Page 177 of Two Marlboros

“I’ll make it up to you anyway,” I replied, and he blew out a laugh. I was unable to do the same, because I could tell from the silence that followed that he had not completely put the matter aside. In a second, I thought I had really become one of the many who went after him, who would do crazy things for him to get noticed. And my father had certainly noticed it, too, with the answers I had given him, where I had let slip a few too many things, because the blanket covering my emotions was now becoming short.

“Nathan.”

“Yes.”

That was really the last attempt I could make before labeling myself definitively as one of the many fools who had not made it with him.

“I care about you.”

“I care about you too,” he hastened to reply, and I lost a beat or maybe two. “It’s just that... wait, I’ll get dressed in a minute.”

A metallic thud suggested that he had put the phone down somewhere, and for every rustle I heard I imagined him putting something on - first his underwear, then his pajama pants, and finally his top. There was something intimate and familiar aboutthose actions, a sense of couplehood and togetherness that I missed.

“Here I am again. So, I was saying...” he began, but quickly froze. “You’ve really taken this making it up thing seriously.”

“I haven’t behaved well with you. And besides, I feel you are distant, so yes, I took it seriously.”

“Sorry,” he whispered, and blew out a laugh, “I didn’t mean to worry you. And I care more about you than my pride, so... it’s all resolved.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he replied, in the same warm tone with which I myself had reassured him so many times. I heard again a series of rustling noises and a few barely audible moans from him. Who knows what he was up to.

“Anyway...I’m not distant, I’m just a little worried.”

“About what?”

He hesitated for a moment and sighed. “It’s about today. I wanted to call you, but you beat me to it.”

I held my breath. I picked up my pen again and scribbled on what had been my notes. I could only hear his breathing and imagined him there, beside me, in a whole series of scenes that were incompatible with his departure. I sighed, waiting for him to continue.

“So. I actually didn’t know whether to tell you or not. I mean,” and there a chuckle escaped me at his nervousness, “of course I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know when to do it. I’ve been thinking about it for a while since it occurred to me, and I think this is the right thing to do.”

A lump in my throat caught me off guard. Brutal and sharp, like I hadn’t felt in a long time. Actually, there were several things I hadn’t felt in too long. Nathan was awakening them one by one.

“Alright, I’m listening.”

Nathan sighed. “It’s from Harvey.”

“What?!”

An astonished reaction came out of me, but not because of the actual meaning of the sentence, which I understood after about ten seconds. No, that wasn’t the reason at all, but the fact that he wasn’t talking about him, about me, about me and him, aboutus- no!

He was talking about the interrogation.

“The cell phone - it’s Harvey’s. There was something familiar about it, I knew, but it didn’t occur to me until later. Sorry to tell you over the phone, but if I had waited until tomorrow, I might have reconsidered.”

I was silent for a few seconds. I left aside thoughts about the two of us and analyzed what he had told me. The phone - was it Harvey’s? Following that line of thinking, then, were Harvey and Waitch the same person? And who had made the anonymous phone call?

“Thank you for telling me.”

I tried to imagine the occasion when Harvey had left the phone at Nathan’s house. They had seen each other, been together, and perhaps in more ways than one. I caught sight of a small crack, down there, on the dam that held my feelings for him at bay; from the outside you couldn’t see it, but you only had to dive a little to notice it and to realize how deep it actually was.

“And also, there’s something else I wanted to tell you.”

His tone of voice changed abruptly. If up to that point he had been strong and confident, at most comforting, with that sentence he sounded uncertain, almost frightened.

“Okay.”

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