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: : : FREYA LEAVES A MESSAGE FOR Fletcher to call her when he gets back. Sunday night he calls, and she takes the phone into the bathroom, the one room in the apartment where she can talk privately these days.
—So how are you doing? she asks, getting comfortably situated on the toilet seat.
—Bad, Fletcher says.
—Bad?
—Yeah.
—I'm sorry, she says. She extends one leg out in front of her, flexes her toes, notices that her polish job has begun to peel.
—I mean it's just so weird to think that I can't just hop on the bus and go over and talk to her. It's just so weird to think that she's not there anymore. That she's in fucking Pennsylvania.
—You have plans to go visit? she asks, as she roots through a basket for the nail polish remover.
—Yeah—I'm supposed to be going to see her over the first weekend in October. But that seems like a long time from now. I mean, that's a month. A lot can happen in a month.
Freya thinks that over, while she's holding a cotton ball at the mouth of the Cutex bottle. —Well, she says, —really—not that much can happen.
—A lot can happen, Fletcher says glumly.
—Well—what exactly are you afraid is going to happen?
—I don't know, Fletcher says.
—Cop-out, Freya says. She wipes her the nail on her big toe, then holds up the cotton ball and confirms the blue smear on its surface with faint satisfaction.
—It's—I'm afraid—I don't know. I just keep thinking I don't want her to lose me. I keep thinking she's going to lose me.
—You mean you think she's going to leave you? Like she's going to meet somebody else?
—Yeah, or—
—Cause, Freya says, —I don't really know Cassandra, but from the things you've told me it seems like she's pretty urbane, you know, and—I mean, she's moving to Lancaster which is pretty rural—I mean, I don't know what the guys are like out there but it's my guess that they're not exactly going to be like the kind of guys she's after—like I think it's going to be tough for her to find a replacement for you out there—I mean, I don't want to be trivializing your fear or anything—
—No—I don't know—it's less like I think she's going to meet someone else and more that like—I don't know—you know how like you can be in a relationship and it just kind of keeps going on because it's like habitual? But you kind of stop thinking about the relationship and like what it means, whether it's what you want, all that?
Freya turns a bottle of nail polish around in her hands. —Yeah, she says. She taps the cap with her finger, frowns. —Yeah. I know what you mean.
—Well it's like that. It's like I'm afraid that over the last year she maybe stopped seeing me; she maybe stopped being interested in me, but she like stayed in the relationship mostly because I was around, you know? Because I was just this guy who kept coming over and she was like yeah, all right, OK, whatever. But now that she's further away and our habit's all disrupted, I'm afraid that she's going to get perspective on the whole thing and be like wow I was really wasting my time with that schlemiel—
—OK, yeah, I get that, Freya says.
—So that's where I'm at, Fletcher says.
—That's tough, Freya says.
—Yeah, Fletcher says, —tell me about it.
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