Page 83 of Twice
And in that unexpected embrace, my soul seemed to melt and my need to wander melted, too. I took in the feel of her scaly skin, and the long blue African sky above us, and the sticky heat, and the smell of the dirt, and I flashed back on my many Saturdays here, and my mother, who had come to this place to do good, to be better, and a little girl named Princess who brought me red mabuyu sweets. I was suddenly overcome by a yearning, if not a grief, for my once-innocent childhood, before I had the power to undo the Lord’s timelines. On a calendar, it was thirty years since my days here, but with all my jumps and life corrections, who knew how long it had really been? Or how old I actually was? Lallu and I shared a memory that almost no one else in the world could: the version of me before I became different.
Gianna shared it, too. I remembered as kids when she said we should move here and build a house by the sea. I realized how lucky I was to have her in my life. Of all the things that had happened to me twice, she was the best.
I blinked back tears. I looked up into Lallu’s small, steady eyes, and understood another Truth About True Love: it makes you feel like you belong someplace.
“I need to go home now, Lallu,” I whispered.
Juma spit out the toothpick.
“Why you talk to her, man?” he said. “She don’t understand you.”
But I think she did.
?
I was back in New York a week later. I could have called Gianna to say I wanted to see her, but it had been months, and I didn’t want to start things back over the phone. I got a room at a hotel and took a long hot shower. Since all my clothes were filthy from my travels, I stopped at a department store and bought new underwear and socks and jeans and a decent shirt. Then I grabbed a cab to our apartment building, took the elevator up, and stood outside the door.
I sucked in a few breaths, excited to see her to the point of giddiness. I had an apology practiced. And a new sense of patience. Mostly, I just planned to tell her how much I loved her, and promise to show her, to do better, to be better. I gripped an envelope with some photos of Lallu that Juma had taken, and I knocked.
No answer.
For a fleeting moment, I wondered if she’d moved. I knocked again, loudly. Nothing. I still had my key. I fished it from my wallet and tried the lock. It worked. I let myself in.
The place was the same, but I could feel my absence everywhere. All the possessions were Gianna’s. Her sweater on the couch. Her sunglasses on the counter. Her purse. Hermagazines. None of my coffee cups in the sink, or jackets on the back of a chair.
I waited a few minutes, then started to feel like I was trespassing. I removed a single photo from the envelope, Lallu and me, with her trunk pushing my hat over my eyes. I placed it on the coffee table, imagining it a small surprise for Gianna. I had my hand on the door, about to leave, when I heard the sound of the elevator opening down the hallway, and then her voice, animated, saying “I couldn’t believe it, you know?” I heard a response from another voice, a man’s voice, and I retreated, suddenly trapped, and before I could do anything the door was swinging open and I was looking straight across at a stunned Gianna, wearing a lavender turtleneck and a leather coat and standing in front of a guy whose face was instantly familiar from my freshman year at college.
Mike.
The soccer star. The guitar player. The guy who’d broken her heart.
“Alfie!” she screamed. “Oh my God! What are you doing here?”
“Twice,” I whispered.
?
Now, Boss, if you’re hoping for an explanation of what Gianna was doing with her old boyfriend, I don’t have one. You’d have to ask her. I time jumped back to, of all places, the department store fitting room, where I was breathinghard and cursing until a salesman on the other side of the curtain said, “Sir, are you all right in there?”
I spent the next hour weighing whether I should return to the scene and confront Gianna. She was still my wife, after all. I thought of every possible reason why she could be coming to our apartment with her old college beau, but my mind kept returning to the worst one, that she was seeing him again, that she was sleeping with him.
That I had been replaced.
I knew if I revisited the moment, I could not undo it. I’d be stuck inside the apartment, staring at Mike and his perfect teeth and two-day stubble, and forced to have my confrontation with Gianna in front of him. I didn’t want that. But I couldn’t just leave things. I needed to know more. So I took a cab back to our apartment building and found a spot across the street, in a Korean grocery store. I positioned myself by the window. And I waited.
I must have looked at my watch a thousand times. I scanned the faces of everyone who came down the block. New York City is an endless cast of characters, pouring out of taxis, pushing through doorframes, turning around the corners. I wasn’t sure if I’d missed Gianna by looking the wrong way at the wrong moment.
But then a bus stopped at a nearby intersection, and I caught sight of her stepping off. There was Mike right behind her. They walked together, heads nodding in intermittent conversation. They stopped momentarily by a vendorselling mixed nuts, but Gianna shook her head, and they continued on. I kept waiting for her to look my way. What was I hoping? That she’d break into tears? Push Mike away and come running with her arms out, screaming, “Alfie! You’re back!”
They approached our building, and from behind, I saw Gianna reach into her handbag, maybe looking for her key. Mike turned his head. Then he made a small gesture that is forever seared in my memory.
He put his arm around Gianna’s shoulder, and when he did, Gianna patted her free hand on his. If a single human act could morph into an arrow, that one would have shot directly across the street, shattered the glass of the grocery window, and pierced my heart.
My throat constricted. I started to sweat. When you experience an emotion you’ve never felt before, your body is confused. And in my mind I had just, for the first time in my life, lost someone I truly loved—not to the angel of death, but to another person’s affection. Where do I go? What do I do? Beneath my suddenly uncomfortable skin, my soul felt gutted, angry, pathetic, victimized.
And at fault.
“Ey! Mister!Mister!”
