SAPH

 

A huge chunk of Saph’s relationships ended on a Tuesday. Always a Tuesday. It was as if the universe predestined Tuesdays to be her exclusive day of doom. Its mornings were mostly coated with a jarring routine—an alarm shriek, a stretch that seemed endless, lazy yawns, and a deafening hesitation to get out of bed. She’d have a brisk shower on her bathroom floor—so slick it made her trip thrice, nearly ripping her manicured pinky fingernail in half. And afterwards, when her outfit did not correlate with what she’d envisioned the previous night, she’d wear a grim facial expression which usually featured furrowed brows and lips curled up just enough to flash her incisors and canines in nothing that had the identity of a smile. What kind of day gets so predictable and unpredictable at the same time? Its afternoons held way less pleasure. Sometimes they made her emotional. She hated that word. Most of all, she hated being associated with it when it had anything to do with her boss’ difficult, demanding, and soul-sapping attitude. The tears she shed on Tuesday afternoons were predominantly wiped with the abrasive paper towel the universe graciously delivered to her doorsteps on Tuesday evenings.

They used to meet at 09:43 a.m., sharp, right in front of her apartment, not just because tardiness to work was her forte, but because, particularly in the winter, she appreciated the feeling of a seemingly warm cup of espresso clasped between her gloved palms—and Blue Bottle Coffee opens ten minutes before that time. They’d walk the High Line with two plastic cups of caffeine, one briefcase and a bag between them, and a single thing they’d both found a way to agree on for over a year—to survive the day. They moved quickly. Past wild grasses laced in snow or dew, past strangers with cameras and pets, that ranged from dogs to the most outrageous of species. Once, they had to scurry past a man with a garter snake, and she almost suffocated from being too conscious. They walked past lovers who had their fingers intertwined in a way that made her want to retch, past graffiti-encrypted walls, past vibrant teenagers who rode colourful or mundane bikes, past the shadows of her younger self, as the city sloped behind them like a muffled confession. 

Nothing mattered in those moments, except, perhaps, getting to work and receiving a query from her boss for being punctual, eating lunch, or just taking aimless breaks together at a cafeteria that didn’t care much about them, save for what they purchased. On the Tuesdays they could, they’d try to abscond from their offices a little early, into the rest of a day stacked to the brim with tons of activities: a slow walk back home—to her apartment or his—sensual, judicious love-making, dinner beside the kaleidoscopic fireplace he’d built at both their homes, so that whenever she was unhappy or distraught she could simply stare at it and think of his ever-blazing affection. . . and biceps, and beard, and manhood, and velvet blimp, and how he’d made her once monochrome existence colorful. Sometimes, an argument ensued right after dinner, ending with one of them leaving, just to return the next day for the same phenomenon.

Saph hadn’t walked the High Line or visited Blue Bottle Coffee since she ended it with Brian Fayokemi twenty months ago. She swore she wouldn't, and not even Tamara, her best friend from college, could convince her to change her mind. But grief, unlike Tamara, had a thing for effete boundaries and awful timing. So this evening, when the sky had gone gunmetal and Tamara had texted: "He’s back in town, Saph. Just saw him at the gym, and I thought you should know.” She’d already known. There’s this anomalous thing humans who’ve had their body parts in each other’s mouths, in deeper ways than mere thrusts, have been cursed to possess—and that’s the ability to feel one another’s energy long before a return. And when that return finally occurs, it’s like they’d never left. Like there’s never been a change in the barometric pressure of your emotions. But somehow, you’re still certain of that low animal pull beneath your ribs.

The wind was different today—colder, impatient, and unwilling to let anything stay in its rightful place. More tourists and teenagers began to vanish, leaving the streets lonesome as the wind blew through shuttered food stands and tree branches. Although in desperate need of something to feast on, Saph automatically halted close to the spot where the skyline opens wide over the Hudson, where Brian once whispered that he was her forever—and she, his. She hadn’t asked him to make such a commitment. Hadn’t asked him to tell her he’d stay in Manhattan as long as she stayed here. And she’d certainly not asked him to take Polaroid pictures of her wrapped in his arms, savoring his lips with hers like she was apologizing for an offense she didn’t commit. But he’d done it anyway—spilled promises he definitely could withhold. And as soon as they’d split up, he moved to London. Not Brooklyn. Not New Rochelle. Not Queens. Not even Hoboken. But London. 

The betrayal was not cinematic or dramatic. When she waited for him at her job and he didn’t come, she went to his apartment. “He doesn’t live here anymore. I heard he moved to London. You should give him a phone call to find out more,” his neighbor said. Her days turned into a gradual erosion: nights alone, the passwords of shared devices changed, and the quiet cruelty of someone trying not to fall out of love and pretending otherwise. But she couldn’t blame him at all. Not when she’d personally filled her nights and thoughts with apportioned blames and the ‘you should have known better!’ mantra.

He’d found the emails on a Tuesday. The other woman was honey-voiced, an investment banker in Mount Vernon. Her collarbone caught light like it had secrets to tell, and her skin looked like it would recall your touch. Her scents lingered in a room long after she was gone, and even if her hips weren’t loud or round, her sways gave off raw confidence. Brian said he never hated Saph or the investment banker. Just himself. For being so typhlotic to something that was very much in front of him. For not feeling the need to decapitate Saph even after viewing all that he’d found. Most of all, he abhorred the familiarity of her words, copy-pasted affection sent to two people like identical scripts. He’d memorized the words: “Being with you feels like a breath of fresh air.” She’d said that to him first. “Was I just a fool to you, Saph?” He’d yelled the evening the truth came out. But how could she convince him that he wasn’t when she’d constantly played him like one? 

She sits on a pew now. At the exact spot where he’d cried for the first time—unexpectedly, unguarded, genuinely, because he’d seen his mother get killed in a dream. She wonders if he still cried like that with the florist. The same florist he was now engaged to, whose pictures she’d stumbled upon online against her will. A violinist plays nearby despite the weather. Something melancholic. The few people left on the street begin to drift past, and some are kind enough to drop some coins for the violinist. One woman in a sundress asks Saph to take a picture of her with the violinist, and she does. She smiles politely even though she is far from present, returns the phone, compliments the woman she just took a photo of, and then sees him.

Brian. 

He looks way older now, beard slightly unkempt for someone who’s engaged, cloak too thin for October, and legs too long for the pants he’s clad in. He doesn’t see her, and she doesn’t wish that he would. He’s walking with a boy, nine, maybe eleven years old. The boy is clinging to his right hand, tugging him towards the only vendor selling hot apple cider and soft pretzels. Brian laughs out loud. It’s the husky laugh she once adored. Still adores, perhaps. Saph watches them. Long enough to confirm the boy has his eyes. Long enough to remember: ‘Oh, that's his nephew.’ Brian still doesn’t see her. And that’s... the universe’s kind of mercy. She stands, heart and legs almost steady now. There’s zero need to say anything. Zero needs to eat anything other than the man in the blue coat, who was once her lover. Zero confrontation. Just the clean, righteous silence of a woman choosing to walk in a direction different from destruction. As Saph descends the staircase back to street level, she replies to Tamara's message with a new one: “He looks so happy without me, T. I think I’ll be just fine.” Or not. But subsequently, even grief runs out of places to hide.  

BY PRECIOUS NELSON ESATE