She takes my hand as I eat her freshly cooked rice, scrutinizes my fingers and then tells me that they are like Mina’s. I have long, slender fingers. People compliment them. They say they are pretty and ladylike. Mina had the same fingers. I wonder if she ever bit her nails or torn them like I do. I wonder if she left them unpolished and short. It is a simple resemblance, minor, and maybe not of great significance. But it makes Grandma happy, knowing that her granddaughter can somehow be connected to her past, to the daughter and the sons she lost. That somehow I can bring them closer to her by having the same shape of brows or eyes or fingers. That somehow, I can be a bridge to her abandoned past.
Grandma lets go of my hand and sighs. She forgets them again, and they become fond memories of long ago. I am powerless. But perhaps if I pronounce their names and learn their faces, I can bring them to life, temporarily. And then I can see Mina, polishing her nails, Grandma holding them, not willing to let them slip away.

The bar down at 10th street is packed by 11 p.m. The married men sit in one corner, drinking and whining about their deranged wives who boss them around and make them sleep on the couch. The single men flirt with the blonds and brunets that throw themselves at them like hungry dogs. And then there is the quiet Andrew, who sits idly in a corner by himself, ordering a tall glass of whiskey, flirting with girls who sit next to him. He drinks a lot, but doesn’t call himself an alcoholic. He has money, coming from a middle-class family and all, but he likes to save his money from time to time. Andrew is a simple man, an honest, hardworking assistant professor at the University of Chicago. He doesn’t live idly. By seven each morning, he is right at work, going through papers and portfolios. During his thirty-minute break time, Andrew Madison writes because he loves writing. He writes about the things that fancy him, like his murals from Mexico, his rugs from India. Writing about his travels makes him motivated, hungry for more places, for more exotics.
It is 11 p.m. and the bar down on 10th street is packed. It’s a small pub, but somehow everyone fits in, conversations entice newcomers, and glasses are raised. Andrew is alone tonight, like all other nights. He is wearing a ruffled, black, collared shirt with dark blue jeans. He has forgotten to take off his glasses; he’s worn them all day long. He is too tired these days, too tired to even write.
He orders a tall whiskey, again. The bartender, a tall blond with a big chest whom they call Big Lola, knows Andrew by now. She knows how many glasses he’ll have by the end of the night, how many girls he’ll start a conversation with, what kind of drink he’ll suggest to them. She likes talking to him because he is a good listener, a fine drinker who appreciates good alcohol, a man of class, a charmer of women.
“Hey Drew, looks like it’s gonna be another crazy Friday night, heh?” she says, looking over his shoulder at the crowd.
“Yep,” Andrew says, not looking up.
“You seen anyone you like tonight?”
“Nah. Not tonight.”
Among the heavy drinkers, in the middle of the bar, not too far from Andrew’s sight, girls and boys play pool. Behind the pool table, four men play Poker right next to a table of eight girls. The girls are young graduate students. One of them is standing, moving her hips to the beat of the music. She has brown hair with reddish high lights. She is fairly tall, around 5’8, and is very pretty, with dark lashes, arched brows, and a pair of astonishing, green eyes. She looks younger from afar, like an innocent child playing a game.
Andrew is almost done with his first drink. He decides to look around. He is curious to see who looks familiar; he’s been coming to the bar ever since he moved to the town, every Friday for five months now. Just as he sees a bearded man who reminds him of his grandfather, the girl walks over to the end of the bar, and stands right next to him.
“I’d like a…” the girl begins, but then pauses as she looks over at Andrew’s dark eyes.
“What can I get you darling?” Big Lola asks, raising a brow.
“What do you think I should get?” the girl asks in her husky voice, looking straight at Andrew.
“Whiskey,” he says right away.
Whiskey’s been his drink for the past five months. Andrew Madison has had little time for change, for exciting new drinks. When he walks into the bar, he needs something strong, something his tongue has been used to tasting. The only time he orders something different is when he is ordering for a girl. But tonight he doesn’t feel like being a charmer. He watches the girl and listens to her husky voice, a kind of voice that goes well with Whiskey.
“Too boring,” she says.
Andrew wants to protest, but then the crowd suddenly screams and cheers at the TV screen. Chicago’s favorite football team is winning by two points.
By the time the commotion ends and the noise goes down, the girl has already ordered a drink and left. Andrew didn’t hear what she ordered. He watches her slender figure disappear to a corner, on the other side of the bar. He watches her as she leans on a wall, gulping down her drink. A broad-shouldered man offers her a cigar. She takes it, hesitantly, as if it’s her first time. She is not a smoker because she detests its smell and because it killed her father. The man lights it for her, getting closer to her face. They exchange words and he leaves. She has suddenly become a recluse, as if she has no one. Andrew sees a rather diffident face, a lonelier, more desperate set of eyes, and he wonders if she too understands the pain of loneliness, of isolation, of failing to become one with others.
It is 12:31 and Andrew Madison is perfectly sober. He had not intended to be a drunk. He had not intended to lose consciousness of the world around him. He would write about the bar and the green-eyed girl who left with the rest of the girls shortly after she exhaled her last smoke and stepped on her cigar with her heel. He would walk around town, breathe and inhale Chicago’s air. He would watch Chicago’s moon as it rose higher into the ascending air. He would, simply, be in unison with the universe. He wouldn’t be alone. He wouldn’t be a stranger. He would be Andrew Madison, walking away from 10th street, away from the small bar, toward a destination of his own.

Maybe it was his father who didn’t believe in him. Maybe it was his father who didn’t accept him the way he was. Maybe it was his father who wanted more from his only son. He had high expectations for his son. If his father had believed in him, in what he did, he would have been a different man today. He might be have been a happier man, a more confident man. He might have been.
A father is an important figure in a man’s life. Boys look up to their fathers. They learn. They learn how to be a man, how to be strong, how to be great. The son and the father go fishing together. They walk side by side and look into each other’s eyes and love each other that way, quietly, silently.
But some little boys get rejected. They never gain Daddy’s approval, his earnest respect, his acceptance. And they never learn to speak, to talk about it. They let it go. The little boy grows up, remembering that his father didn’t praise or extol him, that his father didn’t pay enough attention, that his father didn’t declare his approval for the man he’d become.
He is a man today, that little boy of eight. He doesn’t talk to his father a lot. They are on their own, living their separate lives. And I wonder if he’ll ever know how great he is, how extraordinary, how special. I wonder if he’ll talk to his father. I wonder.

The world stopped then. Time stopped for me. And I stood and felt an arrow cutting through me, through my heart, through my belly, cutting my baby girl, stopping her heart. I stood and watched how he drank his coffee, his head into the newspaper, grumbling to himself because his favorite sports team had lost. I didn’t know how to tell him, how to break it to him that I was going to have a baby, that we were going to be parents. I stood in the kitchen doorway and time stopped and I took a breath. One, two, one, two. And then I told him.
I could feel the arrow, cutting through me, through my heart, through hers. I couldn’t stop the feeling, the pain, the image of my baby’s wounded heart. I had already named her. She was Angela. She would be my angel, my guardian, my love, my life. She would be mine and I would be hers and we would be each other’s. If only I could hold her and tell her I loved her. If only I could just whisper into her little ears, kiss her pale lips, stroke her tiny head, feel her cheeks against my own. If only I had the courage to cancel that days’ appointment. If only I had the courage to be a mother.
After the dreadful appointment, after it was all over, after my whole body was torn to pieces, I came home. I wasn’t myself anymore. I didn’t have a soul. Or a beating heart. I was reduced down to molecules and no one could put me back together. That night I dreamt about a baby girl whose name was Angela, whose heart was cut open, blood pouring out, spreading out, leaking through her cradle. Then I saw myself holding her and hugging her and whispering into her ears that I loved her.
Then I woke up with a scream. And I remembered that Angela was gone and that I was not a mother.

The snow made everything disappear, even the bitter feelings and guilt. The guilt of being the other woman in his life. She was the other. The stranger. It wasn’t the joy of being promiscuous, nor was it the joy of being indecent and immoral. But there was something, something underneath that she felt herself getting a pleasure out of. Like the guilty pleasure of eating chocolate or ice cream. The pleasure of being with him was too good to let go of. Their affair was strange and beautiful and she wouldn’t end it.
Now that it snowed, she no longer felt remorse. She was selfishly enjoying a cup of tea by the fire place. She was waiting for him to come and make love to her. He would tell her that he felt incomplete without her. And she’d kiss his lips.
The next day, the snow stopped, the sun came out and melted the ice. A few days later everything became colorful again and she began to cry. She hated being the other.

He left me. It was not a bitter parting, but a little dry. I had loved him and I felt like I deserved more. I thought that he would pour out his feelings like a patient who spills everything out to his therapist. And the therapist feels accomplished and lets him go. I, however, was nowhere near accomplished. I had failed to state my feelings. I had only succeeded in writing them in pure fiction. The danger of fiction is that people might not believe you in the end because they assume that you really don’t mean what you say.
If I were to re-write what happened that day in a form of fiction, I would write that before he left my apartment, I yelled out that I had been in love with him. I would write that I yelled it out and that he stopped and came back up the stairs. He then stood there and said with a big smile,
“I’ll be here for a couple of days. You busy tomorrow?”
And then after that I would write that somehow we connected and spent time together.
But of course since I don’t believe in happy endings, the ones that leave readers hopeful and make them too satisfied, I would say that we spent some time together, but then he went back to his quiet Georgia town. He went back and he owed me nothing. I stayed where I was and wrote because someone had told me to write. We lived our separate lives and always thought of one another.
But I did not and would not re-write what happened because what happened was simply perfect on its own. Some things must stay in a writer’s head, fiction or not.
The end.

I waited for him to go on. I waited for him to say I came back because all these years I thought about you like I said I would. I waited to hear him say I thought of you and your success and wanted to say that I was in love with you too. I waited for him to say…
“I wanted to congratulate you on your success,” he said, breaking my thoughts.
Bull shit. I thought. Please don’t tell me you came all the way here just to congratulate me?
“Is that all you came to tell me? You could have just wrote me you know.”
He watched my eyes with a hurt look on his face. Then rose from his seat and walked toward my kitchen window facing the Empire State Building.
“I always knew you’d make it here. And I’m glad, no I’m happy and excited, and proud that you made it,” he said, staring outside.
I had nothing to say, I realized suddenly. What could I have said to this man? Could I have told him that I expected more from him, more than a bottle of wine and a congratulation, more than his words and his sincere happiness for my success? Could I have?
I could have, but my ego did not allow it. So I held on to my drink and said nothing for a while. It was silence again and I decided to politely ask him to leave since I was very tired.
“Listen. I um. Thank you. Really, thank you so much for everything. And I didn’t mean it like that. I just. I don’t know, I guess I never thought you’d be the kind to come down here to see me. And I am so glad you did.”
It was the most inarticulate phrasing of words. And I admit that my expectations were high, too high, like they had always been. I became a child again, the one who always wanted to talk, to say anything.
To be continued…

He came to see me. I adored him so of course I jumped with excitement when he appeared at my front door, with a bottle of wine. White, I believe it was. He told me that he had read a lot of my books and that he’d never thought I’d go so far with fiction.
“Your male characters, most were me, weren’t they? And were you really in love with me?” he asked with a teasing smile.
I laughed and said, “I’m a writer. I say a lot of things.”
I didn’t give him a direct answer but he himself was an intelligent, witty writer and understood me well. He already knew.
Then we were silent, just looking at each other, enjoying the moment with our wine glasses and reminiscing about the past. He had not changed, but I had. I was not that loud, crazy teenager anymore. I had more pride now that I had been published and recognized in a city like New York. And I think he sensed the change. He was sitting in front of a known writer, not a child running around like a wanton, dreaming up stories and books and a published name. He had always told me I was great but I never accepted that. No, I said I was a fine writer, not great. I could be better.
“I love the wine. Thank you,” I broke the silence.
“I wasn’t sure, but I recalled from your writings that you don’t like red wine. Am I right?”
“You know me well dear John.”
“Hardly,” he said and winked.
I remembered how we used to tease each other, how I’d mock him and he’d sneer. We had such good times together. Short, brief, but memorable moments.
“So what are you here for? You don’t like this city and besides, I thought you’d forgotten me,” I said.
“You are not easy to forget. But you’re right. I don’t like this city.”
To be continued…

He came to see me. It was the summer of 85. I was still a writer. Let me rephrase that: I was a great writer. New York City and I were madly in love and I had finally been accepted. I thought I had it all; most great writers thought that way. So much was happening everyday that I couldn’t stop writing. It was as if I were a wheel that wouldn’t stop rolling. The roads would never end; they’d forever continue to open a new path for me, with new stories in every corner. I was so in love with the city that I forgot him. And I figured that he probably had forgotten me. So when he rang my doorbell one summer evening as I was enjoying a piece of chocolate, I was shocked. But he was there. Standing in front of me with the same smile that he’d worn ten years earlier. And we said hello and I fell in love with him all over again…
Don’t be fooled though, I was only playing with words. I didn’t fall in love again. No, that time had passed and I had moved on with a half broken heart. I say half because he never really gave me his heart. In other words, falling in love or its idea was all in the head of a writer. Nothing had happened, nothing had been said or done. In fact, everything was in my head. Everything.
But it was a little more complicated than that. I cannot say that he felt nothing at all because I don’t know, I never asked and he never said. What I did know, without a doubt, was that he cared for me, a lot, and perhaps loved me on his own terms. Whether or not he was in love, I cannot say. I was young so I did think that he was in love. Nothing seemed impossible to me.
To be continued…

She turns him on. She is sexy and he likes her. He might even be in love with her but no one knows. He never talks about her because he doesn’t quite know how he feels about her. He is a coward, scared. He is such a fool. He is going to lose her and he doesn’t even realize it because he is a f****** coward.
They met a while ago. Seems like a decade now. No details. They met, that’s all you need to know. And they went on dates but it was like, I don’t know, it’s hard to explain really. It was like, he liked the way she was around him. All loud and talkative and flirtatious and sassy. He just didn’t know what to do. What to say. He just got scared I think. He hid all his feelings because all guys like to hide their feelings because they hate to show their sensitivity. I mean for god’s sake, a man doesn’t show his real feelings! (Big laugh) She doesn’t know either. She tells me that she fell in love with him but got nothing in return so she had to move on. She’s lost and he is a coward and a fool. An idiot! A complete, sigh…idiot…