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“And now?”
“Now this—us—you—is starting to feel like habit.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Listen,” he said, crushing me, “I’m gonna go sleep in the other room. OK?”
“OK,” I said and watched him, naked, walk away.
Friday, October 25, 2019, St. Jude—When I woke up this morning, Rio wasn’t in bed beside me. This wasn’t unusual. Often when his hip is particularly painful, he’ll get up and go sleep in the guest room, and it had been rainy and damp yesterday, which always makes his hip hurt.
The guest room was empty, and the dresser drawers were partially open, the closet door ajar. I set about straightening the room—his messiness and inability to complete tasks frustrates me. As it was early in the morning and I was still half-asleep,I just slammed the drawers shut and closed the closet door without realizing they were empty of his clothes.
In the kitchen, there was freshly brewed coffee—Rio, like Jackson, held the secret to making great fresh coffee. After pouring a cup, I wandered through the open front door to find Rio loading his things into his ancient Subaru. Its bright-yellow color seemed faded, and its red-and-black pinstripe was flaking off in places.
“Morning,” he called, seeing me, but not pausing in his efforts.
“Morning,” I repeated, then asked, “What’s going on?”
“It’s time for me to move on,” he said. He turned to face me, his hand shielding his eyes from the sunlight.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh. OK.” And just like that, our—whatever this was—ended. I can’t say I wasn’t hurt, even though I hadn’t expected anything else, hadn’t been able to quantify our relationship or define what I wanted from him. Still, like Peter Lawford inSweet November, I wanted to postpone this parting; I wanted to add days to the calendar to prolong our togetherness, to give us time we did not have and which perhaps I did not deserve. In the end, I did not throw myself at his feet and beg him not to leave, beg him not to be another man I loved leaving me behind in the dust. I did not attempt to alter the calendar to trick him into believing our time together hadn’t come to an end.
Instead, I simply went back into the house and sat on the deck of the kitchen from where I could hear him humming as he finished loading his car, then the sound of his car sliding down the gravel driveway. I was reminded of Sidney Poitier’s character singing “Amen” while packing his wagon and slipping away at the end ofLilies of the Field.I suppose, like Sidney’s character, Rio feltthat having rebuilt the chapel of me that Kitt had burned to the ground, it was simply time for him to move on.
I stood and watched for his car as it backed down the driveway. I’d always been frustrated by his unwillingness—his inability—to finish anything he started. But he had finished something at last; he’d finished us. I watched until his car, smoking, eased off the gravel drive onto the road and disappeared.
I’ll miss Rio, but I’ll survive. Hell, if I survived losing Jackson, I’d surely survive this parting. Rio was a blip on my radar, a passing diversion, and I’d known he was a bit of a nomad.
Saturday, November 16, 2019, St. Jude—MJ is the most popular anchorwoman in our city in a generation. Thus, when out in public, she is often besieged by adoring fans, just asking if she is really Mary Jane Mitchell; others ask for autographs; and still others, more intrusive, ask her to pose for selfies with them. This happens at Saks, at Nordstrom, at restaurants, even while standing on a corner waiting to cross the street. Once while standing in a disorganized line at the post office, several people, recognizing her, implored her to do an exposé of the inefficiency and general incompetence of staff at the local post office.
So, I wasn’t surprised today at lunch when our drinks were interrupted by a young woman who approached and asked to take a selfie with her while her boyfriend stood nearby looking embarrassed. After the selfie, the young woman turned to me and, eyeing me up and down, asked, “Should I take a selfie with you, too?”
“I beg your pardon?” I asked.
She sighed with dramatic exasperation. “Should I take a selfie with you?” she repeated. “Are you anybody? You look like youcould be somebody,” she added, taking in my dangling double-cross earrings, goatee, and open wing-collared tuxedo shirt.
Before I could answer, “No,” MJ snapped, “He’s my friend. He is everybody.”
Suitably chastised, the young woman nodded and walked away but not before I heard her say to her companion, “I should have known he was nobody. I didn’t recognize him.”
In a rare moment of fury, MJ started to rise to her feet. My hand on the sleeve of her vintage pink Chanel bouclé suit—MJ is also the best-dressed anchorwoman on TV—arrested her movement.
She settled in her seat. “How are you doing?” she asked, laying her hand over mine and entwining our fingers, “since Rio left? The coward.”
I casually disengaged our fingers—I am always uncomfortable with displays of physical affection with female friends in public. It makes me feel deceptive somehow, as if I am sending a dishonest message, a misdirection.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I survived losing both my parentsandJackson. This isnothing—”
“This isn’t nothing,” she said carefully while scanning the menu in front of her.
“No. I suppose not. Still—”
“You’re not gonna say your affair with Rio was a bad idea? It wasn’t—”
“No. It wasn’t. But it wasn’t a particularly good idea, either.”
“How do you mean?” she asked, putting down her menu.