That Mustardy Dip They Call Cheese

Would it be clichéd to say the past stalks me like a shadow? Would my readers groan? Would you protest? Could I say it tucks itself into the folds of the dark each time I turn around to confront it? like being trailed by a figure in a trench coat, two lamp-posts back. How else might I articulate this pervasive lack of closure? And can a lack of anything really be pervasive? And how is it that absence can feel so present?

I believed five years had made a difference, but now I twiddle my thumbs and wonder if my progress has been make-believe, if adulthood has served as just another hiding place. Though twenty-four, I’m reduced to my nineteen-year-old self.

The waiter leans over the vacant chair and clumsily places a mug before me. He spills a little and apologises. I take a sip, quietly savouring the waiter’s New York accent; it’s an accent I’ve long associated with Adrian and When Harry Met Sally, but I’d forgotten that it belonged to an entire city: its businessmen, its cab drivers, its waiters. I return the mug to the table with too much force, overestimating its weight, and a small wave sloshes over the lip. My hands are simultaneously light and heavy: my hands, my hopes, my heart.

I gnaw at my nails, a habit broken years ago, and retreat within myself where I rehearse our imaginary encounters. I always say something clever and Adrian’s smile always reaches his eyes. I rehearsed this very encounter in my head last night as I looked through the plane window at the New York City lights, a Jager miniature and a bag of salted peanuts in my clammy hands; I can hear the ding of the seatbelt sign. Sip, crunch, sip. Ladies and gentlemen, we have begun our descent into N—

“I’m really sorry about that.”

Yesterday evaporates, just a puff of steam. The waiter has a scratched Beatles badge on his lanyard, and as he wipes up the spillage with a wet cloth, I notice his bitten fingernails, his calloused hands.

The door creaks open and my heart races. I turn around but it isn’t him, and I take a deep breath. I nonchalantly fix my hair and adjust my sweater, sit up straight, lean back, cross my arms, uncross them. My pulse is still in my ears, blocked as though in flight.

At least I arrived first, otherwise I’d have to close the distance and it would stretch out, and I’d forget how to walk; I’d waddle, limp, march as he watched this inelegant and poorly dressed bulk of flesh, awkward proportions and mess of hair approach. I suddenly regret the miniskirt; I’ve always had short legs.

The door again. That accent. His voice. I’m suspended in time; I’m nineteen on a picnic blanket, the sun is shining and he’s kissing the freckles on my shoulders.

“…meeting someone—”

I turn to face him; he’s standing in a patch of sunlight by the door, his eyes wandering through the café, mine wandering up his body, across his face. He looks older, wearier, different, yet a sense of youth washes over me upon seeing him.

He spots me and I try not to move as he approaches, try not to distort the first impression with a grotesque smile and wild gestures.

“Hi, you.” It’s his voice, alright, and it’s not a rehearsal this time.

“Hey, Adrian.” I practiced that, as though saying his name could reignite something; I even planned the casual hey.

I rise and he embraces me; he’s warm, he’s tangible, he’s more than the wisps of memory that have so long woven together this image. He squeezes my shoulder as we withdraw.

“You alright?” he says, and I shift beneath the weight of light touches.

He orders a cappuccino and I watch his familiar, yet unfamiliar, lips move; they’re thinner, different, and they belong to a different man: a man with thinner hair, a croakier voice, deeper lines on his neck.

“How are you?” he asks.

Eternally crestfallen, I’d like to say, though I’m sure he doesn’t want to hear about the perpetual disappointment that now characterises my life, doesn’t want to hear about the void caused by the pure joy I once felt as I’m quite sure I’ll never feel it again.

“Great,” I say, instead.

He nods and comments on my lipstick—doesn’t compliment it, just comments—as though pointing out the spinach in one’s teeth. Perhaps I should’ve gone with plum, but I read something about red and attraction.

“How was China?” he asks.

“It was great until the novelty wore off and disillusionment set in.”

“And when did that happen?”

“By the end of the first year.”

“And yet you stayed for another two?”

“Three.”

He nods, lips pursed. A few stray whiskers jut out from his upper lip. “And how’s your family?” he asks, drumming his fingers on the table.

“Alive and well,” I say, “unfortunately.”

He doesn’t laugh.

I don’t find it funny either, really, and quietly knock on the underside of the table just in case.

He clears his throat, his gaze wandering through the café, mine connecting the freckles on his cheeks. “And you’re still writing?” he asks, catching my eye.

“Yeah.”

“On serviettes?”

“I’ve got this thing called a laptop,” I say.

His blank expression sends a wave of nausea through me. I feel the blood rush from my face, feel my skin melt, droop, sag into a frown. Even my eyes feel sleepily alert, my red lips feel like a gash, my wrinkles scream that they’re seen. Did I sound passive aggressive? Am I just not funny? I’m tempted to go to the bathroom but I don’t want him to see my red and stubby thighs which are likely indented by the chair.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, rising from his.

He’s short, his pants are too tight, and he wears ankle socks, so why do I feel self-conscious?

I check my teeth in my phone, check the time. It’s only been four minutes and it already feels wrong, we already feel like strangers, and the past already feels like a lie; it’s that congealed and mustardy dip masquerading as cheese, it’s a summer romance disguised as love, its cheap stitching veiled by a bold print.

“Cappuccino.”

I glimpse the Beatles badge and look up; the waiter has green eyes. He places the cup on Adrian’s side of the table; there’s a set of keys there and a black jacket on the otherwise vacant chair.

“Thank you,” I say, rearranging my hair, and even my fingers feel cold and dry, superfluous as they scrape against the coarse nest on my head.

My senses are heightened, and yet somewhat numbed in their self-consciousness, just as a word is reduced to a grunt when repeated. I’m living the moment I dreamt of, only now I can see the ink on the serviettes, my lipstick on the mug, every line in the table’s surface, every line in his face as he places a plate on the table between us and sits down, pulling his jacket from beneath him and draping it over the chair.

Blueberry cheesecake. He hands me a fork and finally smiles, leaning in, his elbow on the table. He slices off a piece with the edge of his fork and I notice that his hands are still calloused, his fingers stubby, veins a violet blue.

“It’s been years since I’ve had one of these,” he says.

I lean in and consciously imitate his body language, only my elbow feels awkward and the cheesecake is stubborn against my intent. I recall the nail I chewed at not long ago and will him not to look. He does, and we both see my bloody nail.

“I think it was at Jennifer’s,” he continues.

“You mean the pool party?” My fork grates against the plate.

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t I make that one?”

“No, it was too good to be yours.”

“I made something,” I say.

“Yeah, you made me come.”

I lean back in my chair.

He’s more buck-toothed than I remembered and I can see every individual blackhead on his nose. I take the last sip of my cold coffee.

“Do you remember when we did it in the airport bathroom?”

“No,” I say.

“Nah, come on.”

“That wasn’t me,” I say.

A moment elapses and I stare into the carpet, stare into the shapes, the stains, and is that a bobby pin?

“You know that you’re the only one I remember, right?”

I roll my eyes as I feel for the bobby pins in my hair. Still there.

“Come on, Nora. Those instances were otherworldly.”

That’s my voice, my voice on his tongue, and words that once tasted of mint now sound pungent in the mouth of a grown man.

I came here with things to say and though a part of me knows it’s all futile—can see it clearly now that reality sits there, in the flesh, with stupid eyes and a jock’s grin—another part of me consciously deludes itself.

“It was difficult,” I say, “after I left.”

I can see the stagehand behind his eyes, see it tug his brow into mock surprise. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he says.

“It’s not like you would’ve come.”

“You didn’t ask me to.”

“Would you have come, then?”

“Yeah.”

I see the stagehand hunched there behind every prop, every word, every gesture. What is most absurd, however, is that he insists he is unseen as though I were still beneath his dramatic spell.

We sit in silence a moment for I’ve realised the superfluity of it all.

He sighs. “Wanna step outside for a cigarette?”

“I quit.”

“Right,” he says, digging through his pocket. “Do you mind?”

“Go ahead,” I say, and he heads for the door.

I always imagined finishing my little poetry collection, wrapping a copy up in newspaper and sending it to him. He’d know, I thought, he’d know as soon as he saw the Chinese characters. It now sits in my bag, minus the newspaper, and the entire thing just strikes me as naïve and clichéd. I’m embarrassed to be me; my entire existence is humiliating and it’s not a blemish one can cover with foundation, mascara, red lipstick. I mean, I once imagined sitting across from him in a café and handing it to him, watching him read through it as I sipped at my coffee. I suppose this is the version I wanted to live out today and it’s fallen flat because you can’t rehearse life; the stage directions don’t belong to you, the characters don’t belong to you, the dialogue doesn’t belong to you, and premeditated responses sound rehearsed. Did I mention that I’ve got painkillers in my bag because they help with social rejection?

The waiter tiptoes over and clears the table, pausing at Adrian’s cup; it’s half-full but I gesture that he take it away. The jacket that occupied the chair is gone, the keys that occupied the table, gone.

“The check, please.”

I stare at the table as I wait, stare at the crumbs of blueberry cheesecake; well, just the crumble, really, none of the sweet stuff.

Adrian’s chair is still empty, impressed with his backside. A sigh involuntarily escapes me, and it sounds like resignation; I’m a deflated Valentine’s balloon, a bouquet of withered roses, a box of regifted chocolates. My skirt’s shit, my makeup’s shit, my poetry’s shit; I rhymed love with dove, and likened his eyes to coffee when I ought to have likened them to cesspools. Subvert expectations, they say, which is difficult to do when you’re in love—you know, the soppy kind—when roses really do seem fiercely red and violets strikingly blue.

The carpet feels like mud as I trudge towards the door. I push it open and sunlight floods in; I’m nineteen on a picnic blanket, the sun is shining, and he’s kissing the freckles on my shoulders; and then it’s drizzling, bucketing down, and he’s bolting for the car.

 I squint, readjusting to the light, and it somehow feels like I’m stepping back into the real world, unconfined by the four walls that seemed to magnify everything. 

“Not the same, is it?” he calls. He’s standing on the kerb, halfway through what I suspect is his second cigarette, and it’s all so casual. What one would expect to be whispered—our mutual disillusionment—is shouted across the space between us.

“No,” I say, closing the distance.

“Did you need a ride?”

“I’m good,” I say, squeezing his shoulder, and light touches are merely light touches.

“Nora?”

“Yeah?”

“Take care.”

“You too.”

I’m less self-conscious about my miniskirt as I walk away, less self-conscious about the sweat on my thighs, about my wild hair, for there’s something disarming about honesty, about good-byes, or maybe it’s all yet to settle in. Maybe I can’t feel it yet because I could turn around right now and he’d be there. I turn a corner and re-enter the cacophony of car horns, tyres and yellow cabs. He’d be there, in the flesh, accessible; and it is this very accessibility that mortalises him.

I stop at the crossing. The orange sunset kisses the building tops, and apartment windows glow yellow, their occupants like small figurines in snow globes.

I feel people gather beside me, behind me, I feel the loneliness of this big city; and as the light turns green, I plunge once more into the bustling sea of people, their blue ties, black suits, red lips, pink skirts, tie-dyes, piercings, a silver mohawk like a fin.

In China I learned the word guoke, a passing guest; and sometimes that’s all anyone ever is, I guess. I drop onto a park bench and listen, unmoving, to the faint chirping of birds; I listen, unmoving, to my own breath. I ache, as though I’ve trekked miles without sleep, and yet I’m numb; this vacant feeling both fills and empties me until I am both brimming with and void of emotion. The lampposts flicker on, and branches bob in the evening breeze, their dark and skeletal shadows playing in the orange patches of grass. I pull out my little poetry collection, run my hand over the cover.

I’m nineteen on a wet picnic blanket, the sky is grumbling, and he’s watching me pack up from the shelter of his car.