The best part about going away is coming home. Who said that? Not him, but it might as well have been, he thinks as he moves trough the apartment. It is noon: a Tuesday, and tomorrow they will drive to Boston.
If you love home – and even if you don't – there is nothing quite as cozy, as comfortable, as delightful, as that first week back. That week, even the things that would irritate you – the alarm waahing from some car at three in the morning; the pigeons who come to clutter and cluck on the windows ill behind your bed when you're trying to sleep in – seem instead reminders of your own permanence, of how life, your life, will always graciously allow you to step back inside of it, no matter how far you have gone away from it or how long you have left it.
Also that week, the things you like anyway seem, in their very existence, to be worthy of celebration: the candid-walnut vendor on Crosby Street who always returns your wave as you jog past him; the falafel sandwich with extra pickled radish from the truck down the block that you woke up craving one night in London; the apartment itself, with its sunlight that lopes from one end to the other in the course of a day, with your things and food and bed and shower and smells.
And of course, there is the person you come back to: his face and body and voice and scent and touch, his way of waiting until you finish whatever you're saying, no matter how lengthy, before he speaks, the way his smile moves so slowly across his face that it reminds you of moonrise, how clearly he has missed you and how clearly happy he is to have you back. Than there are things, if you are particulary lucky, that this person has done for you while you're away: how in the pantry, in the freezer, in the refrigerator will be all the food you like to eat, the scotch you like to drink. There will be the sweater you thought you lost the previous year at the theater, clean and folded and back on its shelf. There will be the shirt with its dangling buttons, but the button will be sewn back in place. There will be you mail stacked on one side of his desk; there will be a contract for an advertising campaign you're going to do in Germany for an Austrian beer, with his notes in the margin to discuss with your lawyer. And there will be no mention of it, and you will know that it was done with genuine pleasure, and you will know that part of the reason – a small part, but a part – you love being in his apartment and in this relationship is because this other person is always making a home for you, and that when you tell him this, he won't be ofended but pleased, and you'll be glad, because you meant it with gratitude. And in these moments – almost a week back home – you will wonder why you leave so often, and you will wonder wheather, after the next year's obligations are fulfilled, you ought not just stay here for a period, where you belong.
A LITTLE LIFE, CHAPTER 2, SECTION 5
Od Malog princa... 