At four in the afternoon, the Van Wyck moves the way water moves through a clogged drain. Her suitcase is in the trunk. I keep one hand on the wheel and the other on the volume knob. I turn it up two clicks, the bravest thing I will do all day.
Remember everything will be alright
We can meet again somewhere
Somewhere far away from here
from “Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles
Somewhere means Tokyo, though neither of us says it. She likes Pokémon. I want ramen in the country that invented it. We have mentioned the trip twice, lightly, as people mention a future they have no plans to enter. She watches the terminal signs pass: Virgin Atlantic, KLM, Delta.
The needle of the Smartstitch S1001 comes down eight hundred times a minute. No single stitch can be seen happening. The arm shuttles left, the hoop snaps right, and the thread leaves the spool in small, hungry gulps beneath a sound like a patient argument.
A Boston Terrier came out of that machine one leg at a time, ears last, eyes wrong. Slightly crossed, slightly startled. That was the machine’s decision, not mine. The flaw made it goofy, and I loved it at once. For four weeks, I did not give it to her. It held too much: the two of us at the machine after dark, getting the tension wrong, laughing, starting again. Once a thing like that leaves your hands, it begins to belong to the past.
Before that, there was wind on the Charles. A Tech Dinghy is small enough that the body becomes part of its rigging. You feel a gust arrive in your hip before you see it darken the water. Gulls complained overhead. Her hands moved as she talked about the work she loved, the boom swinging over us, the boat eager to go faster than either of us knew how to manage. It was her first day, and by the end of the afternoon, she had given me a consultation that changed my mind.
Later came Boston summer rain, arriving sideways and ignoring the idea of shelter, on our way to a place where fish and chips cost more than fish and chips should. We shared one umbrella. Water found us anyway. On the Fourth of July, traffic held the city in place while fireworks went off somewhere above the Charles. We stood among strangers and watched the sky open.
One afternoon, I overheard her having a difficult conversation with our advisor. I did not ask about it. Instead, I programmed the pen plotter. It took ten minutes. A puppy appeared in thin black lines, leaning into the wind, the ink not quite dry. The whole drawing looked free in a way neither of us was. Underneath, I wrote in a language I did not speak: Ich tanze nach meinem eigenen Rhythmus.
She read it and said, “Drop the Ich.”
She meant the grammar. Still, the correction stayed with me. Drop the ego. Drop the hedging. Remove the man standing in front of his own sentence.
Watch your words
Turn to dust
As we forget
As we move on
from “Don’t Be So Serious” by Low Roar
Beside me on the Van Wyck, she wears sunglasses. Behind them are eyes that can look green, gray, and blue at once. The reunion weekend plays whether or not I put it on.
She did not want to carry water on the hike, and I let it go. She would rather sit alone in the computer science building, she said, and I answered with something light. That night, she sat on a couch at the edge of the room, waiting. I left her there. The second night, we slept in the car with the seats tilted back. Somewhere in those hours, I lost her.
At breakfast, someone asked who she was. “A visiting student in my lab,” I said. Every word was true. The whole of it was a lie. She had spent two days waiting for me to claim her aloud. I chose the words that would keep the room comfortable. She heard the smaller place I had made for her inside them.
She wanted the best for me and wore herself down carrying it. We both wanted the other one happy, and that is how we managed to hurt each other so precisely.
The Japanese barbecue came later. Smoke gathered over the table while strips of meat tightened on the grill. “This feels like a date,” I said.
Fucking. Feels. Like. Two doors left half closed.
She came around to my side of the table and corrected my grip on the chopsticks, her hands over mine. I sat very still, believing something was beginning, while doing nothing to begin it.
Two weeks later, we went back to Kura Sushi. She ate quickly, plates stacking beside her, and watching her was better than eating. Afterward, at J.P. Licks, we shared pistachio and cookies and cream in one cup. The pistachio tasted wrong. The ice cream melted before either of us could save it.
We sat outside as the sky turned the color of the inside of a shell. Children rode past on bicycles, laughing with the certainty of children who think they have caught two adults in love. They understood the scene better than I did.
In the car, I put on the Beatles, the one with a large yellow “1” against the bright red. Every song seemed to know the word I could not say. When we reached her building, she asked if I wanted to come up.
We talked until dark. She laid out, in order, every confusion I had caused her. There was no defense against any of it, and I thought the night was over. Then she went inside and returned with a blanket so we could stay on the roof a little longer.
Even in late July, the air was cold. The blanket held some warmth from the day. The city kept most of the stars for itself. A plane crossed the sky, slow and blinking. Her arm was close enough that I could feel its warmth without touching it. I kissed her cheek, and she turned and kissed mine.
Then something passed overhead, high and quick, gone before the eye finished reporting it. “Did you see that shooting star?” she asked.
I looked at the place where it had been and made a wish. I asked for the whole of it, both halves, the one that was mine to give and the one that was not mine to ask for. Three seconds is what you are given. I spent them wishing for what I could simply have said. When I looked over, she was still watching the sky.
For I know one thing
Love comes on a wing
For tonight I will be by your side
But tomorrow I will fly
from “To Be By Your Side” by Nick Cave
At Yume wo Katare, I ordered the wrong flavor for both of us. We walked home for a long time, until the walk stopped being a walk and became distance being covered. The parking spot in front of her building was taken. She hugged me long enough for it to become a full sentence. I left without asking what it said.
On Wednesday, I learned she would fly Friday from New York to Berlin. I drove down alone to see her one last time. The embroidered Boston Terrier rode in the passenger seat for five hours, staring at the turnpike with its startled eyes.
In the hotel room, the Boston Terrier changed hands, along with my letter about apology and love. By the window, the hours went soft and long. We talked beyond the point where talking helped because silence would have ended the night, and neither of us was willing to end it first. What happened afterward belonged to no future we shared. She regretted it for my sake. I regretted it for hers. The night went unclaimed.
The next morning, we had brunch at the Church of the Heavenly Rest. Light came through the glass at an angle that deserved a better story. Neither of us had slept. Neither could pick the subject up again. She did not finish her food. She never has. I helped her out. I always do.
At Terminal 4, her hand grasped mine. I slipped away without an Auf Wiedersehen. Soon there was only the car, the road, and the first hundred meters of absence. Then the missing thing announced itself. I made a sharp U-turn and parked.
I know your voice, I know your face
This is something I cannot replace
...
You’re a part of me and I’m a part of you
from “Bones” by Low Roar
I called while running from the lot. She stepped out of the security line, allowing me to hold her and kiss a proper goodbye. The arithmetic was plain. I was sadder by some margin. I was the one farther in. Pulling away had begun to feel like removing part of my own body.
That night, Delta 92 left JFK for Berlin. Near the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the plane reported a navigation-system error, turned around, and landed at Logan. She came back to where it began, then left again. I read about it at midnight on my phone.
I changed the course of an airplane. I could not change the course of her heart.
In the moonlight I felt your heart
Quiver like a bow string’s pulse
Nobody knows your heart
from “Princess Mononoke Theme Song” by Joe Hisaishi
Later, I made her a video and uploaded it to YouTube as unlisted, a link that exists only for those who already possess it. Her family saw it by accident. They felt something private had been exposed. By the time I tried to explain, explanation was no longer on offer. I had worked on the video until four in the morning. It moved her not at all.
She lives by rules. Too many people crowd her, and rules are the walls she is allowed to build. I crossed many of them without noticing they were there. The one she regrets most is allowing me to kiss her in New York. The moment I want to keep is the one she wants returned.
Behind all this are untold stories about my childhood, my house, and a school where those three words were not permitted. They might explain. They would not excuse.
Near the end, she told me that a person cannot feel an emotion they did not feel. Reasons arriving afterward change nothing. Every explanation can be correct, and still the feeling will not appear.
The furthest distance in the world
is not between life and death,
but when I stand in front of you
yet you don’t know that I love you.
from “The Single Bed in the Wallet” by Zhang Xiaoxian
Somewhere over Boston Harbor, her plane takes off again. For a few seconds it is low enough to belong to the city. Then it is a light, then it is not.