André Aciman - Harvard Square

The second time I saw him weep came much later.

“I’M HUNGRY. HAVE you eaten?” Kalaj asked at Café Algiers, that day we first met.

“No.”

“Well, let’s get a bite for free.”

He looked so grubby and unkempt when he stood up, that I imagined he must have meant something by way of a soup kitchen. There was clearly a first time for everything, and, given my cash flow, I’d been sacrificing food for too many cigarettes. I was ready to admit defeat and head out for a free bowl of chicken broth or whatever was the pauper’s fare on the menu that Sunday.

“They’re serving ’appy hower at Césarion’s.” He pronounced happy hour as the French do: ’appy hower, by eliding h ’s where they belong and inserting them where they don’t.

I had no idea what happy hour was. He looked totally baffled. “It’s when you buy a cheap glass of pale red wine for a dollar twenty-two and have as many petits sandwiches as you can eat,” he explained. Why hadn’t I known about this?

We walked out of Café Algiers, then made our way through the narrow corridor leading to the tiny makeshift parking lot that stood in front of the Harvest. This was where he liked to park his cab.

He entered Césarion’s with all the poise and self-assurance of someone who’s been a longtime friend of the owner, the manager, the headwaiter. “Frankly, I’m sick and tired of Buffalo wings,” he said as soon as he spotted a large ceramic bowl filled with the greasiest fried wings that had ever been mired in bogs of sauce. We ordered two glasses of red wine. You took a little plate comme ça , like that, he explained, and you filled it with petits sandwiches or brochettes or wings , comme ceci , like this.

Soon, some of the same faces I’d observed at Café Algiers began to straggle downstairs into Césarion’s. I had always thought it was an expensive establishment. Yet, here, half of Cambridge’s riffraff was busy stuffing itself on larded wings and petits sandwiches . I’d been living in this town for four years, and yet someone who had landed at Logan Airport six months ago already knew all the ins and outs of every Sunday freebie around town. How and where did one pick up such a skill?

“See this guy?” Kalaj pointed to a bearded man wearing a large leather-brimmed hat. “He was here yesterday too. And the day before. He comes in here like me: to eat for free.” Kalaj wedged himself to where the cheeses were. I followed. He pointed to a woman holding a glass of wine. “She was at Café Algiers too this afternoon.” I gave him a blank stare. “You don’t remember? She was sitting right next to you for two hours.”

“She was?”

“ Franchement , frankly…” Exasperation speaking. “Now watch this guy.”

I watched this guy . Unlike Young Hemingway, he had a studiously stubbly unshaven beard. There is nothing to watch, I finally said. Of course there was, snapped Kalaj. “Learn to see, can’t you!” He took a breath. “He’s just spotted the woman at the corner and is going to try to pick her up. He never succeeds.”

Sure enough, the studiously unshaven young man sidled up to a woman in a paisley summer dress, and without looking at her, muttered something. She smiled but didn’t say anything. He muttered something else. Her smile was more guarded, almost forced. Anyone could tell she was not interested just by the way she leaned against a pillar. “He never learns.” But I admired the man’s courage, his persistence, I said. “Courage he has lots of; persistence also, and certainly no shame. Desire too he’s got. But it’s all in his head — not here . Which is why he’s never convincing, because he isn’t very convinced himself. He’ll wake up one day at the age of fifty and find he’s never liked women.”

“How do you know all this?”

“How do I know! Easy. He’s going through the motions, but you can tell he’s hoping she’ll ask him to stop. Either this, or he’s decided it’s a loss but keeps at it to prove that at least he tried. And besides, there’s another reason.” Here, with his back leaning against the wall, he finally lit the cigarette he’d been dangling from his lips ever since rolling it at Café Algiers. “The fact is he’s ugly, and he knows it. All that stubble on his face is intended to make him look cool, but it doesn’t work.”

I was beginning to wonder what he thought of me. Had he already figured me out? I was not sure I wanted to know.

One of the waiters came and asked if we wanted another glass of wine. “In a moment,” said Kalaj, almost offended that management was trying to push drinks now. “Can’t he see I’m still drinking?”

Meanwhile another waitress had removed the empty bowl of chicken wings only to return moments later and put down another bowl brimming with more of the same. “A few more bites won’t hurt us,” he said.

Soon, the friend he had left behind at Café Algiers also stepped in. “There he is again. Let’s leave.”

I was just starting to like Césarion’s. I had grown to like the petits sandwiches , and the chicken wings weren’t so bad either.

“There’s nothing happening here tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“The women are taken.”

“What about the one leaning on the pillar,” I pointed out, if only to persuade him to stay a while longer.

“She works here.”

I didn’t have to leave or follow him, and yet I walked out with him. As we stepped out into the early evening light, he muttered, “Je déteste ’appy hower.”

It was nearing sunset. I never liked sunsets around Harvard Square, never liked Mount Auburn Street, especially late on Sunday afternoons when its tired, declining light and its shuttered, old New-England-town look suggested a mix of lingering wealth, incipient decrepitude, and the stealthy patter of movements in quiet nursing homes where early supper is being served as soon as Sunday’s visitors have left. Mount Auburn had always stood for the grungy backside of Cambridge, and now that the students were gone, its deserted sidewalks and ugly post office looked as gray and wretched as an aging dowager sans makeup.

I was growing restless and needed to get back to my reading. Besides, Kalaj was beginning to buttonhole me, and I didn’t like it.

Suddenly, as we were still on the stairway leading up to the street, he gave me his hand and shook mine. “Time went by faster than I thought. I must drive my cab.”

He must have read what was going through my mind. It would be just like him to end a conversation abruptly. It made saying goodbye easy. “Maybe we’ll see each other another time. Bonne soirée .” Snap!

Before going home, on impulse, I headed back downstairs to Césarion’s. I had always been a light eater and what I’d seen during happy hour there could easily pass for tonight’s fare if I managed to wolf down more wings. Yet after only a few moments downstairs by myself I couldn’t have felt more out of place. Not my crowd, not my scene. Without Kalaj and the unreal France he projected on everything around us that afternoon, I felt awkward, exposed; everyone seemed to be an habitué here, whereas I needed to be seen talking to someone, someone who knew his way around this strange ritual called happy hour and who had lived long enough on the fringe of things not to feel uncomfortable or even louche when caught slumming for more than five minutes. I couldn’t even find the gumption to pick up another chicken wing. So, before daring to touch the food, I hesitated, then finally managed to order another glass of wine. By the time the bartender served me a glass of red, the big bowl of chicken wings had disappeared. Perhaps they would replenish it soon. But the large bowl of petits sandwiches had also been taken away. It took me a while to realize that happy hour was over and that the price of wine, when I finally asked how much I owed the bartender, had doubled.