Days of 1994: Alexandrians

for Edmund White Lunch: as we close the twentieth century, death, like a hanger-on or a wanna-be sits with us at the cluttered bistro table, inflecting the conversation. Elderly friends take lovers, rent studios, plan trips to unpronounceable provinces. Fifty makes the ironic wager that his biographer will outlive him— as may the erudite eighty-one-year-old dandy with whom a squabble is simmering. His green-eyed architect companion died in the spring. He is frank about his grief, as he savors spiced pumpkin soup, and a sliced rare filet. We’ll see the next decade in or not. This one retains its flavor. “Her new book ...” “... brilliant!” “She slept with ...” “Really!” Long arabesques of silver-tipped sentences drift on the current of our two languages into the mist of late September midafternoon, where the dusk is curling Just thirty-eight: her last chemotherapy treatment’s the same day classes begin again. I went through it a year before she started; but hers was both breasts, and lymph nodes. She’s always been a lax vegetarian. Now she has cut out butter and cheese, and she never drank wine or beer. What else is there to eliminate? Tea and coffee ... ? (Our avocado salads are copious.) It’s easier to talk about politics than to allow the terror that shares both of our bedrooms to find words. It made the introduction; it’s an acquaintance we’ve in common. Trading medical anecdotes helps out when conversation lapses. We don’t discuss Mitterrand and cancer. Four months (I say) I’ll see her, see him again. (I dream my life; I wake to contingencies.) Now I walk home along the river, into the wind, as the clouds break open.