To Build a Home

34 | Charlie (Reprise)

We found a Starbucks still open and filled with tourists a few blocks uptown. We waited in line in silence and stared at the menu as if we didn't already know what we wanted. We were between a group that had been split up in the line and they were shouting over us at each other in another language, pointing at a map on their phones in the air. Charlie ordered for me without asking, a small green tea with honey. It was only as we were waiting for his coffee that he realized what he had done and asked if I wanted something else.

From our table at the large window, we stared out at 9th Avenue and watched groups of people head down to the bars that I had just left, men in short shorts and crop tops, so many mustaches and dangly earrings. My friends were texting me non-stop and I had to turn the phone on silent. I thought about the handsome stranger and whether he found someone else to share expensive wine. Charlie put sugar in his coffee and stirred it longer than necessary.

"Thanks for doing this," I finally said.

"I'm not sure what I'm doing." He looked the same with his shaggy hair and clean shave, maybe a little tired. I knew he was approaching his book's deadline.

"Well you left in such a hurry, we didn't really get a chance to talk," I said.

"What do you want to talk about?"

"I guess I wanted to apologize."

"You did that in your voicemail. And your email and your texts."

"But you never responded."

"So you want me to apologize?"

"No! Shit. I'm sorry." I was screwing it up. I took a sip of my tea.

"How's Windber?"

"Everyone's good. Things are back to normal down there, so I figured it was time to come back to my life here. What's left of it, anyway." I didn't mean to say that last part, but I was feeling down on myself.

"I have to admit, I'm surprised to hear you say that. It felt like you were going to stay."

I could have told him that he was right, I was going to stay. I could have confessed that Darren and I started sleeping together and that he lied to me and that I had no rights to my nephew, that my brother had punished me yet again, so I ran back here like a coward. But I thought it would be unfair to unload all of that on him after everything I had put him through. Plus, I was embarrassed. If I would have stayed with Charlie, maybe none of this would have happened. I wouldn't feel so alone.

So instead, I said, "Sometimes I think about what would have happened if we hadn't gone to that graveyard."

"Never have I ever been so sorry," he said.

"Are we still playing that awful game?" I laughed. But somehow it eased the tension.

We talked about his book and my show and the new film playing at The Paris Theatre. We fell easily into our rhythm of conversation, filling in any silence with a knowing smile or a sip of our hot drinks in the air-conditioned shop. Charlie told me he was back on the apps and about a few of his bad dates in recent weeks. I couldn't help but feel a little jealous. I wondered if the men he met looked anything like me or drank green tea with honey. Did he say he was looking for an artistic type on his profile? And then I played with his red headphones on the table.

"You know," I said, framing the headphones around my ears, "I always wondered what you listened to with these big things."

Charlie reached across the table and adjusted them with a laugh. Then he pressed play on his phone. I was suddenly surrounded by orchestral music as if an entire symphony was stuffed into the Starbucks. I could feel every pulse and vibration and was immediately transported to Carnegie Hall, but the walls were draped in moss and greenery and there was no roof, just endless blue sky, birds resting on the backs of red velvet seats and singing along.