Chapter 9: The Last Days

In the middle of October, Nora started to do what is now called “ghosting.” First, she didn’t show up at The Salient office; then she stopped taking my phone calls. I looked around campus for her, but I didn’t see her.

After more than ten days of this, by coincidence I saw her being driven up Convent Avenue by some guy in a Triumph Stag convertible. It stopped near 135th Street so that she could get out. The top was up, so the guy didn’t notice me. I saw enough of him to notice that he was older, maybe about twenty-eight.

When Nora saw me she shook her head. Then she put a finger to her mouth to make the “shushing” gesture. I wasn’t supposed to talk to her at that point. Then she just left and walked down Convent Avenue.

Nora called me the next day and told me to meet her outside Finley. I wondered why it wouldn’t be inside the building.

I was standing there when she came up. Her clothes were what would now be called “business casual.” These included a blazer and nice pair of trousers.

She didn’t say anything, and I grasped that her tactic was to talk to me standing up, not for us to be more comfortable sitting down.

A lot of things were going through my mind. Who is this guy and what does he have that I don’t? (Obviously it was more money, a car, and a good job.) You’ve betrayed me. We said we loved each other. Then I was back to that other guy again. I see, now you don’t have to worry anymore about part-time hooking or Burger King or your upcoming useless B.A. in history.

All I said was, “You could have warned me, or at least called me in the last week.”

She put her hands up, “Look, Paul, take my advice; just let go of it.”

“How can I do that? I’m really hurting.”

“I know that, but you’ll get over it.”

I asked her, “Are you quitting the paper?”

“No, I’m going back.”

“How am I going to stand having you around there?”

“You’ll deal with it. I mean, we can still be polite and say hello to each other.”

I was struck by how calm and collected she was. She continued, “I’m not going to be talking about this anymore. In a moment, I’m going to turn around, and that’s the end of it.”

I almost didn’t believe her. But then she did turn and leave. Her ass swayed inside her tight gray pants.

The whole thing hadn’t really hit me yet. That’s great, it’s only been, what? Maybe fourteen or fifteen weeks? My thoughts went to sex. I’m back to where I was last semester. How am I going to get laid now? I know, with my own two hands, as before.

I actually looked up at the sky. Lord, how could you do this to me? She was pretty weird but in other ways, she was the most amazing girlfriend I could imagine. She gave me almost everything sexual I had ever wanted. She even came equipped with her own convertible. I had waited my whole life for this. (At nineteen one has a different sense of time.)

It wasn’t just the sex; it was the first time my heart had been broken, and I didn’t know how to deal with it.

Perhaps one of the worst aspects of it was that she was coming back to the paper. I’d be seeing around all of the time. But it might have been more merciful if she wasn’t there and she had just stayed disappeared. And who had invited her to join in the first place? It was me of course. I thought I was being clever but now I felt like an idiot.

She did attend the next staff meeting. Everyone noticed that we weren’t sitting together. Lili smirked at us; writer Bobby was appraising her even more intently. Man, don’t bother; you can’t compete either.