André Aciman - Harvard Square

“Yes, I know.”

My son and I would probably be stifling laughter at this point. And I’d be relishing the prospect of returning late to a nearly empty Office of Admissions, winking at my son and saying to the admissions officer, “Very sorry, most very sorry, we’ve missed the boat to Byzantium, haven’t we?”

No sooner would we have gotten into the cab than I’d be reminded of that summer’s oppressive heat. I’d be back to the books I read each day while drinking Tom Collins up on my roof terrace on Concord Avenue, and to those summer days so hot and so scented with suntan lotion that you’d think you were somewhere on the Mediterranean coastline, not far from Sidi Bou Saïd, south of Pantelleria, which I had still never been to, much less thought of after he’d left Cambridge. I’d be back to the French songs we sang in the car on our way to Walden Pond, or of that French song by an Alexandrian Jew about two friends ending up together after so many detours, and of the way Kalaj, who always talked so much, sat and listened to me when he came to pick me up one night because I needed to run away. I’ll never forget the way his car, like a spy boat entering enemy waters to help a prisoner escape, had edged its slow, silent way from Putnam Avenue and then, with its engine still running, had turned its lights on and off twice, just as in spy movies. I’d ask the cabdriver where he’d purchased this car, who from, and when. And as I’d have him distracted, in the backseat I’d ask my son to look for a Freemason sticker somewhere. Kalaj had ended up with so many round stickers after visiting the Masonic Lodge that, not knowing what to do with the last two, he finally stuck them in the least likely spots — right below the armrests under each ashtray, in case you were a smoker and still hadn’t gotten the point! Had there been such a sticker, I would have unpeeled it without the driver’s noticing, and held it. That sticker would have been his time-delayed message to me— Thank God you found me. I’m well. I have two daughters. I have good memories. I love you.

And I love you too.