him, by the silence, though he didn’t seem to notice, and I could think of nothing better to say than that the streets were very quiet, which pointless observation he ignored.
“A pretty girl like you,” he said, not looking at me, “you have no husband, no children?”
“Not right now.”
“You had a husband, then?”
“Almost, a long time ago.”
“A boyfriend?”
“Skandar, please …”
“I don’t mean to embarrass you. But when Sirena told me you were single, I thought surely there’s a mistake, maybe you’re just very private.”
“No, nobody special right now.” And after a moment, “And I’m not gay.”
“I know you’re not gay.”
Did he think I’d been flirting with him? “How are you feeling about Reza?”
“What about Reza?”
“About what happened at school, before the vacation.”
He shrugged, blew icy breath and smoke. “Am I asked to have feelings about it? I don’t think so, ultimately. I wish it hadn’t happened; but what good does this do? I can wish it wouldn’t happen again—but here too, if I’m wishing the impossible, it will do no good at all.”
“You’re a cynic, then.”
He, usually slow in his movements, turned very quickly to look at me, and his glance seemed almost angry. “Cynic? Absolutely not. I am a realist. I am a pragmatist. But I’m also an optimist. Otherwise, I couldn’t do what I do.”
“Which is?”
“To what end does one speak about the ethics of history, about the moral questions inherent in the very history of history, if not then to look to the future and hope—no, not to hope, to work, for better?”
“I suppose—”
“No, this is serious. I’m a man who studies and reflects, but I’m committed to the conversations going on, wherever they take place, among whichever parties. And they matter.”
I imagined a gilded halo around him, but it was the pinkish fizz of a streetlight. This was the trouble with places like Cambridge, Massachusetts: these people—these men—who thought they were God’s gift; and yet about whom there remained some aura, and the possibility, just faint, that they were God’s gift—it couldn’t be gainsaid.
If they were a meal, I would have eaten all the courses with equal relish: each so distinct, and so uniquely flavorful. I had no way to conceive of them all together—I have to be clear about this, because otherwise you might think that I was fond of a family, that their family-ness was a pleasure to me; and you might infer from that that there was trust between us (a fact really true only about Reza), a mutuality the existence of which I always doubted. I was in love with Reza. I was in love with Sirena. I was in love with Skandar. All these things were true; they were not mutually exclusive, but they also, most important, did not, as far as I could see, pertain to one another.
Didi’s construction—that I was in love with Sirena but wanted to fuck her husband and steal her child—wasn’t right. I wanted a full and independent engagement with each of them, unrelated to the others. I needed their family-ness—how else would each of them have been brought to me?—and yet I despised it. I didn’t want to be with them together (although that was preferable to not being with any of them) and I hated to think of them all together, in the evenings and on the weekends, without me and with barely a thought for me.
As for trust, I had so little: “Why would he want even to talk to me?” I asked Didi, the next time I saw her. “Why would he choose to walk me home, in the freezing cold, in the dark?” I couldn’t quite admit to myself what I wanted her to say, what reassurance I was after, but I was physically aware of my disingenuousness, a tightening in the center of my chest—can you clench your esophagus?
“Do you need to ask? Men will be men will be men.”
I shook my head so hard it hurt. “It isn’t. It’s not so simple. It can’t be.”
“He can want your approval without himself wanting more.”
“I suppose—”
“I want you to want me,” she sang, “I need you to need me …”
“Live at Budokan. I know. But what does he want with my approval?”
“That’s his way, perhaps.”
“It doesn’t feel like a ‘way’—it feels specific, to me. There’s a way of talking—of looking—he is looking at me, do you know what I’m saying?”
“You’re saying he has the seducer’s eyes.”
“No—it’s much more transparent than seduction. He’s not trying to impress me; he’s really trying to