Sometimes Always

"I can't do this anymore."

"Hold on." He set the phone on the desk and shut the office door.

"What are you talking about?" he said.

"You know, Charlie. Little emails every day. Going out a couple nights every week. We're stuck."

"But I--"

"You're stuck. You're never going to do anything."

"What--let me come up there, Rachel. Let me take you out to lunch."

"No."

"Why don't you ever let me do anything?" he said. Tenseness crept into his stomach. That feeling again.

"What are you going to do? You never do anything. I can't do this anymore." Her voice was small. He couldn't hear her.

"I hate talking when I can't see you," he said.

"I can't do this anymore," she said. Then she hung up.

Voices drifted by his office. Someone peered in the narrow window beside the door, then walked away.

The phone would ring again in an hour, he told himself. Things would be fine. He pulled up to his gray computer and tried to work. The cursor arrow floated. Text scrolled down the screen.

He thought about going across the street to the strip mall to pick up lunch. Get out of the office. He pictured himself shuffling over to the mediocre sub shop. Or the convenience store if he forced himself to settle for a yogurt.

Then he thought about taking a nap, and immediately felt tired. Felt the comfort call of sleep. His apartment was only 10 minutes away--8 if he hit all the lights. So when it neared lunchtime and the morning tiredness still lingered, it was hard not to think about a nap. With a nap so easy to take, and Rachel calling like that, the morning tiredness lingered. He had come to work that morning determined to work through lunch. No nap.

Five minutes later he was driving down the parking garage ramp. He slipped his white pass-card in the silver box and the striped arm rose. You're going home to nap, he thought. That's good.

The intersection at the highway junction was backed up with traffic. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes today. He turned on the radio. They were advertising for "Classics on the Common." Summer was a month away. Soon there would be old movies on the city common on Friday nights. Vertigo was the first one this year.

On their third date, he'd taken her to Casablanca. She had never seen it before.

"Are you sure it's not sappy?" she'd asked, raising one red eyebrow high and sharp. That was one of the things she could do.

"Yes, I'm sure. Bogart's completely cynical for the first two-thirds. The flashback scenes in Paris are a little sappy--you know, they're driving around with goofy smiles while stock scenery rolls in the background. But that's only for a few minutes."

So they went, and she loved it. Afterwards they sat on the small back deck of her apartment drinking beer. She smoked her clove cigarettes and sent ashes spinning down on her landlord's deck below.

"So what kind of guy are you?" she asked. "Humphrey Bogart or that Victor Laszlo."

"Who am I?" He asked with a laugh "Or who do I wish I was?"

She smiled. "Careful Charlie," she said. "Never a quick answer." It was the first time she called him that.

He sipped his beer and looked out at the fluorescent sunset provided by the city pollution.

"Nice night," he said.

"Know what?"

"What?"

"I'm falling in love with you."

She said things like that. Just said them.

"A romantic movie and a few beers, and tough girl turns sappy," Charlie said.

"Scared."

"It just seems foolish. I'm only a prematurely balding guy with questionable prospects who's more than happy to drink your beer."

"And a wonderful dancer."

He turned off the radio and pulled up on the car in front of him, waiting for the light to turn green. Straight across the intersection. Then straight some more. Home in a few minutes. Then nap. He'd open the window over his bed and let the spring air drift in.

But when he got up to the intersection, he didn't go straight through. He turned right without signaling. The car behind him honked. He drove up onto the highway that would take him to her office. He rested his arm on the open window, and wind rushed into the car. You're going to see her, he thought. That's good.

He drove in the second lane, not pressing down the passing lane as usual. This is that scene in the movies where the guy suddenly decides to follow the girl and hops on a plane or a train or speeds away in his car, he thought. I'm in that scene. I should be overcome with passion and desperation. Cars swam around him, passing on the left, slowing on the right. In 15 minutes he reached his exit. Her exit. The exit.

There was no sweeping romantic music as he moved along the side streets that led to her office. School children bunched on a corner and he stopped for them. He tapped on the steering wheel while they crossed. "What's going on with you?" she would have asked. "Did you swallow a valium before you got in the car?"

He pulled down a street lined with office parks and began to rub his stomach with one hand. There it was again. It was never very far. What am I going to say? What is she going to say? He reached the parking lot for her office. He drove in and slid into a space.

When he walked into the reception area it was almost empty. White plastic letters pinned on a small black sign spelled out "Welcome to GTC, Inc." There was more black space below where additional white letters could spell other messages, but today it was blank.

A young blond man in a new blue suit sat on an armchair opposite the receptionist's desk. He was filling out a form and sweating a bit. A few years younger than me, Charlie thought. Just out of college. I remember those carefree days. Did I really just think that?

"Can I help you?" The receptionist had glinting black hair and wore a lot of eye-makeup.

"I'm here to see Rachel. Rachel Leary."

"And your name is?"

Charlie paused. "Victor Laszlo," he said.

The receptionist picked up the phone. "Rachel, there's a Victor Laszlo here to see you. Yes. I think so. Okay."

Moments later Rachel appeared at the top of the stairs wearing a tense smile. "What?--oh." Charlie looked up at her. Her smile relaxed and resigned.

She came down and they went outside. They walked along the asphalt parking lot around the corner of the building. Through what was left of some woods Charlie could see the white concrete and black glass of the building next door. Rachel kept looking at him, shaking her head and smirking.

"Victor Laszlo. I thought Stephanie must have rented Casablanca last night. Think you're funny?"

"If you knew it was me, you might have found a budget meeting to go to."

"Charlie, sometimes you don't know anything." She cocked her head. "I prefer you to a budget meeting."

"Sometimes I wonder."

"Well . . . over here." At the back of her building was a small grassy area with a brown picnic table. She waved her hand, "The 'park' in 'office park.'"

"Breathtaking," he said. "It's a national park, I assume."

She nodded. "I'm afraid so."

They sat across from each other. She lit a clove cigarette. Sweet smoke curled over the picnic table. He smiled at her.

"I don't know, Charlie. It's so easy. You come down here and we laugh and in a little while you'll go back to work. It's too easy. Nothing will change."

"Something needs to change?"

"Don't you think so? Me, you, us. It has to change some way."

"Just for the sake of it."

"No. Maybe."

She looked off toward a rise where the asphalt narrowed to a single lane leading around the building. Two middle-aged women were walking down the drive together. A late morning break. Gossip and nods. A few circles then back to cubes.

Charlie rubbed his stomach with an absent hand.

"So?"

"So."

"This is up to me, Charlie? Jump in anytime."

"I'm trying. What would Victor Laszlo say?"

She laughed. "He'd start singing 'La Marseillaise' or some nonsense. But don't think you could get away that easily."

She cocked her eyebrow. Not completely in jest.

"Cornered," he said. "Like Peter Lorre when the police raided Rick's place."

"I don't think so. I can never seem to corner you."

"You want to?"

She shrugged and flicked her cigarette. "Not sure. Maybe because it's so difficult."

"I wish it wasn't."

"You act like it's out of your hands."

He nodded. "Fate," he murmured with a French accent. "Our hands are inextricably tied--"

"Cut it," she said.

He stared at her. She smoked her cigarette and waited. She sits like a queen on her regal picnic bench, he thought. Before her the humble fool juggles his lines, grasping for substance. Talk, Charlie. Words, Charlie. I'm going to explode. She'll be covered by debris. Sweep it into a pile, wait for it to say something.

He opened his mouth to talk but stopped. He didn't know what to say and might yell from frustration. He should be able to explain it all, decide it all, think for the both of them now. Whisk her away from this crazy world or send her away on a gray propeller plane. But he wasn't Humphrey Bogart, or even Victor Laszlo. He was just like most men, only more so.

He started to say it, but the two women were walking close by. She turned her head to smile and wave at them. The breeze blew and a strand of red hair formed a soft S-shape along her temple. Charlie's throat caught and his stomach tingled. Then the breeze dropped, the strand flattened, and she was just sitting across from him on a picnic bench in a parking lot. They were silent.

Charlie thought about the night after Casablanca. They sat on the balcony and talked and drank her beer until it was dark. He remembered the night sky. Remembered how it struck him that it was not a painted picture. Stars shone and died and more stars shone and died, and if you sat and stared long enough, the last one would die and everything would be black. The end. Or, maybe as long as you kept staring new stars kept sputtering and blinking on.

"Charlie. Do you ever think always?"

He looked at her. It wasn't an accusation.

"Sometimes."

She smiled a little. "Me, too." They sat for a few more minutes. A few cars rolled into the lot.

She stood up. "Time to go." They started walking. He nudged her in the shoulder and she nudged back.

"Don't mind me, Charlie. I don't know what I'm doing most of the time."

"Women."

"Careful."

He walked her back to the reception area door. A few co-workers emerged, going out for lunch, and she nodded at them.

He said in a public voice, "Okay, you win. I'll pick up dinner. Should be around eight."

She cocked her eyebrow and smirked. "Right. Eight o'clock."

She went inside and he walked back to his car. As he pulled out of the parking lot, he rolled down the windows. With his right hand he rubbed his stomach. Wind filled the car. He didn't need to nap.

Copyright © 2002 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
All rights reserved. Comments. Last modified Wed, Dec 18, 2002.