Try again later were the last words I’d spoken to myself every night

when I’d sworn to do something to bring Oliver closer to me. Try again

later meant, I haven’t the courage now. Things weren’t ready just yet.

Where I’d find the will and the courage to try again later I didn’t know. But

resolving to do something rather than sit passively made me feel that I was already doing something, like reaping a profit on money I hadn’t invested,

much less earned yet.

But I also knew that I was circling wagons around my life with try

again laters, and that months, seasons, entire years, a lifetime could go by

with nothing but Saint Try-again-later stamped on every day. Try again

later worked for people like Oliver. If not later, when? was my shibboleth.

If not later, when? What if he had found me out and uncovered each and

every one of my secrets with those four cutting words?

I had to let him know I was totally indifferent to him.

What sent me into a total tailspin was talking to him a few mornings

later in the garden and finding, not only that he was turning a deaf ear to all

of my blandishments on behalf of Chiara, but that I was on the totally

wrong track.

“What do you mean, wrong track?"

“I’m not interested.”

I didn’t know if he meant not interested in discussing it, or not

interested in Chiara.

“Everyone is interested."

“Well, maybe. But not me.”

Still unclear.

There was something at once dry, irked, and fussy in his voice.

“But I saw you two.”

“What you saw was not your business to see. Anyway, I’m not playing

this game with either her or you.”

He sucked on his cigarette and looking back at me gave me his usual

menacing, chilly gaze that could cut and bore into your guts with

arthroscopic accuracy.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Look, I’m sorry”—and went back to my

books. I had overstepped my bounds again and there was no getting out of it

gracefully except by owning that I’d been terribly indiscreet.

“Maybe you should try,” he threw in.

I’d never heard him speak in that lambent tone before. Usually, it was I

who teetered on the fringes of propriety.

“She wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

“Would you want her to?”

Where was this going, and why did I feel that a trap lay a few steps

ahead?

“No?” I replied gingerly, not realizing that my diffidence had made my

“no” sound almost like a question.

“Are you sure?”

Had I, by any chance, convinced him that I’d wanted her all along?

I looked up at him as though to return challenge for challenge.

“What would you know?”

“I know you like her.”

“You have no idea what I like,” I snapped. “No idea.”

I was trying to sound arch and mysterious, as though referring to a

realm of human experience about which someone like him wouldn’t have

the slightest clue. But I had only managed to sound peevish and hysterical.

A less canny reader of the human soul would have seen in my persistent

denials the terrified signs of a flustered admission about Chiara scrambling

for cover.

A more canny observer, however, would have considered it a lead-in to

an entirely different truth: push open the door at your own peril—believe

me, you don’t want to hear this. Maybe you should go away now, while

there’s still time.

But I also knew that if he so much as showed signs of suspecting the

truth, I’d make every effort to cast him adrift right away. If, however, he

suspected nothing, then my flustered words would have left him marooned

just the same. In the end, I was happier if he thought I wanted Chiara than if

he pushed the issue further and had me tripping all over myself. Speechless,

I would have admitted things I hadn’t mapped out for myself or didn’t

know I had it in me to admit. Speechless, I would have gotten to where my

body longed to go far sooner than with any bon mot prepared hours ahead

of time. I would have blushed, and blushed because I had blushed, fuddled

with words and ultimately broken down—and then where would I be? What

would he say?

Better break down now, I thought, than live another day juggling all of

my implausible resolutions to try again later.

No, better he should never know. I could live with that. I could always,

always live with that. It didn’t even surprise me to see how easy it was to accept.

And yet, out of the blue, a tender moment would erupt so suddenly

between us that the words I longed to tell him would almost slip out of my

mouth. Green bathing suit moments, I called them—even after my color

theory was entirely disproved and gave me no confidence to expect

kindness on “blue” days or to watch out for “red” days.

Music was an easy subject for us to discuss, especially when I was at

the piano. Or when he’d want me to play something in the manner of so￾and-so. He liked my combinations of two, three, even four composers

chiming in on the same piece, and then transcribed by me. One day Chiara

started to hum a hit-parade tune and suddenly, because it was a windy day

and no one was heading for the beach or even staying outdoors, our friends

gathered around the piano in the living room as I improvised a Brahms

variation on a Mozart rendition of that very same song. “How do you do

this?” he asked me one morning while he lay in heaven.

“Sometimes the only way to understand an artist is to wear his shoes, to

get inside him. Then everything else flows naturally.”

to be continued