The Central Cafeteria is not a place I usually go. The food is institutional in the way that cafeteria food is institutional everywhere — large quantities of rice, protein of uncertain origin, vegetables that have been cooked to a point past colour — and the space is open and bright in a way that is the opposite of the studio, which is dark and small and smells of turpentine and which is where I have been taking my meals, alone, for the past two weeks, since the semester entered its difficult middle period and I entered my own difficult middle period, which is the overlap between the academic calendar and the calendar I have been keeping inside myself, the one that measures time in paintings rather than weeks.
But Kanade is here.
Kanade is almost always here on Thursdays. This is a thing I know about him the way I know things about him — without having been told, without having decided to notice, as a consequence of the fourteen years during which I have been building a detailed map of his patterns and habits and the places he occupies at the times he occupies them. Thursdays: studio in the morning, composition seminar at eleven, cafeteria at twelve-thirty, back to the studio by two. He has been following this pattern since the beginning of the semester. I have been not following this pattern since the beginning of the semester, which is a deviation he has noticed because he notices everything I do and which I have been pretending not to notice that he notices.
He is sitting at a table near the window. He has a tray — rice, miso soup, grilled fish, the components of a meal that is more considered than my usual convenience store rotation, which he has also noticed, because he notices my eating habits the way I notice his, which is the asymmetry of our friendship and also, I am beginning to think, the thing that is unsustainable about it.
He sees me before I reach the table. This is not unusual — Kanade sees most things before they happen, which is a quality that is useful in composition and also, I have found, somewhat unnerving in a friendship, where the asymmetry of attention can become a kind of weight.
He does not wave. He does not call out. He looks up, he sees me, he nods — a small movement, the kind of acknowledgment that is also a summons, the kind that says: I see you, come sit, I have been waiting without waiting, the way you wait when you assume someone will arrive because they have always arrived before and the always-arriving has become a fact of the relationship.
I get a tray. I move through the line. I choose the things that are fastest — rice, curry, a can of cold coffee from the refrigerator case — and I carry the tray to his table and I sit across from him and the sitting is the most natural thing and also the most difficult thing I have done all day.
"You've been absent," he says.
He says this without looking at me. He is eating — lifting the rice to his mouth with the chopsticks, chewing, swallowing, the mechanical process of nourishment that his body performs automatically while his attention is elsewhere. He is not looking at me. He does not need to look at me. He knows exactly where I am and what I am doing and how I am sitting and the angle of my arms on the table, which are the same angles they have always been, and which he has mapped over fourteen years and which he can feel without seeing, which is the kind of knowledge that is either love or obsession and which I have been afraid to name.
"I've been in the studio," I say.
"I know." He takes a sip of the miso soup. "You've been in the studio for two weeks. You're not eating properly. You're not answering my texts."
This is an accumulation. He has been keeping track. He has been keeping track the way he keeps track of everything — not in a notebook, not in a file, but in the part of his mind that is always running, always monitoring, the part that composes music and also composes attention, the part that has been directed at me for fourteen years and which I have been receiving without reciprocating, which is the structure of our friendship and which is also, I am beginning to understand, the thing that is killing it.
"The graduation show," I say. "There's a lot to do."
This is the thing I have been saying to everyone. Professor Endo. The other students who have asked why I am spending so much time in the studio. The lie of it is thin — I have been in the studio, yes, but I have not been making the work I should be making, I have been making versions of Kanade and versions of Hasumi and versions of the space between them, which is not the graduation show work and which is not what I am supposed to be doing and which is the thing I cannot explain to anyone, least of all to Kanade.
Kanade puts down his chopsticks. He looks at me.
His eyes are the colour they are in the late afternoon, which is almost amber, which is the colour I could not mix correctly for the tenth version, which is the colour that appears on the canvas as brown when it should appear as something else, something that captures the specific quality of light that lives in his irises when the sun is behind him and the light passes through and makes him look, for a moment, like someone lit from within.
"You don't need to give me a reason," he says.
I do not know what to say to this. The words are generous and also devastating — generous because they release me from the obligation to explain, and devastating because the releasing is also a statement about the distance, about how far I have moved, about how much I am not telling, and he knows. He knows I am not telling. He has known for two weeks or two months or longer. He has known and he has been waiting and he has decided, today, to say that I do not need to give him a reason, which is the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me and also the saddest, because the kindness is in the not-asking and the sadness is in the reason there is nothing to ask.
"I'm here," I say. It is not an answer. It is not even a sentence that makes logical sense — being here is not an answer to the question of why I have been absent, why I have not been eating properly, why I have not been answering texts. Being here is the minimum. Being here is what he should be able to expect and what I have been failing to provide.
"I know you're here," he says. He picks up his chopsticks again. He returns to the fish, to the rice, to the mechanical process of being nourished. "I'm not worried about whether you're here. I'm worried about what's happening when you're not."
The cafeteria is loud around us. Students talking, trays clattering, the sound of the vending machine dispensing drinks, the particular acoustic of a large room filled with people eating food they are not paying attention to. In the noise I can hear only him. I have always been able to hear only him, in a room, in a crowd, in the various situations where sound becomes noise and noise becomes undifferentiated and Kanade's voice cuts through because it is the voice I have been listening for since I was thirteen years old and did not know what I was listening for.
"Nothing's happening," I say. "I'm just working."
He looks at me. He holds the look for a moment — not long, not in the way that stares are long, but long enough for the look to mean something, for the eye contact to become a form of communication that is different from the words we are using and more precise and also more frightening, because the precision is the precision of someone who is reading you, who has learned to read you over fourteen years, who can tell when you are lying and who is choosing, today, not to say that he can tell.
"Okay," he says.
The word is small. The word is a door left open and also a door left closed — it is the acknowledgment that he has heard what I said and is choosing not to pursue it, which is his way of being kind and also his way of protecting himself, because the pursuing would require him to name what he knows and the naming would change the thing and he is not ready for the thing to change any more than I am.
We eat. The curry is lukewarm. The rice is rice. The coffee is cold in the way that cafeteria coffee is always cold, which is a specific temperature that is not quite refrigerated but is also not the temperature of coffee that has been sitting out, which is a temperature I have been trying to achieve at home with less success than the cafeteria achieves, which is the kind of useless knowledge that fills the space when the important knowledge cannot be spoken.
"I heard you're seeing someone," Kanade says.
He says this casually. He is not looking at me. He is cutting the fish with the side of his chopsticks, a small, precise motion that breaks the flesh along its natural seams, the way you break something apart that is already almost broken, the way you separate what wants to stay together without forcing the separation, which is a skill and also a tendency and also, in this context, an action that means something more than the action.
The sentence lands in my chest. I feel it — the specific impact, the way the words arrange themselves in my mind and I understand that they mean something I do not want them to mean and also something I have been waiting for someone to say, which is: someone has noticed. Someone has been watching me go to the printmaking building. Someone has seen me with Hasumi. Someone has drawn a conclusion.
"Who said that?" I ask.
"A friend." He does not specify which friend. He does not need to. The friend is probably Shiraishi — who has been in the studio, who has seen me come and go, who knows more than she says and says things in the knowing, in the way she said, in the corridor, that she knew before I did. Or it could be anyone. The campus is small. Art students are observant. I have been going to the printmaking building for two weeks with a regularity that is not invisible, and people notice patterns, especially people who are looking, especially people who are paying the kind of attention that art students pay to the world because the attention is the material of the work.
"No one," I say. "I'm not seeing anyone."
He looks at me. The look is the same look he gave me when I said I was just working — a moment of eye contact that is also a form of reading, a scan, a check against the thing he already knows or suspects or has been not asking about for reasons of his own. He is quiet for a moment. He finishes the fish. He sets down the chopsticks.
"Okay," he says again.
The second okay is different from the first. The first was acceptance. The second is something else — a closing, a window shutting, a small and precise indication that we have reached the end of the territory we can safely walk in together, that there are places I am going that he cannot follow, that the distance I have been living in is not the distance he thought we were sharing.
I eat the curry. It is lukewarm and flavourless and I eat it without tasting it, which is the way I eat most meals when I am in the middle of something, which is the way I have been eating for two weeks, which is the way my body is being maintained at a minimal level while the rest of me is occupied with the thing I am not painting and the people I am not naming and the admission I am not making.
Kanade finishes his rice. He pushes the tray to the centre of the table — the universal gesture of meal completion, the small ritual by which two people acknowledge that the shared activity is over and what comes next is the returning to separate lives. He picks up his bag. He stands.
"I have composition at two," he says. "Good luck with the show."
He says this without emphasis. He says this the way he says things that are not questions — as statements, as facts, as things that are happening in the world and which he is reporting without requesting a response. Good luck with the show. The show is the graduation show, the thing I am supposed to be working toward, the thing that is six months away and that I have been thinking about in the wrong way and painting about in the wrong way and which is now, in this cafeteria, in this conversation, becoming the cover story for something it is not.
"Thanks," I say.
He nods. He turns. He walks away. He moves through the cafeteria with the same speed he has always moved with — slightly hurried, slightly late, the body language of someone who is always on the way to the next thing and who treats the current thing as a waystation rather than a destination, which is how I have been treating this conversation and also how I have been treating our friendship and also how I have been treating the painting, which is as a thing in transit, a thing not yet arrived, a thing that cannot be named because the naming would make it too real.
I watch him go. I watch his back — the bag on his shoulder, the way he carries himself, the particular angle of his head when he is thinking about something and not performing the thinking. I know these things about him. I have fourteen years of knowing them. I have been painting them, in the wrong way, for nine months. I have been not admitting them for eight years.
He turns at the door. He looks back. For a moment our eyes meet across the cafeteria — across the tables and the trays and the students and the institutional lighting — and in the moment there is something that is not said and not unsaid and not the kind of thing that can be said in a cafeteria full of people, which is the kind of thing it is, which has always been the kind of thing it is, and which I have been living next to for fourteen years without opening the door to see what was on the other side.
He turns away. He goes through the door. He is gone.
I sit at the table. The curry is finished. The tray is in front of me. The cafeteria continues around me — the same noise, the same light, the same institutional everything — and in the middle of it I am sitting with the knowledge that Kanade knows, that Kanade has been knowing, that Kanade said you don't need to give me a reason and the not-giving was the admission, the real admission, the thing that was harder to say than anything I could have said because the real admission is not a sentence but a silence and the silence said: there is something and I am not ready and you have been waiting and the waiting is the proof and the proof is the thing I cannot look at and the not-looking is the painting and the painting is the distance and the distance is the eight years I have been measuring without knowing what I was measuring.
I pick up the tray. I take it to the tray return. I walk back to the studio.
The cloth is on the canvas. Kanade's face is underneath. The amber eyes I could not mix are underneath.
I sit in front of it. I do not lift the cloth.
He said you don't need to give me a reason. The reason is you. The reason has always been you. The reason is that I have been in love with you for eight years and I have been painting you in technically correct circles and the technically correct circles are the proof of the distance and the distance is the thing I have been calling technique and the technique is the lie and the lie is the painting and the painting is my life and my life is this room and the canvas and the cloth and the waiting for something I am not ready to admit.
I sit. I do not paint.
The afternoon light changes. The cherry blossoms outside the window are thinner than they were last week. The semester is moving. The year is moving. Everything is moving except the canvas and the cloth and the thing underneath the cloth that is waiting to be seen and that I am not ready to see.
You don't need to give me a reason, he said.
The reason is you. I will not give it. I will not paint it. I will sit in this studio and I will wait and the waiting will be the thing I do instead of the thing I say and the thing I do will become the painting and the painting will become the admission and the admission will be the thing I was afraid of all along and the fear was the point and the point is that I have been making safe work because the safe work cannot hurt me and the unsafe work is the only work that is worth making and the unsafe work is this: the cloth, the canvas, the face underneath, the amber eyes I could not get right.
I sit in the studio. The cherry blossoms fall. The cloth stays on.
Tomorrow is Friday. Tomorrow he will be in the cafeteria again. Tomorrow I may or may not be there. Tomorrow the distance will be the same distance and the admission will be the same admission not made and the painting will be the same painting and the cloth will be the same cloth and the waiting will continue because the waiting is what I know and the knowing is the only safety I have left.
My phone buzzed. Kanade: Where are you?
