Page 98 of Two Marlboros

The house phone rang. I turned toward the doorway and looked back at him, who was now staring at the cover of the other handouts.

“Excuse me. I’ll be right there.”

I got up and headed for the cordless phone in the hall. “Hello?”

A moment of silence followed.

“Hey there. It’s Nelly.”

And how could I not have recognized her voice, so similar to Oliver’s? I took refuge in the small hallway leading to the sleeping area and slid open the door.

“Hi.”

That was all I could say. In the old days, I might have asked her how it was going at the bookshop, but at that moment I couldn’t. I would have liked to tell her something more, because Nelly had become a sister to me as well now, but I couldn’t come up with anything that wasn’t silly. They were all clichés.

“I called to check on you. We haven’t heard from you in a long time, and I’m worried.”

The downside of locking yourself in your sadness is that you have to take care of those who care about you as well, with the consequence that you can’t really isolate yourself from the world. I would have liked to live in my muffled shell, instead, I had to think about not worrying Nelly, keeping Ash’s jokes at bay, and not being overwhelmed by the endless string of false promises my mother filled me with every time.

“A little better. Work keeps me very busy.”

I remembered Nathan and wondered if I hadn’t been rude in closing the door behind me like that, but, when I returned to the kitchen, all that was left of him were the papers and the little bags for making cigarettes. Beyond the windowpane, I glimpsed a trail of smoke carried away by the wind and realized he had gone out onto the terrace.

“Would you like to see us?”

One of the last times I had seen Nelly I almost ran away. She looked so much like Oliver, both in physical appearance and in movements.

Several times I had passed by the bookstore where she worked, after disassembling; but the more I talked to her, the more I saw Oliver again, and it was unbearable; we always talked about the same things, about how bad I was grieving and how everything was going to work out. Since I had entered the stage of wanting to start forgetting, to leave everything behind, those conversations were torture.

“Alright.”

I still observed the smoke beyond the glass. Nathan had become the protagonist of my dreams for a few nights now, and I shuddered at the idea that it had occurred to me to make a reality even a fraction of the things I had imagined doing with him.

Oliver was my safe harbor and Nathan the unexplored horizon, while I felt like a boat at the mercy of the waves, but with the rope hooked. I missed Oliver... but I could not deny that the waters of my feelings were getting rougher every day.

“Would you be free now?”

“No, I am...”

...if she calls you one day, you tell her you have to go because you are dating a guy. Don’t say who he is or what he represents to you, it will be quite obvious...

“...with a guy,” I continued.

My fingertips had suddenly gone cold. I was trembling. I dreaded her judgment, what she was processing in those seconds of silence, so much that if I could take back those words, I would; because to have said them was to have given dignity to the dreams I was having and the feelings I was experiencing; feelings that were no longer meant to be run out in the intimacy of a night, but to become real and legitimate.

There, I was saying:I am starting to live again.

And it scared me. It scared me so much!

“Oh,” she only replied, after an endless time, in a sound that encapsulated all her disappointment. Perhaps she wondered who would be left to keep Oliver’s memory alive. Certainly not his ex, who had only needed a few months before falling for another guy, right?

“Is it a serious thing?” she asked, certainly wondering if I was a total asshole or only half an asshole.

“No, of course not,” I reassured her, or maybe I wanted to reassure myself. I was still shaking, and my eyes were tingling. The next moment, a tear fell, but I didn’t want her to notice. I didn’t want her pity to justify my actions.

“Alan,” she whispered, in that unbearable tone, meant to pity me, “look-”

“I said no,” I repeated dryly.

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