by Nick Hornby
Lucy didn’t know what he was talking about.
“OK.”
“It’s just . . . If we’re headed that way, I thought it better to explain now rather than for you to discover for yourself later.”
“Thank you.”
There seemed to be honesty and some kind of consideration involved, so thanks had to be appropriate.
“May I ask . . . Well, what’s the hit? And what’s the miss?”
“Ah. Yes. I was being needlessly opaque. So. The hit is everything working normally. The miss is . . . nothing going on at all.”
The fog had cleared. She still thought he was probably a fuckman, but his eyes were bigger than his belly, as her mother used to say, and that must have been confusing for him.
“I just don’t want to be one of these men who say, oh, this has never happened before. When it has.”
“Right.”
“So.”
“Have you thought of . . . taking the medical route?”
“Yes. Of course. More and more frequently. But then suddenly everything comes back to life and I think, oh, I’m over it. You hear such awful stories, don’t you?”
“Do you?”
“Yes. Of things . . . lasting too long, and discomfort, and excruciating embarrassment.”
This, then, was what she was rushing toward, but surely there were some other stops along the way? She’d rather presumed that Viagra and so on would come toward the end of the journey—Plymouth, say, if you were traveling to Cornwall. But what happened to Reading, Bath, Bristol Temple Meads? She didn’t know what the sexual equivalent of Bristol Temple Meads was, but she’d somehow fallen asleep and missed the stop.
“This is all incredibly unseductive, I know. But it’s so confusing, the erratic nature of it all.”
“Have you detected any rhyme or reason to the hit-and-miss?”
Michael addressed his wine again.
“I have developed some theories, but . . . I’m not sure I want to talk about them. And it’s not fair on the, the . . . Anyway.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to . . .”
“No, no, it’s . . .”
What were these theories? And why were they unfair? And how would he have finished the sentence about fairness? Lucy wasn’t troubled, just extremely curious. If he were about to say that it wasn’t fair on the potential sexual partner, then surely the suggestion seemed to be that the malfunctions only happened with a certain kind of woman. But what kind? What if you had to be of a certain level of intelligence? That if you weren’t smart enough for the prize-winning author Michael Marwood, it just lay there, leaning back, bored and unimpressed? Or, worse, it got halfway up and then gave up the ghost? But it could be anything—breast size, arse size, weight . . . She would have to stop thinking about it immediately before her guesses took darker and more particular turns. Something to do with his mother? The woman who looked least like her? Most like her? Least/most like his father? Why did all mental perambulations and panics lead to the parents of potential sexual partners?
“And . . . Obviously I’m taking a risk in telling you anything. But I would value your discretion. I understand that one particular female novelist has been entertaining people with stories of my misfortunes.”
“From experience? Or hearsay?”
“Touché.”
“Touché”? She hadn’t made a witty or telling point. She had merely asked a question. She could only presume that in this context, “touché” meant shut up.
She hesitated.
“Can I say one more thing about it?”
“And then we talk about something else.”
“There’s a lot more to sex than that.”
“A lot more?”
“A lot more.”
She had no idea whether this was true or not. Paul’s problems frequently resulted in malfunction, but they never bothered trying to overcome them—he got angry and as a consequence she didn’t want to have sex with him anyway. But she knew this was a thing people said.
“I think that’s true within a relationship. I’m not sure it works when you’re, well. Dating. If that’s what I’m doing. And you’re doing. We’re doing, come to think of it.”
“No?”
“The last couple of years, since the end of my marriage, I often seem to be attempting sex with women who for one reason or another have lost their confidence. A husband has left them for a younger woman, or they’re not meeting anyone . . . I mean, there are a hundred reasons, aren’t there?”
“For both genders, I’d have thought.”
She was thinking of poor Ted, who was looking for someone plain.
“Yes. Yes. Of course. Both genders. But I go to bed with someone, and nothing happens . . . Well, you can say there’s more to sex than, than that, and you’re right, but you can see that . . .”
“Yes. Yes.”
She just wanted to stop him from talking about it now. There was a part of her, inevitably, that wanted to find out whether she was a hit or a miss, but it was much, much smaller than the part that wanted the evening to end as soon as possible.
* * *
—
Joseph called his dad Chris, and he called his mum Mum. He didn’t need a shrink to understand why that might be. Chris lived just up the road from the cinema where Joseph was meeting Jaz, so he went round there for a cup of tea first. He didn’t like going to see his father. Chris brought him down. Life hadn’t gone the way he’d wanted it to, and that was his main topic of conversation. A lot of his unhappiness wasn’t his fault: for the last few years he had been in and out of work because of a chronic shoulder injury. The injury had resulted in a dependency on Subutex, a heavy-duty opioid that Joseph suspected he was now half addicted to, and he spent much of his life looking for new doctors who would prescribe it. It was all a mess.
Chris lived in a ground-floor apartment on the Denham estate, and he had a red poster in his window: TAKE BACK CONTROL. VOTE LEAVE ON JUNE 23RD, it said. Joseph knew the moment he saw it that he shouldn’t ask about it. He’d be on the receiving end of a rant that would occupy the whole of the visit. Joseph had no idea why his father wanted to display the poster, or whether he would agree with him. Past experience had taught him that when Chris had a bee in his bonnet about something, it was best not to disturb the bee.
But it was immediately clear that something had changed. The apartment was clean, and no longer smelled of either dog or cigarettes, which it used to do long after Chris had stopped smoking and the dog had died. And Chris was smiling at him.
“How are you, son?”
“I’m good, Chris, thanks.”
“Did you see my poster in the window?” said Chris.
“No.”
“Vote leave.”
“Yeah. You said that was the way you were going.”
“How are you voting?”
“Dunno,” said Joseph. “Hadn’t thought about it. How’ve you been?”
“Yeah. Good.”
“Good?” Joseph wasn’t sure Chris had ever used the word before, in answer to this or any other question.
“Yeah. Optimistic.”
“That’s great. Why?”
“Because of all this. I’ve got involved. Giving out leaflets and all that.”
He was pointing at the poster.
“What difference is it going to make to you?”
“You haven’t thought about this at all, have you?”
“Not really. I thought everyone was voting remain.”
“No, mate. Not round here. Literally nobody is voting remain. Who’ve you been talking to?”
Joseph decided that Chris wouldn’t necessarily want to know about Lucy and the other customers at the shop.
“I don’t know. I just got the impression.”
“Wrong.”
&nb
sp; “Well, I will think about it properly now.”
“Nothing to think about. Not if you’re a working man.”
“You keep telling me I’m not.”
“I know you work hard, son. Just because you’re not a scaffolder doesn’t mean you don’t put in a shift.”
Joseph found it hard not to gape. This was not an opinion his father had ever previously held or expressed.
“The apartment’s looking nice.”
“It’s all about supply and demand. If they want anything built in London, they’re going to have to pay people properly.”
Chris handed Joseph a mug of tea. You could just about make out the words DAD OF THE YEAR on the side of the mug, nearly worn away now. Or maybe only Joseph could have seen them. He had given Chris the mug, a long time ago. He wanted to take it back. He also wanted his father to buy some new mugs.
“The thing is, I’ve got no problem with immigration. Immigration is why we’re here. But they haven’t come here to be a part of Britain, have they? All the Eastern Europeans and all them. It’s a hit-and-run. Undercut the locals, earn some money, fuck off home. Meanwhile, those of us who are stuck in one of the world’s most expensive cities can’t make a living.”
“Right.”
“You know Kelvin who I used to work with at Canary Wharf?”
“No.”
“Well, I keep in touch. And he reckons they’ll have to pay twenty-five quid an hour if the Eastern Europeans leave.”
“Have you seen Grace recently?”
“Why aren’t you interested in what I’ve got to say?”
“I am interested. But I’m going to the cinema in a bit and I wanted to talk about something else before I go.”
“She won’t come round here.”
Joseph’s sister was renting an apartment in South London with friends. She worked as a teaching assistant in Balham.
“Have you asked her?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you meet her somewhere?”
“‘Meet her.’ Where am I going to meet her?”
In the old days, a few weeks ago, before he’d found his purpose in life, this was Chris’s favorite trick: the repetition of the suggestion, followed by a question related to it that he seemed to think was unanswerable. It was a habit born of depression, but Joseph frequently had to stifle a laugh, because most of the time he could answer the unanswerable questions with a couple of words.
“The pub? McDonald’s?”
“Maybe I will.”
If he did, then Joseph would know that the prospect of leaving the E.U. was more powerful than any happy pill. Vote leave to bring unhappy families together.
* * *
—
Jaz had made an effort—she looked like someone who was going out on a date. She was wearing a tight spangly shirt over leggings, and there was glitter on her face. Joseph was, he supposed, regretful about the Nike track pants and top, but not regretful enough to apologize. They decided to see a horror film called Satan’s Butcher. The poster showed a butcher in a bloody apron holding a meat cleaver. His eyes were red.
“I hope it’s about a butcher who’s possessed by Satan and slices people up,” said Joseph. It was supposed to be a joke. The poster didn’t offer up too many other alternative interpretations.
“What else is it going to be about?” said Jaz, as if he were stupid.
Happily, it did indeed turn out to be about a butcher who was possessed by Satan, and Jaz grabbed his arm every time something awful happened, which was approximately every two minutes until the last half hour, when there was no pause between one horrific assault and the next. Joseph was frequently distracted by the incompetence of Satan’s Butcher. Joseph wasn’t allowed to carve up carcasses himself because he hadn’t been trained, even though Mark who owned the shop wanted to train him. (He didn’t want to learn because he didn’t want to be sucked into working there full time.) Satan’s Butcher used a cleaver instead of a knife, and he cut with the grain, which was pretty much the most stupid thing you could do. Cutting with the grain made the meat much chewier, and though Joseph had never seen Mark create steaks from a human corpse, he was pretty sure that the same rules would apply. Satan’s Butcher did a slightly better job with the ribs, but that was more by accident than judgment. He was still hacking away with a cleaver, which would sort of do a job for you, although not as good a job as a saw, and he seemed to think that he could sell the end ribs, whereas in fact the end ribs are full of fat, and more or less useless. (Again, this was assuming that human ribs were roughly comparable to the ribs of a cow.)
It occurred to him that Jaz didn’t know anything about his Saturday job.
“I’m a butcher,” he whispered to her after the Demon Butcher had laid out his steaks for display in his shop.
“Shut up,” said Jaz.
“I am,” said Joseph.
“You’re never a butcher.”
“I work in a butcher’s shop, anyway.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Why would I lie?”
“Because we’re watching a film about a satanic butcher and you want to scare me.”
The man in the row behind leaned forward and tapped her on the shoulder. He was probably in his forties, cropped blond hair, with a woman. He was the kind of man that Joseph always thought of as potentially troublesome. Jaz turned around.
“What?”
“I just want to join in,” said the man. “I can’t hear what they’re saying on the screen so I might as well talk to you. What are we talking about?”
Joseph couldn’t help thinking that if you had to tell someone to shut up, this was a stylish way of doing it.
“It’s not your fucking business,” said Jaz.
That, on the other hand, wasn’t quite as cool.
“Well, don’t make it my fucking business,” said the man. “Shut up.”
A few people were turning round now. One person clapped.
Jaz was angry now.
“Let’s just watch the film,” said Joseph. Jaz was pouty, but she didn’t say anything else.
* * *
—
“Where shall we go?” she said as they were walking out.
There was no evidence that the incident with the man in the row behind was still alive in her, which Joseph took to be a bad sign: the implication was that a confrontation was all part of a regular evening out. He found himself wondering whether he would ever go to the cinema with Lucy. It was completely possible, of course, in the sense that very small ambitions can be achieved quite easily, if one can be bothered. He could just ask her, maybe after a couple more babysitting sessions. He could say, “Lucy, this film looks really interesting, but I don’t know anyone else who wants to see it and I don’t like going on my own. Do you fancy it?” And she would almost certainly say yes, if she could find a babysitter. But of course that wasn’t really what he meant, was it? Or maybe it was. Maybe he just wanted to go to the cinema with a woman who was unlikely to say, “It’s not your fucking business” to the person sitting behind them. Except he never went to the cinema, really, unless it was on a date, which seemed to bring him back full circle.
“Hello?” said Jaz.
“Oh. Sorry. Do you want a drink or something?”
“I was thinking more, you know, my place or yours? Except not mine. No privacy.”
This whole evening, if he were honest, had been prompted by his need for sex. But now that it was apparently on offer, the prospect seemed beside the point, unrelated to anything that had happened between them so far. Was that how it worked? They watched a film about a butcher possessed by the Devil, she told someone to fuck off, and then wanted to know where they were going to do it? That felt more like finding an empty space in a bike rack than having sex. He wasn’t looking for somewhere to park it.
There were only two of them at home, now that Grace was gone, and his mother didn’t really mind if he disappeared upstairs with someone. She’d worried when he was fourteen or fifteen, and she was right to worry, but since he’d reached an age where he might reasonably be trusted to know what he was doing, she’d relaxed.
“So what we going to do?”
“You can come home and meet my mum, or we can go somewhere.”
* * *
—
There was a note on the kitchen table reminding him that his mum had started working nights. She’d left half a chicken pie in the oven for him. She refused to believe that he never touched pie.
“So there’s nobody here?”
“Nope.”
“Ooooh,” said Jaz, and put her arms around him from behind.
“Do you want some tea?”
She let go of him.
“Have you got any vodka?”
“Vodka?”
“Yeah. Is it bad to ask?”
“No,” he said, and he shrugged, the shrug suggesting the opposite, somehow.
“I don’t want to get drunk. I just want to, you know. Loosen up a bit. Will you have one?”
“No, I’m all right.”
“You don’t seem it.”
“Meaning what?”
“I dunno. You’re all tense and yes-no.”
He hadn’t said much on the bus, but she’d been on her phone all the time. At one point she lifted it in the air and took a photo of the two of them. She showed Joseph the picture. He thought he looked puzzled. She posted it somewhere, or sent it to someone, but Joseph didn’t ask where or who, and afterward she just went back to scrolling through Instagram.
He knew there was a bottle of vodka. Neither he nor his mother drank much, and someone had brought a bottle to their Christmas party. It was in the freezer, virtually untouched.
“What have you got to go in it? Coke?”
“No. We never have Coke in the house.”
“You’re a lot of fun, aren’t you?” said Jaz. “No vodka, no Coke . . .”
No chicken pie, no sex, Joseph thought. What was wrong with him?
