Eliza reappeared the week following Christmas. I lost count of the number of years I saw her last.
She said I kept myself fairly well hidden. I told her she was looking in all the wrong places or all the right ones since I was hiding in plain sight. Her initial searches came across my professional profile, but she passed over it because that man wasn’t the one she remembered. She expected me to be a professor with books and papers on the Portuguese of the Orient. After a while, she sought me using combinations of my name, Macau, and Brown. Finally, she found me through an old interview.
At first, I didn’t know whether or not to respond to the brief note I found in my Inbox, “I’m taking a chance and asking if you are the boy who danced with me at Cinema King. This is Eliza writing hello.” I wondered if she was angry at me after all these years or perhaps pissed at my representation of her in my writing.
After a day of reflection, I replied with a simple, “I am he, the boy you once knew as Kiki.”
We sent newsy reports back and forth where we relayed our lives’ paths had not gone as either of us expected. Eventually, we turned on our computer’s video cameras. She was the first to comment, you wear glasses and still have those sideburns! I said I’d never imagined a Bettie Page coif. She laughed.
I felt so self-conscious; she knew me when I was younger and more interesting.
You never change, Eliza told me. I still have sideburns, yes, but no afro, as you can see. I wonder where it went! I laughed, on the floor in a barbershop. I cut it off to look respectable to get through customs. Vanessa suggested it because of what happened in Morocco. Anyway, I was detained in Amsterdam by the Dutch. Of course, you were, Eliza said. S’truth! I waltzed through U.S. customs, though. It is a long story. With you, it always is, she said and laughed: you listened to Vanessa of all people! Morocco…
We talked about the group, what happened to me, and how they broke up after my sudden departure from Portugal. Eliza maintained a strict silence on some of my questions. She said there are some things unforgivable. Mário called me a few years after I left, and I forgave him. He was ill, and I understood that. I needed to move on with my life and not feel like a victim anymore, I said. Eliza sighed, You were a victim. You’re stronger than me. I should have said something. I’m sorry.
We eventually talked about my projects and the novel I began during my sojourn in Lisbon. She said she read my interview of her and my other writing, and it reminded her of someone she doesn’t know anymore. We were naïve then, she said. I agreed and asked her if she was insulted or angry. She said she always wondered how I saw her. I explained all the words are me now filtering the thoughts and experiences of me then; memory is subjective, and I find so many things transposed or re-remembered out-of-sequence. She said I was hiding behind ideas as usual.
After I described the novel’s arc, she said I was writing about the group because I was heartbroken, wasn’t I? I said yes. I said I unequivocally fell in love with all of them, and instead of dealing with the confusion, I turned away and left. We all did, she said. None of us dealt with it because there was no love in what we did; everyone turned to heroin again. Writing was my way of expurgating it and making my experience understandable.
She said she read such love in my words about her, and she cried when she read my memory of her in a short story. I asked her why. Because how she feels is still tender, she said. Her wife doesn’t know all of what happened back then. I’m a brief aside in their conversations because I am a memory she kept when she felt sad. If she ever wanted to smile, she thought of me. I said I didn’t know I affected her so. But, she said, how could anyone not?
At that point, the two of us began sighing. Finally, after a long pause, I said I have to go, it is time to cook dinner. She promised not to be a stranger anymore and would text tomorrow.
I felt ambivalent talking with Eliza. After all this time, she stopped existing and became a faraway story, a ghost.
* * *
“I liked the short story about plant-based cream custards,” Eliza texted me the next day. “I submitted it to a few places, but I become less optimistic about its reception as the days go by,” I responded. “It is timing,” Eliza texted back. “If anything, I had fun writing it; how did you like how I wrote you?” She texted back: “You captured the day so well. I think of it often when I make the pastries.”
Eliza texted again, “May I call you immediately? My ideas are going too fast for my fingers.” I responded a little later, “I’m cooking.” “Always cooking!” Later that evening, Eliza called and started with a sigh and tell me now. She asked if I were a Vegan. I laughed and said only on odd-numbered days. You still say that, she laughed. I always loved her laugh: a trill that ends in a snort; it hadn’t changed. I said I was an aspiring Vegan. Eschewing meat is like what happened after I quit smoking: if I eat meat, I get nauseous. That’s some reaction, she said. It is the worst with beef, I said. You don’t smoke?
I heard a door slam on the other end of the line. Eliza said she couldn’t talk and will call later. “Who is this Eliza you write about?” Eliza texted later that night – it must have been four in the morning in Portugal. “Is she real?” “Yes,” I responded. “I see. You write her with such love and care that I want to know more about her. She is so lovely, lovely.” I wrote back, “Is this Eliza the wayward law student or literary critic talking?” “A little of both.” She called and said, “Tell me why.” I explained I wished to tell some of a special friendship the narrator had with her. In the story, I wanted to be careful not to reveal how the narrator felt. I see, she said and summed it up, friend to all, lover to none. That’s not fair, I said, then again, no ego strokes from you. Never, she said. I said I accept that. Eliza told me that her wife is the same as me, and sometimes it is frustrating never to know where she stands. I said, ask! That was your issue with me, you assumed, she laughed. You remember all too well.
I did not hear from Eliza for several weeks. I figured she wanted validation that I still cared. My past self did, and he was a stranger to me. Finally, I heard one last time from Eliza. She spoke with a faraway voice.
Do you write about everyone you’ve had feelings for? You adored Nessa, and she is nowhere in your stories. I responded, a little too sharply, I do not write about everyone, only those special to me. Were you complimenting me? Sure, yes. I did not say it is easier to talk story about the good days where there was nothing to sweep under the rug. But, I continued, Vanessa and you are inseparable in my memory, and what happened, happened. She knows, Eliza said.
Eliza ended our call by saying beijinhos queijos as she always used to. I went to sleep thinking of my old friend and wondering if leaving was the best thing. Perhaps, perhaps not. As she was fond of saying: the past is a foreign country to which we may never return. I had a new life; it made no sense to revisit the mouth of hell.