My phone rings again. I know it's Charlie. The phone vibrated twice while I was at the movies, though I didn't feel it and only noticed it just now, while exiting. I was contemplating if I should call him back, but his call now has just interrupted my deliberation. So I answer it, in case it is an emergency. The wind suddenly becomes stronger, but that's because I have just entered one of the few wind tunnels we have in downtown where some big buildings stand to rush in the bitter winter wind. My fingers are already complaining. I've forgotten to put moisturizers on and very soon my right hand that is holding the phone, unlike my left hand, which is safe in the left pocket of my jacket, will chap and turn purple soon.
I've just come out of watching a movie alone. It's not something I do very frequently; I prefer company, but I also prefer to see a movie I like than not seeing it at all in the absence of company. The story is brutal, the ending is sobering, and my mind is still spinning from seeing the cruelty of this world when we have to have wars. The screaming of the mothers and wives and girlfriends (or not likely girlfriends in a Muslim world?) still ring in my head, and the images of bodies rotting and discolored still fixed in my vision. Around me is the cold and windy streets of downtown where people are starting to gather for a Friday night out. I wonder what people do. I wonder why there are so many smiles when shallow happiness is cheap and the expensive kinds, the real ones, are so rare. I see men looking like they are dying to impress and outdo one another in some ways, and I see women, looking like girls, really, all looking beautiful in more or less the same way, the way you find in TV or magazines. Suddenly, everyone looks the same, the world becomes a one-dimensional drawing you see through a pin-hole called downtown life.
"Hey Charlie," I said, "How's it going?"
"What?"
"I said, how are things going?" I repeat, but then every time I try to say something a gust of wind shoves itself between my lips and the phone, that tiny, narrow space. Does it have a mind of its own? Or it needs my attention too? Like cats that get between you and your work when they know you're busiest.
"I still can't hear you. Are you there?" he asks.
"I am in a wind tunnel in downtown," I say. Then I repeat it again. This time he figures out what is happening, and he says, "Call me back when you get home. Are you going home now?"
Of course, where else would I be on a Friday night? Perhaps with these ladies who are basically replicas of one another? What would I do with them? Dance? Drink a cocktail while buying them one each? Or worse, trying to be someone I am not because however much everyone thinks they want a person to be who he is, in such social setting, or perhaps in life in general, no one really wants you to be who you are because somehow you make them feel uncomfortable. Maybe. But now I tell him, "I will be home in about ten minutes. I am walking." He then says something, maybe about the safety of downtown at this time of the evening, though it is barely 6PM and I can still see some twilight in the sky melting into the silhouettes of the few tall buildings. I then hear him say, "Bye!" I reply the same, though he may not have heard me.
Away from the main streets of downtown and into the ghost town of the financial district. Here the winds are even stronger between all these tall, glass buildings of banks and government buildings. Here there is no one. Everyone had vacated an hour ago, to their homes, to the clubs or bars to be anyone except themselves. The massacres of some other land at some other time mean nothing to them. Then what does mean to them? Impressing someone? Being someone else? I am being too mean. I am just projecting my own discomfort in the past within a crowd to these people who, well, don't seem very profound. But as I walk past the bagel shop I remind myself that everyone has a story, everyone has a profound side. I may not see it, hear it, or ever get to know the first syllable of it, but everyone has that side. What's sad and accurate, however, is that most of the time that side is not shown, and during most of our lives, that side doesn't make it to the surface, so that we are perceived as shallow, mean, too happy, too sad, perpetually close-minded, etc. What does it take to get to know one of those mannequins I passed by when the phone rang? Or the gentlemen with nice looking clothes and nervousness to match their horniness? I don't know. Maybe I should talk to them, sometime.
The bagel shop is still lit up, but it's closed. I see the chairs placed upside-down on the tables while some person of dark skin is mopping. In this town she can be either black or Hispanic; I am not sure. The wind is pushing me away from any detailed observation. This bagel shop was where my sweetheart ripped out my heart and pulverized it with a blender; she should have drunk it up like a smoothie so at least I didn't have anything left to put back together. How do you break up with someone at a bagel shop? And yet, that seems like some story I've read from a book because it happened a few years ago. I only now remember the metaphors I had used in the ensuing months to describe the pain and agony. Now it all seems like some story not of my life.
Maybe this is what I should tell Charlie. It will all be over before you know it even if you think now that it is interminable, that life has come to a bitter crawl. But he is not calling to seek advice. He is not even calling to tell me about his agony, not anymore.
Thinking about the bagel shop and fighting the whipping winds, I almost got distracted and hit by a car. Charlie told me last week that he wished he would get into an accident. He wouldn't kill or harm himself, but he wished something bad would happen to him, but not to kill him. I read somewhere that men are five to six times more likely to commit suicide after a breakup than women. And women have told me that men are actually a lot less tolerant of pain than men. So it all makes sense. If this car just now had hit me, broken my hips or legs or something, I wonder what all those mean women who had done infinitely worse things to my heart would feel? Probably nothing. Like me, they have moved on. That's something else I should tell Charlie. Women can overcome pain more easily and can thus move on more quickly. I wonder how he will take this axiom of life.
Finally, I am out of the winds and in front of my door. There is one piece of mail. It is advertisement from my car dealer; I suppose like everyone else in that industry they aren't doing so well nowadays. Or who knows; they just like sending out junk to me. I have no interest in buying a new car. The wind howls one last time, as if to bid me good night even though it is very early. It's true, I have nothing better to do tonight but to talk to Charlie. I take one last look outside and I see the last glimpse of the blue sky reflected off in a dotted pattern from this permafrost in front of my house. It's a block of ice from some three weeks ago when we had three days of sporadic snow storm. Despite many warm days there is still remnants of the ice.
I enter into the warmth of my apartment. It is dark. Darkness smears everything into a single color of black. It's an empty house, and after the thick door closes, there is also silence. Not the kind of silence you find in a church where even if you don't believe in the Christian God, you still feel solace, feel safety from life. No, it's not that kind of silence. It is the silence of loneliness. The silence that your entrance into the house is the only entrance you will hear until you leave the house. There is no one else coming in. I know what life was like when there was someone who came in or when someone was already here and even if you don't talk to them, even if you are angry with them, or if you're in fear of starting up a conflict with them, even if, even if, even if all this, at least there isn't silence, not this kind of silence. Most of the time I don't notice this silence. But today, maybe because of the mood the movie put me in, but, I notice it. I notice it even after I turn on the light, turn on the heat that generates a lot of noise in the house. I am tempted to turn on the music to bandage this silence. But I need to make a phone call.
Or rather, take the phone call because the phone is ringing again.
I feel like I am dealing with a woman, or at least like the women I have dealt with in the past who were dying for my attention and dying to call me all the time. So needy. I thought only women were like that, or at least, people who can't accept a breakup has happened and feel a need to connect to the person who had pulverized their hearts. But here's Charlie calling me, his new best friend who happened to have taken notice of his mopey face one evening and started paying attention to him. I haven't figured out what kind of person he is when he is not talking about the same topic.
"You're home?" asks my needy friend.
"Yes, just got in, actually. Man, it's cold outside!" I say, trying to take off my jacket with one hand on the phone.
"What did you do tonight? Got a hot date?" asks the man who really doesn't care what I did unless it was bad.
"No, went to see a movie by myself," I say, quite indifferent to even my own words.
"I should go see a movie too. To distract myself, you know?"
"Sure. Just make sure it's not anything to remind you of her," I say, finally free of my jacket, scarf, and hat.
"I know. So, hey, I never asked you anything. It's always been about me," he says, a bit hesitant.
"Ask away," I say, sitting down in the dark living room, too lazy to stand back up to turn on the light now that I realized how dark it is. But the light from the foyer is sufficient.
"How long did it take you to get over that last chick? What was her name?"
"I can't remember, I mean, how long. It..." I thought for a moment. I want to tell him that in the beginning it feels interminable, then it starts to feel easier, and the next thing you know, you don't even remember which table you sat at when she pushed the pulverizer button. That's not true, I remember it's the one almost at the end, next to some crazy lady who was sitting alone and moving her lips without uttering any sound. But I didn't tell him any of this. "It wasn't long."
"It feels so long. Maybe I should go on a trip, but I ain't got no money."
"Mmhmm...." I make myself comfortable.
"At least if I go to the desert I won't have reception and then I won't have any urge to call her or expect her to call me. And forget about e-mail!"
"Clever idea," then suddenly I wonder if he is calling to ask for money. But that idea seems ridiculous. I guess I know something about him, after all.
"How soon did you date again?"
"Hmm, you mean go on a date or sleep with someone?"
"Either one."
"I think I got myself on a date like a week or two after the bagel store scene," I say, and then after thinking a bit more, "Sleeping with someone took some time. Do you want to know the details? When I kissed someone? Touched someone's boobies, what?"
He laughs uncontrollably, in a way that takes me aback a little.
"I saw this chick today in the subway; she was hot! Almost like her, you know!"
"'Her'," I thought, poor guy still can't utter "her" name.
"And you still ain't got a girl now?"
"You know the answer to that."
I started getting bored. I knew this was his next phase. Instead of agonizing over and over again he is now asking me all sorts of questions. I am also starting to feel hungry. There's silence now, just for a little bit.
"I wanted to share something with you," Charlie says.
"Shoot," I say, and thinks, "As if you're not doing this every time you call."
"In Central Park today I saw this big block of ice, still from all that snow a few weeks ago."
"OK...."
"I was staring at it for a while. Then I realized something when I saw some tourists walking by. No one made a big deal out of the ice, but I imagined if you're from Kenya or Algeria or somewhere warm, you would find this big block of ice interesting. Not only because it doesn't snow over there, but if it ever snows, it wouldn't ever stick. But here we are, three weeks of warm sunshine after all that snow we still have such big piece of ice here."
"I don't really understand what you're driving at," I say with a small frown.
"If you're from Kenya you would wonder if the ice will ever disappear. Logic says it has to because summer will come and you will never see ice in the summer of any country. But still, if you've never experienced the slow melting of ice in winter, no matter how many warm days we have, you might wonder if it will ever melt.
"So, my thought was, you know, it was so hard for me to accept that she just left me. You know what I told you so many times, that she was my first serious girl, someone I would have wanted to have the rest of my life, someone I fell in love with. And she just walked away like this. It feels like the pain will never end. But I guess that's partly because I've never experienced this sort of pain before, just like some Kenyan dude has never witnessed the complete melting away of ice before, however slow the process might be."
I remain quiet. I want him to take a breath and continue. And he says, "Sitting there with all these people walking by I was just watching the big block of ice, I mean, it's like bigger than the boulders you see in the Park. And I can see that it isn't melting, it isn't getting smaller in front of me. But experience tells me that it will disappear, and spring will come to melt all the snow and ice away and summer warmth will happen just like it did every year. So I guess I wanted to tell you that today was the first day I felt any hope...."
I smile and gave a sigh, "I am glad, Charlie. I am glad.
What a strange way of seeing things, even stranger to find hope. It's been a little more than a year since I last saw her, in that bagel shop just down the street from where I am sitting now. Unlike Charlie, she was not my first love, but somehow I ended up feeling as desperate as he has been feeling these few weeks. I wonder if experience really makes things easier. After those first couple of months I stopped feeling desperate and needy. But I also have never found any hope, just numbness. I felt anger when numbness was not enough. I guess I didn't have anyone to call at random times like a Friday evening. So Charlie is lucky to have me. He continues to expand on his new-found philosophy that may or may not help him finally sleep well tonight. As I listen, I wonder why everything remains so dark everywhere. The house, the sky, even the winds feel dark, and along with the cold, the darkness seeps through my jacket and scarf and hat and into my body. I shiver a little, and I suddenly feel a little thankful that I am not alone as long as the crazy person on the other side of the line is talking gibberish.
