The First Warm Evening of the Year by Jamie M. Saul Page A

glass of club soda in his hand, went over to the window, looked downstairs, and down on the sofa again.
    I was thinking about, trying to remember, actually, when Alex and I had started having these conversations, all the evenings and all the talks, the two of us, in this room. I was thinking about how close it made me feel to him, how important it was to feel that. But I said nothing, and I had to wonder what inhibited me from telling Alex how much I loved talking with him, and if I shared his aversion to the emotional trespass.
    I sat up and looked over at my brother. He was turning the ice cubes around his glass with his index finger and staring at me.
    â€œThe truth is, I’m stuck with the life I have,” he said.
    â€œStuck, but not trapped. The solution,” I told him, “would be for you to get past thinking you need to find someone who doesn’t threaten the relationships you have with your patients, or make demands on your practice. I’m thinking you want a deeper relationship than that.”
    â€œFrom explanations to solutions, all in one night?”
    â€œWith a bit of resistance thrown in from my big brother.”
    â€œWhat do you want from me? You’re the one who thinks he’s in love, not me.”
    â€œI’m thinking about you falling in love. Really in love. Not that it would hurt if you shacked up with some guy at the Plaza for a few days in the meantime.”
    â€œIf you’re going to have fantasies about my sex life, I’d appreciate it if you made it the Carlyle. It’s so much classier than the Plaza.”
    â€œThe Carlyle it is.”
    â€œAnd you still have to tell Rita about your sudden change of heart.”

Eight
    I n a corner of my bedroom ceiling there was a small oval just a little bit brighter than the rest of the paint. Maybe it was bleached from the sun, maybe it was just one of those mysteries of apartment life in Manhattan. I spent most of the day lying on my bed staring at that spot, thinking about the things that Alex and I had talked about the night before, thinking that later in the afternoon I’d take a cab crosstown to Lincoln Center, to Juilliard, where Laura and I used to meet when her classes were over. I would have even gone uptown to the West End—only it had closed down years ago. I’d never gone out of my way to see these places again, and I didn’t know why I wanted to see them now. Maybe it was an attempt at changing something about the way I’d been living; not a bold-stroke change but something small, something slight, like that oval of bright paint in the corner of my ceiling.
    That night, I met a few friends for supper in Chinatown, friends who didn’t know about Laura and Shady Grove, whose company was fun, whose conversation was easy, with about as much depth as my coat pocket. I enjoyed being with them. I always did.
    Telephones that don’t ring were never my concern, but when I got back to my apartment, I wanted my phone to ring with Marian’s voice on the other end. She’d say it was coming up on the middle of April, time for her to start working in other people’s gardens, or just about that time. She’d describe what she was planting and what it would look like. We would speak to each other the way we did that first afternoon at Laura’s. I would feel a lightness within me, and hear that same lightness in Marian’s voice, playful and flirtatious. Did Marian ever think, just for a moment, that she wanted her phone to ring with me at the other end?
    I thought about her and Eliot, and what they would be doing this spring. Did they make plans the way a lot of couples do? And I thought about Rita and what we might want to do together a month from now, or even next week. But what I really wanted was that phone call from Marian. I fell asleep thinking about that call and how good it would feel to hear Marian’s voice.
    In the morning, when the phone did ring,