There came a moment
when Miriam looked across the table into Roberto's brown
eyes and saw Jay's brown eyes. In Roberto's hands and gestures
-- Jay's. At once she felt the joy one feels in a dream, when that
which is lost is miraculously restored, and at once the
aftermath, when one wakes up. Roberto looked away from
her, but she continued to see what she had failed to
acknowledge before: Roberto's resemblance to Jay was
unmistakable. Something gave way in her, she rose and went
to stand at the kitchen window.
For she was over Jay, had been over him a long time. Only the sudden sensation she had just received -- of Jay -- and the accompanying rise and fall, had dislodged her sense of time. She held her eyes on the black bay below, and reminded herself that she was bored by broken hearts, especially her own, and no, she would not have this feeling, of sadness and sickness, of remembrance of things already long gone and unfinished which could never be finished. If things would not be finished by themselves, you put your will to them and made them done.
She turned, suddenly self-conscious. But Roberto wasn't looking at her, and so she stood studying him. His profile was Mayan. Perhaps his ancestors in Mexico had lived in the mysterious city of Palenque, had run silently through the jungle where the insects screeched like the ghosts of even more ancient ancestors. She returned and sat across from him at the table. They had not spoken since they got out of bed. But even in the silence there was something shared, for didn't they feel alone in the same way? If lovemaking could bring you close, it most assuredly could fling you as far apart as anything she had seen. She wondered if she and Roberto could ever regain the old comfortable simplicity of affection, friendship, and camaraderie they had shared prior to this evening. She left the silence, for once they had understood each other well enough to accept the loneliness of each other now.
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