The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [108]
Richie smiled as he rolled her off and pried her fingers from his arm one by one. “I’ll be back—je te promis—and right now, we have to get going or we’ll be late.”
“Okay,” she sighed, somewhat regretting the plans they had made to meet Richie’s friends for lunch at a café in SoHo. Though she had fully endorsed the idea earlier in the week, now she didn’t want to share Richie, particularly with people who would presumably be seeing him all the time when they were back in Paris.
Her mood did not improve at the café, where she felt isolated by her lack of real proficiency in the language—Richie’s friends had invited two other French friends—and the discussion veered into a Marxist analysis of modern socialism. After lunch she felt better strolling along the West Side piers with Richie, at least until the leg of her jeans got caught on a cleat and ripped the seam almost all the way up to her butt, which even though they both laughed made her sulk on the train ride back uptown.
Back at the apartment, Richie tried to reassure her. “Maria, come on, don’t be upset.”
She tried to smile. “Who said I’m upset?”
“You did. This morning.” He spoke a little shortly, so that she could tell he was also agitated, but then he sighed. “Look, you’ve been moody all day.”
“Well, you’d be moody, too, if you’d had to sit through that pretentious lunch and then had ripped your jeans.”
Richie smiled and caressed her arm. “I’m sorry about lunch—and your jeans. I thought it was just going to be the four of us, like last night.”
“I know. I don’t care about lunch—or the jeans.” Maria looked at him and for a second hated herself for acting imperious and ungrateful. But as she considered the greater uncertainty of their relationship, she felt tentative and precarious, as if she had just crashed through one floor and another was about to give way. This vision was quickly replaced by one of her the following year, rehearsing for what she—and to be fair, everyone else at the school—expected would be a leading role in her first production, and she felt a familiar if somewhat crushing sense of resolve as she spoke. “Richie, we need to break up.”
“What? Why? Everything has been so perfect, until today—”
“I know. That’s just it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean it was too perfect. It’s unreal; it’s dangerous. It makes me want to throw my life away and never sing another note.”
“Christ, it’s a vacation, Maria. Why can’t you give yourself a break?”
“No, it’s more than a vacation.” She bit her lip. “Nothing feels real to me anymore, like I’m dreaming or maybe even dead. I fantasize about moving to Paris with you, and it scares me. It’s like there’s this temptation to forget everything I need to start doing as of next week, because it’s going to be a lot, but I have to do it and I can’t afford to be lovesick anymore.”
“I understand, but you don’t have to do this.” Richie pulled her into his arms. “You’re being extreme. You don’t have to destroy yourself to sing.”
“How do you know?” she demanded as she wrestled free to face him. “How can you say that when you just don’t know?”
“Okay, I don’t.” He shrugged. “But for both of our sakes, I hope you’re wrong.”
WHEN MORNING ARRIVED, it would have been hard to believe that this day was any different from so many others except they now looked at each other shyly, more like new lovers than like old, and the conversation was generic and forced, related to the weather and the mundane details of how Richie should pack and get to the airport. Though determined not to go back on her decision, Maria felt sadder and weaker than she had the previous night. She interrupted Richie and filled every pause with her own voice, which sounded shrill and artificial.
At JFK they spent a few more awkward minutes at the gate until they heard Richie’s boarding call.
“That’s you, isn’t it,” she managed