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The Pivot
by Rachel Hochhauser Nigel and I went to meet his friends for drinks. Summer was nearly over, and as we walked toward the restaurant through the setting light, the air was ripe with the smell of the season’s trash. We’d only been dating a few months, and I had not yet met these friends. An Argentinean man and his live-in girlfriend. They’d been together for nine years, Nigel had explained, though they were unmarried. He and I had been dating for a few months. During this time, I’d grown enthralled by the world of couples. By the dinners — so many dinners — that opened a new realm of people to me. Not just Nigel’s friends and colleagues and cousins, but people from my own life, people that had emerged from bland friendships or vague associations, scurrying through the city, eager to make reservations. I enjoyed these get-togethers greatly. I liked to deflect questions to Nigel to hear how he would answer. The perfected cadence of How We Met. The reassuring punch lines. The reassurance of repitition. I learned about us this way — and I learned about Nigel. As we walked, time felt invaluable and unending: summer taking its leave, the seminal promise of fall. I only wanted more of it, and more of him, to know all that I could. I looked forward to the evening, to presenting ourselves over the cocktails, and to the precious and revelatory bits of information that these conversations could unearth. When we turned the corner, the other couple was already waiting for us out front. “You,” the Argentine said, taking my hand and kissing each of my cheeks, quick and practiced, “Nice to meet you.” He was tanned — the sort who might wear white pants. His wisp of a girlfriend introduced herself, and the four of us — an Argentine, a Brit, a wisp, and myself — went inside to find a table. I liked Nigel, or initially liked him, because of his Englishness. Which is not to say I like the English so much as it is that I liked, previously, one particular Englishman. People are attracted to familiarity. We carry forward the bits and pieces of the people who have touched us. So, it was the Englishness that first piqued my interest, and later Nigel took care of the rest — in the end the two men were nothing alike. Nigel delivered upon expectations. “All of England,” he once told me, through his angled teeth, “has a drinking problem.” The four of us ordered our drinks. We talked over one another, eager to show our friendliness. We discussed employment, past and planned vacations, restaurants that had recently opened. We made our way into How We’d Met, and Nigel said his usual piece about spotting me across a room. A blue dress and a spilled drink. A first date and an unreturned phonecall. It went back to that room, he said. That dress. The Argentine nodded in my direction. “You are very, very beautiful.” I glanced quickly at his girlfriend to see if she would resent the compliment, but she was distracted, finishing her drink. The verys made it less believable. “Thank you,” Nigel said, putting a hand over my knee and pressing. I had opened my mouth to say the same. “Why is it,” I asked him, “that you get to say thank you when he says that to me?” The Argentine laughed. “It is a compliment to both of you.” Nigel’s hand stayed on my knee. I was annoyed, but part of me enjoyed being pinned. The appreciation. I’d wear the blue dress again at one of our anniversaries, as a surprise. “No, but really,” the Argentine continued. He said that often, the but really’s and the come on guys had peppered our conversation, making everything both more serious and less meaningful than it should have been. “Much prettier than the others.” He stopped, then corrected himself: “the past girls.” I looked over at Nigel, without meaning to. I understood then that what was undiscovered could become sinister, that I could fret and worry about what I did not know, and that things withheld or yet disclosed might be riddled with potential hurt. The Argentine’s girlfriend set her drink on the table, leaving a pale round of cucumber at the bottom of the glass. I admired her discipline. I never left my garnishes. I liked to nibble the orange slice to the pith, to gnaw the olive off the toothpick until there was only wood in my mouth, to plough through the best bits of something until there was little left to cherish. |
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