We’re Not Getting Better
Slouching to my best-by date.
Note: This is a NOT a call for you to do anything, write me, etc. This is just the state of the union. This is me sharing. I expect nothing in return.
I remember that last summer, that final trip to Miami before K boarded a plane and a country divided us in two. We took a cheap room by the beach where the door never latched, and we kept asking ourselves: Are we doing to die? We’re going to die. We pictured our crime scenes — the yellow tape and chalk outlines. How they’d mispronounce our names on the 10 o’clock news. How they’d say we “lit up a room” when really we were the sort to torch the joint.
But that first night we huddled under the covers, watching game shows. We were content. We had all that we’d ever wanted because we had our friendship, we had each other. And I would hold onto both for as long as I could.
I remember the next morning on the beach. How the sun never rose. The waves cresting black and silver, the foam on the shoreline that made me retreat. Storm up the sand. We wore soft sweaters over our bikinis. Our bodies pebbled in cold. K prattled on about her new apartment, her new job, her Lebanese lovahhhh. Although she was physically here, although this trip was about saying our goodbyes, she’d already left. I was her Normandy and she had already fled the beach. Asking me all these questions about a life after our friendship. A life K told me I needed to create.
You could always visit, her voice trailing off. Translation: Please don’t.
A few bodies sprawled out on towels. Shivering. We slathered on the sunscreen for effect. Because a burning was still possible. A man sold us ceviche for $5. We cradled the cold silver foil in our hands. Picked apart the slippery, slick fish. Why does it smell like fish? I said, to which K responded, half-laughing, half-serious, Because it is fish.
At the airport, I held her longer than I should. Everybody always leaves, I said. I’m not leaving — I’m moving back home. What’s the difference? New York. Columbia grad school. Nights on York Avenue and taxi cabs barreling down the Lower East Side. Pouches and bottles passed between us. Our friendship, that old life — all tour stops. Now it’s last call. The curtain falls. Let the credits roll. We had a good run, kid.
What occurs to me now that I hadn’t realized then is this: I was never loved as much as I loved. I would always be the photo in the album yellowed with age, saying: Yeah, she’s some girl I used to know. But me? I’d love you all the way through. Write stories about you decades later, long after I’d been discarded. Forgotten.
K and I haven’t spoken in twenty years. But we live in the same city.
