You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [34]
Anyway, it was nice. Her parents were warm. I mean in the way that people like that are warm. It was as if they were our guests and we were people they really liked and they were happy to be there but you always knew that they would leave at the end of the party.
Her father was a big guy. Tall and wide with red hair. He was loud and had these huge hands. I think he’d been some kind of athlete. I liked him. He was just who he was. There was no formality at all. He looked at you when he spoke. Everything was simple with him. No subtext. Ariel’s mother was O.K. too. She was pretty of course. So much smaller than her husband and thin like Ariel. She looked at me the way Ariel did. Assessing. Just like my mother.
After breakfast Ariel and I went to study in her room. At some point she left to go running and I stayed on her bed with my books open in front of me. I must have been working on a paper for Ms. Keller. I worked hard for her. She was the only one of my teachers I cared about and who seemed to care about me. I was trying to figure out some poem and all of a sudden he was there drinking a cup of coffee, standing in the doorway smiling at me. He asked what I was working on. I told him and he came in. It didn’t feel strange to have him there. I mean, I didn’t feel uncomfortable or threatened. He told me how he never liked poetry or something like that. I was lying on my stomach facing away from the door and he sat down next to me. He sipped his coffee and looked at the page trying to figure the thing out. And then he said something like, I don’t know Marie, this might be over my head. Then he laughed his big wide-open laugh and put his hand on my shoulder. But he was just patting me you know? Like, O.K. I’ll let you get back to work. Hang in there. That kind of thing. Then Ariel came back and we both turned around. She was standing at the door in her running clothes looking at us.
Know anything about poetry, Ariel? he said. She didn’t say anything, or not that I remember anyway. She looked pale. She shrugged her shoulders and went to take a shower. She barely spoke to me the rest of the day.
* * *
Ariel never said a thing about it, but you could tell she hated me. It was over, you know? A week later we went out to this bar in the fifth, The Long Hop. Aldo was there, Mazin, and some other people I don’t remember. We were all drunk. The place was crowded and there were maybe, I don’t know, five of us at this little table. And then Colin shows up and sits down on some girl’s lap and smiles at me. I ignored him.
I mean he’d been around. It’s not like it was the first time I’d seen him since. But God his face made me sick. Seeing him there that night, I wish I could say that I only felt anger but the truth is that when he sat down I was afraid too. It’s a blur but at some point Ariel says, How’s Mr. Silver? And I think she’s talking to Colin because they’re both in his class but then I see she’s looking at me. And everyone’s looking at Ariel waiting for the point. So she asks again and I say, I don’t know. She says, Oh come on, Marie tell them. I look at her horrified and she says, Fine I’ll tell them.
Marie hooked up with Mr. Silver. After that I don’t remember what happened exactly. Just that Colin said it was bullshit. In your dreams, he said. Then I didn’t know who I hated more. My face was so hot and everyone was staring at me. They must have seen it. I turned to Ariel and I called her a bitch and I left.
I went to the river and walked fast and then I stood out on that bridge, it was the Petit Pont I think, or the Pont au Double and I stood there not knowing what to do feeling completely alone. Like it had never quite occurred to me before, the idea that I was really alone. Or that’s how it felt. And there I was in my stupid skirt, in that fucking outfit Ariel had chosen for me, and I was shivering and I just thought fuck it and I sent him a message. I wrote, “I’m in your neighborhood should I come?”
I waited looking down into the river watching the boats go by. Then, like