I wanted to tell him that the pool, the garden, the house, the tennis court, the orle of
paradise, the whole place, would always be his ghost spot. Instead, I pointed upstairs to the
French windows of his room. Your eyes are forever there, I wanted to say, trapped in the sheer
curtains, staring out from my bedroom upstairs where no one sleeps these days. When there's a
breeze and they swell and I look up from down here or stand outside on the balcony, I'll catch
myself thinking that you're in there, staring out from your world to my world, saying, as you did
on that one night when I found you on the rock, I've been happy here. You're thousands of miles
away but no sooner do I look at this window than I'll think of a bathing suit, a shirt thrown on on
the fly, arms resting on the banister, and you're suddenly there, lighting up your first
cigarette of the day-twenty years ago today. For as long as the house stands, this will be your
ghost spot-and mine too, I wanted to say. We stood there for a few seconds where my father and
I had spoken of Oliver once. Now he and I were speaking of my father. Tomorrow, I'll think back
on this moment and let the ghosts of their absence maunder in the twilit hour of the day.
"I know he would have wanted something like this to happen, especially on such a gorgeous
summer day."
"I am sure he would have. Where did you bury the rest of his ashes?" he asked.
"Oh, all over. In the Hudson, the Aegean, the Dead Sea. But this is where I come to be with
him."
He said nothing. There was nothing to say.
"Come, I'll take you to San Giacomo before you change your mind," I finally said. "There
is still time before lunch. Remember the way?"
"I remember the way."
"You remember the way," I echoed.
He looked at me and smiled. It cheered me. Perhaps because I knew he was taunting me.
Twenty years was yesterday, and yesterday was just earlier this morning, and morning
seemed light-years away.
"I'm like you," he said. "I remember everything."
I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you are really
like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or when you're just ready to shut the door of the taxi
and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there’s not a thing left to say in this life,
then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant
everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my
gaze, and call me by your name