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The traffic was like glue. It took us nearly thirty minutes to get downtown. New York was softening under the snow. A white Christmas: how happy everyone was going to be. My apartment was on the second floor; I would have to carry her. I waited for a neighbor to come through the door and asked him to hold it open, guided Liz out of the cab, and lifted her into my arms.
“Wow,” my neighbor said. “She doesn’t look too good.”
He followed us to my apartment door, took the key from my pocket, and opened that as well. “Do you want me to call 911?” he asked.
“It’s okay, I’ve got this. She had a little too much to drink is all.”
He winked despicably. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
I got her out of her coat and carried her into the bedroom. As I lay her on my bed, she opened her eyes and turned her face toward the window.
“It’s snowing,” she said, as if this were the most amazing thing in the world.
She closed them again. I removed her glasses and shoes, draped a blanket over her, and doused the lights. There was an overstuffed chair close to the window where I liked to read. I sat down and waited in the dark to see what would happen next.
—
Sometime later, I awoke. I looked at my watch: it was nearly two A.M. I went to Liz and placed my palm to her forehead. She felt cool, and I believed that the worst had passed.
Her eyes opened. She looked around cautiously, as if she wasn’t quite sure where she was.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
She didn’t answer right away. Her voice was very soft. “Better, I think. Sorry to scare you.”
“That’s perfectly all right.”
“It happens sometimes like that, but it goes away. Until sometime when it doesn’t, I guess.”
I had nothing to say to that. “Let me get you some water.”
I filled a glass in the bathroom and brought it to her. She lifted her head off the pillow and sipped. “I was having the strangest dream,” she said. “The chemo is what does it. The stuff’s like LSD. I thought that was over, though.”
A thought occurred to me. “I have a present for you.”
“You do?”
“Wait here.”
I kept her glasses in my desk. I returned to the bedroom and placed them in her hand. She studied them for a long moment.
“I was wondering when you’d get around to giving these back.”
“I like to put them on sometimes.”
“And here I didn’t get you anything. I’m just appalling.” She was crying, just a little. She looked up, meeting my eye. “You’re not the only one who blew it you know.”
“Liz?”
She reached out her hand and touched my cheek. “It’s funny. You can live your whole life and then suddenly know that you didn’t do it right at all.”
I wrapped her fingers with my own. Outside, the snow fell upon the sleeping city.
“You should kiss me,” she said.
“Do you want me to?”
“I think that’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said.”
I did. I brought my mouth to hers. It was a soft, quiet kiss—peaceful would be the word—the kind that obliterates the world and makes all time turn around it. Infinity in a moment, the hem of creation brushing the face of the waters.
“I should stop,” I said.
“No, you shouldn’t.” She began to unbutton her blouse. “Just please be careful with me. I’m kind of breakable, you know.”
* * *
21
We became lovers. I don’t think I’d ever truly understood the word. I don’t mean just sex, though there was that—unhurried, meticulous, a form of passion I had never known existed. I mean that we lived as richly as two people ever could, with a feeling of absolute rightness. We left the apartment only to walk. A deep cold had followed the snow, sealing the city in whiteness. Jonas’s name was never mentioned. It wasn’t a subject we were avoiding. It had simply ceased to matter.
We both knew she would have to return eventually; she could not simply step out of her life. Nor could I imagine the two of us being apart for one minute of the time she had left. I believed she felt the same. I wanted to be there when it happened. I wanted to be touching her, holding her hand, telling her how much I loved her as she faded away.
One morning the week after Christmas, I awoke in bed alone. I found her in the kitchen, sipping tea, and knew what she was about to tell me.
“I have to go back.”
“I know,” I said. “Where?”
