Part 12 (1/2)
”Sushok,” he said, picking up.
”Hi, Mufka,” she said. ”What are you doing?”
”Walking down the street,” he said. ”What about you?”
”I had a bad dream about you, Mufka. Are you OK?”
”I'm OK. Yes. I think so. I'm going to defend my dissertation next week.”
”Really? Mufka, that's great! In Syracuse? Do you want me to come watch?”
”Oh, no. In Syracuse? No. That would be too sad.”
”Yes, that would be sad.”
”Sushok?” They hadn't talked in a while, and though there was still no one person as significant in their lives (or Mark's, anyway) , time too had done its work. So had the hurting of others, Mark had found. He was about to hurt Celeste, he feared, and this distanced him from Sasha, whom he'd hurt so long ago. ”Sushok, how are things up there?”
”I don't know,” she said. ”It's pretty here but everyone is stupid. All they talk about is dating. I don't want to do that.”
”No. No. Don't date.”
”And I don't want to go on the Internet.”
”Oh, no. G.o.d, no. No Internet.” The thought of his ex-wife on the Internet was truly horrible.
”So, there we are.”
Mark took a breath, preparing to say something that might offend his sensitive Sushok. ”Sushok,” he said. ”You need to marry a rich man.”
”Find me a rich man,” Sasha said very seriously, ”and I'll consider it.”
”Rich men aren't idiots,” Mark told her, half believing it. ”They'll find you themselves. You're a beautiful woman still, you know.” Which was true.
”Well,” said Sasha. ”We'll see.”
Mark was already at his building, and now he got off the phone. Would he really give her away? Really? The thought of them getting back together was blasphemy, it was socially taboo. You made a certain promise when you gathered all your friends and were married, and accepted their gifts, and congratulations, toasts and well wishes. When, in the course of time, you broke that promise, when you divorced and told your friends and gathered them, together or singly, to announce it, and accepted their condolences, their regrets, their well wishes-well, you soon found you'd made another promise, this time that you were apart. Now you had to stay apart.
His roommate Toby's door was still closed when Mark came in, meaning he had been home all this time, growing angry about global warming. Mark knocked anyway and Toby appeared.
”Jog?” said Mark.
”OK,” Toby answered wearily. He hadn't shaved.
”It's a nice day out,” said Mark.
”Nice day out for you.”
”What's that mean?”
”Nice day here means more drought in the Sahara and hurricanes of unprecedented force off the Gulf Coast.”
”Look. I've stopped leaving my reading light on at night.”
”I know. Thank you.”
Toby was right, of course. They were done for. But still they had to live. Mark said, ”I have to break up with Celeste tomorrow.”
”Why?”
”Because. I don't know. Because of Gwyn.”
”Well,” said Toby. ”There could be worse reasons.”
”Thank you. It would help if we could jog.”
”OK, OK,” said Toby, and retreated into his room to put on his jogging shorts. Mark did the same. ”When are you going up to Syracuse?” Toby called out from his room.
”Monday!” Mark called back. ”If I go!”
”Of course you'll go!” Toby appeared now in Mark's doorway. His jogging shorts were too long for him. ”You should stay there, too. When the floods come, Syracuse might survive. In fact it might become a coastal city. A Ma.r.s.eilles.”
”When are the floods?”
”Can't say. Could be thirty years, could be five. Some of these things, they're not predictable.” Mark threw Toby the house keys. Toby had a pocket for them.
”What about Brooklyn?”
”No more Brooklyn.”
”Parties?”
”No more parties. No more pretty girls. No Mensheviks, no jogging, no delicious Senegalese restaurant for breaking up with your older but more interesting and intelligent girlfriend.”
They walked out onto St. John's, two highly trained, highly educated white men. ”Of course, Canada is really your safest bet,” Toby went on. He used to be a very quiet guy, but the global climate had changed his personality. ”It's the Saudi Arabia of freshwater, plus Canadian citizens.h.i.+p will be very valuable when most of the U.S. is under water.”
”Sasha's in Canada,” said Mark.
”Sasha's a genius,” said Toby.
They used to jog on the concrete road that encircled the park. Now, in deference to their aging knees, they jogged straight through-up and back once, then up and back again on the soft Brooklyn gra.s.s.
He had to break up with Celeste. He said it to himself in the shower; he repeated it to himself as he spread out his notes for the dissertation presentation, and some beers, and turned on the Rangers first-round playoff game. Their best player, Jaromir Jagr, wore a 68 on his jersey in honor of the Czech uprising against the Soviets. Mark had always found this puzzling, like when football players thanked Jesus for touchdowns. He got a little drunk, watching the Rangers lose, and helplessly wrote both Celeste and Gwyn tender text messages before falling asleep on the couch.
But he had to break up with Celeste; he began catechizing himself again the next day as he rode down Cla.s.son on his bike. Break up with Celeste, he said. You are both unhappy. You are not, it turns out, such a great couple. Misanthropes should not marry. At least not each other. And your failure to end it now would be purely the product of fear-and some misguided loyalty to Syracuse Mark, poor lonely stupid Syracuse Mark. In his mind he defended his decision to the dissertation committee: This is a relations.h.i.+p of convenience. We cannot keep it up. We are desperate and we've tugged on this last straw. We don't love each other!
”You loved her before,” answered the dissertation committee.
”That was a long time ago. We were both different.”
”She's twenty-nine years old.”