3

He

had immediately laughed and recognized the veiled allusion to Carlo Levi’s

book. I liked how our minds seemed to travel in parallel, how we instantly

inferred what words the other was toying with but at the last moment held

back.

He was going to be a difficult neighbor. Better stay away from him, I

thought. To think that I had almost fallen for the skin of his hands, his chest,

his feet that had never touched a rough surface in their existence—and his

eyes, which, when their other, kinder gaze fell on you, came like the miracle

of the Resurrection. You could never stare long enough but needed to keep

staring to find out why you couldn’t.

I must have shot him a similarly wicked glance.

For two days our conversations came to a sudden halt.

On the long balcony that both our bedrooms shared, total avoidance:

just a makeshift hello, good morning, nice weather, shallow chitchat.

Then, without explanation, things resumed.

Did I want to go jogging this morning? No, not really. Well, let’s swim,

then.

Today, the pain, the stoking, the thrill of someone new, the promise of

so much bliss hovering a fingertip away, the fumbling around people I

might misread and don’t want to lose and must second-guess at every turn,

the desperate cunning I bring to everyone I want and crave to be wanted by,

the screens I put up as though between me and the world there were not just

one but layers of rice-paper sliding doors, the urge to scramble and

unscramble what was never really coded in the first place—all these started

the summer Oliver came into our house. They are embossed on every song

that was a hit that summer, in every novel I read during and after his stay,

on anything from the smell of rosemary on hot days to the frantic rattle of

the cicadas in the afternoon—smells and sounds I’d grown up with and

known every year of my life until then but that had suddenly turned on me

and acquired an inflection forever colored by the events of that summer.

Or perhaps it started after his first week, when I was thrilled to see he

still remembered who I was, that he didn’t ignore me, and that, therefore, I

could allow myself the luxury of passing him on my way to the garden and

not having to pretend I was unaware of him. We jogged early on the first

morning—all the way up to B. and back. Early the next morning we swam.

Then, the day after, we jogged again. I liked racing by the milk delivery van

when it was far from done with its rounds, or by the grocer and the baker as

they were just getting ready for business, liked to run along the shore and

the promenade when there wasn’t a soul about yet and our house seemed a

distant mirage. I liked it when our feet were aligned, left with left, and

struck the ground at the same time, leaving footprints on the shore that I

wished to return to and, in secret, place my foot where his had left its mark.

This alternation of running and swimming was simply his “routine” in

graduate school. Did he run on the Sabbath? I joked. He always exercised,

even when he was sick; he’d exercise in bed if he had to. Even when he’d

slept with someone new the night before, he said, he’d still head out for a

jog early in the morning. The only time he didn’t exercise was when they

operated on him. When I asked him what for, the answer I had promised

never to incite in him came at me like the thwack of a jack-in-the-box

wearing a baleful smirk. “Later.”

Perhaps he was out of breath and didn’t want to talk too much or just

wanted to concentrate on his swimming or his running. Or perhaps it was

his way of spurring me to do the same—totally harmless.

But there was something at once chilling and off-putting in the sudden

distance that crept between us in the most unexpected moments. It was

almost as though he were doing it on purpose; feeding me slack, and more

slack, and then yanking away any semblance of fellowship.

The steely gaze always returned. One day, while I was practicing my

guitar at what had become “my table” in the back garden by the pool and he

was lying nearby on the grass, I recognized the gaze right away. He had

been staring at me while I was focusing on the fingerboard, and when I

suddenly raised my face to see if he liked what I was playing, there it was:

cutting, cruel, like a glistening blade instantly retracted the moment its

victim caught sight of it. He gave me a bland smile, as though to say, No

point hiding it now.

Stay away from him.

He must have noticed I was shaken and in an effort to make it up to me

began asking me questions about the guitar. I was too much on my guard to

answer him with candor. Meanwhile, hearing me scramble for answers

made him suspect that perhaps more was amiss than I was showing. “Don’t

bother explaining. Just play it again.” But I thought you hated it. Hated it?

Whatever gave you that idea? We argued back and forth. “Just play it, will

you?” “The same one?” “The same one.”

I stood up and walked into the living room, leaving the large French

windows open so that he might hear me play it on the piano.

He followed

me halfway and, leaning on the windows’ wooden frame, listened for a

while.

“You changed it. It’s not the same. What did you do to it?”

“I just played it the way Liszt would have played it had he jimmied

around with it.”

to be continued

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