Roommates

by Valerie Reyes

  I blinked. I was at a loss. She had to know that. She could have said something. Anyone else at the table could have said something. Why wasn’t Willy saying anything? Why wasn’t he asking why I was there? Why wasn’t anyone talking?

  It was left to me. I was left with what to say after so many years and so many words I wished that I could say to her, but never, never could.

  “This isn’t whist,” was all I could come up with.

  She visibly relaxed. What had she been afraid of?

  “No,” she said. “This is quite a different game. A bit the same, but much less … scientific. Much less certain. They play it along the Mississippi Valley, you know, in America.”

  And just like that, we’d sidestepped our history. Willy introduced us, more on his toes than I was at that moment. And I could focus only on learning the game.

  I hated it. The whole point of whist was that I could be certain I’d win. It was a science. Perhaps it was the only thing in my life that was truly predictable, and had always been truly predictable. But this game … it was not. There were some guidelines I could follow, I deduced quickly from a general overview of the rules. But there was too much betting that had to be done on too little information, only looking at my opponents for what information I could glean from their expressions.

  And I was at a loss, for I found I couldn’t look at Emma.

  No one was masked at the table, and it was preferable to the ball out there. It always seemed as though it would be so much fun for everyone to be concealed, but in reality it never really ended up being nearly as exciting nor as mysterious as all that. Even so, I wished that I had something to hide behind now.

  As for Emma herself, she was magnificent. She’d never been much of one for cards when I’d known her. I tried to teach her whist once, perhaps more than once, and she’d never taken to it. Or perhaps she just hadn’t wanted to play with me. But now, here, she was running the table. Perhaps I couldn’t read her because I couldn’t bear to look at her face. But the others at the table all did not have that disadvantage, and kept making bad calls and falling into traps that I saw, only in retrospect, that she had laid.

  Perhaps, then, this game was perfect for her.

  I had fallen victim to these traps as well. The money I had brought with me in the first place had not been extensive, as I was not expecting to play cards, and, even if I had, I wouldn’t have had much to bring with me. But even so, it began to thin, more and more, until I had an even sorrier showing in front of me than I began with.

  “You are permitted to replenish from your pockets,” I heard Emma say. A chill ran up my spine when I realized she was speaking at me. I would need to look at her. I couldn’t bring my eyes up. I couldn’t look.

  It was one of the others who saved me, after a fashion. He didn’t help me out in preserving whatever dignity I might have had left in front of Emma, but at least he took her focus from me.

  “Oh, I suspect he hasn’t got much in his pockets. To be sure, he’ll be our first out, and there’s no question.”

  “That will be a nice change,” another said. I’d hated this one from the moment I walked in. His green cravat reminded me too much of the one my father had worn. And that hadn’t been his fault, but his words hadn’t saved him from my ill opinion.

  Emma’s voice sounded confused as she chimed in for clarification. And I would have easily believed, had I not known better, that she didn’t know me.

  “Oh? I thought you’d said he was a lord?”

  The man with the green cravat answered her.

  “Have you not heard of him? Have you really not heard of Lord Headwidge? They say he spent his whole fortune learning whist, just so he could spend the rest of his whole life earning it back by playing, piece by piece.”

  I shot the man a peeved look.

  “Well, they do!” he shot back, quietly. But the conversation had moved on. The first man who had spoken was speaking again.

  “To my mind, it must have been the parties. It is a shame you haven’t been in London! He used to throw the most spectacular balls. Oh, this is fine, certainly. But some years ago, he used to open up the manor and put on a show that puts Dowager Whitehall’s spectacle to shame.”

  “And is that like him?” Emma asked, pointedly. “Only he seems so reserved here tonight.”

  No, it wasn’t like me. But I had not been feeling very much myself when this had happened. I had been laboring under several misapprehensions, not the least of which was that there had been something I’d done, or some deficiency in me that had made Emma lose interested.

  So I had spent a great deal of time, yes, and a great deal of my family’s money, in trying to remedy these deficiencies. And truth be told, I had hoped that Emma would hear of it and see that I was not such an unsocial or inhospitable man as she had imagined, and return. Or at least I imagined that she would become curious, and her curiosity would draw her back.

  But she had not. All that had happened was that I had burned through an awful lot of family money awfully quickly. I drank through most of the rest, and yes, Green Cravat was correct, I had spent some time gambling poorly before I mastered the art of gambling well.

  “He’s a man of many facets,” Willy said for me, when it was clear I was not ever going to answer for myself.

  And so the game wore on, and I had a new goal: simply not to go out. For all I found Green Cravat an intolerable man, I did not want to prove him right. So I played cautiously, bleeding slowly away to the blinds as they wound their way around and around the table.

  Green Cravat was our first out, in the end. He was hardly graceful about it, too. He cursed, and then apologized to the ladies present when Willy made him. And then he sat around, watching us play, and making snide comments when he could.

  After Green Cravat was out, I could easily have let my pile wither, without having lost face. But I continued to stay in. I felt somehow that it was necessary for me to stay here. Emma’s magic had started working on me. That could be the only explanation. I wanted to stay near her – to hear the gentle huskiness her voice took on when she humbly admitted she had again won the hand – even though there was nothing else here to keep me.

  And so I stayed alive and in the game as long as I could. I even won a few hands to bolster my reserves and keep me going through another round of folding and observing. I felt a kind of joy begin. Just being for this long in the same room with her made me happy in a way I wouldn’t have predicted if I’d been asked beforehand.

  But then the night turned. It began with a stray comment Green Cravat made. He was commenting on the woman I’d been talking to out at the ball. He asked if she was the only one I had on the docket tonight, or if I was forming a queue. How did I manage to make them all be so amenable? The man joked he should take lessons from me.

  Willy’s lady friend rebuked him, and this time he apologized. This sort of talk wasn’t appropriate around ladies, and he’d simply let his mouth run away with him, since they were playing cards together, and usually there weren’t any ladies around when they were doing that.

  I saw the apology for what it was, though. It was a little victory shot at me. It was all very well to apologize once the deed was done. He could see from the look my face, and surely from the look on Emma’s as well, what he’d done to me.

  I didn’t look at Emma. I still couldn’t, not since I’d looked at her when I walked in, and everything had gone wrong in my head, and my chest felt like it had caved in and left the entire contents thereof in disarray. But was it my imagination? I could feel her. I could feel her disapproval. After all this time she returned to someone laughable … someone she could laugh at, and make her certain she had made the correct choice to leave.

  I could not speak. I could not think of anything to say. I decided at that point to play more aggressively, so that I would have valid reason to leave, and lick my wounds at home for however long it took me to drink myself to sleep.

  Chapter 8


  Emma

  What was the point? What was the point of the city being so big, and containing so many people, if the one person I didn’t want to see showed up regardless, in the one moment of joy I’d had since arriving?

  I’d truly enjoyed myself for a few rounds. I was able to spread a little bit of knowledge around, and bring this game I’d so loved in America back to London. And the questions they’d asked about it were a welcome change from the dull, repetitive conversations I’d had with so many people since being back. They wanted to hear card stories, and if there was one thing that I’d learned over the years and over my travels, it was that there was no character that couldn’t be revealed in perfect clarity by a loss at cards.

  I found, quite surprisingly, that I didn’t dislike these people. Well, none but one of them, who was most disagreeable. And it was not that I was generally one primed to dislike people. But whatever had truly happened downstairs, whether it was fair of me to think of myself as ill-treated or not, it had put me in a terrible mood. And so finding some company that could make me forget all of that absurdity was so welcome.

  But him! Why did he have to come? And when he had come in the room he had stared at me as though he knew what I was thinking, as though I’d done this intentionally. Why did he always have to look as though he thought I’d planned to bring him pain? His eyes were accusing. They were assaulting.

  And then, it felt, they were too fleetingly on me. He wouldn’t look at me. I kept looking at him. I was drawn to. I even bet wrong, once or twice, because I wasn’t watching where I should have been watching, and was instead staring at him. He who was staring at others, staring at the ceiling, staring at anything he could that wasn’t me.

  And then feelings began welling up in me. All the guilt I’d had on leaving came bubbling up. And all the righteous indignation. He had no right to expect! He had no right to judge me! It wasn’t his choice! He was never put to such a test!

  The game, the table, and the night became a misery. It was no longer a refuge to be stuck in there with these people. Now it was only a test of my resolve. I felt somehow that I must stay. I must last. I must show him that he could not guilt me into leaving.

  But then that hideous man spoke those words. He said those things, and…

  I’d prepared myself that he might be married. I’d accepted it. His wife would be lovely, no doubt. Then, when I’d seen him downstairs, it was clear he was not. And yet, still, I thought that perhaps the girl he had spoken to was his long-term sweetheart. Maybe there’d been one or two others, and that was why he hadn’t married. He’d always wanted children. He’d wanted a quiet life. He’d wanted a family life.

  The reputation that this man implied for him … it was wrong. Everything about it seemed impossible. The Henry I knew would never be like that! He would never do that sort of a thing. He would never be that kind of man.

  But no one contradicted the words. No one defended Henry’s honor. I tried to tell myself that meant nothing but I found I could not make myself believe it.

  I won the hand and, though I could have gotten more, I decided it was time to quit. The air in the room itself had become toxic to me. It was hard to breathe. It was like acid had been dissolved into the very air and somehow everyone else was ignoring its effects, but my body was melting inside itself. I took my money and left, ignoring the protestations of my new friends that I should stay and give them a chance to win back all that they’d lost. Henry didn’t protest. He didn’t say a word. Perhaps if he’d spoken, I would have stayed.

  The air outside of the room felt better, but I still felt trapped. I’d forgotten my mask in the room, but I paid it no mind. The idea that I should care whatsoever what anyone had to say about me, or to me, now seemed absurd. What did their words matter? What did any of them matter?

  I went down the stairs and finally found the door I’d been looking for before my ill-fated detour. I didn’t look around. I simply slipped out and headed for the back gate of the property.

  It wasn’t until I was well and truly out that I began to feel more myself. The river had a calming influence, and even though it was a nice night, luckily no one was out walking on the promenade along this portion of the river. I leaned against the stone wall and looked at the reflections, and the distortions made in them by the ripples left by passing boats.

  So that was what had become of him, in the end. Perhaps I had been wrong about him all along. I’d been so young. Perhaps in all these years I’d simply built him into more of a man than he was. I’d let my own guilt transform a bit of a boorish man into someone pristine and innocent. I’d turned him into the life I could have had instead of the one I did, so every disappointment I experienced only elevated him in my mind.

  Then perhaps this meeting was inevitable. What real man could possibly live up to the god I’d made Henry into in my mind over the years?

  This explanation was comforting, in its own way. I struggled to accept it, even though accepting it felt like an ending, and I couldn’t bear endings.

  Sure, I’d struggled with the decision. And I’d loved him. Oh, I didn’t doubt that I’d loved him. But hadn’t I learned and seen, time and time again, that a young girl in love is only a young girl driven beyond her senses? I wasn’t in my right mind. I wasn’t thinking properly. How had I credited myself for so long with being so right in who he was and what life with him would have been like, and ignored the whole time that I simply had not missed out on much after all?

  With this frame around it, tonight didn’t seem quite so bad. I didn’t mind blaming myself for having been foolish. Perhaps it was easier than what I had done all these years, blaming myself for having been a coward.

  My shoulders relaxed. I breathed in. I breathed out. All things considered, tonight had been a very good night indeed. I’d earned some very useful money that would go a long way towards making us more comfortable until the money came through from the solicitor. Perhaps it would even do to get us through until we were out of that hotel, if the meeting I had arranged tomorrow went well enough.

  But above all I’d dispelled a myth that had been haunting me for such a very long time. I’d slain a ghost of a man I once knew, who turned out never to have even been real. It was a good night, and I resolved myself to drink it all in for a while, and cherish the newfound feeling I had that London was an ally to me, and that it had nothing lurking in it that I needed to fear.

  Then I felt it – a hand on my shoulder. And I remembered suddenly that for a woman carrying a good deal of cash, all alone in a secluded spot in London at night, there were perhaps a good fair few things lurking that I needed to fear. My heart began to pound and I allowed myself a moment of fear.

  And then the fear was done, and I determined that things had best be dealt with rationally.

  “I have money,” I said, “and I’m not going to turn around. You can take it and be gone.”

  Chapter 9

  Henry

  “Have I ever wanted your money?”

  I realized Emma didn’t know it was me, but even so, the accusation still stung. I drew my hand back as though she were a hot iron that had burned my fingers.

  She turned and faced me, and I felt my courage begin to wither. But I couldn’t let it. I had let it go this long. It would go no longer. She owed me better than that.

  “Are you afraid of me?” I asked her, though I could see now that she was not. Her fear had gone, and all the things that had artificially held us apart the whole night long were gone. Now it was simply the two of us, standing in front of each other, alone.

  I didn’t know exactly what to expect when I followed her out to speak to her, but I hadn’t expected this. Things between us felt so familiar, as though no time at all had passed. The whirlwind of emotions, the anger, the indignation, with the longing when I saw her face and the shame when she had heard what I’d come to … it was all gone. Now that it was only the two of us, it felt as though all those things had never happened, and we were si
mply strolling along the river, having a talk to one another.

  But we weren’t, were we?

  “Tell me it isn’t true,” she began, and I wished I could.

  “If I did it would be a lie. And if it were a lie, what good would that do either of us?”

  “It isn’t you.”

  She spat the words out, bitterly, and I felt a trace of my earlier anger coming back up to the surface.

  “What is it you think you know about me? After all this time? Do you think you have the right to say what I am and what I am not, and what I should be and what I should not? I owe you nothing. I owe you no apologies. Did you expect me to wait for you all this time?”

  She was hurt. My words had stung her. Good.

  But it still felt like a lie. I had waited. For several years, I had waited. For two years I’d spoken to no one about it. I’d been convinced that she was going to return to me and that, when she did, it would be best if I had not disparaged her and there was no obstacle to our reunion. Those were the days of the parties. All those grand parties when I had sat, chaste, among so many women who would have loved for me to make love to them. Some had even propositioned me, and fawned over me, and made their intentions clear in so many ways. What a waste it had been!

  “You’re angry,” she observed, calmly. And in that moment, I hated her.

  “Of course I’m angry! Why should I not be angry?” I yelled, and felt as though I’d lost it all. I had lost my composure, and she had kept hers. What ground did I have left to stand on?

  “You ought to be,” she said, and stared at the ground.

  I had been wrong; she hadn’t kept her composure. She’d lost it, but not to anger. She’d lost it to sadness. And with the revelation of her sadness, I felt my anger calm.

  Standing here by the river, in this light, she looked as she had looked one evening not long after we began to court in secret. No one had known we were here. It was the first time she had spoken to me about anything of worth. I had been drawn by her beauty, and by the conviction I had drawn from those few words I had heard her speak that there was more to her. But that night by the river, which was so much like this night by the river, she had proved it.