Page 53 of Two Marlboros

He nodded slowly and asked no more. I knew he understood something, although he probably thought it was about me; however, he had the grace not to push and always understood the subtext of certain situations. He respected my silences and let them speak for me. Perhaps that was what he would have wanted, with all those people who had certainly asked him questions about Oliver and his love life.

We remained silent, but it almost seemed as if it was cuddling us, while the only background that could be heard was Alan’s swallowing and his placing his coffee cup on the table to regain his courage. When he was finished, he made a small, contrite grimace and got up to wash the cup, although he had left some coffee to the bottom.

The sink faucet turned to cold water and a continuous roar crashed against the steel. The sponge rubbed all over the circumference of the cup, which Alan plunged under the water and finished washing. When he turned off the faucet, I noticed that the lamp at the stove, the one Alan had turned on, was emitting a small, monotonous hum in the background.

I felt my eyelids droop, but quickly opened them again as Alan returned to his seat beside me.

“If you’re sleepy, you can go back to sleep.”

“No, I’m not going back to sleep now.”

Alan laid his head on his palm. “Light sleep?”

“Not really. It’s just that when I get into bed, I start thinking and I don’t fall asleep anymore.”

He smiled. “I understand, it happens to me too.”

He was certainly thinking about Oliver. However, I liked to imagine that his thoughts were other, less obvious ones. I didn’t have the courage to ask him, though.

The buzzing of the lamp seemed more consistent to me. If before it had seemed almost hypnotic, now it was definitely annoying and was making me wake up too soon.

Alan’s gaze was lost in the emptiness of the table. He still kept his head snuggled in his palm, perhaps hoping that the headache would not increase. He blinked and returned to moving those not-so-viscous eyes, then laid his gaze on me.

“But what are you doing here?”

He had only thought about that in that moment, wow. Or maybe even before, since he hadn’t been startled when I had fallen off the couch. I didn’t know and it was too complex an argument for the moment.

“Someone here can’t handle alcohol well and I had to drive him home. I thought I’d stop here, I didn’t feel like taking the subway.”

Alan blew off some residual sleep and nodded without much conviction. He rubbed his temple again and his face contracted into a small grimace of pain.

“Where’s the car?”

Red alert, red alert. Where was the car? What a good question.

“Around.”

He huffed again. “No kidding. You don’t remember the name of the street? A reference?”

I scratched my chin, as if to ponder, but it was all useless.

“We’ll look it up later together. It shouldn’t be difficult, should it?”

Alan shook his head and took the opportunity to run his temple under his fingertips. He sketched a smile.

“You’re impossible, really.”

He insisted no further. I breathed a sigh of relief: he hadn’t taken it seriously, and besides, the car was truly nearby. All he would have had to do was walk around with the keys in his hand and press the open button, like a water stick - although I had never believed they actually worked.

I reached out a leg to stretch it and bumped into his. I quickly retracted it and sensed him doing the same.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

Silence fell, but I felt comforted.

Alan and I were almost strangers, but I liked that quizzical way he used to tease me. There was something endearing about it, and I wondered when things had gotten that way. Perhaps finding out about Oliver had created a special bond between us, a red thread that had the power to keep us connected, even though we shared nothing.

“I can’t smoke in the house, can I?”

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