Page 90 of Twice
“How much did you read?”
“Enough,” she rasped.
“Why are you so upset?”
She squeezed her lips in silence.
“Look, Ms. Rule,” LaPorta said, trying to sound empathetic, “you’ve got to answer my questions if you want me to help. I need to know Alfie’s connection to your ex. Andwhy he’s making all this stuff up about the two of you being married.
“And while I’m at it... Who the hell is this boss that he’s writing this notebook to?”
Gianna sniffed in deeply.
“Don’t you understand?” she whispered. “I’mhis boss.”
Seven
The Composition Book
What is it about love that makes us think we can tame it, when all the while it is taming us?
Gianna went to stay with friends while I moved out of our apartment, saying it was better “if we didn’t watch each other untangle.” We’d had a few difficult heart-to-hearts, and the performance review that couples give each other before they split. We came to the usual conclusions, that we’d “grown apart” and there was no point blaming each other. She was less emotional about it than I had imagined, which gave me pause, since being unemotional was never Gianna’s thing.
Still, at the time, I stubbornly refused to believe my magic was solely at fault, that my time jump back to Nicolette’s arms had done this, that my grandmother’s warning about lovers not being able to love you twice had woven its evil spell. Perhaps this was coming anyhow, I reasoned. People change.
As I loaded boxes into a small U-Haul I had rented, I let thoughts of returning to Nicolette become my salve, a numbing agent to the pain of leaving Gianna, the woman who, in a whimsical ceremony in a Pennsylvania forest, I had promised I would always love, and who’d promised me she would do the same.
I called Nicolette from a pay phone in Manhattan. She was in Canada, about to leave for the day’s shooting. I mentioned that Gianna and I had finally split up.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Alfie.”
“It was coming for a while.”
“That’s the worst.”
“I’m glad I have you to talk to.”
“Of course.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking. I’m pretty tired of New York and the cold. I can write from anywhere. I might move out to L.A. now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Would you like that?”
I regretted asking the moment I did.
“Sure,” she said. “I mean, that would be great. I’m not there a lot, you know. With shoots and everything. But—”
“Right, right. I wouldn’t be coming for you. I mean, of course, I want to be with you. That would be the cool part. But I’m not, you know... I’m not saying...”
I waited for her to add something. She didn’t.
“Twice,” I mumbled.
The second time around, I never made the call. I told myself I would see her at the premiere, five months away. Better to talk in person.
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