All That Was Promised by William Pei Shih
Day One
September. The hotel. It was supposed to be beautiful. It was, after all, named after Jay Gatsby, and located on a French side street. The emerald green walls, like a signature. They left their luggage at the front desk. The person who had checked them in was a sleepy-eyed and heavy-set man named Martin, who possessed a sour, dismissive disposition, someone who gave off the aura of having spent a lifetime guarding doors that he would never be invited to walk through. It was the room—it wasn’t ready, Martin told them. It didn’t matter that they were both tired and jet-lagged. They’d simply have to wait an hour or so. So they waited, and waited. Hayden was the patient one. Ivan, obviously less so.
A little later, the light in the hallway was starting to dim. It smelled of floor wax and cigarette smoke. And when they finally entered the room, it felt like a defeated space. It was a place where things had stopped happening long ago. The carpet, damp and mapped with the pale, salt-rimmed outlines of previous floods. The air held the mustiness of a cellar. The bathroom, no better, white tiles that had buckled and fallen from the wall like teeth, revealing the black, rotting adhesive beneath. It wasn’t just neglected; it was in ruins.
“What the hell is this?” Ivan remarked. “We can’t stay here.”
Back downstairs, back at the front desk, Ivan raised his voice as he made one demand after another. He couldn’t help it. Of course, it did little to improve the situation. Martin seemed to have a way of subverting every complaint, every grievance. His eyebrows, an arc of disbelief. He even summoned the housekeepers—two dubious middle-aged women with sturdy arms and deadpan eyes that had seen every version of despair. Finally, they all stood in the center of the hotel room, a small tribunal of sorts, as if surveying a garden in bloom.
“It is a nice room,” Martin insisted. “Look at the view. You can see all the way to the ocean.” He glanced back at Hayden, who had been the one to choose the hotel. “Still, if you insist, I will try and change it. Though I cannot promise that the next one will be so, what is the word, charming.”
*
It was a beautiful day. The sun, a white weight. The beach below, a tranquility of gray stones. It was not a scene for wasting time, yet there they were, squandering the day away with a practiced, rhythmic misery. They argued about how to stay out of the heat. Then it was the proper SPF of the sunblock—trifles that were weaponized as proxies for what was actually at stake. Once more, they had exhausted the inventory of their grievances; once more, there was nothing left to say that hadn’t already been carved into the ether that somehow still held them together. The waves of the sea crashed in the distance.
The accustomed silence came. The habits of the mundane followed. They walked together along the Promenade Anglais, their breathing heavy and out of sync. They were hollowed by travel, nerves worn thin as old silk, vibrating with a fatigue that sleep could not seem to touch. This trip had been a sudden departure. Four days in Nice—a brief, though sharp interval to outrun what had taken up residence in their apartment back in Montreal. A change of scenery had been much needed. Extra time together. That had been the plan, at least. It was their way of extending the summer—something which Hayden had felt that they had been trying to do almost all their lives. How to extend a summer? It wasn’t the same as trying to live forever.
Past the hotel, past the vibrant restaurants, the rocky beach and sun chairs, an army of blue and white striped umbrellas, even the cruise ship in the distance. It was everything that Hayden could imagine when he thought of the South of France, better too—especially the sea, exquisitely blue and glistening like a gem and roiling endlessly before them. So why wasn’t it working? Why wasn’t it enough? And why did it feel like there would have been no other time to see the city together, had they not done so right then and there, in their late thirties, as if the next time would be never. The possibility of Nice, or something like Nice, little more than an afterthought.
“You’re thinking too much again,” Ivan remarked.
“No, I’m not.”
It wasn’t just the jet lag. It was also the exhaustion of being known too well.
*
France was new to them as a pair. However, Hayden carried the ghost of that single week in Paris. He had once visited the city as a wide-eyed high school student from Canada. The hockey tournament. The winter of New Year’s Eve parties and the metallic chill of the metro. Kylie Minogue always seemed to be playing in the background. Grégoire’s “Toi + Moi.” He remembered the cold—a pure, bone-chilling cold—and the company of his teammates who moved with a restless, unforced strength. They were athletes, all of them, living in a shared language of competition and the sudden and fierce inspirations of the ice. After the game, they visited the cobblestone streets of Le Marais and then the hilltop village of Montmartre. There had been someone named Scott, tall and short dark hair, a pronounced nose and thin but soft lips. Sometimes Hayden still thought of him. There had been the day together that would never be the equivalent of others—now he knew, more than ever. The walk along the Seine. The kiss under the bridge. The second kiss. Over the years, he had been careless; he had let many of his friendships slip away, a negligence of having to protect himself too much, he now felt. He was a different person then, as if his youth had been a promissory note, capable of restoring and regaining anything that would be temporarily let go.
Of course, this was a previous life, a life before Ivan had come into the picture.
Now, Hayden was paler than ever, his black hair (being half Chinese), not what it once was. He had become a person who had unintentionally let himself go. He was someone who turned to books. After all, his father had gone to McGill and was a reader himself, mostly nonfiction, but an admirer of Elena Ferrante and Haruki Murakami, nonetheless. Hayden moved through the world cerebrally. His body, a vessel for ideas, also insecurities. He did have the habit of thinking too much. More so, he had the forever fear that people would get bored of him and ghost him. Ivan, however, was the opposite even when they’d met—a creature of solidity and sureness. Now, he seemed almost untouched by the years. He still possessed a bronze-like radiance too, a physical glow of confidence, or obliviousness, that seemed to emanate from the skin itself. He was beautiful in the way that a statue could be, still showcasing that natural, unforced strength in the line of his shoulders, the set of his jaw. An eternalness, was another word for it. He had finally quit smoking—“I did it for you,” Ivan would often declare. “That’s how much you mean to me.” And yet, Ivan could be like a rival as well. For years, Hayden had lived with a jealousy that would be like a slow-burning fever. It was a jealousy of Ivan’s ease, his athleticism, his effortless claim on the world, the eyes of others. Ivan was desired in ways that Hayden, in the private theater of his mind, could only rehearse and rehearse, but never seem to land the part.
Time was the other partner in their relationship. And they had reached an age when they knew that love was not a victory, but a long and often rigorous negotiation. A back and forth of gives and takes. Oftentimes, more gives than takes.
“I’m done with the exploring,” Ivan finally said. He crouched down to stretch. They were at the Old Port, where the water was a thick, oily indigo. The masts of the sailboats knocked against the sky like a forest of skeletal fingers. “We should head back.”
“To the hotel?” Hayden asked. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, back to the room. To the broken everything. To the tiles on the floor. To whatever is left of the bathroom.” Then, “There is nothing left for us here. Though maybe I can check out the gym.”
“There’s no gym.”
“No gym? That figures.”
“Do you absolutely hate Nice?”
He didn’t answer. Perhaps he didn’t hear him. Perhaps he didn’t want to hear him.
*
The new room was not beautiful. But it was the best that the Hotel Gatsby could do, “especially on such short notice,” according to Martin, who was still on his shift. This version of a room was a cramped, low-ceilinged box; the walls were still emerald, but they seemed even more scuffed and faded; the window looked out onto a sunless stairwell, and the air conditioner wasn’t working either. Ivan opened the window.
They sat on opposite sides, two bare-chested boxers in a ring, waiting for their turn at each other. Hayden stared into his laptop, looking over the line items of an insurance claim, his finger tracing the digital list of things that could be replaced if lost. Ivan was scrolling on his phone. The television flickered; it was a succession of bright, incomprehensible faces. The French announcers spoke with a rapid, metallic certainty that somehow made the space feel all the more claustrophobic.
“What are you thinking about now?” Ivan asked.
“Nothing. You?”
“I’m thinking about something callipygian.”
“What?”
“Do you know what that means?”
“No. Did you just make that up?”
“Look it up.”
Hayden did as he was told. He laughed. “Where did you learn that word?”
“Try exundation next.”
“I don’t even know how to spell that.”
Ivan looked over his shoulder as he typed. “There’s an x.” Then, “I could really use an exundation.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Ithyphallic, actually.”
“Oh?”
“Want to see?”
Hayden felt a sudden heat flush up his neck upon looking up the word. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”
“We should fuck.”
Ivan reached into the darkness below—nothing stirred. Hayden leaned in, his lips brushing against Ivan’s cheek. He felt Ivan’s response, a thin, automatic pressure—was it only the motions of a kiss? The echo of one? Something in him recoiled.
“What is it?” Ivan said.
“I don’t know. I think I’m just tired.”
“Do I still excite you?”
“What are you asking? What are you saying?”
“Never mind.”
“Yes,” Hayden uttered, perhaps a beat too late. “You excite me. You’ve always excited me.” He waited for the silence to settle before adding, “And you?”
“Of course.”
There was no second attempt. Ivan’s thumb was already back on the remote, clicking through the static.
*
Day Two
The next morning was beautiful. The sun, already beginning its slow, relentless climb. They were up early. Hayden decided that he would try to rescue the previous day’s efforts. He planned on the over-priced breakfast at the hotel. Only, it was a lackluster arrangement of cold hard-boiled eggs and croissants that were doughy and floppy. The coffee, bitter and lukewarm. The pastries, stale.
But Hayden already had an itinerary. The plan was to walk toward the sea again. However, this time, in the distance, they’d take in the Negresco, like a wedding cake left out in the rain, though still grand and white. And then they could walk to the Ancien Hôtel Regina; it was where Queen Victoria had once stayed, where Hayden imagined it to be a place of old money and people who didn’t have to worry about the cost of a view. Queen Victoria’s favorite candy shop was also on the list, Maison Auer, across the street from the opera house, known for its candied clementines and chocolates. And then there was the Excelsior Régina Palace, and the St. Nicolas Russian Orthodox Cathedral, the Villa Masséna—all on the checklist, all hangovers from that other era, la Belle Époque. This was supposed to be a tour of the Beautiful Era, the once was and what could have been.
Only at the sea, Ivan stopped at the edge of the stone beach. The water, a flat, turquoise plate, too enticing to resist. “I think I’ll stay here,” he said. “I want to feel the sun on my face.”
He gestured to the bodies strewn across the pebbles and rocks, already oiled and gleaming provocatively under the heat that raged on despite it being late September. Men in speedos. Women in bikinis. “People don’t mind it.” In fact, Ivan looked at home in the glare, a man made for the light.
“Well it’s too hot for me here,” Hayden finally said.
“No, stay. Come on, stay.”
“I can’t. I don’t feel like it today.” He didn’t know how to say that he felt self-conscious to someone who didn’t know what that meant, yet.
“Don’t you like the sun? We don’t get sun like this in Montreal.”
“I’d rather go back to the hotel.”
“And do what?”
Hayden felt a sudden, sharp need to be away from the water, away from the sight of Ivan among the beach of strangers. “I don’t know. Sit in the lobby and read?”
Ivan made a comedic gesture. “That sounds boring,” he replied.
“You don’t have to come, really you don’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I’ll be alright.”
Ivan turned back toward the expanse of the sea. “Then I won’t.”
*
At the hotel, a cool air bathed the 1920s-themed lobby. The motif was the Belle Époque-meets-Jazz Age (or so Hayden thought). Dusty silk potted palms, frosted glass lighting, sunburst-patterned brass inlays. There was the polished Macassar ebony paneling, too. A hand-cranked gramophone—though Hayden wasn’t sure if it worked.
He settled into one of the stiff, emerald-colored armchairs. He could feel the velvet against his skin. It was a comfort. Behind the dark-wood counter, another version of Martin (where did they find these people?) was at the front desk and remained fixed on a computer screen. From time to time, he only took a call. Hayden opened his copy of Death in Venice; it had been lent to him by his father. And then he turned to The Selected Stories of Alice Munro (also lent by his father), trying his best to anchor himself, but the words were merely black marks, swimming on a page, devoid of meaning. He soon fell into a thin, foggy sleep, his head lolling against the high back, and he dreamt of things that couldn’t yet be articulated.
It was the sharp, echoing crack of a newspaper that startled him awake; another guest, across the room. Immediately, Hayden felt the heavy, disoriented weight of a person who had slept through an entire day. He looked toward the glass doors, the light hitting what he thought was likely the Quartier des Musiciens. He checked his watch, and he was relieved to see that only an hour had passed—maybe a little more—and it was still technically the morning.
He found Ivan where he’d left him, in sunglasses, and a skimpy red bathing suit, looking pristine. He was a splash of vivid color against all the gray, lying on a thin hotel towel that looked absurdly white against the rubble of the stone beach. He was staring at his phone, his thumb moving in a restless, mechanical scroll.
“Hey,” Hayden said. The initial sound was swallowed up by the wind. He tried again.
Ivan looked up, squinting against the glare. “Hey, there.”
“Learn any new words?”
“Maybe.”
“Did you fall asleep?”
“I did.”
“Me too.”
A pause.
“I’m wide awake now,” Hayden said, though he didn’t feel entirely certain of it.
“I’m a little burned.”
“That’s what you get.”
“Funny.” They both laughed. It was the remnants of an old joke that neither of them could really remember what it was first about. And it was then when it happened—a sudden, percussive roar that shattered the air like a gunshot. It was the sound of battle. It sounded like a bombing, a violence against the backdrop of the stillness of the coast.
“What the hell was that?” cried Ivan.
The sound rolled across the water and bounced off the beach and the white facades of buildings. Pigeons soared. Everything came to a halt.
“The cannon, I’m guessing.”
“What cannon?” Ivan then pressed. “There’s a cannon?”
“Relax, they fire it every day at noon.” Hayden had read about it—the old tradition, one hundred and fifty years old in fact, a relic of a time when life was governed by more simple, audible signals. In fact, it had originally been intended by a wife to summon a distracted husband home for lunch, but it persisted long after the man and his hunger were gone. It was the marking of time—the announcement of it. Or the intrusion of it.
“For what?”
“To tell the city that it’s time for lunch.”
“They need to fire a cannon to know that it’s lunch?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
Ivan gave him a pointed look.
“It’s what they do here,” Hayden replied.
“Do they?”
“Yes, they do.”
“Well, I don’t like it.”
*
And then they crossed the arched stone entrances and descended upon the Vieille Ville, the Old Town, where the streets narrowed into dark, salt-scented veins. Ivan moved through the crowds with an effortless, sun-drenched magnetism. People looked at him and smiled; they leaned in when he spoke. Again, he was handsome, naked to the waist, and more than that, he could be arrogant, but also kind, which could be a devastating combination.
They were looking for a restaurant—a place with a name someone had scribbled on a damp napkin at a bar back in Montreal (Was it in Chinatown? Was it at Maison VIP?) Montreal was waiting in lines for things. For brunch or bagels, St-Viateur vs. Fairmount. Construction. It felt like the streets were constantly under construction, a riddle of orange cones and detours.
They walked deeper into the labyrinth of the old quarter, past shutters slammed tight against the afternoon heat, the smell of scorched sugar, and the murmur of a television set from a hidden courtyard.
When they finally found the address, the windows were dark. A small, handwritten sign hung behind the glass.
Hayden translated it: Closed for renovations.
“Is that what it says?” Ivan asked.
“Sorry.”
“You promised me a good time.”
“I know.”
Things could be going so well. And then they wouldn’t.
“Okay, I could have done better,” Hayden admitted. It was like talking to the untouchable horizon, to the version of himself that had vanished years prior, lost to a winter.
“You sound like you’re talking about me,” Ivan said. He was leaning against a stone wall, his face half-hidden in shadow.
“No, conceited. I’m talking about the terrible hotel. The terrible time that we’re having. I made a mistake.”
“It’s fine, really. Nice is nice.”
“It’s my fault. I should have known.”
“It’s nobody’s fault.” Ivan then flashed that old smile. “Who’s the conceited one now?”
They decided to skip lunch altogether. Castle Hill was, after all, on the itinerary that Hayden had planned, and they could see it in the distance. The fortress was long gone, leveled by the battles waged by Louis XIV, three centuries prior. But the name remained, a stubborn ghost haunting the heights. A name like that could last, could endure, outliving even stone and mortar until the myth of the structure became more real than the ruins themselves. They made the climb up, past the commemorative plaque dedicated to the composer Hector Berlioz. They stood at the top, looking out over the panoramic sweep of the city, its crescent shape, like a half-bitten wafer. It was undeniably beautiful—the sea, now a deep saturated blue, the terracotta roofs of the old town glowing like embers in the remains of the day.
*
Martin offered the Italian restaurant on Rue Dalpozzo as a final gesture of goodwill; perhaps it was a peace offering. “It is a nice restaurant,” he said, using the same thin, versatile adjective that he had used before to describe the room. “Do you like Italian? We have good Italian. In fact, we are very close to Italy. You can almost walk there.”
They found the restaurant a few blocks over, tucked away from the main surge of the evening crowd. The tables were mostly empty, but the air was thick with the scent of garlic and heated wine. The waiter moved with a slow, unhurried grace. Here, time was not something to be managed, but withstood. Here it was even meant to be luxuriated. Hayden and Ivan took the last table outside, pressed against the warm stone wall. They sat side by side, a configuration that allowed Hayden to lean his good ear toward Ivan. He was deaf in one ear, but not many people knew that about him. There were other things that he still didn’t want people to know.
They began to read aloud; it was a story, passing it between them in low, rhythmic tones. At first, Ivan wasn’t so keen on the idea. Imagine, reading aloud to each other in public? But then, he could be coaxed from time to time. Especially if he could make fun of the voices. He liked reading dialogue most. This was one of those times. It was a tactic that they had borrowed from Hayden’s father, who would read with his Chinese mother (she was from Beijing) when things got difficult—a bridge over the gaps in their own conversation. Of course, every bridge was a division, too. Or a diversion.
“‘The Progress of Love,’” a voice interrupted from behind. It was the title of the Alice Munro story that they were looking at. The waiter was leaning over their shoulders, his eyes, tracking the text on the page. “Apologies. It isn’t every day that I see two people reading to each other. It’s a nice thing to see.”
He was young, with the restless energy of someone who found the night too quiet. He had a bun in his hair. One couldn’t easily place him in the world. He asked, with a casual, curious bluntness, if they were together. Hayden hesitated, then nodded.
“I am the same as you,” the waiter said as if it was like permission; a small knowing smile played on his lips. Then, as if realizing that he had stepped across an invisible boundary, “Apologies, I don’t mean to be so personal. I simply like to talk. People say I talk too much.” Then, “Do I?”
Ivan smiled boyishly at this.
His name was Nico—short for Nicholas, he added unnecessarily, and then added further that he had been named after Czar Nicholas I (not Nicholas II). His mother, a woman of fading aristocratic delusions, had insisted on the name as a tether to a history that only vaguely belonged to them.
“At least I’d like to think so,” Nico admitted.
His family was one of many departures: Moscow first, then Geneva in Switzerland, several cities in Italy, and now Nice, helping out at a restaurant that belonged to his family. In Russia, he told them, the country was still cold, still fixed in its traditional, hard ways.
“Where are you staying?” Nico then asked.
Hayden almost replied, “That’s none of your business.”
“We’re at the hotel around the corner,” Ivan coolly said instead. Hayden could only offer a polite upturn of his mouth. Then Ivan continued, “I don’t recommend it. Everything about the hotel is kind of broken.”
“Ah, you must mean the Gatsby, of course,” Nico nodded. “I’ve heard. They always recommend us to the guests.” He leaned in, “We have a deal.”
He gestured toward a table at the entrance to the woman sitting alone and talking on her cell, a small white dog perched on her lap like a pillow. She was speaking Russian with a vivid, theatrical intensity.
“My mother,” Nico explained. “She knows how to arrange these things.”
The night deepened. They ate pasta that tasted of the sea and shared a pizza with a charred, salty crust. Nico brought a round of drinks, and later, once the last of the other diners had drifted away, he brought a bottle of red wine and sat with them. The restaurant was officially closed, the street quiet.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said.
“Be my guest,” Ivan replied before Hayden could register what was actually happening.
“I will. If you insist. It is, after all, my family’s restaurant.”
Nico refilled their glasses. He spoke youthfully of the future as if it were a place he could already see, even manifest. He longed to be in a bigger city—New York, perhaps, though he also didn’t want to be away from his family. He had the face of a model but not the grace. Still, he spoke of fashion and incandescent dreams. He was only twenty-six (what a difference a decade made), with all the time in the world, and at the age of immense potential, that fleeting currency that Hayden knew too well. Nico seemed so convinced that his life was about to begin, while Hayden sat beside him, wondering when his own had come to closures. Or did it only feel like that in contrast? Rivaling the contrast of Nico’s light?
Hayden watched on as Ivan and Nico talked some more. Ivan was forthcoming, for once, about his own life in Russia too, and then how he moved to Montreal, which was very boring, it seemed. His job was boring, his clients were boring, and he could use some excitement in his life. “Boring,” seemed to be the word of the evening. “I used to play ice hockey, if you can believe it.”
“Were you good?”
“The best.”
“What about you?” Nico asked Hayden.
“What about me?” He didn’t feel like talking about ice hockey.
“Are you bored as well?”
“I don’t get bored that easily.”
“Well, lucky you. Why not?”
“He thinks too much about things,” Ivan cut in.
“Really.”
“No, no,” Hayden responded. “I’m actually just an observer mostly.”
“And a reader, I see.”
“I know how to keep myself entertained, I suppose.”
“That is good.”
Hayden pushed his book away and out of sight.
“I couldn’t wait to get out of there,” Hayden said, moments later. They had left the restaurant, and were back at the hotel, changing out of their sweaty clothes. As it had not been refreshed, the room was still in the disarray of their own mess, towels on the floor, cups half-filled with coffee. Ivan cleared a space by the bed and started doing pushups in his black briefs.
“How long was he going to keep talking about himself?” Hayden continued. Then, “He came on kind of strong.”
“I didn’t mind,” Ivan noted, breathing heavily. He was counting up to fifty. “I was young once.”
“Do you like him?”
“He was alright.”
“He seemed to like you.”
“He was just talking.” Then, “We’re both Russian, you know, so we have that in common.”
“Gee, I hadn’t noticed. I felt a little left out when you both started speaking your mother tongue for five minutes straight.”
“Ha, ha.” Then, “Good. Maybe you should finally learn some Russian.”
“Maybe.” He allowed a moment to pass. Ivan was already counting up to a hundred. “I didn’t know that you were so bored with your life.”
Ivan took a break, sitting up on the floor to catch his breath.
Hayden offered him a water bottle, though he waved it away. “Not all the time. But sometimes, things can get kind of, you know, boring.”
“I see.” A pause. “Am I boring?”
“No, not you.”
“Then what?”
“The rest of it.”
Then Hayden sat down next to him. “So will you keep talking to him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You exchanged numbers.”
“It was to be nice. We should be nice in Nice.”
Hayden laughed a little. “It seemed more than that.”
“What?” Ivan reached over to touch Hayden’s cheek. By then, he was breathing more deeply. “Are you jealous?”
“No, shut up.” At first, Hayden wasn’t going to say much more. Then he couldn’t help himself. “We don’t have to be so nice all the time.”
*
Day Three
The next day, Hayden and Ivan took a trip to Monaco. This was again Hayden’s idea. They boarded the bus by the port, driving past the towns that faced the sea. The bus went to Menton. Hayden was reminded of Elizabeth Bowen’s novel The House in Paris, recalling Leopold’s frantic and secret journey to meet a mother who was more an idea than a person. He thought of how the Mediterranean coast in the novel felt like a backdrop for the inevitable collision between childhood illusions and the cold reality of adulthood. He quoted Elizabeth Bowen: “People in love, in whom every sense is open, cannot beat off the influence of a place.” He told this to Ivan. Ivan only nodded.
Almost everything seemed to go right this time—beautifully. They arrived in Monaco earlier than anticipated. The wealthy city, only just coming alive. It was still quiet, though there were people on their way to work. They were well-dressed. Even the children, who were on their way to school were unnecessarily well-dressed for the little events of their day like riding a bus, attending class. It was a city of prosperity and detached disproportion.
They walked up the steep and winding paths of the hill that was known as Le Rocher. They made their way towards the Musée Océanographique. At the top, the sea seemed to extend towards an infinitude. It was actually Ivan who wanted to visit the aquarium. Jacques Cousteau had been something of a hero for him once. When he was younger, he would watch the persona on TV. He would borrow VHS tapes from the library and watch the episodes. At least this was what he was now telling Hayden.
“In between practice, that is,” Ivan said. “But you know how it was.”
It felt as if they had the entire aquarium to themselves—few people were there to enjoy the silent, blue-lit exhibits. There was also a light show, which they sat and took a moment to watch. The different flashes of ultraviolet lights, pinks and purples and aqua and greens, cascading over the skeletons of whales and sharks and dolphins.
Afterwards, they toured the Cathedral of Monaco, where a radiant Grace Kelly had married Prince Rainier III and where she was also buried with the prince. Then they were at the Casino de Monte-Carlo. Ivan said that he had recognized the casino in an episode of I Love Lucy; it was the time when Lucy and Ricky had gone for Ricky’s European Tour. Didn’t Hayden remember? Lucy accidentally winning hundreds of francs, and then having to hide the money in her lingerie in order to avoid having to tell Ricky that she had gambled against his wishes?
“It was hilarious,” Ivan said.
“Yeah,” Hayden agreed.
“We watched an I Love Lucy marathon when we first met.”
“I remember.”
“Eight hours.”
“Yes.”
“Where did the time go?” Then, “Do you remember where we met?”
“The locker room?”
“We played a game in Montreal.”
“Oh, yes. That’s right.”
“You came up and said hello. You were always so polite. You were always a good sportsman.”
“You were impatient.”
“I wanted to beat you.”
“You still lost.”
“I know.” Then, “I won you instead.”
“Ha. You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
It was hot—the weather. They couldn’t enter the casino until the evening. One needed to wear a sports jacket, too, which they didn’t have. They decided that the least they could do was to get their passports stamped at the Tourism Office, a small, dignified kiosk where a clerk performed the task with a mechanical, bureaucratic grace. The stamp was a solitary, violet ink-mark on an empty page of their passport, a crown and a date—a memento of their presence.
Later, they were standing before the Café de Paris. Parked outside was a line of luxury cars. Everything was expensive. Even the McDonald’s was pricey. They decided that they would just go back to Nice for lunch.
*
On the bus ride, they both fell asleep. Almost an hour later they were back in the city. They were both hungry by then—ravenous. They decided to stop at a cafe in the old town. They sat outside, under the hot sun. They devoured the pan bagnat with olive oil. Niçoise salad, mussels and fries. Socca. Little cold glasses of rosé to wash it all down. They ate heartedly.
“This is good,” Ivan said.
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t disappoint.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No.” Ivan reached over and squeezed the back of Hayden’s neck. “Better than a tuna melt, I think.”
Hayden laughed. “I’m glad to hear it.”
They ate a little more in silence. The sun felt good too. It went the way of all things—bright, blinding, and brief. “I guess we missed it,” Ivan then said.
“Missed what?”
“The cannon?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess we did. It must be after noon.”
“Too late for us.”
“Right.”
They ate some more. Sometimes one became used to not talking. Sometimes the silence became a habit. Sometimes the emptiness became the norm. And then sometimes, the norm became the unbearable. Additionally there were times when the silence between them was no longer a void, but more of a solid thing, like a piece of furniture that they were both trying to move, or replace.
Then there were other times.
*
That evening, they embraced and felt each other deeply in a way that they hadn’t done for so long. There had been so much pent up. And they clung to the familiar landscape of bone and sinew, seeking a sanctuary that no longer offered shelter. Ivan was eager—voracious. But there was the dull and uninspired room as well, the stuffiness of it, too difficult to ignore. And then there were instances when Hayden would be thinking too much about everything, and then nothing. Instances when he could get in the way of himself. He would not be able to summon the spirit of that former, unbridled urgency. It would be like a run-on sentence. A sentence that he could not complete. It would be a phantom of a performance, like reciting the lines of a play—only a mimicry of a fever that had already broken.
A phone call came. It was someone at the office and Hayden had to take it like an excuse. Though Ivan still proceeded to continue what had already started with a newfound rigor, as if it was a challenge. At one time, they would be on the same page, such things would not be able to stop them, not even a phone call. But these days, such moments could pass as easily as a change in season.
They sat up in bed afterwards. Hayden was answering a series of emails. The time difference didn’t work in their favor; Montreal, being six hours behind.
“Why do people email you when they know that you’re supposed to be off?” Ivan said.
“I don’t know. People at the office don’t realize it.”
“And why do people check their email when they know they’re supposed to be out of the office?”
Hayden gave him a look. “Very funny.”
“You’re not laughing.”
“Shut up. For real, just shut up.”
“You used to like it when I was like this.”
“Like what?”
“Not so serious.”
“I also liked when you were . . .,” he began. “Never mind.”
“What?”
Hayden stared him down, this one, more pertinent. The conversation could move in a bad direction—another change in season. He wanted to make sure that it didn’t so like a ship in the night, he steered it back away.
*
The dream felt like a continuation. At the same time, the dream was about the failure of a dream—the past life. He was having dinner with a group of people who he was mostly meeting for the first time. None of them were particularly interested in him. This was back in Montreal. Was it somewhere in Mont Royal? That’s what it felt like. An evening in Montreal. Outside, a blanket of snow had covered the streets. Rosa, his best friend, was there, but she was sitting at the other end of the table, looking radiant in her sapphire silk slip. He couldn’t really hear what anyone was saying. They either spoke too quickly or too excitedly. But he could recognize that it was a group of people who moved throughout the world with little to no effort, people who he couldn’t take seriously. People who were non-inclusive. People who received credit for participation. They seemed to embody leisure, or something like it. Something like the luxury of leisure. At the same time, they were people who squandered access and opportunity. They were people who had a head start but that was beside the point because they were deteriorating. What they didn’t have was talent, or a vision. Inspiration was like a short-lasting drug. They loved their cats more than each other. They had little else to contribute to the world. They complained about the food, but continued to eat. They complained about the drinks, but continued to drink. Their lives, but continued to live. They complained a lot—all dinner long. They used to be actors. They used to be models. They used to be beautiful. They used to be.
*
When Hayden woke, he turned over only to discover that Ivan was gone. He waited. Then he waited some more. He turned on the lamp beside his bed. Moments later, he sent Ivan a text. No answer—not for what felt like its own immeasurable stretch. Finally, Ivan replied. He said that he was just downstairs, and not to worry.
“Do you want me to come down?” Hayden texted back. “Is everything okay?”
No answer again.
Moments later, he found Ivan with Nico. They were in the street; it was dark and empty. Hayden felt that he had to approach them carefully, as if he didn’t want to be the one to break a spell.
“Oops,” Ivan uttered. “Shit. Or I should say, putain.” Then, “Nico’s been teaching me some French.”
He was smoking. They were both smoking. Even though Ivan had quit, hadn’t he? He had promised, too. Now he tossed his cigarette to the ground and stamped it out. Then he said, “It’s nothing that you wouldn’t approve of.” He had meant it as a joke. “I wish I had some lingerie to hide this,” he explained further so that the joke was no longer funny.
“What are you doing out here?” Hayden then said.
“You didn’t come back,” Nico replied like an explanation. “To the restaurant. I was starting to get worried that I wouldn’t see you again.”
“What do you mean?”
Nico beamed. He had the dark eyes of a conspirator, a co-conspirator. “I apologize, I hope you don’t mind that I came here to find you.” He then said: “Your book. You left it behind. My mother found it after you left.” Finally, likely responding to Hayden’s reaction, he added, “I talk too much. Sometimes I say the wrong things.”
Indeed, Hayden had left the book. His book of Alice Munro stories was now in Nico’s hands, who raised it to show him, even dangling it and giving it a little shake, before handing it over.
“‘The Progress of Love?’” Nico said.
“You have a good memory.”
“Only for things that interest me.”
Ivan clarified, “I was going to bring it back up to you. You were sleeping. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
Hayden turned to Nico. “Thanks, but you didn’t have to come all this way.”
Nico replied, “It’s no trouble at all. And the restaurant is closed today.”
“Great.”
A silence.
“We should buy you a drink at least,” Ivan then offered. “To thank you.” The teasing in his voice was palpable.
“There’s really no need.”
“We should do something, shouldn’t we?”
Nico tossed his cigarette to the ground. “Unfortunately, I have somewhere that I have to be.”
“I thought you said that the restaurant was closed tonight.”
“It is. But not to the restaurant. To see old friends.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Unless, of course, my new friends would like to come and join my old friends?”
“Oh? That sounds like fun.” Ivan turned to Hayden, “Doesn’t it?”
“Well, we’re tired.”
“Are we?”
Nico cut in, “It’s really not far, just a little past the Vieille Ville. You can get me a drink there, if you’d like, if you insist. Of course, if you’re both too tired from your visit, another time.”
Ivan spoke up. “We’re not.” He looked back at Hayden, “Come on, it is the decent thing to do, no?”
“Ivan.”
“It’ll be fun. I promise. And then I won’t have to listen to you talk in your sleep.”
“I don’t talk in my sleep.”
He turned to Hayden sharply. His eyes radiated. “Oh yes, you do.”
*
In the cool, neon-etched dark of the space, a live band was playing covers. “Alors On Danse,” by Stromae. “Shark in the Water,” by VV Brown. Hayden stood at the bar, his hand curved around a glass of something cold and even medicinal. The air felt thick to him, unbreathable, frantic. Across the room, Nico and Ivan were talking together. Nico had introduced them to Etienne, Chloë, and Mathis. There were several more of Nico’s “old friends,” all indistinguishable to Hayden, all seemingly wearing some form of black that made them appear like shadows against the pulsing walls. At some point, they did a round of shots, a brief, stinging ritual that left Hayden’s throat burning while the others laughed, their voices lost to the percussion.
As the music shifted into something more subterranean and heavier, the group dissolved into the crowd, leaving Hayden anchored to where he stood. From a distance he watched Ivan leaning into Nico to hear something over the bass, their sweaty foreheads, practically touching. Then actually touching. It wasn’t just a conversation; it was a choreography of proximity. The others were there, and they were constantly laughing, though he didn’t think anything was worth laughing about.
He started thinking: Maybe it was the drink in him talking. Maybe it was the unconscious becoming conscious. But Nico was still coming on strong, overly-familiar, perhaps too much a consequence of his youth (Sometimes youth was too easy an excuse; it could even be an under-estimation). And if they were to cross that line, then let it happen—if just to get it over with, if simply to end the pain before it started. And if they were to leave him there in the dust of the crowd, then again, let it happen. Even to have them leave this place together, perhaps even to a not-so-boring city like New York, and to be back at the beginning of things, and he himself, on the other hand, stranded in a spot where it should have only been a brief interlude, and would now be an eternity. And if that were to happen, he would take over what was left. It would only make things easier for him, wouldn’t it? It would balance the ledger. It would provide the absolute terminus that he had been too cowardly to face, for in its place, he had allowed something like a complacency to settle in—a tediousness. Something dull. Something that was the opposite of beauty, but not exactly ugliness, perhaps worse, a banality. And perhaps, it would finally absolve him of what he had signed on to years ago; perhaps in the unknown, he could finally rediscover what had been missing.
It was already midnight—the other side of noon. But as the night dragged on, it did so not with the bang of the cannon, but with the slow and agonizing friction of a performance that only refused to end.
Hayden found himself texting Rosa, back in Montreal. She replied instantly. It must have been the early evening where she was, but she was still on set. He apologized for disturbing her. She was about to shoot a scene in her next film, something about a cyborg in a parallel world. It was not her ideal role; she didn’t think she was exactly right for it. Square peg, round hole. But a gig was a gig.
“I wish I could fix this,” he wrote to her.
“I do too,” she replied, soon after. She was always reliable. “Oh, actually, gotta go.”
The live music from the band became a blunt, rhythmic pressure against the chest, the kind of sounds that made the room feel even smaller, claustrophobic. After all, music was also a corroboration of time. Yet, he couldn’t find Ivan. Perhaps he was somewhere with Nico’s friends. They must have stepped outside. Hayden decided to wait. He tried to get his mind off things. One of the musicians said that they were performing a song by Christophe Maé. Moments after that, they were performing a song by Stanislas and Calogero, “La débâcle des sentiments.” Another song that people seemed to sing along to. It became all too much. Hayden moved around, the heavy velvet curtains trapping the heat of the crowd, the chipped mosaic tiles of the floor slick with spilled wine; the bathroom was tiny. Then he spent some time outside in the dark street waiting to be found. Only he was not found. The truth of the matter was, he had lost Ivan for some time.
It was Nico who approached him from behind. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Oh, you have?”
“I found this at the bar.” He passed the book back to Hayden. “It’s like you want to lose it.” Then, “I mean you keep losing it; sorry, what I’m saying, it’s not coming out right. I’m talking too much.”
“Oh, thanks. I don’t know what’s come over me.”
“Are you enjoying Nice?”
“What’s there not to like?”
“That’s good to hear.”
“It’s late, really late. I think we should be going soon. We have a plane to catch tomorrow.” In fact, Hayden had miscalculated. He checked his phone for the time. Now it was a little after 1 a.m. Everything was taking longer than it should.
“One more drink? After all, I think you owe me one.”
Reluctantly he said, “Fine.”
Back inside, Nico signaled the bartender for another round. Then he leaned in towards Hayden, “Ivan said that I can stay with you both when I visit Montreal.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he by the way?”
“He’s betraying you. Oh, I’m not saying the right thing, I’m talking too much again. I mean he’s entertaining my friends. Okay, he’s having another cigarette with them.” Then, “He’s a likeable guy.”
Hayden sighed. “What else did he say?”
“That Montreal is cold and full of friendly people and good music.”
“It’s true.”
“And that you’re usually more patient.”
Hayden laughed. “What do you mean?” It was the music; it made it so that he could only catch the first part of what Nico was telling him. Sometimes it was difficult to string the words together. Other times, he stopped caring and simply nodded along.
“Do you want to talk outside?” Nico then said. “Don’t worry, Ivan told me about your trouble.”
“Told you what exactly?”
“About your hearing?”
“What?”
“That is why you act like you don’t like anyone, isn’t it?”
Hayden could feel his own smile evaporating from his face. “Alright, I think I’ve had enough for tonight. I’m going to go.”
“Did I say something wrong?” Then, “You’re going alone? What about Ivan?”
“Tell him if he wants to find me, he’ll know where.”
*
Day Four
This time, Hayden woke to the sun in his face. He turned, surprised to find that Ivan was already there, beside him, snoring and in a deep sleep. How peaceful he appeared. How untroubled. There was a dread in Hayden’s stomach as he realized that he had overslept, they both had. They had missed breakfast. What else had they missed?
“Wake up,” he said, pushing Ivan’s arm and then his torso. More purposefully: “I said wake up you bitch.”
Gradually, Ivan awoke. “What? My head hurts.”
A short time later, Hayden was bringing Ivan a cup of coffee he had made in the room. “When did you get back? I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Not so long after you. You were knocked out.” Then, “You left me.”
“I couldn’t find you.”
“You didn’t even try.”
“Well, you reek of cigarettes.”
Ivan threw a pillow at him. “Are you mad? It was just one night. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”
“Not a chance.”
One last time, they went to the beach. Their flight wasn’t until later in the afternoon (Hayden had arranged a late check out with Martin). Ivan wanted to see the beach once more, while it was still the morning, while they still had the early light. Reluctantly, Hayden agreed. They were back on the promenade, watching the water, like a constant in the variables of the city, like a force of its own.
“We should pack,” Hayden finally said.
“We’ll be fine. We have all the time in the world.”
It wasn’t true but Hayden still said, “I guess.”
“You were talking in your sleep again.”
“I don’t talk in my sleep.”
“You kick as well.”
“I don’t kick. Do I?”
“I have the bruises to prove it.”
“What was I saying?”
“Oh, nothing I could really make out. You were pining for me, that’s all.”
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t realize that you were so unhappy.”
“But I’m not unhappy.”
“It doesn’t sound like it. You don’t say it, not in those words of course, but it’s what you mean. I think it’s more than just a bad dream.”
What else could Hayden say? It wasn’t untrue. Nothing had gone as planned in Nice, in Montreal, in the journey to and fro, the journey since. He felt betrayed by time, and at the same time, there was no way to get any of it back. Hayden could have said this, or something like this. But he refrained. Instead, he faced the sea.
“Hey,” Ivan said. “Don’t cry. It’s okay.” Ivan put his arm around Hayden. He held him close, and wiped away some of the tears, kissing his forehead. It felt, for a moment, like something previously held. They sat for a while longer. They looked ahead. The view—the abyss of the water. Something hung in the air like a fermata, that pause of unspecified length. Sometimes, things could even be too beautiful.
“You have to forgive me,” Ivan said.
“Yes, I know.”
The blast erupted like a finality—the announcement of noon like a period at the end of a sentence. Or another kind of sentence—perhaps an imprisonment of fate. The sun, at its highest peak. No shadow. No nuance. Just the death of mystery.
“Hear that?” Ivan asked. “I think it’s time for lunch.”
“Oh yes, I think so.”
“Time to go, don’t you agree?”
“Yes, I think it is.”
*
Winter, Paris. In hindsight, it had been a highlight. For Hayden, it had been a break: from the ice, the training, the competition—the rivalries. From everything else, too. Of course, this had been after the game that they had played. They had lost, but it didn’t matter. It felt like a relief in fact, a weight off their shoulders, as if there were other possibilities already in place. They had visited the Louvre and then the Musée Carnavalet, when it used to close for lunch, so they had to go back in the afternoon to see the rest. They had stayed on the Left Bank, and walked everywhere in the city, crossing the bridges over the Seine—perhaps to a department store to warm up, then perhaps taking the escalator up to the highest floor and absorbing the view from the roof. Again, Kylie Minogue seemed to be playing all over the place. The music would always take him back, like the scent of a perfume. It had already been another era. Something like the potential for reinvention. Again, there had been Scott to pull him from the sidelines and into the bright, bone-chilling center of things. He had let his guard down, for once. He had not known then that it would be the first of firsts, of many firsts. He had not known that such things were also a means to an irretrievable end. He had not known how much he would delight in such moments, such indulgences; how could he? How they would remain with him. After all, the timing could not have been more promising.
William Pei Shih’s story “The Masterclass” was first published in The Los Angeles Review and was awarded a 2026 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction and selected for The Best American Short Stories 2025. He was also selected for The Best American Short Stories 2020. He is the Fiction Editor at Guernica Magazine and teaches at NYU. For more, visit williampeishih.com.
24 July 206
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