whether I could trust you?” said McCarthy with a tight grin.
“Ask me anything, and I could make up something that would sound good,” said Fitzgerald. The interview continued for another half-hour. McCarthy bantered and Karl read questions from his sheet, sullen and cautious. At the end of the session McCarthy gave Fitzgerald sample tubes of cream for his abrasions and said, “I still don’t know if we can trust you.”
“The only way to find out is to let me in and see what happens.” He said it plainly, somewhat tired.
After the interview, Fitzgerald went to the bathroom, splashed water on his face, ran his fingers through his hair. He got in the elevator and Karl caught the closing door, stepped in with him.
“We haven’t met,” said Karl. “I’m sure of it, so don’t tell me we have.”
“But I know you. Ming and I are close friends.”
“You want to know how you scored today, close friend?”
“No,” said Fitzgerald.
“I wouldn’t count on Toronto.” Karl stood directly in front of Fitzgerald, and behind him the elevator buttons flickered in sequence as they descended to the ground floor. “See, all it takes is one bad score—an exam, an essay, an interview—and you’re out. Bye-bye. McCarthy liked you, but I think you’ve got the wrong attitude. Besides, whatever you think you know about me, you don’t.”
The floor numbers progressed downward.
“Feeling pretty guilty, huh?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but don’t count on Toronto.” Karl turned away from Fitzgerald and gazed at the elevator door, leaning back on the railing.
Fitzgerald stepped in front of Karl, faced him. “Does the surgery program director know about your teaching experience, about how you got your start in tutoring?” They were at the fourth, then the third floor. “Imagine the embarrassment if there was some reason you couldn’t be left alone with kids, perhaps needed special supervision during your pediatric surgery rotation. It’s terrible how people talk.”
Second floor, then ground level. The door rumbled open slowly, an old elevator.
“How’d I do?” said Fitzgerald, putting his arm across the elevator door. “That interview score. How’d I perform?”
Karl raised the aluminum clipboard as if about to hit Fitzgerald with it, but instead pointed its corner between Fitzgerald’s eyes and said, “If you end up in Toronto, just remember that someone will see your mistakes.”
Fitzgerald moved his arm, allowed Karl to pass, and watched him disappear around the corner.
An hour later, standing on the Dundas subway platform, Fitzgerald removed his tie. His sports jacket was constrictive and lumpy under his winter coat. He rolled the tie carefully and pushed it into an outside pocket of his coat. He rode the subway to Summerhill station, stepped off the train, and stood on the platform as people walked past him. He sat on a plastic bench that looked like a square mushroom, pushed his hands deep into his coat pockets, and watched two more trains arrive and depart. The three tones of the bell sang out before the doors whooshed shut and the second train hurtled away with a rising clatter. Fitzgerald climbed the tiled stairs to the exit and clanked through the turnstile. Outside, the cold air felt like morning water. He was afraid. His breath steamed around him as he walked.
First, he buzzed.
He tried Ming’s apartment twice.
The screen said No Answer. It was four-thirty-five in the afternoon. He rang again, punched the numbers on the keypad with a determination he hoped would make her appear. The transmitted electronic bleeping continued until the screen flashed No Answer again.
From his inner jacket pocket, Fitzgerald removed the keys. He opened the front door, went up the elevator, and his feet were light and fast as he walked down the hallway to Ming’s door.
He knocked using his fingers, making a short little rhythm.
Silence.
He knocked again, rapped with his knuckles.
Still quiet.
The tip of the key trembled as he tried to bring it to the lock, and then with two hands he steadied and pushed the toothed key into its slot. It went in easily, without jamming or catching. He turned it. It turned smoothly, a soft click. She had not changed the lock.
He opened the door and called out, “Hello?”
No one.
Again, “Ming? It’s me.”
Quiet.
When he had last seen the apartment, it had been almost bare—furnished by her parents with one station-wagon load of prefabricated Swedish furniture and three brush-painted scrolls. Now, Ming had settled in. There were sandals and a single black pump in the hallway. In the kitchen, oven mitts that were supposed to look like slices of watermelon hung from a drawer knob. Medical pathology books and dissection notes covered the surface of the coffee table. Fitzgerald removed his shoes and winter coat, put them in the closet, and sat in the armchair that faced the couch.
On top of the study notes was a half-finished cup of tea, its inner surface ringed with brown circles. The apartment smelled of ginger and garlic. A large print of Van Gogh’s Starlight over the Rhone hung above the couch, and Fitzgerald stared at it for a long time. He examined the rippled lines of the light reflected in the water, and the hunched stance of the man and woman. Why were they looking at the artist, and not at the deep cobalt water shot through with the light of reflected stars? They faced away from the riverbank, away from the dark liquid at the heart of the scene. They stared out at the viewer, who could be none other than an eye looking down from the black night.
She shouldn’t be surprised, he thought.
He had written, he told himself, sitting there in his socks.
For weeks, he had sent letters reminding her of his interview date, asking if they could meet. She didn’t write back. He wrote notes in which he addressed possible objections she might have to seeing him. Was she afraid of hurting him? If so, he wanted nothing more than to see her. Perhaps she felt that because their relationship was over, they shouldn’t see each other? If this was her concern, he wrote, she should feel completely comfortable because he had accepted that the relationship was done, that their romance was finished, but it hurt him to not be able to see his closest friend. Maybe she was too busy? They would meet quickly, eat a meal like old friends—didn’t she have to eat? Did she feel that everything between them was in the past? He wrote that although the past was gone, he didn’t discount the future. Since he would be in Toronto for his interview and neither of them was deliberately travelling to see the other, this would be a perfectly neutral meeting—not evoking the past but also not requiring a future. Did she hope they would simply forget each other? Impossible.
He had written these things to her, but no reply had come. She should not be surprised to see him. He had tried to express the important but casual and enjoyable nature of a meeting. He didn’t write that he would simply come to her apartment, enter, remove his shoes, and wait. Why not? Perhaps he didn’t really think he would do it. The idea had run in his mind like a movie: she would be surprised at first, but then seeing him in her home would allow all of the old feelings to come back to her. She would hold him, she would thank him for seeking her out, she would swear to never turn away from him again.
Maybe he didn’t think any of this could be real. It was unreasonable to break into her apartment, and so perhaps he never really thought he would be sitting here like this, flipping through her pathology notes, smelling her kitchen, patting the bandages on his face to see whether they had soaked through. That’s what it was, he reminded himself, breaking and entering. Was that why he had not written about this possibility? Perhaps he had suspected that she had forgotten about his set