Chapter 4

The late afternoon passes in a pleasant sequence of talking, laughing, eating, and drinking. When Mr. Benning comes home from the university, he joins us in the living room for a pre-dinner Scotch and a chat. Unlike his wife, he has not changed one bit since I saw him last—a reed-thin, kind-eyed man whose hair was graying well before his daughter graduated high school. He has an upper-crust English accent that makes everything he says sound sophisticated. His grey beard is neatly trimmed, and his wire-framed glasses make him look every inch the college professor even without the impeccable clothing. Berkeley may be the most liberal campus in the country, but Nicole's dad does not believe in sandals or blue jeans. He is wearing a tie and button-down shirt underneath a cardigan, tan-colored suit pants that look like they've been tailored to measure, and spotless brown Oxfords.

We move into the dining room for dinner. Nicole's mom has put together a rice and peanut butter chicken curry with tofu strips taking the place of the genuine bird. I'm not particularly hungry after the one-hour lunch we had up at the Lotus, but the dish is fantastic, and Mrs. Benning smiles her approval as I help myself to seconds. We uncork the Riesling bottle I brought with me, and a glass of it already serves to make my head pleasantly fuzzy. I'm not a big drinker, and my tolerance for alcohol is low when it comes in a wine bottle. We chat over dinner, both of Nicole's parents expressing polite interest in my life story after leaving Berkeley, and we finish off the curry dish and the wine bottle at about the same time.

"Well," Mr. Benning says as we clean off the dinner table, "I guess you two can take it from here. We're going to leave you to your reunion."

"Hot date tonight?" Nicole asks her dad.

"It's Saturday," he replies. "We've had tickets for Puccini for three weeks now. As I am sure you don't want to accompany two fuddy-duddies to see Turandot, I trust you won't be too heartbroken if your mother and I follow our original schedule." He pronounces the last word the English way, shed-yool.

"Not at all," Nicole says. "We'll just look at old yearbooks and get massively drunk."

"Splendid," Mr. Benning smiles. "Just be sure to stay away from my two hundred dollar single malt, if you would."

Nicole's parents excuse themselves, and Nicole and I migrate back into the living room. At Nicole's insistence, I open the bottle of Shiraz as well, and we settle down on the couch again. A little while into our conversation, Mrs. Benning sticks her head into the living room.

"We're leaving. Call us on your dad's cell phone if you need to. You two have a nice evening."

"You too, mom," Nicole replies. "Have fun listening to people singing in Italian."

Mrs. Benning makes a face at Nicole before disappearing in the hallway, but it's an affectionate grimace.

"You're an artsy type," I say. "I would have figured you're actually into people singing in Italian."

"I love opera," Nicole says with conviction. "And theater. And musicals. Anything that involves people dancing, or singing, or acting, or everything put together." She smiles as she watches her father giving us a casual wave as he passes the living room on his way to the front door. "I'm just egging her, that's all. They go out together all the time, like they're in their Twenties again. Mom says that my moving out of the house has done wonders for their social life. Apparently, I was just a millstone around their necks for eighteen years or something."

"So what kind of artsy stuff do you do for a living in New York?"

"Waiting tables," she says with a smirk, and I laugh.

"Seriously. The dancing doesn't pay the bills—well, not entirely anyway. I work as a waitress when I have to, but most of the time I can hold my head over water just by giving Yoga lessons on the side. There's a Yoga studio near where I live, and they hired me as a part-time instructor. I teach beginner's Yoga twice a week, and I give private lessons as well."

"Still, " I say. "I had an interview with a company in Manhattan a while back, and their offer was good enough that I actually started apartment shopping. Talk about sticker shock. Fifteen hundred a month for a one-room studio?"

"That's actually not bad for Manhattan," Nicole nods. "You should have taken it. What neighborhood was it in?"

"Bowery."

"Hey, that's where I live now. We could have been neighbors and never even known it."

It occurs to me that Nicole is probably more on the money than she knows. We live completely diverging lifestyles. I spend most of my free time in my apartment; she spends most of hers out and about. I hang out with fellow geeks; she probably socializes with her performing arts crowd. I work days; she works nights. We wouldn't even have bumped into each other at the grocery store, since she prefers fresh organic food, and my weekday diet mostly comes in frozen form. In a beehive like New York City, two people can live full lives within a quarter mile of each other and never even cross paths once.

"It would have been a short residence," I say. "I decided to stay in Boston after all. That was in August of 2001. The place where I interviewed was located in the World Trade Center, North Tower, seventy-eighth floor. I loved the location. They even would have given me a shared window office."

Nicole looks at me open-mouthed, clearly shocked.

"Yeah, I know," I say. "Imagine what went through my mind a month later."

"Did you ever, you know... get back in touch with the people you interviewed with? I mean, after?"

I shake my head. "I found that I didn't really care to know whether they made it out or not."

"Holy shit," Nicole says, turning her wine glass in her hands. "That will certainly put life in perspective for you."

"I wish I could say it did," I reply and take a big sip of my own wine. "I was a bit shaken for a few weeks, but I didn't really do anything life-altering. Same old slacker routines. Pathetic, huh?"

She looks at me for a moment as if she's trying to decide on an answer, and then shakes her head.

"Not really. I just told you this afternoon that I dropped out of college and pissed away my savings on a trip to Europe. How smart is that?"

"Well, yeah, but you do what you want now, don't you?"

"I found something I like even better than slacking off, that's all. You just need to do the same. Shit, it's not like you're fifty or something. Go quit your job and do some fun stuff, and then you can figure out what yanks your crank."

"If only it was that simple," I smirk.

"It really is that simple," she says. "Trust me. Just close your eyes and jump. The hardest part is letting go of what you know just because you're afraid that whatever comes next might suck worse."

Nicole studies my face with a disarmingly sincere expression, and I have to resist the impulse to reach out and run my hand through her hair. Instead, my fingers seek refuge with my wine glass once again, and I take another sip.

"Try out something new," she says. "Not just work, I mean. Go and hang out with some amateur theatre group. I'm sure they have those in Boston, too. Try some acting, or singing, or dancing."

"Sure thing," I laugh. "I don't have an artistic bone in my body."

"Bullshit," Nicole says. "Everybody does. You spend some time with the most boring person you know, they'll surprise the hell out of you sooner or later with something they can do well. It might be something totally dorky, or trivial, like being able to make little animals out of pipe cleaners or blowing that stupid Friends theme song on a comb, but I guarantee you that everyone has a creative side. We used to do a dance performance last year where we pulled people out of the audience and had them participate, and you'd be amazed how well some of these people got into the act."

"The closest I've ever come to public performance is reciting Shakespeare in the car on the way to work," I say.

Nicole leans back on the couch and sets down her wine glass.

"Let's hear some. I've always admired people who can keep a hundred lines of Elizabethan dialogue in their heads."

Under normal circumstances, I would dig my heels in and categorically refuse such a request, but I am three glasses of wine in the bag, and the whole day has put me in a strange mood. Besides, I can hardly think of a better audience for a sonnet at this moment.

"Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force;
Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill;
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
But these particulars are not my measure;
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost,
Of more delight than hawks or horses be;
And having thee, of all men's pride I boast:
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
All this away, and me most wretched make."

Nicole smiles with delight and claps her hands softly as I finish with a little bow.

"See? Now that was good. That was hot. You know how many girls would rip their clothes off if a guy recited something like that to them without reading it off a book?"

"Ah, I was just doing a bad Patrick Stewart impression."

"Baloney. You're a mushy romantic, Frank. You can recite Shakespeare sonnets. See what I mean about artistic skill?"

"I suppose you have somewhat of a point," I say.

"Damn skippy." She takes the wine bottle from the coffee table and refills both our glasses to the brim.

"What do you say we go upstairs, look at some old yearbooks, and make fun of Eighties haircuts?"

"Sounds good to me," I reply, and seize my wine glass.

The Benning house has three levels. The living and dining rooms make up most of the first floor, while the master bath and bedroom are on the second floor. Nicole's old room is on a separate two-floor room above her parents' bedroom, a cozy little den nestled into the peak of the roof. We take our almost-finished bottle of wine, and two more from Mr. Benning's wine rack for good measure, and make our way up the narrow staircase.

Her room has been redecorated since the last time I saw it. The pastel-colored furniture I remember has been replaced with contemporary designs, light wood and brushed stainless steel. There are no more Duran Duran or George Michael posters on the wall; instead, it is painted in a pleasant shade of light yellow. For all its Ethan Allen-furnished appeal, the room no longer looks like someone lives here. The only sign of disorder is a large purple nylon travel bag that is sitting half-opened on the floor, and a small pile of clothes piled up next to it. Nicole pushes the travel bag out of the way with her foot as we enter the room, and pulls a small stack of books off a bookshelf before sitting down on the bed. I sit down next to her, careful not to spill any wine on the cream-colored comforter.

We go through our old yearbooks, starting with the senior year of 1989 ("nice perm!"), and then tracking our way back chronologically all the way to our first appearances as freshmen in the 1986 yearbook. Now that I have some visual references, I recognize many of the names again, but I have to admit to myself that I don't really care one bit what became of most of them.

We talk and laugh and talk some more, and I don't even realize how much time has passed until I reach for my wine glass at some point and realize that there are three empty wine bottles on the floor of the bedroom. My head is swimming just a little, but I'm warm and comfortable. I feel better than I have in weeks, even though I know that I get mean hangovers from wine.

The sun has long since set beyond the skyline of downtown San Francisco in the distance. I check my watch, and it's ten thirty at night.

"Well," I say. "I should try and make my way down to the hotel while I can still see straight."

Nicole stretches out on the bed and looks at me with a sleepy smile on her face.

"You can stay here, you know."

She pats the comforter next to her, and I feel a little flush of warmth in the center of my stomach that does not come from the wine.

Who am I to decline this invitation?

After a brief moment of contemplation, I settle down next to her, and she reaches over to the night stand and turns the light off. Then she kicks off her shoes and wiggles underneath the comforter, jeans and all. I only hesitate for a moment before following suit. The comforter smells freshly laundered. I roll on my right side to face Nicole, and even in the sudden darkness I can see her looking at me expectantly.

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