Don't I Know You? by Karen Shepard Page B

after his parents died, murdered by robbers when he was six. “You can’t imagine,” he said, waving his good hand. “Think worse than Dickens,” he said.
    â€œGogol,” she said, pulling the name from the World Literature class she’d taken at school.
    â€œOn your nose,” he said, putting a finger to her nose, and she felt the first warmth of getting something right with him.
    He was nothing like she was but familiar nonetheless. She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that even in her neighborhood, where you had to walk for blocks before seeing a white person, he’d watched her play her childhood games on her stoop from his across the street.
    Later, he’d revealed that he’d seen her at the bar before, andshe’d understood why he’d seemed so familiar, and she’d felt a little silly and told herself, as she often did, to remember that there were usually logical explanations for all those illogical feelings that wouldn’t quite be placed.
    â€œI watched you many times,” he told her. “Always so sad, so pinched.” He made a fist and held it over his heart. “I think in my head, such a beautiful girl.”
    And then she didn’t feel silly. Hearing him describe her sadness made her think again that he was sad. She saw it as the still surface of a frozen lake, and she wanted to put on the ice skates she hadn’t worn since her lessons as a child and pirouette through its hardness.
    He’d worked his way through Columbia undergrad as a dishwasher in the dining halls, and had continued there for one semester of business school before losing patience with the pace. He’d made investors out of his classmates and professors, selling them on the opportunity of state-sponsored middle-income co-ops and tax-abatement programs. His first building was a seven-story apartment house in Brooklyn Heights that he sold three years after buying it for five times what he’d paid. “The rest,” he’d said, sweeping his arm around as if he now owned all that she could see, “is history.”
    She was charmed by his use of clichés. She liked that he’d liked the bar for the same reasons she had. It seemed friendly without being pretentious. He seemed as different from Matthew as possible, yet there was something familiar about the feelings the two men inspired in her, and that, she decided, was a good thing. So when he asked her if he could walk her home, she said yes, as if saying yes were something she did all the time.
    They walked down Broadway to 107th. They veered west and walked down West End to 102nd. They crossed West End. She could see her building halfway down the block. She said, “You don’t have to walk me all the way,” and he looked at her and threw his head back, laughing his big laugh. “You kill me,” he said.
    He put his arm around her and squeezed her to his side. She imagined herself as Eve in reverse. A woman burrowing her way between Adam’s ribs, nestling there as if returning home.
    S he had to admit now that it embarrassed her to have to say that she and her fiancé had met at a bar. His friends liked to tease her about it, raising their eyebrows and making their animal sounds. Her parents adored him, thrilled that he’d proposed after such a short time, though in the four months he’d been with her, he’d probably said no more than fifty words to them. It was as if they’d convinced him that they didn’t speak English. She could tell they adored him by how they talked about him in the third person. “Look. He seems tired.” “Look. He’s watching TV.” “Look. He’s eating.” Even when they spoke English, he acted as if they weren’t.
    She hid the new purchases in the back of what would be her study closet. Nikolai never went in there. He’d already encouraged her to use the room as a study. “You spend