Chapter 22

The second dinner was Film’s idea.

She had suggested it the morning after the first one — a text, warm and without pressure, that said: I had a nice time even if it was short. No expectations. But if you wanted to try again sometime, I’d be up for it.

Lookmhee had read it on Wednesday morning sitting on her bed with her coffee — the coffee from outside her door, still warm, no note — and had thought about it for a long time before she replied.

She had replied: I’d like that. Next week maybe?

She had sent it and then sat with her phone in her lap and looked at the wall between her apartment and 4C and thought: this is not the right thing. I know this is not the right thing. I am doing it anyway because I am waiting for a conversation that has not happened yet and I do not know when it will happen and in the meantime I am a person who is allowed to have dinner.

She had believed approximately half of this.

✦ ✦ ✦

The conversation happened on Wednesday evening.

Not the conversation — not the one she had been waiting for, not the one Sonya had said tomorrow about in the hallway, which had been last Tuesday, which had then been followed by a morning where Sonya had knocked on her door at seven thirty and said can we walk and they had walked to Common Ground and sat down and ordered and Sonya had looked at her across the table with the unguarded expression and opened her mouth and then Sonya’s phone had rung.

Her author. A crisis of the specific kind that publishing produced — something urgent and genuine and requiring immediate attention. Sonya had looked at the phone and looked at Lookmhee and said: I’m sorry. I have to take this. And Lookmhee had said go and Sonya had stepped outside and spent forty minutes on the phone walking up and down the street outside the window while Lookmhee sat at their table and drank her latte and watched her through the glass.

When Sonya came back she had looked tired in the specific way work made her tired — not physically but the tiredness of someone who had been precise and focused under pressure for forty minutes. She had sat down and looked at Lookmhee and said: I’m sorry. Can we—

Later, Lookmhee had said. It’s okay. Later.

Later had not happened that day. Or the next day. The days had moved in the way days did when something was pending between two people — slightly heightened, slightly careful, both of them aware of the thing waiting to be said and neither of them quite finding the right moment to say it.

And into that waiting space, on Wednesday, Film had texted.

And Lookmhee had said yes.

✦ ✦ ✦

She knew why she had said yes.

She had been honest about this with herself since the first dinner, since Freen’s be honest with yourself about which one it is, since sitting in the dark listening to music through the wall and writing I don’t know if I did that for the right reasons in her notebook.

She had said yes because waiting was hard. Because she was good at patience — genuinely good at it, she had proven that over five months — but patience had a texture to it that changed over time, and the texture lately had been getting rougher, more effortful, and when Film had asked it had been easier to say yes than to sit with the roughness one more time.

That was honest. She was not proud of it but it was honest.

She had also said yes, she admitted to herself on Thursday morning while reorganizing a shelf at work with more force than the books strictly required, because some part of her had wanted to see what Sonya would do. Whether the I’m not going anywhere had weight to it. Whether after Tuesday would actually become something.

She was less proud of this than the first reason.

But it was true.

✦ ✦ ✦

Thursday at work Dao appeared beside her while she was writing a recommendation card and said, without preamble: “You’ve written the same opening three times.”

Lookmhee looked at the card. She had. Three different attempts at the same sentence, each one crossed out.

“Person thing,” she said.

“Still,” Dao said.

“Still,” Lookmhee confirmed.

Dao looked at the card for a moment. Then she said, in the tone she used for things she had been observing for a while and had decided it was time to say: “The display last month. The one about starting over.”

“Yes?”

“You made that when you first arrived. When things were new.” Dao looked at the shelf Lookmhee had been reorganizing, which was now slightly worse than it had been before she touched it. “I think you need to make a new one.”

Lookmhee frowned. “What theme?”

Dao looked at her with the mild, patient expression. “I think you know,” she said. And went back to the other room.

Lookmhee stood with the recommendation card in her hand.

She thought about what came after starting over. About what the display would look like if it was not for someone beginning but for someone who had already begun, who was already somewhere new and good and real, who was standing at a different kind of edge.

She thought: the display for when you are about to arrive.

She put the card down. She went to the front window. She stood in front of the display for a long moment, looking at it, thinking.

Then she started rearranging.

✦ ✦ ✦

She texted Film on Thursday afternoon.

She had been thinking about it since the morning, since Dao and the recommendation card and the display she had rebuilt around a theme she had not named out loud but knew completely. She had been thinking about honesty — about Freen’s be honest with yourself and Sonya’s I should have been faster and the specific, uncomfortable weight of doing something for reasons that were not quite right.

She sat in the back room on her break and typed: Film, I want to be honest with you about something.

Film replied quickly: okay. I appreciate that.

I’ve been enjoying your company and I meant it when I said yes to next week. But I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t think I should go. There’s someone — it’s complicated, or I’ve been making it complicated, but it’s there. And saying yes to dinner when that’s true isn’t fair to you.

A pause. Then Film: I wondered.

Lookmhee looked at her phone. I’m sorry.

Don’t be. Honestly. A pause. Is it the Saturday morning person?

Lookmhee smiled despite herself. Is it that obvious?

You mentioned the coffee shop twice in the first conversation. You had a specific face when you said her name. Another pause, then: Go sort it out. Life’s short.

Thank you for being gracious.

Thank you for being honest. It’s rarer than it should be. And then: Also your book recommendation made someone I care about cry in the best way. That counts for a lot.

Lookmhee put her phone in her pocket.

She sat in the back room for a moment.

She thought: okay. Okay. That’s done. That’s the right thing done.

She thought about you had a specific face when you said her name.

She thought: I have been having a specific face for five months. Everyone has seen it. I am apparently the last person surprised by it.

She went back to the floor.

✦ ✦ ✦

She told Freen that evening.

Freen’s response was to make a sound that was not quite a word and then pull Lookmhee into a hug that lasted approximately thirty seconds, which from Freen was the highest form of emotional endorsement.

“I’m proud of you,” Freen said, when she let go.

“I just cancelled a dinner,” Lookmhee said.

“You were honest with someone even though it was harder than not being honest,” Freen said. “That’s not small.” She held Lookmhee at arm’s length and looked at her with the direct, warm gaze she had when she was being serious. “How do you feel?”

“Clear,” Lookmhee said. And it was true. The roughness of the waiting had not changed — Sonya had not said anything yet, the conversation was still pending, she did not know when it was coming — but something else had changed. The uncertainty about her own self. That part was gone. She knew what she wanted. She had known for a long time. She was just waiting for the right moment to arrive.

“Good,” Freen said. She paused. “Are you going to tell Sonya?”

“Not tonight.” Lookmhee thought about it. “I don’t want it to feel like — I don’t want it to feel like a transaction. Like I cancelled it for her. I cancelled it because it was the right thing. What happens with Sonya is separate.”

Freen nodded slowly. “That’s very mature.”

“I’m trying.”

“You’re succeeding.” Freen smiled. Then, because she could not help it: “But also I really hope the conversation happens soon because I am running out of ways to look like I’m not paying attention when you two are in the same room.”

Lookmhee laughed — a real one, the sudden kind. “You have never once looked like you’re not paying attention.”

“I know,” Freen said sadly. “I have a very expressive face. It’s a burden.”

✦ ✦ ✦

She walked home in the cold December evening with her hands in her pockets and the city doing its winter thing around her — the lights and the warmth spilling out of shops and the smell of something being cooked somewhere and the particular quality of city air in December that felt more alive than other months, more aware of itself.

She walked past the bakery on the corner — closed now, the display empty, the lights off — and thought about almond pastry left outside a door without a note. She walked past Common Ground — still open, warm light in the window, a few people inside at their tables — and thought about a Saturday morning that had become every Saturday morning.

She walked into the building. She pressed the elevator button. She rode up to the fourth floor.

The hallway was quiet. The light was on under the door of 4C.

She stood outside her own door with her keys in her hand.

She thought about knocking. About going across and saying: I cancelled it. Not for you — for me, because it was right. But also I’ve been waiting for a conversation that keeps getting interrupted and I want you to know that I’m still here and I’m still waiting and I would very much like it to happen soon.

She thought about I’m not going anywhere and after Tuesday.

She looked at 4C for a long moment.

Then she unlocked her door. She went inside. She took off her coat. She made tea.

She sat at her desk and opened her notebook and wrote the thing she had been trying to write all week — the poem that had been circling, the one she had written three false starts of in the margins of recommendation cards. It came out in one go, clean and complete, the way the real ones did when the thing they were about was finally clear enough to hold still.

She read it back.

It was, she thought, the most honest thing she had written in the green notebook. More honest even than the one who keeps showing up. More honest because it was not about Sonya specifically — it was about this. This specific feeling of being certain about something before it had arrived. Of knowing the shape of something before you could touch it.

She titled it: almost there.

She looked at the title.

She closed the notebook.

She looked at the wall between her apartment and 4C and thought: I am ready. She thought: I have been ready for a while. She thought: whenever you are, I am here.

The music started through the wall at ten past nine. Soft, low, the familiar suggestion of a melody that had become the sound of her evenings.

She turned off the desk lamp.

She sat in the dark with her tea and the music and the clear, settled feeling of someone who knows what they want and has stopped pretending otherwise and is simply, patiently, fully waiting.

✦ ✦ ✦

The next morning the coffee was at the door at seven twelve.

She picked it up. Still warm. Her order exactly. No note.

She stood in the doorway and looked at 4C and thought: soon.

She went inside.

She sat with her coffee and her notebook and the poem she had written the night before and the knowledge — clear and named and completely hers — that the thing she was waiting for was almost there.

She opened the notebook.

She wrote one line at the bottom of the poem, underneath almost there:

I think I am already there. I think I have been for a while. I’m just waiting for the door to open.

She closed the notebook.

She got ready for work.

She walked the fifteen minutes to The Last Page in the cold December morning thinking about doors and the people on the other side of them and all the ways a thing could be true before it was said.

She walked in, hung up her coat, said good morning to Dao, and went to look at the new display she had built yesterday.

It was good. It was the best one she had made.

The card in the center said: for when you are almost where you are going. you are closer than you think.

She looked at it for a moment.

Then she smiled and went to start the day.

✦ ✦ ✦