by Julian Gallo
The radiator hisses and pops. It has a certain rhythm to it, like an atonal composition from an avant-garde composer. Riccardo taps his fingers on the top of the dresser, trying to follow it as he pours two small glasses of raki. He hands Marie one, then sits on the bed next to her.
‘Are you okay?,’ he asks.
Marie sips the raki and winces. ‘It’s strong.’
‘It’s what they drink here.’
Riccardo throws back the remainder of his drink and leans against the headboard. Marie doesn’t want the rest of her drink and places the glass on the floor beside the bed.
‘We’re snowed in, Ric. It’s kind of a fucked up situation.’
‘I know.’
The snowstorm came on suddenly. First, just a few flurries, then, seemingly out of nowhere, a full-on blizzard. They had already crossed the Galata Bridge and up through Karaköy, the wind whipping into their faces. The snow stuck to the cobblestones, making it increasingly difficult to walk, obscuring their view of the street vendors and the traffic stuck along the thoroughfare.
‘We’ll be lucky if we get out of here before Monday,’ Riccardo says.
Marie doesn’t say anything.
‘Are you going to finish your drink?’
Marie picks up the glass from the floor and hands it to him. Riccardo throws it back in one gulp. It burns his throat going down.
‘We might as well make the best of it,’ he says. ‘It has to stop sometime.’
‘It’s fucking snowing, Ric. I didn’t think it snowed here.’
‘It can.’
Riccardo gets out of bed and looks out the window. It’s a heavy snow, rapidly accumulating along the avenue. There are less people now, and the occasional red tram pushes through the blanket of white. Somewhere downstairs, someone is listening to an old Turkish song. It clashes with the atonal rhythm of the radiator.
He turns away from the window and pours himself another shot of raki. ‘I assume you don’t want any,’ he says.
‘No thanks. I don’t know how you can drink that shit.’
‘When in Rome…’, he says, then throws back another shot.
‘We should have gone to Rome,’ Marie says. ‘Do you think it’s snowing there?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
They had come to Istanbul on a whim. They wanted to get away from New York. Marie’s therapist thought a change of scenery would do her some good. It’s supposed to be a short excursion. Just a week. Riccardo assured her Istanbul was good this time of year. She should have known better than to listen to him. He likes to talk a lot.
Marie climbs out of bed and looks out the window. God, she hates the snow, hates winter. She had no idea it would be as cold as New York. It was supposed to be a Mediterranean climate. That’s what Riccardo told her. Her Cuban blood can’t handle the cold, the snow, the biting winds. They could have stayed in New York for that. Only a few people are navigating the mainly pedestrian street below. However, the street vendor is undeterred, selling his simit to anyone who wants it.
‘What would happen if you died here?’, Marie asks.
‘What kind of question is that?’
‘You’d be in a city you don’t know. No one knows who you are. You go out for some limit then bang! — that’s it.’
‘Why do you always think things like this?’
‘My therapist sometimes asks the same thing.’
She turns away from the window and returns to the bed. Riccardo has another shot of raki in his hand.
‘Well, we’ve been through a lot worse than this,’ she says.
‘It’s not so bad. The snow will stop, and we’ll do what we came to do.’
‘We’ve been through a lot together, haven’t we?’
‘We sure have.’
‘We’re cosmically tethered.’
‘I’m the one drinking here.’
Marie makes a face, then reaches for her pocketbook.
‘Do they allow you to smoke here?’, she asks.
‘Probably not.’
‘Fuck ‘em,’ she says, lighting a cigarette. ‘They can’t expect anyone to go outside in that mess just to smoke a cigarette.’
She gets out of bed and opens the window, leans on the windowsill, dangles the cigarette out. God, it’s cold. The wind whips icy pellets into her face. She watches the street vendor selling simit. He doesn’t seem to care about the weather. Why can’t she adopt a similar attitude? She looks back at Riccardo, who is now scrolling through his cellphone, laughing at those stupid videos he likes to watch. She’s having second thoughts now — not only about the trip but about Riccardo himself. Can she spend the rest of her life with a guy like this? Perhaps, what she’s been thinking as of late, needs to be reexamined. She takes one last drag from the cigarette and flicks it out the window. She watches it vanish in the fallen snow.
‘Did I ever tell you how much I hate the fucking snow?’, she says, closing the window. ‘I don’t know how people can live in a climate like this.’
‘So Alaska is not on your bucket list.’
She climbs back into bed and picks up her cellphone. They sit side by side, silently, each lost in their own virtual worlds. Riccardo laughs over the videos he’s watching. She is reading texts from other potential suitors. There’s something pleasing about all the attention she gets from men. She knows she can have any one of them. Her Mona Lisa smile is a testament to that. She tries, sometimes, but they’re always a disappointment. Her therapists suggested that it’s merely a defense mechanism whenever she begins feeling too emotionally attached. She pushed back at first, but has since given it serious thought. She glances over at Riccardo, who has been by her side for years, has been through nearly everything with her. No one knows her as well as he does. He’s her best friend. She doesn’t have to pretend with him. She can be herself and he accepts it, without question, without judgment. It wouldn’t be the first time she entertained thoughts about them. Then Riccardo laughs at another dumb video — that uproarious laugh which always seems exaggerated, affected, and just like that, dismisses the idea.
Riccardo puts down his phone and pours another shot of raki.
‘Are you sure you don’t want any?’
‘How many shots have you had?’
He throws back the shot. ‘I lost count.’
Riccardo walks over to the window and looks down at the accumulating snow. It’s worse than before.
‘Well, since we’re stuck here for the time being, what do you want to do? We could go to the café downstairs for something to eat. It might make us feel less trapped.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ she says as she continues to scroll through her text messages. ‘Maybe in a little while.’
He watches her, noting that Mona Lisa smile. Whenever he sees it, he knows she’s reading a text from one of her many suitors. She isn’t aware she’s doing it. It used to bother him. It no longer does. Time has taken care of that. He knows she’ll eventually choose one of them, then fly off into one of her temporary happy times, until it no longer is. Then she’ll turn to him for comfort and validation. He’ll be there for her, of course. He can’t help loving her, but the veneer has long since withered away. The blinders came off.
With nothing else to do, Riccardo retrieves his notebook from his backpack and sits back on the bed. He rests the notebook on his knees and begins writing.
‘You’re working on that story again?’
‘No, just writing,’ he says. ‘Whatever comes. Random thoughts. A sort of automatic writing. Sometimes something can sprout from it. Many of my stories have.’
He writes, she continues to scroll. The radiator continues to compete with the Turkish song, which plays repeatedly.
The truth is, Riccardo isn’t writing random thoughts. He’s writing about Marie, but she will never see it. He doesn’t allow her to read his rough ideas, or his journal entries. Only the finished product. None of his stories are about her, at least not on the surface. He’s learned to hide his feelings within the subtext of the story, knowing she’s not adept at teasing it out. His stories are a history of hurt feelings and crushed expectations, unrequited love and emotional confusion. If anything came out of his friendship with Marie, it was the emotional truth to his stories. He’s feeling a little buzzed now from all the raki. He knows he’s probably reached his limit, yet he climbs off the bed to pour himself another shot. He keeps the notebook with him. He knows Marie will want to steal a glimpse. He pours another shot and looks at her, still scrolling, same Mona Lisa smile. Who is it this time, he wonders? He throws back the shot. It helps quell the emotions beginning to well up inside him. In college, they once spent an entire evening talking in the dorm stairwell. It was a snowy day like this one. She’d been crying. Some idiot had broken her heart. One of the many who had. Another of her extremely bad choices. He didn’t know what to say to her that hadn’t been said a thousand times before, so he just listened. Sometimes that’s all one has to do. She kissed him. Taken aback, he initially pushed her away but ultimately he reciprocated. That’s all it was. They never again brought it up. That’s when the seed was planted. He now knew she had certain feelings for him. He had them for her as well, but he tried to just allow things to be. It seemed promising after that. Then came another of her terrible choices.
He puts it out of his mind and returns to the bed, taking the bottle of raki and the shot glass with him. He places them both on the floor beside the bed, continues to write.
Marie finally puts her phone down. ‘I’m starting to get hungry,’ she says. ‘Maybe we should go downstairs to the café. At least it will give us something to do.’
. . . . . .
The café sits in the lobby of the pension. A small establishment with only a few tables. Only two other customers are present. Riccardo realizes the café is the source of the Turkish music. They take a table by the window and look out onto Istiklal. Only a few pedestrians are out and about. The limit vendor is directly across the street, still undeterred. A red tram passes by.
The waiter hands them each a menu and places two glasses of water on the table. They each peruse their menus in silence. Most of what’s available ids unfamiliar. They each decide on Köfte and Gözleme.
‘Have you ever had this before?, Marie asks.
‘Never.’
‘I hope it’s good.’
‘It should be.’
‘How do you know? It could be the worst thing you ever tasted.’
‘When in Rome…’
‘Oh please stop mentioning Rome. It only irritates me.’
They eat dinner in silence. Marie mostly picks at her food while Riccardo had already devoured his. He watches her over the flame of the table candle between them. She’s somewhere else.
‘I thought you were hungry,’ he says. ‘You don’t like it?’
‘It’s all right, I guess. It looked better than it tastes.’
‘You should eat. It won’t be until tomorrow before we can go out again. Hopefully, anyway.’
She continues to pick at her meal, only to be interrupted by an incoming text message. She reads it. Another Mona Lisa smile.
‘So who is it this time?’
‘No one,’ she says, blushing. ‘Just a friend.’
‘Does he know you’re here with me?’
‘No.’
‘Does he know you’re in Istanbul?’
‘I don’t have to tell him anything. I told you, he’s just a friend.’
‘Right,’ Riccardo says.
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘No, I don’t.’ He watches her not looking at him. ‘So who is he?’
‘No one, all right? Why are you being such a pain in the ass?’
‘You still have a week with this pain in the ass. Don’t I have a right to ask? Why do you always keep things secret from me?’
‘You know why.’
‘Do I? Enlighten me, please.’
‘You know damn well why.’
‘If you say so.’
It’s the way he says that which both annoys and worries her. The finality of it, that in some ways, she’s lost him. Riccardo knows well enough to leave it alone. He doesn’t push the issue and gazes out the window. There must be a half a foot of snow on the ground and it’s still falling heavily. He’s concerned it won’t ever stop.
A woman’s voice gets his attention. He turns in its direction. A beautiful woman, finely dressed in a long black coat flecked with melting snowflakes. He blonde hair falls loosely from under her black ski hat, wet with snow. She says something in Turkish to the waiter, then disappears into the lobby of the pension. She returns a moment later with another woman in tow. She’s just as beautiful, only dark haired. They choose the table behind Marie, the only other one situated by the window. They remove their coats and take their seats, rubbing their hands for warmth, their faces red from the cold. The blonde momentarily makes eye contact. A little smile tugs at her lips before looking away.
Marie turns around, looks at the two women, then at Riccardo.
‘What?’
‘Just wondering what you found so interesting,’ she says.
Riccardo shrugs. ‘Am I not allowed to look?’
‘Did I say you couldn’t?’
‘No need to get testy.’
Maries grabs her phone off the table and begins scrolling through her text messages. The Mona Lisa smile returns. He’s been down this road a million times with her, only now it’s different. He’s irritated. He usually isn’t. He glances at the blonde woman again. She’s too busy conversing with her companion to notice him. Their moment was fleeting, trivial, over. He looks at Marie, who is trying a little too hard not to show her enthusiasm reading the text message. She begins answering it, her thumbs flying across the keypad, again with her Mona Lisa smile. He’s tempted to say something but a cooler head prevails. He sips his water and looks out the window. No sign of it letting up.
. . . . . .
Later, back in the room, Riccardo stands by the window watching the snow fall. It hasn’t let up. If anything, it’s worse. He looks back at Marie, who is again texting someone with that Mona Lisa smile which is becoming an increasing annoyance.
‘You’ve been different here,’ he tells her, again looking out the window.
‘Different how?’
‘I don’t know…quieter… If not that, a bit more irritable than usual.’
‘I’m tired of hearing my own voice, she says.
He pours himself another shot of raki, looks at her. She’d been talking to him without once looking up from her phone. He doesn’t say anything and throws back another shot of raki.
Still texting, she says, ‘Do you ever feel like you’re watching your life happen from the outside?’
‘Sometimes, I guess.’
She pauses from texting and looks at him. ‘It’s like I’m drifting, hovering above myself, watching another me do things. Ever feel like that? Disconnected, I guess, I don’t know.’
‘You don’t seem that way to me. You’ve always been the more sensible one.’
‘Not always,’ she says, and returns to her text message.
He pours another shot of raki. The content of the bottle is getting low. He’ll have to preserve whatever is left. He’s feeling it now. A little drunk. It only enhances his annoyance. How would the guy she’s texting react if she ever asked him such a question? How many men has she unknowingly driven away by these sorts of questions? She doesn’t realize that not everyone is like him, willing to listen, or even entertain her sometimes bizarre notions. He throws back the shot of raki and puts the glass down on the floor beside the bottle. That’s all for today. He wants to keep some in reserve.
She finishes texting and puts the phone down. She doesn’t look at him, is lost in thought.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ she says.
‘ You don’t seem fine.’
‘I’m just tired of pretending, Ric, okay?’
‘You don’t have to pretend with me.’
‘Don’t I?’
‘Look, Marie…’
She looks him directly in the eye. ‘Don’t,’ she says.
. . . . . .
Marie looks out the window as another tram slices through the continuing snowfall. She opens the window and lights a cigarette, making sure to wave the excess smoke out into the open air. It’s later in the evening now, and the simit vendor is now gone. There’s hardly anyone out. She glances back at Riccardo, who is deeply focused on writing in his notebook. He hasn’t spoken a word in nearly an hour. She feels bad for talking to him the way she did. It’s not his fault she feels the way she does. Sometimes she doesn’t know how he’s put up with her for as long as he has. That’s true friendship, true loyalty, the kind no one else has ever given her.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’
Riccardo doesn’t answer her.
‘Despite all this snow. It’s so quiet now, save for that damn radiator.’
After a long silence Riccardo says, ‘It is. It’s a matter of perspective.’ He takes a moment to finish writing down his thought. ‘I mean, I’m not exactly thrilled either, but we have to try to make do with what is given to us.’
She doesn’t say anything and takes a long drag from her cigarette.
‘I think I’m broken, Ric,’ she says after a long silence.
‘You’re no more broken than anyone else.’
‘I feel like a ghost sometimes. I walk through people, not by them. Sometimes I don’t feel like a person. Ever feel that way?’
Riccardo looks at her, leaning forward on the windowsill, her black hair tumbling over her shoulders, wreathed in tendrils of smoke. He wants to comfort her but he no longer knows how. ‘Not exactly,’ he says. ‘You know, you don’t have to carry this burden alone.’
‘I do, though,’ she says. ‘That’s the thing.’
Riccardo dose’t say anything. He no longer knows what to say.
. . . . . .
Suddenly, everything goes dark. The radiator goes silent. The Turkish song downstairs no longer plays.
‘What the hell happened?’
‘Power is out,’ Riccardo says.
‘Ric, you know how I…’
‘Take it easy.’ Riccardo gropes for his cellphone on the night table. He turns on the flashlight mode and places the phone back on the table. ‘Where’s yours?’
Marie hands him her cellphone. He shakes it, turning on the light. He places her phone on the dresser, facing them.
‘It’s not great but better than nothing,’ he says. ‘How’s that for you?’
‘Better. Thank you.’
‘Apparently the heat is off as well.’
In a circle of light, he sees her reaching for a cigarette.
‘Don’t smoke,’ he says. ‘We should leave the window closed — at least until the heat comes back on.’
She lights the cigarette. He reluctantly cracks open the window. He can already feel the cold air coming in.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘but…’
‘I know, I know…’
He sits beside her, brushes her hair away from her face. She looks beautiful in that shaft of light. He stops touching her hair.
‘How long do you think we’ll be in the dark?’
‘Impossible to say,’ he says, ‘but we’ll be all right as long as our cellphone batteries last.’
She raises the cigarette to her lips with a trembling hand. He feels sorry for her. She’s like a child.
‘I don’t know how I’m going to sleep off the lights don’t go back on.’
‘You can’t see anything anyway, right? With your eyes closed?’
‘Still…’, she says, taking long drags from the cigarette. The room is starting to smell of smoke.
‘Just try to relax,’ he tells her, then searches for the bottle or raki. It’s too dark, and he doesn’t want to move the positioning of the cellphones. ‘Put out that cigarette and lie down.’
She stubs out the cigarette on the floor and lies back in bed. Riccardo closes the window. It’s still snowing, though it appears a bit lighter. Marie just lies there, looking utterly helpless without the phone in her hand. He climbs into bed.
‘Maybe it’s only temporary,’ he says. ‘It seems confined to the pension. The power is on outside.’
There’s a commotion out in the hall. Voices in rapid fire Turkish, footsteps, doors opening and closing, Riccardo can tell it’s exacerbating Marie’s anxiety.
‘Just breathe,’ he tells her.
‘I’m sorry…’
‘Stop apologizing. You’re always apologizing for things you have no reason to. Why is that?’
Marie doesn’t say anything, rests her head against Riccardo’s shoulder. It’s a deja vu moment. This is how it went down the last time. He allows her to rest her head on his shoulder but he doesn’t do anything more to comfort her. He knows the pattern now. It’s best to do nothing. She then wraps her arm around his waist. He peers down at it. Beneath the cotton sleeve of her shirt would be her very first tattoo, the one he paid for on her twenty-second birthday. It was a generous gift, and she appreciated it, but he had his head in the clouds then, always clinging to hope. It’s different now.
‘I just want you to know that I appreciate you,’ she whispers.
He doesn’t say anything. He no longer knows what to say. Everything that needed to be said was said long ago. It changed nothing.
‘We’ve been through a lot together, haven’t we?’
‘Yes,’ he says.
She shifts position, embracing him now, making herself more comfortable. He peers down at her, the glow of the cellphone flashlight across the room highlighting her soft, dark hair against her face. It’s a beautiful face, and he can see why she attracts so much attention. But it’s a different face now. A familiar one. It’s not the same face everyone else sees. Behind its numerous layers is the true Marie, the one that those guys never get to see. It’s a rather durable mask, but to him, a transparent one. It’s the face she allows him to see, the one she dare not reveal to anyone else. However, it does sometimes come through, and it often leads to heartbreak. So he just lies there, allowing her to take comfort in his presence. It’s the only thing left.
The commotion in the hallway subsides and whatever was being said was enough too calm the nerves of the various residents. It’s still snowing, though lighter, as evidenced by how gently it falls into the light from the streetlamp on the avenue below. He wants to get up and look out the window but he doesn’t want to disturb Marie, who is starting to drift in and out of sleep. The room is beginning to get a little colder. He pulls the bedsheets over them for warmth. When he does so, Marie again shifts position, drawing her face closer to his, close enough to kiss him. He turns his head and looks out the window. No again. He’s long past this now. It took years of intense struggle to emotionally detach from her. He can’t go back. He won’t go back. But she draws her lips closer to his, kisses them softly. He gently pushes her way and sits up.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘You know what’s wrong,’ he says.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Neither do I. I just don’t understand you sometimes. I mean, I love you, but sometimes I don’t understand you.’
‘I thought you…’
‘I did. Once. A long time ago.’
She doesn’t say anything. Confusion sets in.
‘It’s too late, Marie. That’s what I wanted to tell you earlier but you shut me down.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I know. That’s the problem. We don’t understand one another. At least as far as this is concerned.’
He gets out of bed and looks out the window. The snow as let up considerably. By morning, it should have stopped. He can feel Marie’s eyes on him but he does not look back. He doesn’t want a moment of weakness, like all the other times in the past. The question now is, what happens next?
He finds the courage to face her. She’s looking at him, half her face illuminated in the beam of the cellphone flashlight.
‘How often have you pushed me away? Whenever you are going through something, I’m the first one you tend to avoid. Why is that? Then you’re present again. Loving, kind, warm, attentive. Then you meet someone and I’m brushed aside again, that is, until you need me again. I offered you a lot, Marie, but you always swatted it away. I just can’t do it, anymore.’
She doesn’t say anything, can’t say anything.
‘You don’t understand, either,’ he continues, ‘but perhaps it’s not really your fault. You’re just confused. Hot and cold, present, absent — it’s hard to figure you out sometimes. We had our moment some years ago. That says something, I guess. I knew then how you felt about me but something always prevented you from taking the leap. I always clung to hope, perhaps naïvely so. I just can’t do it anymore, Marie. It’s not fair to me.’
She doesn’t say anything.
‘You have nothing to add? What are you thinking?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says.
‘That’s always been the problem.’
‘We never did discuss that day, did we?’
‘Never — but your silence spoke volumes.’
‘I guess I’m afraid.’
‘Afraid of what?’
‘Of ruining what we have.’
‘I used to think that was absurd, but now I kind of see your point. Perhaps its best we leave things as they are. It’s better that way.’
He turns away and looks out the window again. He can just barely make out Marie’s reflection in the glass. She just looks at him, silent, confused. It hurts, but it’s necessary.
‘I thought you loved me,’ she whispers, her voice cracking.
‘I do love you,’ he says, not looking at her but rather her reflection in the window. ‘I always have and always will. You’re the only one who ever accepted me for who I am, just as I have always accepted you. That wasn’t good enough. You always gave that part of yourself to someone else. My ego resented you for that. My love for you accepted it. It was a struggle, Marie, but I finally overcame it. At least I think I did. No, it’s best to maintain the status quo. For both our sakes.’
He continues to look out the window, watches the snow fall. What will they do tomorrow, he wonders? How much of this conversation will hover between them in the morning? Considering their history, things will probably carry on as normal, as if it never happened, like the last time.
The smell of cigarette smoke permeates the room again. He turns to see her sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to him, the cigarette smoke swirling through the shaft of light from the phone’s flashlight. She’s upset but he knows it will be temporary. He cracks open the window.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I guess so,’ she says.
He climbs back into bed, watches her. It’s tragic, he muses. What could have been.
‘Put that cigarette out and come to bed.’
‘In a minute,’ she says, still not looking at him.
‘You’re upset.’
She doesn’t answer him.
He lies down, turns to face the window. The snow has let up some more, almost a flurry now. Maybe soon the power will go back on — and the heat. They still have a week ahead of them, a city to explore, experiences to add to their long history. It hurts that he hurt her but he knows better. She’s hurt now, at this precise moment, but tomorrow will be different. He’s certain of that. She’ll look at her cellphone and find a text from her ‘friend’ and she’ll answer it with that Mona Lisa smile, and this moment will be just like the last one. She’ll start seeing this guy and she’ll disappear for a little while, until the next heartbreak. He hopes now, but that’s how it usually goes.