Do I Know You?(12)

Eliza’s expression shades faintly, like a single cloud in an otherwise clear sky. “Right. Well, you could have introduced me at any time.”

“You could have introduced yourself,” I parry. “You didn’t. It’s like you want it this way.”

I knew she was enjoying the performance we were putting on, pretending we didn’t know each other. It wasn’t just the actress in her delighting in the exercise, either. It was her. She was enjoying rewriting the rules of us.

While I was, too, this certainly wasn’t my plan for the first night of this trip. In fact, tonight has continued to unfold further and further from the evening I’d imagined. I didn’t want to be talking to David Berqvist in the first place. I just wanted to have dinner with my wife. I mean, I really wanted to have dinner with my wife with whom I have endless topics of engaging conversation, whom I could listen to read explicit content for hours, and with whom I have mutually satisfying sex every night.

But I would’ve settled for dinner.

“Which way?” Eliza asks. “Us acting like we don’t know each other?”

I’m still surprised by how frankly she’s handling this entire conversation. I don’t show it. “Tell me you didn’t like me better when I was pretending to be a stranger,” I challenge her.

Her overcast eyes flit from mine for a split second, then return, but it’s too late. I know what her answer is.

When she speaks, her voice has softened. More genuine now, less poised. While I’m still pissed, I listen. “It’s not about liking you better, Graham,” Eliza says. “I love you. But I feel like I don’t know you. Not the way I used to.” She sighs. “I mean, yeah. You pretending to be a stranger to me felt . . . honest. Like we could say things we couldn’t normally. It was easy talking to you. Flirting with you. We could be open in ways we haven’t been, be comfortable with not knowing each other.”

I hide how her conclusion hurts me. “We can be open with each other,” I insist, hearing the forced note in my conviction.

Eliza watches me for a long moment like she wants this to be true. It spurs some indignant hope in me. If I can just prove this to her—

“Okay,” Eliza finally says. “Let’s try it.”

My mind fires to life, driven by stubborn insistence. I prove things to people professionally, I remind myself. I can do this. Whatever’s wrong with us, I can prove we’re not so far gone we can’t have one dinner conversation. I remember the day, remember its most strained moments—until finally I seize on something. “So, what’s this new book you’re recording?” I ask.

Eliza’s expression dims. “I want to work with you here,” she says gently. “But I could email you the pitch for the book I’m performing. I could forward it to you in two seconds. You could read it in ten. You could do the same thing for every book I ever read without really coming closer to knowing me,” she explains with pained patience.

Frustrated, yet grudgingly understanding what she means, I retreat into my head, wracking my thoughts some more. Eliza just doesn’t understand the real problem here, some firm, fatalistic little voice in me says. It’s not that I won’t ask her real questions. I can’t ask her real questions. I’ve either asked them already or I can’t locate them past veils of not knowing what I don’t know.

Suddenly, just like that, quick, shallow desperation cuts into me. Usually, I only feel like I’ve been treading water for hours. Right now, I feel like I’ve been treading water for days, with no signs of shore in sight. I need to find something. Anything, now.

“Do you want to pick a new show to watch on TV?” I manage wildly.

Eliza doesn’t reply. She just looks sad. Unable to keep meeting her eyes, I lower my gaze.

“Graham,” she says. Half guarded, half imploring. “Is this what you want? Is this how you would prefer this week to look? Honestly?”

“How do you want the week to look?” I fire back, looking up sharply. The posture of her question pisses me off, because this—this week, this year, this horrible conversation—isn’t me failing. It isn’t me taking wrong turns while Eliza clutches the map. We got to this tense gray place together.

“Well,” Eliza says, then pauses.

In her silence, I realize she’s . . . thinking. I’d meant the question rhetorically, a rejection of sole responsibility for our issue. But in the midst of my flourish, Eliza is starting to form an answer. There’s some decision here, some idea forming secretly in her. The entire room narrows down to her hesitation.

“Maybe we should be strangers,” she says.

I know I don’t hide the dubious shock on my face. I’d begun to wonder whether she wanted to go home or maybe go to counseling. Not even years of high-stakes litigation have prepared me for this.

“For a couple days,” she clarifies hastily. “Just like we did tonight. Play this game, see where it takes us. Because”—she swallows—“I want to have more conversations like the one we just had.”

I want to object to her. I’m good at finding argumentative angles, supplying facts or twisting words to support my claims. Here, though, it’s harder. Part of me knows she’s right—or right in some regards. Our relationship has lost something, and our discussion of dating had substance in ways our conversations never do.