"I like the quiet there. I like the simplicity." I said to Evan. "I'm sure that one day, if the country integrates into the global economy and modernizes, it will be a completely different place. Tashkent will be a city like any other city. Now it's almost like living in the country, or the way people once used to live a long time ago."

"Interesting. I've never met anyone from there. or anyone whose ever been there."

"He's cute," Mario whispers, and then mouths "introduce me," gesturing discretely with a series of points of his fingers to himself, to Evan, and back at himself. I notice that the cocktail in his hand seems to have been magically topped off.

"You should go talk to your friend Jared," I responded, seeing Jared a few feet away in the crowd talking to two guys. "He needs company."

He sulked. "I saw your ex out there."

"Who?" I wondered. I had some exes, but I never thought of any particular one. As a rule, I prefered to avoid all of them and never had a special place in my heart for any of them. One of the nice things about Tashkent was that there really wasn't much of a chance of running into any of my New York exes there. On the other thand, it seemed to me that avoiding an ex in Tashkent would be impossible, for example, with Yulia.

"Adrian," he said. "He said the strangest thing, like you were, like...straight and had a girlfriend over there."

It seemed like Mario was dead set on discrediting me as much as possible in front of the handsome Evan. And I didn't feel much like seeing Adrian, who remained very much within the orbit of my circle of friends and clearly had been talking to Jonathan, who could always be trusted to spread salacious news. I hadn't called Adrian to let him know I was in town, for which he probably felt some affront, but I didn't particularly feel comfortable dealing with people in the past, though, thankfully, our relationship was short, our breakup polite, and interactions since, cordial. I wished I could somehow leave the bar, thought of a stealthy exit. But then Adrian appeared before my face.

"I thought you were gone for good!" Adrian said looking very much the same as I remembered him. Blandly handsome. "Mario told me you were here. Also Jonathan told me you were in town."

I thought of all the polite things I could have said. I could have said, "I meant to call," to justify my lack of social graces, but said nothing, preferring not to lie, preferring silence and not delving into the past; I thought a silent hug would be better. It was much less complicated and he seemed pleased by it.

"I heard you a few times on the radio. Sometimes I'll be listening in my car and then it hits me, hey, i know that guy. He was my ex-lover who dumped my ass," he said, not bitterly, but not entirely good naturedly. Nonetheless, being called an ex-lover, or lover made me cringe. All talk of the past, in particularly talk of the past with an ex made me cringe. And perhaps this is why I liked Tashkent, whose vast deserts were my blank slate.

"We should meet up while I'm in town," I said using the tired, non-commital New York vernacular, not really meaning it and slightly unenthused that he took my offer seriously. It was like the Uzbeks, who always seem to be genuinely inviting you somewhere, almost aggressively, but it would always be hard to tell if they really meant it or did so by habit.

"We should," he said, "maybe Sunday afternoon?" I gave him my cell phone number and he excused himself, disappearing into the crowd.

Evan asked me if I could repeat my cell phone number, that maybe I could tell him more about Uzbekistan, which seemed so incredibly sweet and kind, and perhaps, to some degree, just what I needed, since no one else seemed to be particularly interested. Of course, that was what I had told myself to expect upon returning home. New York was a world in itself to those who lived inside of it, and they had little need for the real world outside. I told him that my drink had run right through me, that I would go to the bathroom, and that I'd return, though I had no intention of doing so. As attractive as Evan was, New York was no longer my city it was the city of my past, and that sowing its concrete fields could not yield fruit.

I thought about a stealthy departure, what the Uzbeks call to leave "in English," meaning to leave without saying goodbye. The Uzbeks, who I credit with their good sense of humor and ability to not take themselves too seriously, also say that to leave "in Uzbek" is to keep bidding your farewell, but never actually leave, long oversaying your welcome. In Uzbekistan, there was no appropriate way to say goodbye. If you were not going to stick around, someone would always feel the pain.

Since the pain was inevitable, I'd grown a bit remorseless and pragmatic about the necessity for abrupt disappearances. My imminent breakup with Yulia, I'd decided, would likely require some kind of vanishing act on my part. Mario had drunk plenty, I could easily gaslight him tomorrow or whenever into believing that I had told him that I was leaving and that he said he would get himself home. For Evan, sadly, I would just be another one who got away. Then again, there were many others in the city. More likely, he would always be for me that missed opportunity in New York, something that could fill future hours of daydreaming in Tashkent.

I splashed some water on my face in the bathroom, and then made my way to the bar's exit, thinking that in the sea of tall people it would be so easy to inconspiciously make my way out. But Mario was at my tail, clinging to my arm with one hand, freshly topped drink in the other, looking almost as though crying. "No one likes me," he said, "no one cares about me." It was the alcohol talking, I thought, and as though he read my thoughts he said, "and I'm not saying this just because I'm drinking. Really, no one appreciates me. I don't understand, I mean, with my friends from school -- they're like, Mario, wow!!!" He made some grand gestures with his hand that hit me in the face. He apologized, but I was just happy to have even more of an excuse to express my frustration with him.

"It's late, Mario," I said. It was already 2AM. "You should probably go home now before you drop that," I said taking hold of his drink which he was spilling left and right and slamming it down on a barstool. "I'm leaving."

But he didn't let go of his grip, took a swig, grimacing as though the drink was too strong, "you can't understand, because you don't have these kinds of problems." There were a lot of problems that people had in New York, problems that most likely I knew about, had once had, but which I was feeling rather pleased with myself right now about having escaped or outgrown. I wasn't sure what the problem was, except that by being content, by expecting very little, as I had grown accustomed to, I didn't have the same problems, say, as Mario did, who downed his glass and looked at me with his eyes wide open, "can you take me home, please?"

"No, but I'll put you in a taxi," I said walking out to the street with him still gripped to my arm and quickly, I went up to one of the taxis lining the street, opened the door and held it open for him. "Get in," I yelled and slammed the door behind him, thinking I've washed my hands of him and started walking away. But the pane of the taxi window drew down, and again, his pitiful eyes peering out, "but who will help me get up all the stairs?" I walked away, the taxi did not move, his pleading voice continuing.

I turned back to him, it was free cabfare, I figured, and I did not feel like riding the subways so late at night. "If I ride with you, I want it to be in silence -- no talking." Mercenary reasoning aside, I could come off as a true friend by taking him home, but refusing to listen to him feeling sorry for himself. He called out his address to the driver and we drove off through the empty and quiet city streets, save for the infrequent dogwalker, or straggler from Tuesday night festivities, near a 24 hour diner or deli. "So you have a girlfriend or something," he said.

"No talking," I reminded him, and he opened his window down all the way, letting in a strong and refreshing breeze into the car, falling back in his seat, dropping his big, heavy head on my shoulder and closing his eyes. He fished through his pocket and pulled out his wallet, pulling out a $20 bill that he tossed up and allowed to be carried into the breeze, flying from his hand to flutter, do summersaults, and finally get sucked out the window. $20 was about how much I spent on food in a week, and in my Tashkent frame of mind, it seemed like a lot of money. By Tashkent standards it was, though by New York, I knew that it wasn't. Nonetheless, I leaped after it, trying to catch it before it flew out the window, angry with Mario and his cavalier attitude towards his money; just as easily, he fished out another $20 bill. He didn't worry about money; he had a very well paying job and an executive MBA. I suppose I envied this of him. Money was strange. Living in Tashkent, where I didn't need much money to get by, I never felt that I was lacking for anything; there were people there who considered me to be well off, living alone in a large apartment, eating out regularly in restaurants, drinking in pubs and bars. In this environment which was somewhat artifical for me, which allowed me to feel like money wasn't an object. Perhaps, people who saw me tossing out my 500 soum notes, worth a mere 50 cents to me, saw me in the same way as I saw Mario letting his cash fly out the window.

He was dozing off as the cab got off the highway and slowed down through the streets of the West side. Without the breeze in the car, it grew hot and I shook Mario's clammy cheek off my shoulder, as we approached his doorstep. I would walk home from here, take a few moments to enjoy the quiet street, to look up into the sky, but as we got out, his limbs seemed to collapse. "Help me upstairs." He was so volunerable at this moment, and no amount of personal animus I felt towards him could overcome my sense that I had to help him. Drunk friends should always be given assistance; I had learned that in Uzbekistan; respect for the elderly, the infirm, the intoxicated. Often you could see on the street, some drunken friends, even after having bloodied each other, broken each others' bones, helping each other home, only to forget all in the morning as they tend to each others' wounds. That was the code of friendship. I'd always thought it strange and perhaps cultural. And here I was doing something quite the same. And I still thought it was strange, dragging him up four flights of shaky stairs in his brownstone, unlocking his door, clearing his sofa littered with empty chinese food boxes, stacks of newspapers, shirts from the dry cleaner still in plastic and set him down, bringing him a glass of water, holding the glass to his mouth to pour down his throat.

I went to his medicine cabinet to find aspirin, and there I saw a small brown bottle with the anti-depressent I was familiar with from my mother's stash in the kitchen where her vitamins we stashed. And beside it, three other brown bottles, the name on one of them looked familiar from the article I had read earlier in the day. I looked back at his crumpled figure on the sofa, making uneasy breaths which sounded eerie in the silent messy room and felt bad for him. His apartment was a mess, he was a mess. But he had a nice apartment, which was small, but nice, with high ceilings and a tall bay window from which you could see above the buildings a quarter moon bright against a typically starless New York sky. Here I was again, feeling very alone, like I would in Tashkent, dwelling among people who I considered to be so different from me, and sitting in Mario's soft chair, like in my kitchen in Tashkent, looking up at the moon, trying to see its reflection of the earth's continents, imagining that I could find there those far away places that were dear to me.

Labels: English Goodbye

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