shiver. How can you shiver when it’s so warm in here?
I want this room. I want this room with you in it, naked beside me. I don’t know where we are. Maybe by the sea. Or in the middle of a city where the noise through the window is as busy as we are.
The afternoon is ours. The evening and the night too. We’ll be tired by then but we’ll still go out and eat a huge meal. Your body will be wonderfully sore and raw. It will make you smile when we walk to the restaurant. I’ll look at you and ask if anything is wrong. You’ll say no and squeeze my arm. We’ll need this time out in the world to remind ourselves there is something else besides us today, that room, our bodies.
In a noisy restaurant we’ll talk quietly. Voices and faces smoothed by all those hours in bed. Anyone watching us will know we have been fucking. It is so obvious.
Later again in the room when nothing is needed, I want to sleep a few hours, and then wake with you pressed against my side. Maybe I’ll reach for you. Maybe I will only touch your wrist and feel your sleeping, secret pulse. The rest can wait. There’s time now.
Keep this picture with you. Put it on a table, a desk, wherever you are. If someone asks why you have it, say it’s a place where you’d be happy. Look at it and know I am waiting. Look at it again.
I walked out of my building on legs made of wet spaghetti. Out on the street, the world was the same as yesterday but it took two or three blocks to regain my bearings and recognize I was still on planet earth. When I came to, I realized I had been walking with the letter clutched tightly in both hands behind my back. To hold the joy as long as I could, I stopped where I was, closed my eyes and said aloud, “I must remember this. I must remember it as long as I live.”
Opening my eyes again, the first thing I saw was James Stillman.
My heart recognized him before any other part did. And it was calm. It said, “There he is. James is across the street.” He looked the way he had when I’d known him fifteen years before. He was unmistakable, even in the rush of people surrounding him.
He wore a suit and tie. I stood frozen in place. We stared at each other until he lifted an arm and waved to me, slowly, from side to side. The kind of exaggerated wave you give someone who is driving off in a car and you want to be sure they see you until the very last second.
Without thinking, I started out into traffic and was met by screeching brakes and angry horns. When I was halfway across, he began to walk away. By the time I reached the other side he was already far ahead. I began running, but somehow he stayed way in front of me. He went around a corner. When I got there and made the turn, he was twice as far as before. There was no way I could catch up. When I stopped he did too. He turned and did something that was pure James Stillman: He put his open hand against his forehead, then moved it down to his mouth and blew me a big kiss. Whenever we parted he would do that. He’d seen it in an old Arabian Nights film and thought it the coolest gesture—hand to the forehead, to the lips, big kiss. My Arabian Knight, back from the dead.
“I saw a ghost and I’m in love with a married man.”
“Welcome to the club.”
“Zoe, I’m serious.”
“Married men are always more delicious than single, Miranda. That’s where the challenge is. And I’ve believed in ghosts all my life. But tell me about Mr. Married first because I’m the expert on that subject.”
We were having lunch. She had come into town for the day. Married boyfriend Hector had ended their relationship and she was at the end of her period of mourning. For weeks I’d suggested a day in the city doing girl things together to take her mind off him and finally she said yes. Now I was doubly glad to meet so I could get her input on my new twilight zones.
“The ghost was James Stillman.”
“Great! Where?”
“On the street near my apartment. He waved to me in
I want this room. I want this room with you in it, naked beside me. I don’t know where we are. Maybe by the sea. Or in the middle of a city where the noise through the window is as busy as we are.
The afternoon is ours. The evening and the night too. We’ll be tired by then but we’ll still go out and eat a huge meal. Your body will be wonderfully sore and raw. It will make you smile when we walk to the restaurant. I’ll look at you and ask if anything is wrong. You’ll say no and squeeze my arm. We’ll need this time out in the world to remind ourselves there is something else besides us today, that room, our bodies.
In a noisy restaurant we’ll talk quietly. Voices and faces smoothed by all those hours in bed. Anyone watching us will know we have been fucking. It is so obvious.
Later again in the room when nothing is needed, I want to sleep a few hours, and then wake with you pressed against my side. Maybe I’ll reach for you. Maybe I will only touch your wrist and feel your sleeping, secret pulse. The rest can wait. There’s time now.
Keep this picture with you. Put it on a table, a desk, wherever you are. If someone asks why you have it, say it’s a place where you’d be happy. Look at it and know I am waiting. Look at it again.
I walked out of my building on legs made of wet spaghetti. Out on the street, the world was the same as yesterday but it took two or three blocks to regain my bearings and recognize I was still on planet earth. When I came to, I realized I had been walking with the letter clutched tightly in both hands behind my back. To hold the joy as long as I could, I stopped where I was, closed my eyes and said aloud, “I must remember this. I must remember it as long as I live.”
Opening my eyes again, the first thing I saw was James Stillman.
My heart recognized him before any other part did. And it was calm. It said, “There he is. James is across the street.” He looked the way he had when I’d known him fifteen years before. He was unmistakable, even in the rush of people surrounding him.
He wore a suit and tie. I stood frozen in place. We stared at each other until he lifted an arm and waved to me, slowly, from side to side. The kind of exaggerated wave you give someone who is driving off in a car and you want to be sure they see you until the very last second.
Without thinking, I started out into traffic and was met by screeching brakes and angry horns. When I was halfway across, he began to walk away. By the time I reached the other side he was already far ahead. I began running, but somehow he stayed way in front of me. He went around a corner. When I got there and made the turn, he was twice as far as before. There was no way I could catch up. When I stopped he did too. He turned and did something that was pure James Stillman: He put his open hand against his forehead, then moved it down to his mouth and blew me a big kiss. Whenever we parted he would do that. He’d seen it in an old Arabian Nights film and thought it the coolest gesture—hand to the forehead, to the lips, big kiss. My Arabian Knight, back from the dead.
“I saw a ghost and I’m in love with a married man.”
“Welcome to the club.”
“Zoe, I’m serious.”
“Married men are always more delicious than single, Miranda. That’s where the challenge is. And I’ve believed in ghosts all my life. But tell me about Mr. Married first because I’m the expert on that subject.”
We were having lunch. She had come into town for the day. Married boyfriend Hector had ended their relationship and she was at the end of her period of mourning. For weeks I’d suggested a day in the city doing girl things together to take her mind off him and finally she said yes. Now I was doubly glad to meet so I could get her input on my new twilight zones.
“The ghost was James Stillman.”
“Great! Where?”
“On the street near my apartment. He waved to me in
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