By Manuela Stoicescu

“Take care, Dave.”

She kisses him on the cheek, and her smile is all the goodbye her lips don’t say.

Take care. The words fall like snowflakes in front of him. For a moment, crystals of pity glint in them, and shame and resentment stir his stomach. But when they melt on the table, in a small puddle, he’s cold and alone, left to “take care,” and he doesn’t know how to do that.

He watches her leave and finishes his beer. It’s his fifth one, and he’s had no sleep, but he’s excruciatingly lucid. He is awake, rooted into the mantle of the Earth, registering every vibration.

The lanterns inside the bar glimmer, and the hum of the voices goes through him and in it he deciphers humanness itself. He feels the frantic toil of every cell in his body, slogging to make up for a splintered heart, and he understands all life and the forces that flow through it. He has loved and he has lost and he is deeply alive.

Niko’s contours linger in the air. The yellow light drips on her absent shoulders, as if it does not yet dare to fill the space she occupied. She was more beautiful than ever. More beautiful than that day in court when she put on her glasses to sign the divorce papers. There’s something so ironically irresistible about someone when they’re self-contained, autonomous creatures, belonging fully to themselves again and not at all to you.

Dave rubs his face and looks at the time. In an hour, he’ll be in the kitchen, drowning in steam, screaming, vacuuming lines of coke, chopping, boiling, frying, and screaming some more. Niko once told him that when he’s cooking, Dave is the Davest.

The only thing he’s ever been good at is making ramen. And good is an understatement. In the restaurant, he’s the Messiah, feeding his flesh and blood to his disciples, in bowls of earthy broth and thick noodles. They come and gorge; they drain him and ask for more, and he comes back to life every night to indulge them. The small room in the back of the café with wooden doors and newspaper cut-outs in the window is the only place in the world where he has never disappointed. He hears it beckoning, whispering, clawing at him.

But maybe he could still learn how to be a good father and husband. Maybe he could run out of Ryoma and catch Niko at the train station, run to her and kiss her face and hands and beg her not to marry Daisuke. He’d make a fool of himself and embarrass her to death, but she would burst into tears and kiss him back. They could go to his place and make love and after, pick up Haru from school and book the first flight to New York, where they would live in their old apartment. He could get a job that releases him when the sun sets and make grilled sandwiches for them in the evening. And after putting Haru to bed, they could spend ages deciding on a movie, only for Niko to fall asleep soon after it started. Maybe she could teach him how to “take care.”

He stands up, takes a crumpled bill out of his pocket, and throws it on the table.

Or maybe she deserves someone who doesn’t need to be taught. Someone who wouldn’t sell his soul and his loved ones for adoring crowds and newspaper mentions. Someone for whom making grilled cheese sandwiches is enough. He hears the restaurant calling again, demanding his presence, waiting to swallow him up like a greedy nightmare, and he feeds it his dreams to appease it and orders another beer.