The Fugitivities, стр. 71

a sinister force or a surveilling state, but by the swirling accumulation of his own evasions coming to account. He could understand almost none of the dialogue, but that hardly mattered. The film was a documentary about tango dancers, about bodies in their color interlocking in the swiveling pattern that sailors and dockworkers, the sons and daughters of Africa and Italy and Spain, had invented on the shores of European outposts in America. But much of the film wasn’t explanatory. It was simply a recording of human bodies expressing desire with extraordinary beauty. The smile of one dancer to another in motion. It summed up everything, it said it all. The pleasures of human dance swept over him. Everything about it effortlessly repulsed the very notion of cerebral tics, malaise, disgust with life. It was like a vision of all that he felt he was not. He found himself on the verge of tears and unable to move. He didn’t want the movie to end. He wanted to hide, and when the last of the colorful bodies had dipped and the fade to black surrendered them to the theater’s soft lights, he had to gather all his force to move on.

Outside, the city’s nocturnal rhythms were beginning to take hold. Pockets of laughter and conversation reverberated under the pale evening sky. The thought of ambulating alone any longer, any farther, brought a leaky lightness to his bones. He leaned against a patch of wall between two posters for coming attractions and pretended to himself that he was merely catching his breath.

What was in reach? Across the way, directly in his line of sight, glowed the neon trimming of the cinema’s Hollywood-themed bar. Before he knew it, Jonah had downed two, then three whiskeys, the slender bartender dispensing each shot and slinking off to the far end to continue conversing with a pair of older gentlemen with portly bellies and stylish glasses. From where he was sitting, he could watch folks exiting the theater. A porter opened the door and walked in with a broom. A few people staggered out, couples, students. Behind a small group, a woman in a dark coat emerged and moved swiftly past him toward the exit, and he had the fluttering sensation that it was the woman from the previous night at El Vasco, but he wasn’t sure. He thought he should follow her, but he hadn’t paid his bill, and in his excitement, it took him even longer than usual to get it settled. By the time he emerged on the pavement she was long gone.

In a state of anxious bewilderment, compounded by drink, he thought he must find an internet café and write to Arna and to Isaac to tell them about this lonely stretch of a trip that had taken him to a city in which he had never imagined setting foot. And then, if he was sober enough, he would find out about the most reasonable flights back to New York. He marched himself up to the more heavily trafficked city center and entered the first place that he found. When he opened his inbox, he saw a short note from Isaac telling him that he’d received a raise at his school and was happy about it, but not sure if it would be enough to keep him around for more than another year or two. But there was another bold line in his inbox that grabbed Jonah’s attention. Nathaniel had written him back.

Dear Jonah,

It sounds like it’s complicated out there, but look, man, don’t think I don’t envy your travels, it’s a great chance that most of us never get. I am glad to hear you are okay. About the letter, it would mean much to me if you could hang on to it, at least while you are in Montevideo. I know you will make the most of your time, and even the thought of both of you being somewhere down there makes me feel hopeful somehow. I’m attaching a scan of one of the only photos I have of her—of us, actually. Paris, 1994. She was a beauty, man, and now I can see that I was looking pretty damn good then too. I wonder if she saw me now if it would even go the same, but you know, we’ll always have Paris, like the movie says. And that’s okay. I’m feeling more myself these days than ever, other than getting old and the fact that my jump shot ain’t right, I’m what you might call a satisfied man. You can’t imagine how great it is when one of my kids graduates, and I get to hug everyone in the family. Truth be told, I never had so much fun hooping as I’ve had coaching, even though our record isn’t exactly pretty. Every time I see those eyes light up when I rap to them about this crazy world we’re living in, well, it just makes me feel good, man. I mean sometimes we get to conversating and I can see it’s connecting, how it’s about the bigger picture, how the world is really theirs if they are willing to make it. But now you got me carrying on about myself again. Listen, be well out there, young brother, and remember to come back—that’s why I gave you the letter too, because you can always come home again. We all got peoples who need us. We all got to find our own way to do good. So do your thing, man. Enjoy that life. I hope to hear from you again somewhere down the road.

Peace,

Nate

Jonah clicked on the photograph. Nathaniel did look terribly happy and handsome in the image. They looked very much like a couple in love. And Laura. Could it be her? The woman he had seen at the theater? The woman he had seen at El Vasco? She would be older now, so there was room for some difference, but the face was so strikingly