have called it that had I heard it, which surprised me a little.
Veronica let that statement stick around for a moment like a surreptitious cat, then: “Do you really want that?”
I looked at her. “To sell it? Well, yeah. Of c—.”
“No, wait. Stop. Before you answer like I know you want to, would you just take a look at yourself for a second? I don’t know if I’d ever have used the word ‘giddy’ to describe someone, but you earn it. You’re shaking with something electric coming off you in waves, and think about that. You get published, you get famous, you get what you always wanted, and I hope that will be everything you ever wanted, but just for a minute appreciate this delicious, if uncertain, excitement, would you? If you never have to do it again, if she calls you tomorrow and sells it the next day, will you ever feel this excitement again?”
She put her hand on mine. I watched her delicate fingers touch my wrist, and as soon as I felt their feather-light caress my hand wanted to grasp, to hold hers—
Man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a Heaven for?—
and I don’t know how I kept from doing so. I don’t know how I controlled my hands and my body, every cell of which suddenly ached for the girl sitting beside me.
“I know how hard it is, because I know how seriously you take it. I know you just want it to happen. But you know . . . regardless of what happens with this woman, or any agent or editor or whatever for that matter, you know you’re going to be okay, right?”
If you had asked me, before that moment, if I ever planned to tell Veronica how I felt, the idea of doing so in the parking lot of our local Post Office wouldn’t have crossed my mind. I’m not sure I would have known how it might occur: a fancy dinner, perhaps, or a day at the park or the beach or the boardwalk. Given how special I thought Veronica was, I’m sure I would have imagined equally special circumstances, but as is so very often the case, life is what happens when you’re making other plans. Perhaps the romantic in me might have made a dinner reservation in some candlelit restaurant, or planned out a picnic before which I might practice several times in front of the mirror the monologue by which I would reveal to her my innermost feelings.
Hell, given that we had already made plans to have dinner, the romantic in me might have waited another hour or so, drinking his courage and eloquence.
Instead:
My fingers closed on her hand without my meaning them to, and I looked at her. Sunlight through the window shone her eyes bright, and I said: “Do you know I love you?” like I legitimately believed she might not, my voice pitched slightly strained, almost as if sad. Maybe it was: even just uttering those words made something immutable concrete.
I wish I could describe how her expression changed. The smile never left her lips, the support her face. Not a single one of her fine features moved, but still, something about it became different from one second to the next, even if it was only her straining to keep it from changing.
“I mean, you must, right? All these years? That time I gave you those poems I don’t even know you still have? Because I’ve gotta be honest; for a while there, even I didn’t know. It was like, I was just so busy being young and going out and dancing with you in dim bars that I didn’t pay attention to the fact that I was falling in love with you all over again. Which is what it was, if only because for a while there—,” I stopped, though, because—well.
Honesty: her expression might not have changed in any measurable way, but there are other ways more important. When I spoke, my voice was level and precise, using no more sound than absolutely necessary and certainly not allowing emotion. “I shouldn’t hav—.”
“No, don’t—,” Veronica said. Her fingers squeezed my hand. “I’m just—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry? For what?”
“You asked if I knew like I might not, but did you really think—how could I have possibly not known? It’s not like you hide it well. I was so happy when you got engaged. I thought maybe you were over me, that maybe you had found what you deserved. Truth is, I don’t know if I ever led you on, but I should have told you a long time ago that—,”she paused, then, and when she did so, she seemed to realize her hand was still grasping mine. She withdrew it to her lap, stared ahead at the wall in front of us as if searching its bricks for words.
I put my hands in my own lap. I didn’t know what else to do with them.
“It’s not that I don’t love you,” she said, turning to look at me again. “You know I love you. You’re one of the most amazing people I know, and one of my best friends.”
“But that’s all.”
“But that’s exactly my point; it’s not enough. You deserve more than that.”
“Not more than you. Don’t say more than you.”
“More than how I feel about you. I’ll always love you. I’ll talk to you about Ionesco and
Beckett and drama and teaching and writing, and all like I can’t talk to anyone else. But you know that feeling you get when someone you like texts you? That swimmy feeling that makes you want to grin so hard you feel your own dimple? Don’t you deserve someone you make grin like that? Don’t you deserve someone who’s just as in love with you as you are with them? Because you know I love you, but I’m—.”
“Please don’t say you’re not in love with me. Could this conversation be any more of a cliché?”
“Could it be any more true? Maybe we needed some cliché in our relationship, finally, because we’ve been keeping things from each other for a while, haven’t we?”
“I haven’t kept anything from you.”
“Except the fact that you were in love with me.”
“Which you’ve apparently always known.”
“But not because you told me. Isn’t that the whole point?”
“I don’t know what the point is anymore. I just know—I wrote it for you. When I wasn’t sure I could go on, the thought of you helped me through it.”
“You don’t seriously think you wouldn’t have finished it if not for me?”
I hesitated. Shrugged. “I never had to find out.”
“Don’t put that on me,” Veronica said. Somewhat shortly, like she didn’t want to leave room for argument. “I don’t deserve that. You wrote a book. Big, thick stack of paper with words—.”
“All for you.”
“Even without me, you would have written it.”
“Maybe not the same way.”
“The way it needed to be written. You wrote something that should make you happy, regardless of me or anybody else. Because what if that agent rejects it? And then the next one, and the next—.”
“But you just said, I keep sending it.”
“Because you believe in it. Not because you wrote it for me, or you think that’s what I want. Because you believe in the words you put down. You can’t do it for any other reason than that, and certainly not for me.”
“But it was your support—.”
“Then maybe you need to do it without my support.”
“What? What’re you—are you breaking up with me? We’re not even dating.”
“But there are feelings. And if we’re going to have an honest relationship, we’re going to need to sort those out, right? Especially if we mean to get past them.”
“Who says I want to move past them?”
“Then how can we possibly have a good friendship? With you pining away after me—.”
“I’m not exactly pining.”
“You know what I mean. It’s not fair to either of us. It’s not fair for me to lead you on, and it’s not fair for you to put me in that position.”
“And what position is that?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t want to be in it.”
“So what, then?”
“Just . . . we give each other some space. We can get through this. We get through everything. We’ll figure it out.”
“And if we don’t? Because I’ll be honest here: I don’t really know what we mean. Am I supposed to avoid Tom’s shows now? Are you going to not go? What’re we—?”
“No, I just mean—look, I’m going back to school soon anyway, and Lord knows I’ve got enough on my plate I should probably just stick around there on weekends as it is. And like I said, it’s not like I don’t love you. I do. You really are one of my best friends. And I’ve always thought the best thing about friendship is the fact that it’s always there to come back to. Real friendships never change. They’re always right where you left them, to pick up where you left off.”
“So we should not be friends for a while,” I said. I hated myself for saying it, the tone of my words, the way I half-spat the question at her. Because on another level, on a very reasonable level, I knew that what she was saying made sense, that what she was suggesting might well be not only the most reasonable option for both of us, but also the best. She was right, too, that maybe I needed to get past this idea that I had written for her, or because of her. Especially given my experience in Angus’ office . . . just the fact that I had considered his offer worried me.
“Don’t do that to me,” she told me.
“Do what?” Mock-defensive. I knew what I’d done. I knew what I was doing, too, and I couldn’t help it. I’m not proud of that moment. But: warts and all, right?
“Don’t turn this on me. It’s not—I don’t—I didn’t mean for this to happen, and if you’ve had feelings for me all this time, have I ever encouraged them? Have I ever led you on to believe I wanted anything more from you than friendship? Because I never have. Not once. I’ve never held your hand. I’ve never drunkenly kissed you while we’ve danced in a dark bar. You can’t blame me for feelings I don’t have unless I’ve misled you, and I don’t think I have.”
I said nothing. I had nothing left. Just breath, and even then only barely.
“I should take you back.”
I hesitated, then nodded. “Dinner’s probably not the best idea.”
“I think we can work through this, given some time.”
“But how much?”
“I don’t want this to end our friendship. Maybe we can be even better friends now that we got this out in the open.”
“I hope so,” I told her.
“I’m sure of it. I’m sure we’ll hug each other again. I’m sure we’ll laugh together again. I’m even sure we’ll dance together again. One day.”
“But not today.”
“No, today I’ll take you back to the bus station, and you can go back up to your apartment, and you can work on some story that will have nothing whatsoever to do with me. You can put one word in front of the other, because more than anything else in the world, including me, that’s what you love. We’ll take a rain check on dinner.”
I hesitated, then nodded, because what else was I going to do? We drove off under the promise of a rain check, but I noticed through the windshield there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky.
***
I just passed the novel mark there, in that scene. Sometime through there, we hit 50,000 words. I think it was sometime between the moment I told Veronica I loved her and the moment she told me she didn’t love me in return, which is probably appropriate, at least in a dramatic sense. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written and rewritten this story, how many false starts I have on this and various other hard drives. I think I’m happiest right now that I might finally be getting it right.
Maybe there’s something to be said for telling the truth.
For example, I’m really not sure about the last line of that previous scene, mentioning the lack of a single cloud in the sky, but then again, I remember that moment. I remember thinking rain check was such an odd term, and that the January day was bright enough I could believe spring was on its way; it was one of those days so bright it’s surreal, the kind of bright that makes you think everything should have a halo, and that everyone should be happy.
It stayed that way the whole way back to the bus station, where Veronica dropped me off to catch the next Greyhound back—I almost wrote “home,” there. Back to Manhattan, back to the trains that would take me to my crummy Hoboken apartment. I told her she didn’t need to wait with me while I waited for the next bus, as I wasn’t too worried about getting stolen, and she gave me an obligatory chuckle, and then a hug that felt that way, too, and she told me to take care, that everything was going to be fine, and she knew it in her bones.
I wished I had as much confidence as she did. I didn’t tell her that.
I didn’t tell her any more at all, in fact. I couldn’t think of anything else I might; I’d already told her the biggest thing I possibly could, after all. We’ve seen how that went down.
Except—
The fact that I was in love with her, that I had been for as long as I could remember, that wasn’t the biggest thing I could have told her, I realized, riding that bus back north to th
e City and my apartment. I could, after all, have told her about Angus, and Futures Trading.
So much for that, I thought, staring out the window as the sun set down to blaze the sky orange through charblack tree branches and clouds like antique shawls. So much for Angus and his offer, but then, I had to admit I didn’t mind that so much. I had to admit it was just about a relief I no longer had to decide, that I could visit his office for only the amount of time necessary to thank him for finally motivating me to talk to Veronica, who had conclusively rendered his offer completely moot.
I guessed I was no longer a candidate for whatever futures Angus might trade, but that was okay, considering the other option. The not-Veronica option. The stories.
I didn’t mind that idea, truthfully. Because I felt, in some way, like . . . remember Schrodinger and his cat in its safe? I felt like I’d opened that safe and made the observation. I felt like there was no longer a quantum state, no longer a possibility. All that was left was certainty and decision. All that was left was a dead cat and a puddle of poison and a half-bit of radioactive decay.
I dozed through most of the ride, then walked to the connecting station to catch the train back to my own stop. Down the hill to the corner church, another couple blocks left, and then I turned the key in the lock and let myself into an apartment that might as well have been empty. Light like a welcome mat from under one of my roommate’s doors, a muffled television through the wall. I opened my own bedroom door to throw my coat on my bed, then went to the kitchen, headed for anything in the fridge, trying to remember if I’d ordered anything recently.
Nothing, really, save the beer Angus had given me on my way out of his office. I remembered its heady aroma and its deep, dense taste, so expansive it had felt like it shouldn’t have fit in my mouth. I popped the cap and reached for a tumbler before I decided against it, brought the bottle to my lips and took a long, slow pull of it. Heavy enough to be a meal on its own, and I remembered how it had affected me nearly right away, and I thought maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe that would take my mind off of . . .
Meets Girl: A Novel Page 14
