Asymmetry - Lisa Halliday Page 0,22
to have children?”
“Well, as I said, Gabriela, I’m not sure I do want to have them, but if it were up to me I’d wait until the last possible moment. Like when I’m forty.”
Gabriela frowned. “Forty is too old. Forty things don’t work right. Forty you are too tired.”
“When do you think I should do it?”
“Thirty.”
“No way.”
“Thirty-two?”
Alice shook her head.
“Thirty-seven. You can’t wait longer than thirty-seven.”
“I’ll think about it.”
A long-legged redhead in spandex jogged past. Ezra watched her all the way to the corner.
“I know,” said Gabriela. “Let’s ask Francine.”
“Who’s Francine?”
“The night nurse,” said Ezra. “She doesn’t have kids.”
On Columbus, they stopped again so that Ezra could chat with the hot dog vendor. “How’s business, my friend?” The vendor made an exasperated gesture up and down the block, as though his truck were parked in a ghost town. “Terrible. No one want hot dog. Everyone want smoothie.”
“Is that right?”
The vendor nodded glumly.
Ezra turned to Alice. “Want a hot dog?”
“Okay.”
“Gabriela?”
“I like hot dogs.”
“Two hot dogs, sir.”
“What does ‘halal’ mean?” asked Gabriela.
“Good for Muslims!” the vendor called down proudly.
While Gabriela took a call on her phone, Alice and Ezra sat on the bench where they’d met. They rested quietly for a moment, until Ezra said something about the plane trees that Alice didn’t hear for her thoughts—about where she’d been in her life, where she was going, and how she might get there without too much difficulty from here. Considerations complicated by this maddening habit of wanting something only until she’d got it, at which point she wanted something else. Then a pigeon swooped in and Ezra shooed it away with his cane; the way he did this, with a debonair little flick, reminded Alice of Fred Astaire.
“Sweetheart,” he said, watching her eat. “This summer, why don’t you take two weeks off and come out to visit me? Would you be bored?”
“Not at all. I’d love that.”
He nodded. Licking mustard off her palm, Alice asked, “What did Adam say about your book?”
“ ‘Ezra, I—I don’t know what to say. It’s genius. A masterpiece. I mean, Jesus Christ it’s good. Every word . . . Every single fucking word . . .’ ”
“Is spelled correctly.”
Ezra blew his nose. “Is spelled correctly.”
“When’s he going to submit it?”
“He’s going to wait until the fall. Have you finished?”
“I’m up to page one sixty-three.”
“And?”
“I like it.”
“What.”
“What?”
“What’s that tone?”
“Well . . . Who’s speaking? Who’s telling the story?”
“What do you mean? The narrator’s telling the story.”
“I know but—”
“Finish it first. Then we can talk about point of view. Anything else?”
“The girl in the bagel shop. Who talks like that, these days? So carefully? So formally?”
“You do.”
“I know but I’m—”
“What? Special?”
Alice raised her eyebrows at him but kept chewing.
“Mary-Alice,” he said tenderly, a moment later. “I know what you’re up to.”
“What?”
“I know what you do when you’re alone.”
“What?”
“You’re writing. Aren’t you?”
Alice shrugged. “A little.”
“Do you write about this? About us?”
“No.”
“Is that true?”
Alice shook her head hopelessly. “It’s impossible.”
He nodded. “Then what do you write about?”
“Other people. People more interesting than I am.” She laughed softly, lifting her chin toward the street. “Muslim hot dog sellers.”
Ezra looked skeptical. “Do you write about your father?”
“No.”
“You should. It’s a gift.”
“I know. But writing about myself doesn’t seem important enough.”
“As opposed to?”
“War. Dictatorships. World affairs.”
“Forget about world affairs. World affairs can take care of themselves.”
“They’re not doing a very good job of it.”
A woman from Ezra’s building came down the path wearing a Gore 2000 cap and power walking a shih tzu. “Hello,” Ezra said as she passed. “Hello, Chaucer,” he added to the dog. For her part, Alice was starting to consider really rather seriously whether a former choirgirl from Massachusetts might be capable of conjuring the consciousness of a Muslim man, when Ezra turned back to her and said: “Don’t worry about importance. Importance comes from doing it well. Just remember what Chekhov said: ‘If there’s a gun hanging on the wall in the first chapter, in a later chapter it must go off.’ ”
Alice wiped her hands and stood to throw her napkin away. “If there’s a defibrillator hanging on the wall in the first chapter, in a later chapter must it go off?”
When she’d returned to him, Gabriela was there, holding his scarf and helping him to his feet; the sun had disappeared behind the high-rises on Columbus and all around them paces quickened in the sudden shade. Back to the wind, Ezra lodged his cane in the groin of his corduroys and struggled with his jacket’s zipper. “No no,” he said