Published in Cairn 44: The St. Andrews Review
Last week I ran into Gillian. You remember Gillian—Korean, Ph.D. dropout, barely came up to your waist. I saw her at the movies, the debut of a midnight festival of kitsch starting with Evil Dead. She walked towards me and I waited for her to pass, to head for the restroom or to someone luckier than me standing at the end of the hall. But she stopped, smiled, smoothed her hair back with one of her hands. Small palms, but surprisingly long fingers; pianist hands, or surgeon’s hands, Mom would say.
“How’ve you been?” she said, like we were old friends.
We talked for a few minutes, until her companion joined us. I could tell they weren’t lovers by the tension in his stance, the aching space he gave her. I suddenly remembered my date standing next to me, Norman, as interesting as someone named Norman can be. “Gillian used to go out with my brother,” I told him.
He was not impressed. “Ready to go?”
“I’m going to get a drink with Gillian instead.” I can never think on my feet, yet I’d plucked the idea out of thin air. Gillian waved goodbye to her friend and Norman, who stared after us with identically hurt doe eyes. I felt bad for not feeling bad.
As we lingered over a beer, I found out she hardly sleeps, just like me. “Since I was twelve,” she said. “Sometimes I’m glad, though. Like now.” I was surprised you’d never mentioned her insomnia, but I didn’t know why I was surprised—not when we speak, at most, a few times a year. At that moment I felt the loss of you, of us, sharply, until it faded under Gillian’s voice. She said you read her palm on your first date, traced her love line, told her she would love well and long. We laughed together, at you for saying it and her for liking it.
Later I examined her small palm in the dawning light, traced her love line, and kissed each of her fingers. I saw, as you must have, that her love line starts between her middle and index fingers, portending aborted relationships, a string of heartbreaks. I didn’t tell her that, of course. Instead, I showed her my palm and the love line that matches hers. She smiled, then leaned in to kiss me.
Naghma Husain 