Ming convinced her parents that the obvious thing was for her to travel to Toronto on Friday for her Saturday morning interview, then spend the weekend there and go to Hamilton for her Monday morning interview before returning to Ottawa. She insisted that she needed to travel without them in order to concentrate. Ming hadn’t asked Fitzgerald, nor had he made the suggestion, but between them they had decided that he would come to Toronto with her.
“You can help me prep for my interview. Afterwards, we’ll have dinner together,” said Ming. It was her reward to herself, she decided, this extravagant pleasure which was only possible in a city where she was a stranger.
“You get to choose the restaurant.”
“We might as well stay in the same hotel room.”
“Because of the cost.”
“I specified two twin beds.”
“Needless to say,” he added quickly.
After a pause she said, “Not to imply that you would imagine differently.”
He was her best friend and study partner, she reasoned, and therefore it was normal that she would want his company. Besides, it was her parents’ own fault that they would not understand this, therefore she would not tell them.
“Next question,” said Ming. It was one o’clock. That morning, they would travel to Toronto. They lay in their respective beds, in their separate homes, talking on the telephone. Ming was curled on her side in the dark. Her muscles ached as if they had been stretched beyond a natural length and then allowed to recoil into tightly wound balls. She imagined Fitzgerald lying on his back, the sheet of paper on his knees, the light from the reading lamp yellow on the page. She knew the paper he held, because she had given him this list of interview questions from previous applicants’ Toronto interviews. It had the pebbly look of a photocopy of a copy of a copy. He read questions, which she answered like lines in a play. Ming foresaw the aloneness of saying goodnight, and wished that she could hold him.
Even so, she felt panic as if being attacked when, at that moment, he said, “Do you think that if things were different, we could be lying together right now?”
“Fitzgerald, this is the worst possible time for you to say that.”
“Sorry.”
“The hotel has two beds, and the only reason I agreed to you coming is that we’re unemotional friends, and you’re supposed to help me with my interview. Not get me all screwed up.” She spoke as if the idea of Fitzgerald coming to Toronto was entirely his doing.
“But don’t you wish we weren’t afraid of each other?”
“We need to go through all the questions once more.”
“It’s better if you answer them spontaneously.”
“For you, that’s the way. For me, I need to be prepared,” she said.
“It’s more honest if you just go for it.”
“You think they want honesty?”
“They’ll throw you questions that aren’t on this sheet.”
“Fine, Mr. Interviewer. Make up something, then.”
Laughing, Fitzgerald said, “Miss Ming, do you really, truly, deeply care about humanity as you claim in your essay?”
“Doesn’t everyone who sits in this stupid chair?”
“Tell me, Miss Ming, what’s the most terrible thing you have done in your life?”
She had been thinking of this, of wanting to tell him about that which answered this question. It would be a trial run of telling it to a man she was in love with, as it would seem somehow necessary to tell such a theoretical man. This would be ideal, she had already reasoned, because Fitzgerald resembled a person that she might fall in love with. In this instance, however, their pre-set constraints meant that nothing would be lost by discussing this thing that she carried like a full bowl of water on her head—so careful to not spill it and yet every moment wanting to smash it into the ground.
Ming said, “Do you really want to know?”
“I must know, Miss Ming. We only admit the purest of character.”
“Forget the interview shtick. I want to tell you something.”
He said, “You want to confess that you fantasize about me.” They had both come to accept an ongoing flirtation of feigned seriousness. It allowed them to vocalize their desires in a way that—by being absolutely straightforward—they could treat as a joke.
She pulled her legs up to her chest. “I want to tell you something true and awful, which I really hate. Will we go on being friends?”
He said, “We’ll be the same people.”
“Except that there’s a part of me that you don’t see yet—that’s very dark—and you might think I’m a bad person.”
“You mean the fact that you’re withholding the truth—that you’re deeply and soulfully in love with me, as I am with you,” said Fitzgerald. Again, this reality was spoken directly to discount itself. This time, she felt, it sounded slightly too honest to function as the usual throwaway, and given what she was about to tell him, she felt angry at Fitzgerald for saying these words which mocked them both. Now scared, she said, “It’s awful, that our friendship has become important. I wanted to keep everything sterile. I wanted to go to medical school and start fresh.”
He retreated, saying, “It’s best that there’s … nothing between us, then.”
Briefly, she thought of making something up, of confessing to something silly. But Fitzgerald had a good instinct for knowing what wasn’t true, of hearing what didn’t fit. Besides, maybe she would tell him and he would hate her. It would be tidy and finished. She said, “I had this, you know, this relationship.”
“Sure,” said Fitzgerald.
“Maybe for you it’s no big deal,” she said. Then, “I’m being touchy.”
Ming’s chest pounded, and her breath felt as if it was coming through a small straw. She was afraid that her next word would crack, and was angry at herself for being close to crying, for not letting the silly fake-interview question slide away. She had come to assume Fitzgerald’s kindness, but now felt trapped in actually needing to trust it. She said, “It was from when I was twelve until not very long ago. With Karl, who taught me to study.”
A short silence, which seemed to stretch. A click, then the hollow tone.
The other line had been picked up. She could not see—little points of light swirled in front of her. The click had occurred only after she had finished speaking, hadn’t it? Or had it just clicked off? Had the other line been open all this time, and had it just clicked off? Ming’s stomach was tight. Was her father listening now, or had he listened? Wait … the telephone silence had that hollow sound right now. Was she fooling herself —what was a sound with no one speaking? Then, as she tried to discern the nature of the silence, as she wished that she could reach across the quiet to take Fitzgerald’s
