Page 175 of Two Marlboros

“Is mom okay?” I whispered. “She seems a little flustered to me.”

He laughed, closed the newspaper, and folded it, setting it down beside him.

“She’s been in meetings all day today and she’s still on edge. You know, she’s about to close a deal with an important client and she’s a little tense, so I left her to butcher vegetables to relax.”

A gentle breeze came in through the window, which also brought with it a light breath of smoke. My thoughts flew back to Nathan and the mess I had made with him. And it wasn’t just that: he still seemed very intent on leaving, because after all, what was really keeping him in the Big Apple? Certainly not some jerk who couldn’t separate private life from work.

The clock on the wall ticked off the seconds in front of me, my mother opened and closed drawers, and my father sizzled the sofa cover every time he got comfortable. I stared at the white ceiling of the living room above my head as fatigue began to set in all at once. I felt as if I no longer had any strength in my arms, let alone the ability to get up from the couch to do anything; shortly thereafter a strong and sudden circle in my head took over, debilitating me almost completely.

I lowered my gaze only when I heard the television turn on. My father had the remote control in his hand and seemed very intrigued by the commercial that was playing at that moment: a new TV series set in a hospital, where the main character looked like a nutcase who didn’t take his job too seriously. In the next scene, another female doctor winked at the main character, but maybe it was just a figment of his imagination. It seemed funny, all things considered, something Nathan would watch. I could have texted him to ask if he was interested in it, or if he was interested in watching it together, but the last words we had exchanged that morning caused a churn in my stomach. He hadn’t seemed really pissed off, but I had certainly let him down. Would he give me another chance?

I thought back to when I had seen him on the couch, asleep, and the moment when he had rolled on the floor because I had woken him up. We had talked wrapped in the night, in a silence that had seemed almost surreal for that city, but perfect for the most intimate part of us. Perhaps something could have happened on that occasion, or even in the many others that had followed, but in the end, we had always backed off. As he had said in the hospital, maybe we weren’t ready yet. But if he had left, would we ever have been?

“Oh, that’s what I wanted to ask you!” my father exclaimed.

I turned my head toward him. “Yes?”

“How is the boy who was in the hospital with you?”

I flashed a smile: it had certainly occurred to him while watching the commercial on television.

“Well, he was hospitalized for about ten days, but he’s fully recovered now.”

I hoped that would be enough to quell all his curiosity. I avoided looking him in the eye and counted the seconds until his next question, which did not come. My father seemed satisfied with my answer and nodded, then kept watching TV.

I sighed involuntarily. I turned my gaze back to the television, too, hoping to sink into the couch and become invisible for the next ten minutes, without everyone’s gaze on me, free of any uncomfortable questions.

It was a feeling I had experienced since childhood, but especially as a boy. I remembered family dinners, everyone sitting at an interminable table, each going about the business of those relatives they hadn’t seen in months. They were mostly 50-years-olds or something, interested only in bad politics, while the younger ones, with parents on either side, from year to year heard asking why they had not yet brought someone, or the date of graduation, or why no children were coming.

The first to be targeted had been my cousin Thomas, older than me by about ten years, who had eventually found a Scottish redhead, all freckles like himself, and had run away never to return. After that it was my turn. All the other discussions would stop, and the other relatives would start staring at me with those small, yearning eyes, while I just hoped my answers would be convincing enough, because no one really cared about the fiercest storm of my life, the one that was eating me up day by day, under my parents’ unsuspecting eyes. The important thing was to have something to say about me, to forget about it a moment later. I, however, could not forget. Because the next morning the one who had to reckon with myself was me. I would look in the mirror and tell myself that I was a coward. And, soon after, that no one had had the courage to stop those stupid questions that made me feel even more wrong, as if everyone had expected something from me.

“But is he a friend of yours? What was his name again?” my mother asked, from the kitchen doorway, with a towel she was running over a clean pot. I did not know what the right answer to give her was, and not because I had any doubts about how to classify Nathan for me, but because I did not know how to classify himfor her.

“Nathan. Anyway, yes, we are friends,” I replied, and I saw again in a flash all the situations that certainly did not categorize us that way. “Sort of.”

The most jaw-dropping fact, however, was that I hardly cared about her judgment. Maybe it was the headache or maybe it was another ten years on my shoulders that had made me more aware, but at that moment I just wanted to watch the news and have a chat with my father.

“Okay,” she only replied, then placed the clean pot on the table behind her. “Have you known each other long?”

“A couple of months,” I replied, and perhaps I could have used one of the knives in the kitchen to slice through the awkwardness I could see growing in that room. “What is this? An interrogation?”

She raised her hands in surrender. “No, of course not. I was just curious about your friends, that’s all.”

She did not even wait for my reply and went back to the kitchen, gently closing the door behind her. The television meanwhile continued to fill the emptiness echoing in my head.

“Is that your tobacco on the pillow?” my father whispered out of nowhere.

He grabbed the one on his right and showed it to me. There were small dark blades of tobacco that stood out against the white pattern of the fabric.

“It’s Nathan’s.”

He chuckled, cleaned it of the evidence he had found, and put it back where it was.

“Don’t mind the questions she asks, really. Every time we leave again, she’s always worried about leaving you alone, and she just wants to make sure you’re okay. However,” and he threw a glance at the pillow again, “I think she’d be glad to know there’s someone new.”

“Between Nathan and me… it’s not what you think.”

“That may be, but in the meantime, he had the privilege of smoking cigarettes in your living room.”

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