Late

Too little, too late.

We met years ago in college. He was engaged to a friend, a fellow foreign student.  She was privilidged, walked regally and looked down on the uncultured. Nevertheless she had this vulnerability, and these large black eyes, like pools of deep water. She’s always fancied herself a writer, a bon vivant, a cosmopolitan city girl. Like I, she’s never had a lot of girlfriends- we feel more womanly in the company of men, gay or straight.

When we were going to school, we spun out the promise of a great future: all potential. Ten years later, I’m struggling with a teaching job, she married, vowing never to return to her homeland, fishing for visas at every turn, still living the city life, albeit elsewhere. We are in our thirties now, and the endless meandering between parties and museums and posh twenty dollar drinks is a lot less becoming. But perhaps my criticism is born of envy: she is like a cat that always falls on her feet, always some man charmed enough is there to pay, to stay, or to listen.

Which brings me to this man, deep in her history, closer in mine.

He is a writer, a well-known novelist. I bought his book in an airport five years ago, and we intermittently kept in touch. When they were engaged, according to both, they fought almost constantly. When she came back, she swallowed a lot of pills: the wedding had fallen through and there was no groom to take back home to the high-class parents. There was little more than the emptiness, so she swallowed pills, only to wake up the next morning and remember the math test waiting, and the books strewn about the room, the emptiness.

Later she was an escort for a while, a sensual masseuse. It hit her bad, that, coupled with a need for luxury, for fancy shoes to accompany the aristocratic gait. But through all the laughable inconsistencies of her character, her inflated prose, her ridiculously short skirts and convenient alliances with the rich, she’s been like a sister. Even now, after falling in and out of love with her ex-fiance, after not telling her about it, I wish it were a different time, a different man, and were gossiping it over drinks at an outdoor cafe…

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