On my way home that night, I received a text message.
PRINTZ OSKAR ONE DAY I’M GOING TO HAVE TO SEND YOU A TEXT MESSAGE
FOURTH NIGHT
What is your hell?” I had planned to ask her. It would have been my way of drawing her out and helping her lower her defenses. I liked it when she spoke about herself. I liked when she cried, liked when we sat inside the booth at Edy’s in the dark and I had almost held her hand and kissed both palms at the same time, liked her when, past midnight after the movies, she said they made good fries at our usual place, because she knew I wanted to be back there and, better yet, be at the same table, side by side, and pick up where we’d left off our talk of Rohmer and the men and women who were all about the obvious but had lost their way around it. I liked the way she skipped out of the movie theater in between films and found an open newspaper vendor who sold M&Ms, because we’d forgotten those we had poured out into a small ziplock bag in Margo’s kitchen. Meanwhile, she had also found the time to buy two grandes. Morning and evening, she said. I assumed she’d also taken the time to check her messages. How many times had he called? I asked. Just eight — and that’s not counting the messages he left on her home phone. Wasn’t she curious to know what he’d said in them? She knew what he’d said in each. I would much rather have seen her pity and kiss him than prove she could churn kindness into venom.
After we’d said goodbye at night, I’d made myself promise not to expect her to call me the next day, not to expect to see or hear from her in who knows how long, and certainly never to think of calling her. Unless I had good reason to. The best reason sprung on me hours later, but I didn’t heed it.
At first I wanted to call her and tell her that. . that I was happy to have spent the day with her and, in the process, make a few references to the day’s markers — Bach, strudel gâteau, Rohmer again, and the sudden appearance of the Prince Oscar along the Henry Hudson lying in wait for us, or the goodbye kiss it was no less awkward to seek than to avoid.
But call and say what? That I took back every joke made at Herr Jäcke’s expense? That I’d spent an amazing day precisely as she foretold? That there’s so much to say? So, say it. I don’t know where to start. Is this going to take forever? I just wish you’d come home with me now, tonight, this moment. Why didn’t you ask me then, Oskár? Because I just couldn’t, because you’re so fucking forbidding with your hot-cold, fire-ice, speak-don’t-speak airs. Because I can’t make out where you are, who you are. Printz Oskár! Clara Brunschvicg! Good night. Good night. There’d be a moment of silence. Clara Brunschvicg. . What? Clara Brunschvicg — Don’t say it, she’d interrupt. Don’t want me to say it? No. Then you say it. Printz Oskár, let’s not do this now. Tell me why you don’t want us to say it, tell me, tell me, tell me.
I could have called on my way back home.
I could have called in the cab.
I could have called once I got home.
I could have called you while you were in the elevator, called your name while you were speaking to Boris, shouted “Clara!”
I could have answered her message as soon as I got it. One day I’m going to have to send you a text message. Written in typical Claraspeak, in stone, like a glyph that no one can decipher, not even its author. What could One day I’m going to have to send you a text message possibly mean? That this is not the text message she means to write, that the message she will write one day will say much, much more, and that this was just a teaser, a stay-tuned signal, with or without sequel? Or did it mean: I wish I had more to say, I wish I had the courage to say more, I wish I could tell you what I know you want to hear — why don’t you ask me, why don’t you just ask me, goddamnit? I wish you would read in between the lines, as I know you will and love to do, because you’ll take nothing I say at face value, which is why I must speak in double-speak, though I do not want to speak in cipher, especially to you, but am reduced to speak in the bleakest of codes.
I kept reading the text message for at least an hour, as if it had come with a crib note I had accidentally lost. I should have answered something right away. But by three I had not answered, and I didn’t want her to think that I was the sort who checks messages in the wee hours of the morning. By four, when I awoke from a dream I couldn’t even remember, I thought I should answer with something witty: “Ceci n’est pas un message non plus. Go to bed.” But then I thought: Let her stew awhile.
It did not occur to me that of the two of us I was and would always be the one stewing, not Clara. She didn’t do stewing. She’d written her SMS off the cuff and then gone to bed. Or did she just want me to think she’d written it off the cuff, then gone to bed?
And why would she want such a thing? To hide what? To suggest what? To have me suspect or second-guess what exactly?
No, this was me, just me.
Then I was seized by a terrible anxiety. What if she had stayed up waiting to hear from me? What if, left by herself, she finally did pick up the phone when it rang for the nth time that night and had one marathon tug-of-war session with Inky that always led to a listless Okay, come over if you really want? I wonder if she would have picked up the phone on seeing it was I calling?
At eight in the morning, when, contrary to every absurd expectation, it finally became apparent that she was not going to buzz me downstairs, I decided it was time to give up hope and head out to the beloved-no-longer-so-beloved Greek diner. Now yesterday’s missed opportunity to be alone with eggs and the paper came back like a reminder of failure and despair. Before stepping into the shower, I eyed the telephone. No, you do not call the Claras of this world just to say hi. You call them with a purpose, with a plan — even if it is a makeshift purpose. Do you have a plan? I do not have a plan. But you want to call? I want to call.
Lunch, I thought. No, a late lunch. Not too loud, not too many people. A late lunch in a nice place.
CB HOW ABOUT LUNCH PO
Let her think this is my natural texting “voice.” Breezy, untrammeled, happening.
By the time I came out of the shower, she had already answered. Here was someone not reluctant to show she was eager to respond.
WHERE WHEN WHAT HOW WHY
She had seen and raised me.
It meant: So you want to play curt and lapidary, here’s curt and lapidary. See who’ll fold first.
The why she’d thrown in as an afterthought was the thorniest part of the equation.
PIRANESI 2 PM ITALIAN 67 & MADISON CUZ
TERRIBLE REASON
YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW THE REASON
NAME ONE
HANDEL ROHMER LAST NIGHT
THAT WAS YESTERDAY
I WANT TODAY TO BE LIKE YESTERDAY DO I NEED TO GO ON
I was on the verge of acknowledging something, though I had no idea what.
SMS is at once more intimate and more distancing. More so sometimes than the spoken word. The accent is there, but louder, sharper, clearer, a reef of curt intentions, easily mistaken but seldom misinterpreted. One more round and we’d be quarreling, not kissing.
I KNOW OF A BETTER PLACE PICK ME UP AT 2