Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

(…continued from Part 2…)

Elin disappeared through the portal known as “early graduation.” That she had the credits was no surprise; it was a given, really. But her sudden departure struck hard and deep. There had been no hints, no warning signs. We said no good-byes and threw no farewell soirée. She was just there on Monday. On Tuesday, gone.

It broke us. The remaining trio played on for the next four months, out of tune and all syncopation unintended, limping through to the end of term. Finally, a week after graduation, walking down the main street of our dusty hometown, the remnants flew apart.

It was a hot, dry day. Bright light fell from the sun with a weight, reflected from storefronts, and bounced up from the pavement, pressing in on my flesh from all sides. The air smelled of hot cement and unleaded exhaust. I squinted as I walked with Simon and Zander—to where, I cannot remember, only that we crossing “D” Street when Zander struck his blow.

“I’m going to New Orleans. To join a ballet company. I’m leaving next week.”

Zander was five-nine and stocky. His thighs, like Simon’s and my own, were well-muscled from our bicycle tours. He was about as far from the lithe, supple, corded men I had seen bounding across the ballet stage as a man could be. Simon and I exchanged looks of befuddlement; in a decade of friendship, Zander had never expressed the slightest interest in dance. We stood, the sun hammering down upon us as we stared at the man we thought we knew.

There may have been a discussion—I may even have participated—but all I remember is the harsh light and the silence that rang in my head.

A few days later, again without warning, Simon told me he was leaving to study at Ann Arbor. By month’s end I was alone, suddenly small and rudderless in a great, empty sea. The breakup of my heart was complete.

Ten years later, Zander resurfaced and we tried to renew our friendship.

“It was something that was mine.” He fidgeted as he sat in my tawdry, one-bedroom flat down along the canal. “It was completely mine, you know? I didn’t want to share it with anyone.” It was his father, all over again, I realized.

Poor Zander. Poor brilliant Zander. He did dance in New Orleans, and in San Francisco, too. He also built houses to fund his education when he finally returned to it, and at Berkeley he became Doctor Zander, going on to build machines no wider than a human hair and experiments that flew on the Mir space station. Yet, for all his amazing intellect, he could never see how much that one act of selfishness had hurt me. He never saw it and thus never changed his behavior. Perhaps it was incumbent on me to explain it to him, and perhaps in that way I failed him as well.

Simon’s path was more predictable. As the son of two psychologists, he had been guaranteed two things: a lifetime of therapy and a full college education at the university of his choice. Our last year, he and I spent mild winter afternoons sitting in the wan daylight, leafing through brochures from prospective schools. Simon viewed each one with a critical, objective eye, while I merely looked through them, dreaming. In the coming years, his achievements would outstrip both our dreams. Ann Arbor would be merely a stopping point on a journey that would lead him to the Sorbonne, back to Ann Arbor, and thence to New York and many exotic places in between.

But never would his path lead him back home.

The quartet, my family of trusted intimates, the people I trusted to always be there, had fallen apart like a wild rose in late summer: one moment whole, cogent, filled with fragrant beauty, then gone at a touch, broken away, scattered.

Understanding came with time. Zander and Simon, the longtime friends of my youth, eventually became comprehensible strangers. But Elin…did I ever know her?

Elin had disappeared so quickly, so thoroughly, it was staggering. Her mother, a gentle, soft-spoken woman, did not know where her daughter was. She promised to pass along my messages but I could hear the pain in her voice, the quiet futility, and I expected no response.

I sought any information I could find on my missing friend. Rumors said she was growing pot in the woods of Humboldt County, riding with bikers through the L.A. Basin, and deep in the Haight-Ashbury district amid counterculture activists. All true? All false? I never knew. After two years, without word or sighting, finding the thick, cloistered air of my hometown ever more stifling, I gave up and began to concentrate on my future instead of my past. I went forward and tried not to look back.

One grey morning, I took the M-car down toward the Avenues and SFSU where I was studying. I stepped off the mist-windowed car, but instead of crossing the street, I turned and looked up toward the end of the platform. I can’t tell you why—a chance gesture, the whiff of patchouli—but I looked up and saw Elin, turning from the platform and heading up the hill. It was just a glimpse, but it was her. Then, like an antelope into the tall grass, she disappeared in the throng of commuters.

I ran. I called her name.

She turned. We met.

We spoke.

When overwhelmed by events, I forget details and remember only sensations: the sound of blood in my ears, the flush of my cheeks against the cold morning air. I do not recall what we said to one another—the words are gone—but I remember the pale blue of her sweater, the iron lid of the sky, the summer wheat of her hair, and the crisp scent of dark green pines that held their boughs over our heads. I remember, too, the sadness in her eyes and the question that pounded in my head: why why why?

It was not a reunion. It was the chance meeting of strangers who shared a bit of history.

That she did not enjoy the encounter was plain from her frown and furrowed brow. That she wanted to be on her way was obvious from the way she slowly stepped toward the stairs. I soon felt like some sort of stalker or worse, like a cat toying with a captured bird. I had no idea why she might have felt that way, had no idea what I did to deserve such treatment, but to prolong it was agony for us both, so I raised my hand, wished her well, and watched her melt away into the crowd.

Fifteen years later, when I told Alice I hadn’t spoken to Elin since she walked out of our lives, it wasn’t the whole truth, but that memory was still so bitter, still so incomprehensible, that I couldn’t bear to mention it.

Learning that Elin was now living in Seattle brought some comfort. That we had both gravitated to the same town, so unlikely a place considering our separate paths, seemed to prove that we had, indeed, been kindred spirits and that perhaps some vestige of that connection remained.

Sir John pointed at me as I stood there dumbly holding the phone. He mimed speaking into the mouthpiece.

“Um, where?” My voice was gruff and I apologized. “Where does she practice? What’s the name of her firm?”

“I don’t know. I called the local bar association but they don’t have her listed. No one by Abington, at least.” She hesitated. “I heard she got married.”

“And took her husband’s name?” For some reason, that seemed the least likely thing of all.

“I guess she finally settled down.”

I looked at Sir John and mouthed Should I?

He shrugged unhelpfully. It was up to me.

“Do you know why? I mean, why she…why she fell out of sight like that?”

Alice sighed. “No.”

“Nils didn’t say anything about it?”

“No.” Her voice was stern, unemotional. The Alice I knew was a strong soul who didn’t like to show her feelings. She was a big heart with a tough skin, but I could tell there was something she wasn’t saying.

“You’ve been looking for her.”

“Yeah. On and off. Whenever I had the time.”

“Why?”

She paused. “I don’t really know.”

We left the topic, chatted for a few minutes more, and then Alice rang off with a parcel-load of good wishes from me to all those she knew back home. But the damage had been done. The hounds of my youth had scented their quarry and gave voice.

The hunt was joined once more.

Sir John grumbled when I asked for his help

“It’s all your doing,” I told him. “I wouldn’t have even picked it up but for you and your…glare.”

He folded the international news section with deliberate precision, put it down on the table, and stared at me. Then he picked up the arts section, sat back, and opened it up. Tonight he would be sitting by the fire. Tomorrow would be soon enough.

He was right. I went back to my chair and picked up my book.

Then my houseguest posed a question, echoing my question to Alice: What compelled me to seek this woman?

It was something I’d never asked myself, but it deserved an answer. “I knew that woman for years. I loved her. I thought the best of her. You say that there is nothing so remarkable as friendship. I think that it’s a wonder it exists at all.”

He challenged me, pointing out that my response was not an answer.

I considered my words. “I suppose I want to know why my friendship was so cheaply laid aside. I want to know if I was naïve, or just blind.”

That seemed to satisfy him, as he asked for another brandy and went back to his paper to read reviews of the latest West End shows.

(…concluded in Part 4…)