Page 20 of After His Eulogy
I do not have a different word. He looks at me.
“Get away from me,” he says.
He says it quiet.
“Right now. Get away from me, Reed. Get away from me right now or I am going to do something I am not ready to do.”
I step back. I step back and his hand falls off the back of my neck and his hand is at his side. I step back further and I am at the wall of the stairwell now, against it. He’s on the landing in his coat, with his bag, and he is looking at the floor.
“Go,” he says. “Please go.”
I go. I go down the stairs and out the side door of Carrigan and I walk in the direction of my apartment. I walk fast. I do not stop. I do not check over my shoulder. I walk until the building is behind me. Then I keep walking. At some point I realize I am walking in the wrong direction, that I have walked four blocks past my own street. I turn around. I walk back. I get to my apartment. I unlock the door. I sit on the couch in my coat. I do not move for a long time. He kissed me back. He kissed me back and then he told me to get away from him, and he was right to, and I went. He’s in his apartment now or he’s still in the stairwell or he’s somewhere else and I don’t know where he is. I am sitting on my couch with my coat on. I have just kissed Griffin in a stairwell. I have not called Mendez. I am not going to call Mendez tonight either. I sit on the couch.
The bag on the coat hook is the bag I had at the pharmacy. I have not moved it. The bag is empty and I have not thrown it out and I have not moved it from the hook for ten days. I look at the bag. I sit on the couch.
FIFTEEN
GRIFFIN
I stand in the stairwell after he leaves. My hand is still where it was. I lower it. I lower it slowly because I am not in a hurry to lower it, and I lower it because I have to. It comes back to my side. I look at the floor where he was standing and there is no one there. I look at the door at the bottom of the stairs and the door is closed and there are no footsteps. I look at the railing my other hand has been on and I take that hand off too. I leave the building. I take the side door. I walk home the long way. Not because the long way is calmer. It’s not calmer. The long way takes me past the river. I’m not ready to be in my apartment yet and the long way is the longest route between Carrigan and my apartment that does not double back. I walk for forty minutes. The light goes from gray to grayer. A person on a bike passes me and I do not register the person on the bike until they are well past. Then I thinkthat was a person on a bike.The way you thinkthat was a person on a bikewhen your brain is doing something else and is reporting to you, several seconds late, the things it has seen.
I think about the kiss. I do not think about the kiss. I have not let myself think about the kiss. I’m going to think about itlater, in the apartment, when I’m sitting down. I will think about it deliberately. I will assign it the time it deserves. Right now I’m walking. I will think about the kiss when I’m not walking. I think about the kiss. I get to the apartment at five-twenty. I unlock the door. I put my bag on the chair. I take off my coat. I put it on the hook. I put my keys on the counter. I do these things in the order I do them. I sit on the couch. I sit on the couch and I do not turn the lamp on. The room is dim because the light outside is going from late afternoon to evening. I sit on the couch and I thinkhe kissed me.He kissed me. He kissed me and his mouth was warm and his mouth was open. His hand. I had not put my hand on the back of his neck. I had not done that. I had moved my hand only after his mouth was on mine. I had moved it up to his jaw and then I had not moved it at all. His hand was on my neck the whole time. The hand was warm. It was him. It was the hand it has always been. I notice hands. I have noticed his hand for six years. It was a hand I have a relationship to. It was on the back of my neck in a stairwell and his mouth was on my mouth and I kissed him back.
I kissed him back. I think about that. I think about who would even ask, and whether the question would bedid he kiss youordid you kiss himordid the two of you kiss each other. The answer is the third one. The answer is the third one because I kissed him back. My body did it before the rest of me caught up. It was the truest thing my body has done in two years. I told him to get away from me. I told him to get away from me because if he had stayed I would have done something I was not ready to do. I do not know what. Kiss him again. Hit him. Sit down on the floor of the stairwell because my legs were doing something. Put my hand back on the side of his face and tell him to come home with me. I did not let myself find out which. It could have been any of them. Not knowing was unbearable. I sent him away before I had to find out.
He went. I think about how he went. Immediately. Stepped back when I told him to. Down the stairs and out the side door and he did not look back. I wonder if he wanted to. How he was holding his bag. Whether his mouth was still doing something. What his mouth was doing. I do not know. I did not look at his mouth. I told him to go and I looked at the floor. He went. The room is dark now. I do not turn on the lamp. I sit on the couch. I make a list, in my head, of what just happened. Reece kissed me. No. Reed kissed me. I kissed him back. I told him to leave. He left. I look at the list. The list is the kind of list I would make about a thing I am trying to understand, and I make lists about things I am trying to understand, and I have made one. I sit with the list. I look at it. Three weeks since the sidewalk, and my brain still offers Reece first. I thinkI should not have kissed him back.
I think I do not regret kissing him back. Two things did not contradict for him at the pharmacy. Or two things did not contradict for him at the pharmacy in the way I imagined them. I have been imagining what is going on inside him. I have been doing it a lot. I sit with the two non-contradicting thoughts. I get up at some point and turn the lamp on. I make a sandwich. I do not eat the sandwich. I open the laptop. I have a response paper due in nine days. I look at the response paper. I have written half of it. The half I have written is good. I read what I have written. It is good. It is better than I had thought when I left it three days ago. I add a sentence. I read what I added. It is a sentence. It is in the voice I have been writing in. It says something about the historiographic argument I am making. It is a fine sentence. I leave the sentence.
I sit at the desk. I look at the laptop. I add a second sentence. The second sentence has nothing to do with the response paper. The second sentence isthe archive holds what it cannot say. I look at the sentence. The sentence is, technically, on topic. The sentence could be in this paper. I would not put the sentence inthis paper because the sentence is too declarative, because the sentence is the kind of sentence that asks a reader to stop and notice it, and a response paper does not want to be stopped. I do not delete the sentence. I close the laptop. I get up. I go to the window. I look at the back of the next house over. The bird feeder is empty. The squirrel is not there. The light in the next house’s kitchen is on and a woman I have never seen is standing at her sink rinsing something. She does not see me. She finishes rinsing. She turns the water off. She moves out of the kitchen. The light stays on. I put my hand on the windowsill. I think about Reed’s hand on the back of my neck.
I take my hand off the windowsill. I go to bed. I do not sleep for a long time. In the morning I will go to the proseminar. I will sit across from him. I will look at the table. He will look at the table. We will get through it. We will get through it because we are the kind of people who get through things, both of us. The proseminar will end. We will leave the room. We will not say anything about the stairwell. That is what is going to happen. That’s not what I want to happen. I do not know what I want. I lie in the dark and I do not know what I want. I sleep at some point. I do not dream, or if I dream, I do not remember. In the morning I get up at six-fifteen. I make coffee one cup at a time over the cone. I drink two cups, one and then another. I look at the response paper. I read the sentence I added.The archive holds what it cannot say.I leave it.
SIXTEEN
REECE
He texts me on Monday. I have not heard from him in three days. We sat across from each other at the proseminar on Tuesday and on Thursday and we did the thing. Neither of us looked at each other. We both contributed at the right moments. Min asked me a question about my project after class and I answered it for ninety seconds. Griffin packed his bag in those ninety seconds and walked out of the room without me being able to look at him without making a thing of it. Friday afternoon I didn’t see him. Saturday I didn’t. Sunday I didn’t. Sunday I checked my phone twice, three times, four times — nothing on it. Monday at three-fourteen the phone buzzes. The text is from a number I do not have saved. Come over tonight. 8. I look at the text, at the number. The number is one I’d memorized two years ago and have spent the intervening time trying not to memorize. I haven’t asked for the number. He didn’t give it to me. He’s just sending me a text from it. The text doesn’t say his name. It doesn’t say anything else. It says Come over tonight. 8.
I look at the text for a minute. I write backokay. Look at it. Send it. He doesn’t respond.
I get to his apartment at eight-oh-two. I know better than to be on time — he’s someone who would notice. He’d remember it later. I’m two minutes late on purpose and he’ll know that too. He opens the door. He is in a sweater I do not know. He does not say anything for a second. He looks at me. He’s been thinking about this for an hour, I can see, the way I have. Been standing in this apartment thinking about whether to open the door this way or another way. He’s chosen this way — without speaking. I take my cue from this. I do not speak either. I come in. The apartment looks the way it looked the night I sat on his couch and he stood with his hand on the chair and I said the wrong things. The chair has the sweatshirt on it. The kitchen has the small coffee pot on the counter. There’s a glass of water on the desk that wasn’t there last time — half-finished, thumbprint on it. I notice it and don’t address it.
He closes the door behind me. He locks it. He does not invite me to sit.
“I have been thinking,” he says.
“Okay.”
“For three days.”
“Okay.”
“And I have a question.”
“Okay.”
“And I am going to ask the question, and you are going to answer it, and then we are going to talk about what comes next.”
