The restaurant’s windows face the street. Nobody passes outside. The falling snow scintillates like television static. Inside, the electric glow warms us in orange. I glance at the Christmas tree standing in the corner, whose lights fade in and out of white, then close my eyes. I hear forks striking plates, pasta being sucked into mouths, children laughing, every note of the synth-heavy Christmas instrumental playing on the radio.
“Are you all right?” Rosie asks. She always says all right as two words. She never says OK.
I open my eyes and smile. “Perfect.”
She wipes the corner of her mouth with a napkin, folds the napkin and puts it back on the table. I don’t know how to fold napkins. I have to concentrate not to wipe myself with the back of my hand. Embarrassed, I look at my feet, which fit snugly into the first pair of elegant winter boots I’ve ever had: dark leather that shines because I’ve been pasting it every night before bed. Everything here shines, and Rosie most of all. She has beautiful skin, beautiful eyes and she’s so well groomed the only creature I can think to compare her to is a horse, but even in my head that sounds ridiculous. No woman wants to be compared to a horse. A mermaid? I imagine Disney’s Ariel but perhaps that’s too nauseatingly romantic even considering the season. Perhaps it’s also too childish. I’m not a child anymore. And mermaids probably smell like fish. Rosie smells like Jamaican rum and peaches.
“Did you enjoy dinner?”
“Yes,” I say. I don’t don’t remember what we had, but it was delicious.
She reaches over the table and puts her hand over mine. “Because you’re speaking in syllables again, and I know you well enough to know that a silent Charlie is a troubled Charlie.”
Genuine concern gazes at me through her pupils. And love?
And love.
“You feel like spring,” I blurt out.
“What?” She takes her hand away, and mine immediately freezes over as if I’d punched the window and stuck my fist into the snowstorm raging outside. “Charlie, my God.”
My cheeks burn. Apparently my weather’s all confused. I need a weatherman. A weatherperson. There’s a gorgeous one on the local news, but the last thing I need now is an erection. One radio song ends, another begins. This one sounds like the theme from Tetris. Blocks fall from the top of my mind. None of them fit. My screen fills up. Game over, I think. I think: I wish I could tell you the truth: I’m happy: happier than I’ve ever been. “I don’t want this evening to end.” I don’t want this life to end. I don’t want us to end. What I want for us is the sprawling backyard, the picket fence and the house full of kids. My God, anything but domestic fantasies. I’d rather fantasise about the weatherperson again. Men don’t have fantasies about weddings and interior design. I learned that in third grade with the force of a well placed punch to the liver and the trauma of being told I was a fag.
Now Rosie’s hand feels icy against my cheek. “That is utterly romantic.” Her lips pulling away from mine taste of wine. “I didn’t know you were a romantic, Charlie.”
I love the way she says my name.
“Neither did I.”
She says it the same way she stands in court and says the name of one of her deadbeat clients, imbuing it with dignity and respect, if only for a single second of one court appearance.
She’s not the first woman I’ve ever been in love with, but she is the first I’ve been in love with this much. I want to see her body clad in a wedding dress, her face behind a veil. I’m already wearing a suit. The veil fades in and out of existence in tune with the Christmas tree lights. I have to blink to make it go away.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” she asks.
I expect a punch to the liver.
But I gather my courage, pick up my glass of wine and down what remains in it only because I’ve seen that done in movies and it looks dramatic, and say, “I want to tell you…” (I love you.) There wasn’t nearly enough wine. There are too many people and what if they’re staring at me, expecting a marriage proposal, waiting for the right moment to clap and offer their anonymous congratulations.
“Yes?”
I can’t believe I’ve stood up in court rooms and told barefaced lies. I can’t believe I passed my bar exams. I’m in third grade again. That’s why everyone in the restaurant is staring. I’ve aged backwards in one swig of white wine. Of course, I know that’s not true. I know nobody is actually staring, and Rosie is looking at me with the quizzical expression of a lawyer watching the other side’s key witness implode on the witness stand. I’m to the point where I don’t even need any helpful goading. I’ve already dug half of my own grave. I brace myself for an explosion of laughter. Or silence. For which, behind the wall of Tetris blocks in my mind, waits an army of crickets. “I want to tell you that I like being with you every day and I want to take our relationship to the next level.”
Rosie smiles but doesn’t laugh. I cringe. The next level? “What I mean,” I add before she can say anything, “is that I’m thinking seriously about our relationship and I’d like you to do the same.” I highlight the last clause of that sentence and backspace it out of existence. What is said cannot unsaid, but it can be said over. “I wish you will do the same.”
“Is that your Christmas wish?” she asks.
“It’s my Christmas wish.”
“And can you verify that with documentary evidence?” She flashes a smile again. “Say, with a letter to Santa?”
“An email.”
“Will the email prove admissible?”
“I believe the court may be persuaded to accept such documentary evidence under the business records exception.”
“I like you, Charlie,” she says and bends sideways to paw around in her handbag.
It’s close to but not quite the word I wanted to hear—or to say myself. But it’ll do. My heart begins its descent from my throat. “What’s your Christmas wish?” I ask as an earnest form of misdirection.
She pulls out a key and holds it out to me. I take it. “I want you to live with me in my apartment,” she says.
This time I rise, lean over the table and give her a kiss, hoping that I’m doing it properly, with enough feeling and without dipping my tie into the leftovers on my plate like an uncultured slob. When we separate I discreetly slide my fingers over my tie checking for wet spots. I feel none. I’m satisfied. Rosie looks satisfied too. I’ve never wanted to appear as professional as I do now. Rosie has such a professional approach to everything. “Has Winterson or one of the other partners spoken to you about a place at the firm after you finish your articling term?” she asks.
They have. “I haven’t signed anything but I’ve been promised a place,” I say.
“It’s best to get it in writing.”
And we both burst out laughing no less maniacally than the kids at the nearest table, who are watching YouTube videos on a smart phone.
Whenever she laughs, Rosie’s face loses its smoothness and reveals the lines, creases and wrinkles around her eyes and on her neck. Her happiness reveals time, a revelation that is itself sad because it suggests all happiness—like all time—must pass. Rosie is almost a decade older than me. I am thinking about neither of these two things.
“Good,” she says after we settle down.
Although she rarely allows herself such moments of unbridled enthusiasm, whenever she does she follows them up with an equally intense dose of seriousness. “So what’s going to happen to Boris?”
Boris is the other articling student at the law firm Winterson & Partners. For the last nine months we’ve been competing for the same job. “I’m sure he’ll find a place at one of the other firms. He’s a smart guy and he’ll be a smart lawyer,” I say.
Rosie nods. “But he’s not as smart as you.”
Compliments from Rosie are rare, so I cherish every one—with an awkward silence, because getting a compliment is too much like getting a gift, which is nothing less than becoming a lab rat in an experiment run by people who sincerely care about you. Rosie watches me for any reactions. I try to have none. “Oh, I’m sure it was my vast arsenal of social skills that won it for me,” I joke.
I pay for dinner because that’s what men do and when we walk outside into the voluminously falling static I put my arm around Rosie’s waist with as little hesitation as I can muster. Confidence is a sham, but projecting it is a skill and anyone who says there is no magic outside of books has a limited definition of illusion. Mine works, just as it works in the courtroom, over the phone and in examinations for discovery. Rosie snuggles against my shoulder. The snow piles up on our heads and shoulders. The Ontario cold snaps at my skin. I barely see where I’m going. I vaguely remember where I parked. I’m proud of myself for telling Rosie some of what I feel and thrilled she feels some of the same. Although I’ve always associated winter with cleanliness and death, tonight I learn to also associate it with love. Love by me and love for me. Even when it is only implied, love can be real. Much of what we value is inexplicit: God, innate human goodness, tomorrow. We enjoy belief. I enjoy believing Rosie loves me and I love her, as she snuggles tighter against my shoulder and I can feel her body shiver from the cold. It’s my role not to shiver. It’s my role to be her unshivering warmth. It’s irrational, then, that I take off my winter hat—green and woollen, one of the remnants of my unrefined life before law school and entry into the upper tier of society—and pull it onto Rosie’s head, messing up her dark hair but vindicated by the happiness in her eyes. Real happiness, or reflected? I don’t believe in illusion; I know it exists because I stand tall under the scrutiny of those eyes despite still being a teetering tower of Tetris blocks inside. Several times in my life I’ve had the realisation that this time I truly am an adult, shed of all the toys of childhood. Each realisation rendered the last one false. Tonight, finally catching sight of my car, I know something else: I know I’ve found my place.
The next day I call my mom and listen to her voice falter as I tell her I won’t be visiting for Christmas. I lie about the reason but she knows as well as I do that I don’t just mean this Christmas. I mean every Christmas. “Goodbye,” I say before hanging up.
“Goodbye,” she says.
Or I imagine her saying it, because by then I am no longer listening.