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Dear Mom and Phoebe and Barry, Yesterday at a chateaux outside Paris Wolf and I jumped over those velvet ropes that block off where you aren’t supposed to go. And we walked through the rooms nobody ever sees they were so beautiful and quiet with silk furniture and little glass things you could pick up. We pretended like we really lived there and lay down on a canopy bed with carved posts but maybe some kind of silent alarm bell went off because a guard came running in and totally freaked and we got thrown out but still it was worth it (Wolf doesn’t think so). But sometimes I think those velvet ropes are all over the world you just cant see them. In Paris I keep thinking where is the best most intense part of Paris, where is the absolute center of Paris and I cant exactly tell, I’m stuck outside the velvet ropes and I just hate them, it makes me so furious when all I ever see is the same normal stuff everybody sees. I wish I could climb over like in the chateaux but the problem is, in Paris unlike a museum the ropes are invisible, you cant tell which way is in which way is out. So you just keep trying. Love, Faith.
Phoebe sensed from Wolf’s expression that she’d given something away, that he saw her differently now. But her impression of Wolf had shifted, too; he was a man who had nearly recovered from something. His diminished size seemed part of this evolution, as if growing older had been, for Wolf, a matter of scaling back.
“How come you never went home?” Phoebe said.
He took a long breath, drawing a cigarette from his pack but not lighting it. “I couldn’t,” he said. “Start up again, like nothing happened? How could I do that?” His face looked bare, stripped of something. “So I waited,” he said. “Years kept passing. This ended up being my life.”
Phoebe noticed Wolf looking at her often now, as if his wonderment at her presence had sharpened with the hours. “Goddamn, this life is strange,” he said when they reached the street where his building stood.
“But good,” Phoebe said. “Right?”
Overhead, the white trees spilled their blossoms heedlessly, like artificial snow.
this actually reminds me of a moment in normal people
“Do you think you used to be arrogant?” Phoebe asked.
Wolf laughed. “Probably,” he said. “Did I seem it?”
“I’m not sure.”
Wolf grew thoughtful. “When I think of that time,” he said, “what I remember most was feeling like nothing could ever go wrong for me.” He turned to Phoebe with a hard smile. “That’s arrogance.”
“So how does irony fit in with that?” she said.
Wolf smiled again. “Blows it to pieces.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I was in love with her,” Wolf said. “Crazy about her, absolutely crazy. I don’t expect I’ll ever, ever feel that way about someone again. Jesus God, I hope not.”
He squatted at the water’s edge. Phoebe sat hunched on the grass, chin on her knees. “What about Carla?” she said.
“It’s night and day,” Wolf said with feeling. “You can be in love and still have a life, you know? You can build something. Faith and I were like thieves. Nothing belonged to us, it was one long spree.” After a moment he said, “On the other hand, we were kids.”
And seeing no way out of it, he leapt in ahead, like diving through a sheet of glass, such a terrible, crushing cold, but he beat her in at least, though Faith was right behind him. Wolf thought he would die for sure but he kept on swimming, he’d be damned if he was going to look like a coward in front of this freshman, this prissy little girl, Jesus Christ. So with the teeth knocking in his head, he kept going, straight out. Sharks, he hadn’t even thought about sharks—after all, this was the fucking ocean. But some distance out a funny thing started to happen: the cold water began to feel almost hot, literally kind of tropical, warming his limbs; it felt pretty good, he had to admit, and on top of that there was this weird power, being out there in that gray heartless sea—as if you’d crossed over to a place most people didn’t know existed. Faith swam near him. Wolf had the impression some of that heat he felt was coming from behind her skin, and he reached out, touching her—just did it—they kissed right there in the water, so easy, as if they knew each other when all they’d done was say five words and jump in the freezing sea. When Faith looked back at the empty beach, she was smiling. Wolf had never seen her really smile before; it shook on her face she was so cold, and he wanted to get her back onshore. Around school he was pretty used to calling the shots, being a senior, having the truck and all, but as he breathed the cold salt air and the wind beat his head, Wolf had a feeling those days were probably over and he didn’t mind, really. He was actually kind of glad.
Phoebe went to the window. Yellow light from the kitchen smeared the dark glass. She heard their laughter, the tinny sound of a radio, and it seemed to Phoebe that her sister’s life was entirely effaced, a shadow beside the vivid presence of Carla. Wolf’s fiancée reminded her of girls in high school who’d worn their boyfriends’ athletic jackets to smoke cigarettes outside on foggy days, sleeves reaching halfway down their slim, manicured fingers. They had seemed to Phoebe so dazzlingly complete, lockets tangled in their turtlenecks, a dozen rings, jade, turquoise; girls who didn’t hesitate, whose very thoughtlessness she longed to copy.
“Look at you,” he said, touching the small of her back as they left the room. Getting on the elevator, Phoebe thought Wolf paused to catch her smell, and again she felt that shock of longing, like a heavy object plunging into deep water. It was not quite painful, but had something in common with pain. She and Wolf rode down in silence, patterned light sliding over their faces.
“I think one of these days the world’s going to look a lot different to you,” he said.
Phoebe was intrigued. “How?”
“Just—yours,” he said. “Yours.” And he looked at Phoebe with such palpable sympathy that she wondered what in herself could possibly have inspired it.
“I hope you’re right,” she said.
Wolf grinned. “I’m right.”
Veal, chicken, ribbons of salad; like casualties, the empty plates and second empty bottle were spirited away from their table. So much wine had eroded Wolf’s usual guard; gone was that studied good nature reminiscent of young male teachers at Phoebe’s high school. She found her gaze stumbling against his and leaning there, unable to break away, and again that desire would stun her. She stalled mid-sentence, too amazed to continue. For all her crushes on boys, Phoebe had never felt so powerfully drawn to anyone. In fact, often when she and the boy finally sank back on the sand or a bench or the seat of his car, something in Phoebe shrank from his soft lips and clamoring heartbeat. Her mind wrestled free, veering back to Faith and Wolf in her mother’s bedroom, the white door shut, watching from the end of that long hall, trying to fathom it. “Come on,” Faith said, taking Wolf’s hand, and Phoebe would try with her mind’s eye to follow, always realizing that whatever happened between herself and this boy would not bring her any nearer that door, not make the slightest difference in her life. Finally she would have no choice but to break free as she had that day from Kyle, for already she was gone. Like hearing her name called again and again, louder each time, finally having to turn.