What I Loved

on the sidewalk—a person's arm or elbow brushing my body, the jab of a stranger's shoulder, sent a shudder up my spine. Wind blew through rather than over me, and I thought I could feel my skeleton rattle. Garbage baking in the streets gave me fits of nausea and dizziness, but so did the aromas of food from restaurants—smoking burgers and chicken and the pungent spices of Asian food. My nostrils took in every human odor, both artificial and real, colognes and oils and sweat and the rank, sour, and tart odors of people's breath. I was bombarded and couldn't escape.
    But the worst was that during those months of hypersensitivity, I sometimes forgot Matthew. Minutes would pass when I didn't think of  him. When he was alive, I had felt no need to think of him constantly. I knew that he was there. Forgetfulness was normal. After he died, I had turned my body into a memorial—an inert gravestone for him. To be awake meant that there were moments of amnesia, and those moments seemed to annihilate Matthew twice. When I forgot him, Matthew was nowhere—not in the world or in my mind. I think my collection was a way to answer those blanks. As Erica and I continued to sort through Matthew's things, I chose a few of them to put in my drawer with the photographs of my parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle, and the twins. My selection was purely a matter of instinct. I chose a green rock, the Roberto Clemente baseball card Bill had given him for his birthday one year in Vermont, the program he had designed for the fourth-grade production of Horton Hears a Who , and a small picture he had done of Dave with Durango. It had more humor than many of the pictures of Dave. The old man was sleeping on the sofa with a newspaper over his face while the cat licked his naked toes.
    Erica moved away in early August, five days before Matt's birthday. She said she needed several weeks to settle into her apartment in Berkeley. I helped her pack up books, and we mailed them to her new address. She had to leave Dr. Trimble, and I sometimes felt that she dreaded leaving her more than Rutgers, more than Bill and Violet, more than me. But Erica had the name of another doctor in Berkeley, whom she began seeing only a few days after she arrived. That morning, I carried her suitcase and walked her down the stairs and outside the building to find a taxi. It was a cloudy day but with a strong glare from the sun, and although I was protected by sunglasses, I winced from the light. After I had hailed the cab, I told the driver to turn on the meter and wait for a couple of moments. When I turned to say good-bye, Erica began to tremble.
    "We've been better, you know," I said. "Lately."
    Erica looked down at her feet. I noticed that despite her weight gain, the skirt she was wearing hung too low around her waist. "It's because I shook things up, Leo. You started to hate me. Now you won't." Erica lifted her chin and smiled at me. "We ... we... we ..Her voice cracked and she laughed. "I don't know what I'm saying. I'll call you when I get there." She fell toward me and put her arms around my back. I felt her body against mine—her small breasts and her shoulders. Her damp face was crushed into my neck. When she withdrew from me, she smiled again. The lines around her eyes wrinkled and I looked at the mole over her lip. Then I leaned forward and kissed it. She knew I had targeted the mole and smiled, "I liked that," she said. "Do it again."
    I kissed her again.
    When she slid into the car, I looked down at her legs, which had stayed white all summer. I had an impulse to slide my hand between her thighs and feel their skin. The warm flood of sexual feeling made me shake inwardly. I listened to the car door slam shut and stood on the side-walk while it drove up Greene Street and turned right. Now you want her—after all these months, I said to myself, and as I turned to walk back into the building, I understood how well Erica knew me.
    The apartment didn't look much different. There were a few empty places on the bookshelves. Our closet in the bedroom was roomier. When all was said and done, Erica had taken very little with her. Nevertheless, as I walked through the loft and surveyed the gaps in the shelves, the empty hangers, the bare floor where Erica's shoes had been lined up only the day before, I found myself gasping for breath. For months I had been prepared for the moment of her departure, but I hadn't guessed that I would feel what I felt—cold,