“Well,” I said, could not bring myself to say “ex.” “I’ve talked to him a couple of times. He’s in Europe.”
Sean downed his drink as soon as it came and waved to the waiter for another one.
I kept trying to talk to Ann but felt utterly lost. While she was telling me about the advantages of low-sodium rice cakes and new age music, something flashed in me and pierced. Sean and I in four years. I looked across the table at Sean. He and Scott were talking about Scott’s new compact disc player.
“You’ve got to listen to it,” he told Sean. “The sound,” he paused, closed his eyes in ecstasy, “… is fantastic.”
Sean wasn’t looking at me but knew I was looking at him. “Yeah?” he nodded.
“Yeah,” Scott went on. “Bought the new Phil Collins today.”
“You should hear how great ‘Sussudio’ sounds on it,” Ann agreed. The two of them had been big Genesis fans at Camden, and had forced me to listen to “Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” one night when the three of us were on coke my Freshman term. But what can you do?
Sean sat there impassive, his face falling slightly. And though it was at that moment I realized I did not love him and never had, and that I was acting on some bizarre impulse, I was still hoping he was thinking the same thing I was: I don’t want to end up like this.
Later that night I dreamed of our new married world. The world Sean and I would live in. Mid-dream Sean was replaced by Victor, but we were still smart and young and drove BMW’s and the fact that Sean had been replaced didn’t alter the dream’s significance to me. Not only did we vote in this dream but we voted for the same person our parents voted for. We drank Evian water and ate kiwi fruit and chomped on bran muffins; I turned into Ann. Sean who had become Victor was now Scott. It was unpleasant but not unbearable and in some indefinable way I felt safe.
The next morning over a breakfast of bran muffins and kiwi and Evian water and wheatgrass juice, Ann mentioned something about buying a BMW and I had to hold back a scream. It was clear that this had not been my best term; it was clear that I was losing it.
At night Sean would lay beside me and I’d be thinking about the baby, something Sean would never mention. He would complain bitterly about how pathetic Ann and Scott were and I would get strange, unexplained urges to call my mother or my sister at R.I.S.D.; to call and explain to them what was going on. But this, like my questioning of my relationship with Sean, vanished.
The last night we were in the loft he turned to me and said, “I can remember the first time we…” He stopped and I knew he wanted to say f**ked, went to bed, did it, f**ked on the floor, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it without extreme embarrassment, so he said quietly, “… met.”
I looked at him sharply, “So do I.”
He was sweaty and his hair was sticking to his forehead. I was smoking one of his cigarettes, our faces blue because of the television set. The sheet was pulled down, just enough so that I could see the hair below his waist. I was wearing a T-shirt.
“That night at the party,” he said.
His face got sad, or did it? Then the expression left. When he touched me, my whisper was deadly and clear and all I said was, “I’m sorry.”
And he asked me, “Why didn’t you tell me you were in love with this guy?”
“Who?” I asked. “You mean Victor?”
“Yes.”
“Because I was afraid,” I said, and maybe at one point somewhere I was.
“Of what?” he asked.
I sighed and didn’t want to be there and without looking at him spoke. “I was afraid that you’d leave me.”
“You want him to like me?” he asked, confused. “Is that what you said?”
I didn’t bother to correct him, or repeat myself, so I said, “Yeah. He likes you.”
“He doesn’t even know me,” he said.
“But he knows of you,” I lied.
“Great,” he mumbled.
“Yes,” I said, thinking of Victor, thinking how can one know yet still hope? I closed my eyes, tried to sleep.
“How do you know it’s not … his?” he finally asked, nervous, suspicious.
“Because it’s not,” I told him.
This was probably our last real conversation. He turned the TV off. The room went dark. I lay there holding my stomach, then running my fingers up, then down, over my belly.
“They have the Sex Pistols on C.D.,” he said. The statement hung there, accusing me of something.