Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash
“I found Natasha’s address!” Mark announced over the cubicle wall.
Beth startled and yanked her headphones off. Mark loved the way Beth startled whenever someone interrupted her; most people called first to avoid her jumpiness, but Mark insisted on surprising her.
“Natasha who?” Beth asked.
“London Natasha.”
Beth wrinkled her nose. “The club-footed hussy?”
She had a colorful sobriquet for all of the romantic failures Mark had told her about. Jane, who returned his love letters unopened, was the “hare-lipped trollop”; Melissa, who gave back her engagement ring right after college graduation, was the “hunch-backed degenerate”; and Natasha, who broke his heart twice, was the “club-footed hussy.”
“The same,” Mark said. “She teaches forensic medicine at UC-San Diego.”
“You’re not going to write to her.” It was a statement—a command—not a question.
“I might.” He grinned.
“You won’t.” Beth put her headphones back on and returned to her work. Mark, still grinning, sat back down at his desk and looked again at the web page with the faculty listings.
He felt giddy in a way that he hadn’t for a long time—maybe not since he had met Natasha almost fourteen years ago. There was no way to be absolutely certain this was Natasha’s address; her last name was “Smith”, after all, and even the unusual combination of “Natasha Smith” turned up many pages of hits on Google. And there was no guarantee that her last name was still Smith.
But he had spent about an hour on his research, and he felt sure this was the right Natasha Smith. He had started with the on-line archive of the conference she had attended in Colorado when she came to visit him in grad school, and followed her career by way of scholarly publications: one at the University of London, two at Manchester University, two more at Columbia, and three since 1999 at San Diego. The subject matter had stayed the same—something to do with identifying neurotoxins—and the other contributors seemed to be a rotating core of four or five names. There couldn’t be more than one Natasha Smith publishing on neurotoxins; this must be her.
Mark started his first probing e-mail five or six times before he finally decided on a simple subject line—“QMC, 1989?”—and a two sentence message: “Are you the Natasha Smith I knew at Queen Mary College in 1989? If not, please disregard.” He clicked “send” and went back to his work.
Beth sat down in the extra chair in his cubicle at about noon. She had inherited many of the applications Mark wrote before he had started on the new extranet project, and was a frequent visitor with questions about them. They also took a walk around the corporate campus most days, which is when she came up with her pet names for Mark’s former girlfriends. Mark sat silently for a moment, waiting to find out which occasion had prompted Beth’s visit, then turned to face her.
“It was the right Natasha,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“The club-footed hussy. The address I found was hers.”
Beth rolled her eyes. Mark opened the e-mail from Natasha:
RE: QMC, 1989?
YES! How did you find me? Are you the Mark Thompson who was visiting from Indiana? (in fact I think I visited you …)
“You are not to write back,” Beth said. She folded her arms and stared at him disapprovingly. Beth could deliver withering glares in the face of stupidity.
“For God’s sake, Beth. I’m thirty four years old, married, with a mortgage and two kids. I’m not the same person I was fourteen years ago.”
“I don’t like her.”
“You’ve never met her.”
“I know her type.”
Mark sighed. “Look,” he said. “I’m not interested in starting something up. I just wondered what became of her. A little more of the story of her life, and I’m done.”
“OK. No more than seven sentences and this is over.”
“And doesn’t that ‘I think I visited you’ comment deserve a response?”
“Not really. It didn’t sound like a very good visit.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Mark looked over his shoulder at his desk clock. “Time for our walk?”
Beth smiled. “Of course,” she said, and went back to her desk to change her shoes.
It was his wife Sara’s remodeling project that brought on this sudden nostalgia. She wanted to redesign the upstairs and add a bathroom, which meant that much of the upstairs would have to move to the basement. But the basement was already filled, mostly with the debris of Mark’s bachelorhood. Sara had been pestering him for three years to clear it out, and now he had a deadline.
He hadn’t found it too difficult once he got started. Working mostly at night, after the kids had gone to bed, he unpacked and sorted. Five big trash bags ended up in the alley. Beth got a box of mystery novels. Several boxes went to a used book store, netting twenty dollars and some change. And then, late one Wednesday night, he found the box of diaries.
They were a little moldy and damp, but intact. He skimmed the high school volumes, wincing at their earnestness. The diaries from his first two years of college, mostly about Jane, seemed pompous and self-engrossed. When he got to his semester in London, and Natasha, he sat on an old kitchen chair and read every word.
He was surprised to find that his affair with Natasha only ran from November 12 to December 20, 1989. In his memory, it seemed much longer. He smiled at a few entries before November 12 that seemed like subtle foreshadowing: suppers at the cafeteria with Natasha and her boyfriend, Ned; visits to Natasha’s room to talk about movies; chance (or not?) meetings at Mile End campus or the South Woodford Underground station. At twenty, he had been remarkably ignorant of how women worked. At thirty four, he suspected he was equally ignorant, but without the excuse of youth.
There was a two year gap in the diaries that he knew had been filled by Melissa, and then they picked up again with Natasha’s surprise phone call to his graduate student apartment in Lafayette, Indiana. In the entries leading up to March 13, 1992, there was exuberance and excitement—Natasha was coming to visit! And then that awful weekend in Chicago, the yet-more-awful week when Natasha decided on a solo vacation in New Orleans, and the horrible drive back to Chicago to send Natasha back to London. After that, the diaries were silent. Mark hadn’t realized before that Natasha’s second breaking of his heart had caused an eleven year writer’s block.
He wished that he had kept up the diaries. A lot had happened in those eleven years. He moved to Minneapolis, fell into a career that he had never expected but really loved, met and married Sara, helped bring two little boys into the world. But he couldn’t remember the details of those events; he didn’t even know the date of his first meeting with Sara, and could hardly remember the place.
For two hours that Wednesday night, though, he was back in London. He remembered every detail, every word, and he loved Natasha again, if only briefly.
“How could you let someone break your heart twice?” Beth asked. They were on their walk—three times around the main office building instead of once around the pond, because on windless summer days the mosquitoes were fearsome.
Mark shrugged. “She was beautiful,” he said. “And quoting poetry to her actually worked.”
“Men.”
Beth was two years younger than Mark, but carried herself with a sophistication that made her seem older. Once, defending Natasha’s bad behavior, he had asked her, “Weren’t you ever young?” She replied, flatly and without pause, “No.”
“It was a long time ago,” Mark said. “I’m not the same person.”
“I’m not so sure. You’re still waiting for another reply, aren’t you?”
“Maybe. But I’m not preoccupied.”
He remembered rushing to the mailbox every day for four months after he had returned from London, hoping that there would be a letter from Natasha. She only wrote him three times, all in the first four weeks.
“Have you told Sara?” Beth asked.
“God, no. Why give her ammunition? Besides, I don’t think she’d really care.”
“But you told Natasha you’re married?”
“Of course! This is just idle curiosity. Nothing more.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes. “Can we drop this topic?” he asked.
“Of course. What do you want to talk about?”
“How about if we pick at the scabs on your heart for a while?”
“I’d rather not.”
So they talked about a billing program Mark had written five years ago that had been acting up lately.
“What are your plans for today?” Natasha asked.
Mark set his cafeteria tray down next Ned and took a seat across the table from her. He had just toast and tea; Ned and Natasha both had the “full English breakfast”: runny eggs, boiled tomato, greasy bacon, and beans. He had tried their breakfast his first week in London, and had quickly switched.
“I’m going to the Quaker Meeting by Euston Station,” he said.
“Is that why you’re dressed for a funeral?” Ned asked, looking up and down Mark’s gray slacks and black sweater.
“Oh, are you a Quaker?” Natasha leaned over the table as if looking at something strange and exotic.
“No. Just curious.”
“Strange lot,” Ned said around a forkful of beans. “Always down at the Union with their peace signs.”
“You’re just a Tory grump,” said Natasha. “I think it’s interesting.”
Mark smiled at her and sipped his tea. It was bitter, and black as coffee. He had never got used to putting milk in his tea, though, and the cafeteria’s coffee was even worse.
“I was trying to convince Mr. Grump here to go for a walk at Hyde Park,” she said.
Mark tore open a packet of sugar and poured it into his tea. “It’s a beautiful day for a walk. Feels almost like summer.”
“I told you I’ve got work to do,” Ned said. “I have to go into campus for the day.”
Natasha put down her fork. “You see what I put up with?”
“I think I put up with more,” Ned mumbled. He pushed half his tomato around on his plate. “Exams are just a few weeks away.”
“Well, maybe Mark would like to join me?”
Mark stirred his tea until the sugar had dissolved. “Well, Meeting isn’t over until ten—“
“Then be at Marble Arch station at eleven.” She looked at Ned, her eyes narrowing. “If I have your permission, of course.”
“Do what you like. Will you ride in to campus with me?”
“If you’re prompt.”
It was almost eleven thirty when Mark ran up the stairs from the platform at Marble Arch, taking two steps at a time. He was certain Natasha would be gone.
“Natasha!” he yelled. She was standing near the exit gate, looking across Bayswater Road at the park. She turned and smiled at him.
“You’re late.”
“I’m sorry,” he gasped, leaning against the ticket machine. “I lost track of time.”
“That’s all right.” She tugged at his sleeve. “Let’s go get some tea.”
They walked into the park together, heading toward the pavilion near the Serpentine. Mark and his roommate, a New Yorker named Pat, had rented a boat on their first visit to the parks in September. Today, the pond was crowded with little boats as people took advantage of the unusually warm mid-November morning. He wondered if he should suggest that he and Natasha do the same.
“I can’t believe Ned would pass up a day like this,” Mark said.
“Well, I’m glad he did.” Natasha ordered two teas, and poured cream into both before Mark could protest. “He’s been a royal pain lately.”
They walked along the path around the Serpentine, sipping their tea from paper cups and talking. Mark tried to keep the talk focused on Natasha—her studies at the college, her friend’s trip to Calais, her plans for Christmas holidays. She suddenly fell silent and stopped. Mark was a few steps ahead before he noticed, and turned back.
When he was beside her, Natasha looked up and whispered, “I fancy you.”
Mark struggled to translate her words, and waited almost too long to say, “I fancy you, too.”
Then she kissed him—a long, deliberate kiss. When she stood back, she took his hand and led him around the Serpentine.
“So what ever happened between you and Natasha?” Beth asked. They were in the cafeteria after their walk, another step in their routine. Beth was pouring herself a cup of lemonade while Mark took a bottle of iced tea from the cooler.
“In what way?”
“If she was all you claim she was, why are you married to Sara?”
“Geography,” said Mark. “The Atlantic Ocean is mighty wide.”
“And her boyfriend was mighty close?”
“Too damned close the whole time.” He handed the cashier two dollars and waited for his change. “We had supper together almost every night. All three of us.”
Beth laughed. “And you were all too polite to point out how ludicrous that was.”
“Well, they were. They’re English. Ned really brought out the ugly American in me.”
Beth paid for her lemonade and walked toward the stairs to their cubicles. “Must have been awfully uncomfortable.”
Mark smiled. “And kind of exciting. Have you ever been in a classic love triangle?”
“I didn’t find it exciting at all. I think the word would be ‘hellish’.”
“I was young and stupid and wildly romantic. I thought it was exciting. Did I mention the poetry?”
Beth started up the stairs and looked back at him. “I’ll certainly grant you ‘stupid’”, she said.
“Why don’t we ever hold hands anymore?” Mark asked as he slid into bed.
Sara groaned and rolled over. “What do you mean, ‘anymore’? We never held hands.”
“No, I guess not. Why not?”
“It’s kind of juvenile.”
“I suppose. It’s kind of nice sometimes, though.”
“Then hold hands with Beth on your walks. Go to sleep, I’m tired.” She rolled over again, her back to him. “You smell musty from the basement.”
Mark looked at the ceiling. He could hear their youngest son, Jason, snoring in the crib at the other end of the room. Henry, a year older than Jason, slept downstairs in a new toddler bed, and if he listened carefully Mark could hear his snores as well. They got that from their mother.
Mark wasn’t sure why he had brought up hand-holding. It was the closest he had come to mentioning the diaries to Sara.
And it was too close to the great taboo subject in their marriage: why she had never said that she loved him. He suspected that she did—they had been married for five years, after all—but she had never said so.
Mark remembered very clearly the first time that he told Sara he loved her, a few months before he proposed. They were at an Italian restaurant in their old neighborhood, talking about Sara’s co-worker whom they called “Bristle Brush,” after his unfortunate mustache. Sara had laughed so hard that she spilled her wine across the white table cloth. Mark, laughing too, blurted out, “I love you.”
The words hung over dinner for a moment, and it was too late to pull them back. Sara stopped laughing, smiled, and said, “I know.” Which still remained her standard response.
Once, he had almost tricked her into saying she loved him. Mark was going over a list of errands he was running, and Sara was preoccupied with something on the television.
“Should I pick up some tomatoes?” he asked.
“Um-hmm.”
“Do we need stamps?”
“Um-hmm.”
“Do you love me?”
“Um-hmm.”
“Are you sure?”
But she caught herself. “No. Get some envelopes, too.”
He turned to face Sara’s back, and fell asleep listening to her snoring.
“Face it—you were just a notch on her bedpost,” Beth said. “I’m surprised she even answered that first e-mail.”
“Oh, you’re right,” Mark said. It was a windy day, so they were walking the trails by the pond behind the office building. “But the whole thing meant a lot to me—I came out of it a different person than I was when I started.”
“A better person?”
Mark shrugged. “I think a more deliberate person.”
“What an odd thing to say! You were ordered to clean the basement, you accidentally found some old diaries, and you obsessively hunted for the club-footed hussy’s e-mail address. Nothing deliberate there.”
Mark smiled. “Getting the address was pretty impressive, though. I’m proud of that.”
“Pride before the fall, Mr. Thompson. Have you told Sara?”
“Told Sara what? That I found an old friend’s e-mail address? I don’t think Sara even knows the Natasha story, and I’m sure she wouldn’t care.”
“Would you care if Sara was looking up old boyfriends?”
“Probably. But I can’t imagine that she would—Sara doesn’t live in the past.” The wind rippled the shallow pond’s surface. “I love Sara very much.”
“You’re just a glutton for punishment.”
“And I think you’re just a little bit jealous.”
Beth picked up her pace, and Mark had to jog a little to keep up.
“Not at all,” she said. “I get to punish you eight hours a day. Natasha just gets the occasional e-mail.”
Sara called down the basement steps for an update on his progress. “I still see a lot of boxes,” she said.
Mark slid the diary under a pile of sweaters that hadn’t fit him in years. “That’s because I’m sorting—they’re mostly empty.”
“They’d better be.” He heard her steps across the living room floor above his head.
Mark retrieved the diary, held it open for a moment, then closed it and put it back under the sweaters. He had just been reading the entries from Natasha’s visit, and was surprised at how raw the cut still was.
“I can’t sleep with you,” Natasha said as soon as they got upstairs to the hotel room. Mark had decided to splurge on this weekend in Chicago, and checked them into the Blackstone Hotel, a faded beauty from 1910 that had put quite a dent in his monthly stipend. Four years later, he would bring Sara here on their first trip together because she loved the architecture.
“Why not?” he asked, surprised both by her words and by their uncharacteristic directness.
“I have a boyfriend now.”
“That never seemed to bother you before.”
“David is different. I think I’m in love.”
“But when you called, you said –“
She shrugged. “We were having a rough patch. I think it’s worked out now.”
“I see.”
“But I’m very happy to see you—I missed you a lot.”
On their first day in Chicago, they visited the Art Institute, almost directly across the street from the Blackstone. Natasha didn’t have much interest in art, but she seemed to be making an effort.
In the middle of one of the galleries was a giant bronze statue of a nude woman. Natasha walked around her twice, slowly looking her over. From the corner of the gallery, Mark watched men slyly doing the same to Natasha. A surge of pride came over him—“Yes, and she’s with me.” But just as quickly, it crashed—“But she’s not mine.”
They hadn’t made any plans for the rest of the week that Natasha would be visiting, and in retrospect Mark saw the error in that. Lafayette held no charms. So when he came back after his sociology seminar Tuesday afternoon, he wasn’t really surprised that Natasha had bought a single plane ticket to New Orleans.
“I’ve always wanted to see New Orleans,” she said, eyes bright with excitement. “And I’m sure you’ve got too much work to do to take off a week to entertain me.”
Mark drove her to the airport in Indianapolis on Wednesday evening, and picked her up the following Tuesday. All the way back to Lafayette, Natasha recounted her adventures in New Orleans, particularly the great fun she had with Tim, whom she met on a tour of plantation houses.
“I thought you had a boyfriend,” Mark said.
“Oh, this was just a holiday fling.”
“I see.”
“Really—it meant nothing. It would be different with you.” She touched his hand and smiled.
Mark was glad to take her to O’Hare Airport the next morning, and hoped never to see her again. He spent the afternoon doing research at the University of Chicago library.
That Natasha had been in San Diego since 1999 was a strange surprise to Mark. He had been there that March for a web developers’ conference, just a few miles from the university.
Sara had joined him, thinking that she would enjoy a week by the pool at a resort hotel. But that had lasted only one day before she was bored.
On the second day of the conference, she walked from the hotel to downtown San Diego, almost five miles in the hot spring sun. When Mark came back from the conference sessions that afternoon, he found Sara lying face down on the bed, covered with damp towels, the shades drawn and the lights off.
“I found some great light fixtures,” she croaked, barely lifting her head.
They agreed that Sara would avoid heatstroke and sunburn for the rest of the conference by taking a cab on her explorations. Each evening she recounted her trips to Balboa Park, the Gas Lamp District, and the art nouveau hotel at Coronado Beach. Mark managed to slip a few of the taxi receipts past the accounting office when he submitted his expense report.
Sara never joined him on another business trip, though. He had gone to Chicago a year before he found his old diaries, and took a long early-morning walk through the south Loop. Sara was sad to hear that the Blackstone Hotel was being converted to condos.
Mark finished cleaning the basement on a Sunday night. There were still some books that could be winnowed out, but they were at least contained in a half dozen boxes, neatly stacked and alphabetized. The diaries were in a plastic tub to keep them from molding further, and the tub held up a stack of boxes.
Or, really, the boxes held down the tub. He couldn’t bring himself to cut off their heads and stuff their mouths with garlic, but he could at least prevent the diaries and their ghosts from escaping and causing any more damage.
On Monday, he and Beth sat together at his computer, looking over the uncooperative billing program. Reading the old code was almost as embarrassing as reading the old diaries had been.
“I wish I could re-write this,” he said. “That’s not how I’d do it now.”
“It’s not so bad,” Beth said. Mark knew that she was trying to be polite—he couldn’t image her ever writing something so sloppy.
“It’s awful. If I ever caught you writing something like this, I’d lose all respect for you.”
“Very sweet. It’s nice to know your respect is so conditional.”
Mark found the spot that was causing the problem: two routines that were trying to update the same database record. Under just the wrong conditions, these jealous routines would spin the poor datum around with unpredictable results.
“I see two ways to fix this,” Mark said. “I can make a little change to get us by, but it will still be kind of wrong. Or we can fix the way the database works and do it right.”
“Well, you won’t respect me if we don’t do it right.”
“I won’t respect myself if we do it wrong.”
“Then it’s settled,” Beth said, standing up. “We start right after our walk.”
“Perfect.”
Mark closed the program module on his computer and checked his e-mail. Among the messages from project managers and system administrators was nestled an e-mail from Natasha Smith, subject line, “RE: QMC, 1989?” He hesitated for a moment, knowing that he would regret any choice he made. And then he deleted it without opening the message.
“Are you coming?” Beth called from the end of the hall.
Mark pushed himself back from his desk. “On my way,” he said.