Coe Review

"Nice meeting you," she says and leaves the room.
I smooth over the comforter. I take a tissue from the flowery box on the
night table, pick up the rubber, fold it into the tissue, put it in my pocket.
When we were in Russian class, when we were in college, Steve Borwick
and I used to whisper what we'd do to the professor if we were stranded with
her in Siberia. She was a young professor, but I assumed she was older, far
older than I was as I sat in the back of the room. But she was far younger than
I am now. If time stood still, and the years only passed for me, the Russian
professor would look at me as far older. If she knew my age. If she knew I'd
been in her class. If time stood still like that. I have a theory about time.
I pull the flowered curtain back and look over the party. There's Jenny
still talking to Ryan about the world of finance. She looks young, but not
that young. There's Steve talking to his daughter about whatever fathers say
to their daughters. He looks a believable forty. There's the nineteen-yearold
walking past the raw bar and over to Steve. She hugs him and I can hear
her wishing him a perky Happy Birthday. Next to her Steve looks almost
foolish, but not when you see him as a successful lawyer and father. He was
a kid in my Russian class, only he's not that kid. He's a forty-year-old man.
The nineteen-year-old picks up Steve's daughter, kisses her cheek, puts her
down. The nineteen-year-old walks over to the pool, undresses to her bathing
suit, dives in. She starts to swim, her young body cutting the water, a
perfect crawl stroke, and when she lifts her face to breathe her mouth is calm,
serene, practically smiling.
A breeze ripples the water.
I smell it.
The raw bar in the sun. The fish going rotten.
Adam Berlin 75