Andrea Barrett - The Air We Breathe

Kathleen’s accompaniment, crashing chords that punctuated the sinking ships and exploding torpedoes, muffled the words but still Leo recognized Naomi’s voice before she sat in the empty chair beside him.

“What letter?” In the glow from the hooded lamps behind him he could see how carefully she’d arranged her hair. “What are you doing here?”

“The letter I sent you Wednesday,” she said, reaching again for his hand. “I said I’d meet you here, and here you are. I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

“I came to watch the pictures, ” Leo said. “I didn’t get any letter.”

“But you’re here,” Naomi said, swinging a large cloth bag onto her knees. “Where I asked you to be. And I brought back what I took from you — I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.” She extracted from the bag a parcel wrapped in brown paper. “Open it.”

Nan and Pietr, beside Leo, were peering his way, while Albert, in the next row, turned to see what was going on.

“Please?” Naomi said. When he crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the screen she said, “I can do it for you.”

“Be quiet, ” he said, sure that some of us could hear despite Kathleen’s vigorous playing. If not their words, then the great rustlings of paper.

“Here,” Naomi said.

On his lap she placed a shirt — she was giving him clothes? — and a sheaf of papers. The sheet he tilted toward the nearest lamp might have been a clouded mirror. He lifted another, another: his eyes, his chin, his face from the front and from the side. “Why would you do this?” he whispered.

“I made them on Wednesdays,” she said. Against his ear, her breath was unpleasantly warm.

He squared the pile of papers and inched his chair away. In the X-ray laboratory, when Eudora had told him about Naomi, he’d dismissed the idea: preposterous that someone should feel that way about him. He should, he saw now, have taken her warnings more seriously.

“It’s just something I do,” Naomi said. “I’ve always been good at capturing faces.” He let that pass. “Say something .”

Her hands, which she’d been squeezing together, separated. One headed for his knee and he flinched and pushed it away, gathering everything on his lap and stuffing it back in the bag she still held. Nan and Pietr looked over again at the rustling, catching the abrupt movement of Leo’s left arm and the way Naomi leaned toward him. The rest of us saw almost nothing. Yet even if we’d understood what was happening, we wouldn’t have interfered. These were the dramas of movie nights, also of holiday parties, secret walks in the woods, late night meetings. With so much time to brood and dream, great dramas, based on a single word or a tiny gesture, sometimes unfurled in our fantasies. Often the object of someone’s deepest desires was unaware, or uninterested. Or incapable; we all hid secrets beneath our clothes.

Leo crossed his legs, raising his knees to prevent Naomi from giving him anything else. “You don’t even know me,” he said.

She clutched her bag. “I know how you look at me.”

He spread his hands, palm up, miserably.

“You don’t think I saw you writing about me? Pretending to be taking notes on those stupid talks…”

“I was taking notes,” Leo said slowly, “ on what my friends were saying . I’m sorry for the misunderstanding but that’s what it is — a misunderstanding.”

Once more the door to Leo’s left opened and then closed.

LATER, EUDORA TOLD herself she’d had no way of knowing that Naomi had sneaked into the building and found Leo. No way of knowing that, when she returned and went to sit beside Leo once more, she’d find Naomi weeping at Leo’s side. And no way of knowing that, when Leo saw her, he’d say to Naomi, “That’s Eudora’s seat you’re in,” reaching as he did for Eudora’s hand.

As Eudora pulled her fingers guiltily from Leo’s, she saw that Naomi was wearing a dress she’d made herself: a dark red cotton print, with a white piqué collar, cuffs, and square patch pockets, surprisingly stylish except for a puckered shoulder seam, where the sleeve hadn’t set correctly. Perhaps she imagined that; the light from the hooded lamps was dim. But certainly she didn’t imagine the look on Naomi’s face, or her choked voice saying, “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you with Irene?” Rising, Naomi caught her hem with one foot and nearly tipped over.

“I took a night off,” Eudora said, while her friend righted herself. “I didn’t think I needed your permission.”

At home, putting on her second-best dress, she’d ascribed the jumpiness in her stomach to curiosity. Not only about what Leo would do, but what she’d do herself when they saw each other away from their normal routines. That, and perhaps also a sense that she was doing something underhanded. She’d wanted to believe she wasn’t doing anything wrong, but it was more, she realized now, that she hadn’t expected to be caught. Her own sense of betraying Naomi made her sound harsher than she’d intended. “What,” she said, “are you doing here?”

By now those of us close enough to hear were eavesdropping with what, if we’re completely honest, we’d have to call a kind of malicious pleasure. The short films had been only sporadically interesting, whereas this…

“But you know, ” Naomi said. Her voice rose, bewildered. “You know how I feel, you’ve known all along.”

Eudora looked beyond her to Leo, wondering how she might ease the situation.

“You told him!” Naomi said, catching the glance Eudora and Leo exchanged.

She ran from the room, the bag dangling at her side. For a moment, as she threw open the door, her slight figure was outlined against the white rectangle of light. “Shut it!” someone called, and she banged it behind her. Myra’s sudden hemorrhage had caused the usual speculations, but this — bad behavior without the excuse of illness — we found simply entertaining, something we could gossip about without feeling too cruel.

Have we said how bored we often were? How hungry for something to happen? Perhaps we didn’t say enough, earlier, about the feuds and quarrels that used to be common here. The way we found scapegoats, broke into factions and groups, turned like jackals on those who tried to hold themselves apart or guard their privacy. It wasn’t that we hoped for the worst or didn’t like a happy ending, but we wanted to be included in the process.

The door closed. Leo sat, Eudora sat; the next reel offered aerial shots of two airplanes fighting. “This is terrible,” Eudora whispered to Leo. “I have to go after her. Or maybe you should.”

“I can’t do anything without her misinterpreting it,” Leo groaned. “She’s so convinced…”

Eudora nodded and rose. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s better if I go.”

Again Leo watched the rectangle of light open up on the wall, this time silhouetting Eudora for an instant before the door shut again. Several of us saw her leave, although no one was with her as she stood looking right and left down the bright corridor, trying to imagine where Naomi might have headed.

A girl had been embarrassed, we thought, as we focused once more on the screen. It was nothing more than had happened to many of us, and she’d get over it. She was well, she was free to go wherever she wanted; what did she have, really, to complain about? Some of us looked with pity, others with amusement, at Leo, who now had his head in his hands. In the corridor Eudora turned right — she should have turned left — toward the walkway leading to the men’s annex and Leo’s room, where she thought that Naomi, trying to comfort herself by going where she was most forbidden, might have headed.