Chapter 42 - The Light We Lost

That year Darren gave me a pair of Manolo Blahniks for my birthday. And we decided to move in together. We’d been a couple for a little over a year and a half, and both of our leases were up in the summer.

“Let’s find a new place,” he said. “One that’s not yours and not mine—one that will only ever be ours.”

I liked that idea. It had felt a little strange moving your clothes out of drawers so that mine could fit in, and you offering to take down a poster or two on the wall so I could put up some of mine. You had shared your space with me, and I didn’t want to take more than what was offered or change too much, even if I would’ve set the apartment up differently.

“What do you think we should look for?” Darren asked, grabbing a piece of paper and a pen off his coffee table. We were at his place. It seemed we were mostly at his place. Probably because it was bigger and easier to get to on the subway and had a particular dog bed that Annie loved that was too big to lug with us and too expensive to buy a duplicate of.

“Dishwasher,” I told him, as I put my socked feet up on the table. “Light. As much space as we can afford.”

He nodded, writing furiously. “I’m adding close to a subway stop, near good restaurants and shopping, and two bedrooms.”

“Two bedrooms?” I asked, my feet back on the floor.

“For guests,” he answered, not looking at me.

But my brain went to babies. Moving in with Darren didn’t feel like moving in with you. It felt more serious. More like we were making a real commitment to each other. More like the step before getting engaged.

We spent our weekends looking at apartments. Darren wouldn’t let us settle for something less than perfect. Our real estate agent was ready to kill us.

“I think this is it,” I finally said to Darren one Sunday in late April. It was prewar, put together in a seemingly haphazard way that involved hallways and alcoves and an archway into the kitchen. It was two flights up and had an exposed brick wall in the master bedroom. “I love it.”

He smiled at me. “And I love you.”

I swatted at him and laughed. “But do you like the apartment?” I asked.

“I do,” he said. “And not just because you do.”

“Good,” I said.

We signed the lease that day, and moved in together three weeks later. We took tons of pictures and I posted our smiles on Facebook. We went to Bed Bath & Beyond and bought anything that made us laugh—a cookie jar in the shape of a muffin, a teapot with a sculpted face, a shower curtain with a picture of a shower curtain that had a picture of a shower curtain on it ad infinitum.

“Mise en abyme,” I said.

Darren looked at me like I was speaking another language, which I guess I was.

“The Quaker Oats phenomenon,” I clarified. “An image with an image of itself on it, over and over again.”

“I didn’t know that had a name,” he said.

You would’ve known, but I didn’t think about you just then. I didn’t think about you when Darren paid for everything in our cart, or when we got home and played fetch with Annie. But I couldn’t help comparing Darren’s and my first night in our place with the one that you and I spent together in your studio that became ours that became mine.

Darren and I cooked dinner together—a fancy affair that involved simmering sauces and Cornish game hens and a bottle of champagne. Then we took Annie for a walk, watched a movie, and made love.

You and I had ordered in pizza and split a bottle of wine and had sex on every surface imaginable. The couch, the floor, the coffee table, and the bed of course. Then we woke up the next morning and did it all again.

But you and I didn’t wash each other’s hair in the shower, like Darren and I did that first morning. I don’t know why we never thought to do that, but it’s wonderful, washing the hair of someone you love, having him wash your hair back. It’s intimate. Maybe it connects to some part of the genetic material we share with apes; they always groom their mates.

And you and I didn’t leave notes for each other in the refrigerator either. Little Post-its stuck to various containers so that the milk read I love you and the orange juice said You’re beautiful and the bag of string cheese had I’m so happy and Me too next to the image of that Polly-O parrot.

I don’t remember how it started, but I do remember thinking: This is something Gabe would never ever do. He’d probably think this is moronic. I hope you don’t. I hope I’m wrong. Because I loved it.