Read Online Harvard Square by André Aciman - Free Book Online Page B

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.
    Crestfallen, I walked back to the Square and