The Word Exchange (42 page)

I was shaken, but I hated to make Clive wait. The city was under curfew; he was anxious to get home to his family. I decided to believe that my things had just been sifted by opportunistic thieves who’d noticed my broken window from the street. But it didn’t look like a burglary: nothing was missing and the door hadn’t been forced. Still, once I saw that no one was lurking in the hall or out on the fire escape, I sent Clive home.

“You sure?” he asked, relieved.

I said yes. And what happened next wasn’t Clive’s fault. It’s true that if he’d stayed, it wouldn’t have come about. But the mistakes were mine. I let myself get distracted, sorting through my ransacked life. I should
have been long gone when the door buzzer went off. Not skimming Doug’s Aleph, which I’d brought along to charge. Certainly not combing through old clothes, papers, photographs.

On the bed, in a mess of other things, was a shiny stack of black-and-whites. Self-portraits—discrete pieces of my body—from my college thesis on “the reification of temporality” (whatever that means). But looking again at those flattened tokens of my persona—glossy bits of lip, eyes, hair, feet—I saw more than I had before.

Max had always loved those photos, and I’d found that both flattering and vaguely creepy. Images were easier to “get,” I’d teased, than thoughts, words, feelings. Ciphers were simpler than people. But as I studied those prints that night, shivering—the apartment was frigid—I finally really realized that I was culpable, too: I’d come to see myself as him seeing me. It was an inherited tendency. A little sadly, with a sting of disloyalty, I thought of Doug’s secret desk-drawer stash of Vera memorabilia. Maybe that was part of their falling apart—reification. Maybe the same was true for Max and me.

But it wasn’t the photos that undid me. A moment later, as I slowly turned them over on the rumpled sheets, I unburied a crumpled piece of paper that made time compress and my heart stop, then jump like a magnet. It was a note I’d first found more than four years earlier. Folded over on a smooth hotel pillow on a different bed, in Picard, Dominica.

And it was that note that left me open to attack. Which came in the form of five piercing trills, and—when I finally pressed the intercom—the sound of Max on the windy street below, choking on something.

“Ana.” He coughed. Tried to catch his breath. “It’s me.” And that’s when I realized, with a painful throb, that he wasn’t choking. He was crying. “Zemin.
Fucked
—” He was sobbing so hard that I could barely understand. “Please! Just stam—”

Heart hammering, I lifted my finger off
LISTEN
. Imagined him still talking into the Delphic plastic box. But after a silence that wound itself, scarflike, around my throat, the buzzer rang again, in staccato bursts, like the kamikaze bombings of an agitated bee.

I tried to think. To inhale and exhale normally. Shaking, I pressed my cheek to the wall. It was cool as a sheet. In my clammy hand I was clutching that note I’d found with the photos. From another life, it seemed, when people still wrote notes. When he wrote them to me. I read the words “My love” over and over, until they had no meaning.
Touched
TALK
. Struggled to keep my voice even as I said, “What do you want?”

For a long moment I heard just the static of wind. Stomach sinking, I wondered if he’d already given up and left. Then I heard a sound like a retch. And I heard it again. But this time it sounded more like my name. Finally, after another silence, I heard something else. In a low, scarred voice, nearly a whisper, he said, “I have to see you.”

I later wondered if it was a recording. But right then, that was it. Those five small words an awful open sesame. Five words that I’d prayed for weeks to hear. That I’d sworn wouldn’t move me. But there we were, that other life returned to me. That life before the virus; before my father went missing; when my days were filled with words and purpose, creating things; and my nights with laughter, friends, Max’s touch—something I’d taken for love. There it all was again. Intruding. I pushed the plastic nib marked
DOOR
and waited.

He didn’t run up the stairs, as he’d done when we were first in love. In fact, for what felt like a very long time I didn’t hear any footsteps. What was he doing? Finishing a cigarette? Trying to wipe off the victory smirk? Holding his head in pain, sick? Was he alone? Was he telling a woman he’d be right back? Or was he with someone else—like Floyd. Or Dmitri. I dead-bolted the door just as I heard the heavy tread of boots start to echo up.

But I soon discerned that it was just one pair. Until, at last, they stopped outside my door. What had been our door until just two months before. Haltingly, knowing he’d see me, I peered out through the peephole. And I was stunned. His face was battered: one eye burled shut, chin abraded, cheekbone gashed. His good eye was red, face wet with tears. And my own eyes began to burn.

I tried to stand my ground. There was no knowing what had happened. Could have been just a bad night out. But in my mind’s ear I heard Phineas say, “He’s mixed up in something very serious.” Worse, the bitter, bruising way Floyd had apprised us that he was looking for Max. And in my hand I held the note that said, “My love without end.”

Through the eyelet in the door, I saw a pale flash. Max was holding something: a piece of paper like a white flag. In collaged letters, it read:
PLEASE LET ME IN
.

“What do you want?” I asked again, sounding tougher than I felt. Thinking not just of Max but of neighbors who’d hear everything, and
who’d worry about infection. Though I also knew—saw myself doing it before I did—that I would open the door. My heart’s long habit of love was too strong for me to leave him sick and stranded outside. While the door was still closed, though, I watched him hold up a hand: wait. Watched as he tried, wincing, to get down on one knee. A sight I’d always hoped to see. But not that way.

“Don’t,” I said, choking up. And undid the bolt.

Once he was inside, I barely noticed the shift in mood. Like a tiny, wayward pulse of energy. Max winked at me. And I realized, too late, that I’d made a mistake.

“Shang you yow sdyelatye me wait there vod night,” said Max. He no longer looked ashamed, or even repentant. In fact he looked a little smug. I could tell he was trying not to. But nearly thirty years of egotism are bad training for remorse.

I’d planned to ask what had happened—who’d done that to his face. But with the crown of power back in play, it seemed best to harden my line. Not show any weakness. And my fears that he might be able to infect me were growing in intensity. I noticed, too, that he wasn’t asking about me—my shorn hair, my chipped front tooth. Why all my things were on the floor. How the past two terrible months had been for me. “This is the last time I’ll ask,” I said, filling my words with ice. “What do you want from me?”

He lowered himself gently into the chair by the door, shivering. I stood, arms crossed. Rigid.

“Want? Towsher see you,” he said, flashing his gap-toothed grin. It looked more gapped than ever: his own front tooth was also broken, more badly than mine. The smile made even his good eye nearly disappear. It almost looked like he was falling asleep.

But he was very much awake. “God, Ana,” he said, reaching for my hand, buried in the crook of my arm. I stepped back, but not far. “Do you know how faychung badly deleenoy you senk? Zeegid idea how seeyong vee.” Stretching forward, he tried again to take my hand. Settled for an elbow. “You’re tolko rensher me. Chvistvo like myself again.” He tried to pull me closer. His smell, of cigarettes and old deodorant and sweat, made me gag.

“Max,” I said, moving farther back, trying to be careful. I didn’t want him in a rage. “You’re not making sense,” I said softly. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

His smile vanished; his eye came out of hiding. And I braced myself. But what I saw wasn’t fury. It was a true flash of fear. “Dongran,” he mumbled, face blanching. He’d brought an old notepad and pen. A stack of pasted-up stock phrases.
HOW ARE YOU?
was on top. Below that.
HOW MUCH?
He groped at the notepad. “Wait, oden second.” Wincing, he pressed his fingers to his head, then tried clumsily to scrawl something out. It took a long, long time. A small forever. I got impatient. Anxious. Turned to look around the room at all my trampled stuff.

But I couldn’t make him leave. He was twice my size. And it was more than that: he still had meaning in that place. He’d made us countless meals in that kitchen. Accidentally shattered nearly every glass. Sometimes left his swim goggles in the freezer, his bike helmet on the dish rack. And said the word “love” so many times. Whether he’d meant it or not.

I was facing the kitchen when he rasped, “Ana? Kan me, please?” He sounded agitated. When I turned, he fixed me with his relentless hazel eyes. Pressed a rumpled piece of paper to my palm. His penmanship had devolved. Letters slackened and gone soggy, like the last cereal in the bowl. I didn’t know whether it was the virus or his lack of practice, but the sloppy letters didn’t help his cause. They made his note seem disingenuous. I was angry a priori, before I even read a word.

“I just want you to know,” he’d scribbled, “I’m so, so sorry for what I did to you and to us. I’m so, so sorry for hurting you. I’m just so profoundly sorry.”

“This is what took so long?” I said, crumpling the paper. I was incredulous, but also a little conflicted for feeling mad when he was clearly so hurt and sick. I didn’t even know what he was sorry for. As if there were just one thing. (As if it were all his fault.) And of course I also knew he couldn’t have just written it. Fleetingly, I wondered if I was the first person he’d given it to.

But he shook his head, brow furrowed, and tried again to talk. “N-not all,” he stammered, taking the paper floret from me and flattening it out. Turning it over and handing it back. And the note lurched on. “I’m horrified, plain and simple,” it continued, “to have ruined things with my best friend and my love. This isn’t something I’ll ever get over. And I’m just so sorry, Anana. So sorry that when things got hard, I put work first and left. I know you can probably never forgive me, but if you’d ever even consider taking me back—”

That’s where I stopped. And not only because it was so insultingly flat. (A man who traffics in words, I thought, should come up with better ones than that.) The note felt toxic; it left a funny taste in my mouth. Metallic, like lead paint, or the prodrome of a migraine. When had he written it? And why? Maybe someone else had done it for him. While I’d had my back turned, had he just been pretending to write? Everything about it made me ill. And then there was what the note said. What did that mean, “put work first”? It’s true that before Max left, he’d had many late nights at “meetings,” with “clients,” “developing projects.” But I’d assumed those were euphemisms—the source of many fights.
Had
he really been working? At what? Meaning Master? What was he “mixed up” in? Did it have anything to do with Doug? The Creatorium? The language virus?

He’d started softly crying again, maybe sensing my doubts. Maybe really crying. With Max, it was hard to know. So hard. And his tears had a paradoxical effect on me. I tersely asked what he meant by the note. “Why bring up work?” I chafed. He couldn’t explain. He was crying harder. Tried a few starts at speech. But the note had put me on guard. And other thoughts had started bubbling up in my brain. Maybe he
had
just written the note. Maybe he wasn’t really sick after all—the virus was a front, to lower my defenses. To scare me, or make me feel sorry for him. How had he turned up, I wondered, at just the moment I’d been home? Had he been watching me? Had someone else?

By that point, though, he was rocking back and forth, and his whimpers sounded piercingly real. Still upset but softening, I studied his bloody, broken face. He was suffering. And whoever had beaten him might not be far away. I eyed the door. Guardedly, second-guessing myself even as I did it, I placed a hand on his broad shoulder.

“I’m never going to take you back,” I said. “I think you know that, too.” The words felt like a benediction; I realized as I said them that they were absolutely true. And with that unexpected release came a warm, airy absolution. Gently I asked, “Why are you really here?”

“Ana,” Max said, voice breaking like glass. He handed me another collaged sheet of paper. It read:
I’M IN SO MUCH TROUBLE
. Then he bent over and wept again. It was a wrenching wail, like the baying of a dog. Tears rained in tiny pearls, marking a trail through the dried blood below his swollen eye. He covered his face with his hands. And finally I believed him. My heart flooded with a sad, insoluble mix of grief, vindication,
and anger, despair, detachment, compassion—like the mismatched letters glued to the papers he’d brought with him. But most of all, seeing him like that, what I felt was fear. Max, the stoic. The king. I hurried to the door and slid the chain. Peered uneasily into the bedroom, at the broken window gaping onto the fire escape, a few loose tines of glass in its casement.

“It’s okay,” I said, stepping close to Max again. Hovering over him. Like I used to do if he’d had a fight with his father, mother, one of his brothers, a friend. Me. But without the same requiem of feelings. I softly said, “Just—try to tell me what’s going on.”

After a moment of silence and a long, jagged sigh, Max said, “I-I-I boo code how I got here.” Looked around, bewildered. “Gebbad what I’m
zolat
here. Bode
shem
I
zwah
. I fucked up.” He stared at me, wretchedly wild-eyed. “I fucked up
bolsh
. Wem a fucking
fuckup
,” he wailed. “And tyx—onet pitsher blame the whole vyesh on me. Dwetto. The virus. Everything.” Then he began banging his head into the wall. I winced. And when it got louder and more violent, I put my hands on that knobby skull I knew so well, and the banging stopped. “Sedded anything,” he sobbed. “
Eechye
to go back. Poydeet six months ago. We hway zove Dominica.” He grabbed my arm. Started crying on my sleeve. “
Please
. Tor gwazee and be with you again. My shokh my fucking
soul
if I nung.”