who happened to be upstairs on this clear, warm, lovely Indian summer day and whom I hadn’t seen since I’d been more or less living elsewhere except for an occasional stop to pick up or bring back books and a few items of clothing, could tell it was my phone ringing. “Why aren’t you answering?” she finally asked. Then she guessed why. “Will she ever stop calling?” By noon, while we were mixing our second Tom Collins in my kitchen, she asked, “Want me to pick up?” I couldn’t do that to a woman who had been my soul mate. Finally Linda grabbed my phone and placed it in the bathroom, shutting the door tight behind it, like a misbehaving pet that was being punished. I wanted her to remove her light blue tank top and the bottom of her bikini and without waiting proceed to my bedroom. I loved her body, loved the untrammeled sex, savage, selfish, and without meaning. I wanted her to erase the other woman in my life; I wanted to kiss her face, her mouth, and with that face bury the other as one might bury a Tanagra statuette that had become unbearable and stirred not a drop of guilt, pity, love, or even ordinary anger, but just this thing that scared me more, because it impugned me, not her: indifference. Or worse yet than indifference: numbness, first of the heart, then of the body. Hating, by contrast was far, far kinder—and perhaps there was a touch of hatred already in me as well, for hatred helps us forget and covers up the wounds we leave on others as fast as it helps heal those they’ve inflicted on us. “You don’t want to hurt her,” Linda said. “It’s because you’re kind.” No, it’s because I’m a coward, I wanted to say. But I didn’t say anything.
KALAJ DROPPED BY to visit me that afternoon. He had frequently gotten into the habit of coming by, knowing the door was never locked.
“The one thing no man should ever do is feel sorry for a woman. You always live to regret it,” he said. “It destroys her, and it destroys you.”
I could barely think of Niloufar at all. It was the last day for going over Chaucer, and I was hopelessly behind. “Can I do anything to help?” Kalaj finally asked.
“No, you can’t help.” And then it hit me: “Or maybe you can.”
The idea seemed a stroke of genius.
“I need two editions of Chaucer’s complete works,” I said.
“And how will I find them?”
I wrote down the approximate call number of the books and gave him my library card to borrow the books with. I told him where exactly to look for them inside the Widener Library stacks and suggested he take out any other books about Chaucer sitting on the stacks.
He had never been inside Widener, didn’t know where or what Widener was.
“Past the gate on Mass Ave between Plympton and Linden Streets,” I explained in cab lingo.
“That’s it?”
I nodded.
With that he sped down the stairs.
I was hungry, ravenous. I could knock at Linda’s, but she had probably already gone to the library. Strange thing: I felt more comfortable asking Kalaj to run an errand at a place he’d never even been to than Linda, who was right now in the very stacks where I was sending Kalaj.
An hour and a half later he was back. He was carrying a brown paper bag which he rushed into the kitchen because it was about to leak and emptied it in a salad bowl. More than a dozen chicken wings. Heavenly. From one of his other pockets he produced a small bottle of beer. Then came a string of petits sandwiches. “I told the waitress you were starving but couldn’t come.”
“But she doesn’t know me.”
“Short, Jewish nose, always lugging books—she knew exactly who you were. With her compliments.”
“And the books—?” I began, fearing the worst.
Suddenly, my heart sank. He had totally forgotten about the books!
“Right, the books—” he started. “I couldn’t find some of the ones you wanted . . . so I took out these instead.”
There he was being Harpo again. Out of numberless pockets in his faded army camouflage jacket, he produced six books.
“Not bad,” I said, as I looked at their titles. They were good books. When I looked in the inside cover, my heart sank again.
“But you forgot to check them out!”
“Well, yes, see, that was a bit hard. There were long lines, and they were all