by Cath Crowley
‘Let’s hope not,’ he says, and smiles nervously.
We walk to Shanghai Dumplings where his parents, George, Martin and Lola are meeting us. ‘Since it’s the last night of the world, they agreed to have dinner,’ Henry says, and then we go quiet. I keep waiting for him to say something, to flirt with me again, to make things clear between us. I wonder if I should tell him that the letter I wrote three years ago wasn’t a goodbye.
Mai Li gives us some menus after we’ve walked into the restaurant, and tells Henry that his parents are fighting again. ‘I don’t know what it’s about, but it seems bad. Your mum’s crying.’
We walk up the stairs, and see that Mai Li’s right. Sophia’s eyes are red, and there’s a small smudge of mascara under her right eye. Henry looks worried. He puts his hand on his mum’s shoulder, and she smiles up at him.
We take our seats, and Lola arrives soon after us, and then George and Martin arrive too, and when we’re finally all seated, an awkward silence settles over the table.
‘What’s going on?’ Henry asks.
‘Nothing,’ Sophia says. ‘We can talk about it later.’
‘Your mother’s sold the business,’ Michael says.
‘We all decided to sell the business,’ Sophia says. ‘We sat here and voted. And then you called me and said I should go ahead and look for buyers.’
‘We should look for buyers for the business,’ Michael says. ‘Not buyers who want to knock down the place.’ He turns to the rest of us. ‘Not even the building will be left. Developers are buying the place to demolish it, but don’t worry, it sold for an absolute fortune. We’re rich,’ he says, and then looks embarrassed by his sharp tone.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sophia says, looking at me and Lola and Martin. ‘This is very rude. We should discuss this later.’
‘Undo it,’ George says, speaking to Sophia. ‘Tell them the deal’s off.’
‘She can’t,’ Michael says quietly, his voice under control now. ‘It’s done. It’s gone.’
‘It can’t be gone. It’s our home,’ George says. ‘I didn’t agree that it be knocked down.’
‘You didn’t agree at all,’ Sophia says gently. ‘You didn’t say anything.’
‘I’m saying something now,’ George says. ‘And maybe I would have spoken up before if you hadn’t made me feel like I was in the middle of something. Henry?’ George asks, looking at him.
Henry looks like he’s in shock. I take his hand and hold it.
‘What’s everyone reading?’ Sophia asks to change the subject, but no one answers. The quiet is unbearable, so I tell her I’ve been reading Cloud Atlas. ‘Henry’s read it, too.’
‘It’s a good book,’ George says half-heartedly.
‘I’m with George,’ Sophia says. ‘Great book. The characters all share the same birthmark, don’t they? Aren’t they all the same person?’ Her eyes keep moving from us back to Michael, who is completely silent.
‘They’re not the same person,’ Henry says. ‘But they’ve got the same soul.’
‘Doesn’t that make them the same person?’ George says, looking at her dad. He shakes his head and doesn’t answer.
‘It’s about the transmigration of the soul,’ I say. ‘At least I think it’s about the possibility that a soul can move on to another body after death.’
‘Does anyone believe in that?’ Martin asks, talking for George’s sake. ‘That souls can transmigrate?’
‘I do,’ says George. ‘I think souls can be in books, too.’
For all my thinking about this, I’ve never changed my view on souls, or transmigration, or ghosts. But I’ve changed what I want my view to be. I love the idea that Cal’s soul could find a way to transmigrate. The moment on the beach, when I realised he was gone, would have been so much easier if I’d known that the centre of him, the thing that made him Cal, had travelled somewhere, disappeared, but not gone. Had turned into something else – even turning into clouds would have been better than ash.
‘Transmigrate comes from the Latin transmigrat,’ Michael finally speaks. ‘Meaning removed from one place to another. Trans means across or beyond.’
‘Or through,’ Henry says. ‘On the other side of.’
‘Exactly,’ his dad says. ‘Have you read “Shakespeare’s Memory” yet? That’s a transmigration of sorts. A transmigration of memory.’
‘I read it,’ Henry says, and he looks so sad. I knew he’d feel like this when he lost the store. It’s one thing to imagine being without a thing you love. It’s another thing when it’s really gone.
Everyone keeps talking to cover the terrible silence.
Lola says she read Fifty Shades of Grey and Henry blocks his ears and then excuses himself to go to the bathroom. George says she wants to read it and her dad blocks his ears, too. Martin says he read a Peter Temple that George suggested and the talk turns to literary crime, and all the while I’m only partly listening.
I’m thinking of the transmigration of memory. Not the transmigration that happened in the Borges story, but the transmigration of memory that happens all the time – saving people the only way we can – holding the dead here with their stories, with their marks on the page, with their histories. It’s a very beautiful idea and, I decide, entirely possible.
Henry
a small spot of light in the darkness
I want to cry when Dad tells us that the bookshop is destined to be demolished. I want to just fucking cry, and then I want to rewind to a month ago, and make a different decision. I’d give up my world ticket, I’d give up Amy, I realise, to have the shop back. I didn’t know what it would feel like. There’s a gap in me, a gap in the future.
I look into my future tonight, stare down the road of it, and I’m walking past a block of ugly high-rise, flats, and I’m telling my kids that there, right there, was the most beautiful building – the building where I grew up.
‘Where is it now?’ they ask, and I tell them I threw it away to be with a girl who didn’t like what I did for a living, a girl who was a little bit in love with someone else, a girl who only came back to me when she was lonely. In short, kids, your dad really fucked up. If Amy loves me then she has to love me working in a bookshop. I can’t believe I didn’t demand that before.
I can’t look at Dad tonight. I’m too ashamed. I’m too sad. I study the tablecloth, every inch of the pattern. I concentrate on the circles. I trace around them with my eyes, finding the end of one, and following it around to the other. It’s the same tablecloth that’s always been here. The whole restaurant has them. I’ve never noticed all the little circles before.
Rachel holds my hand, which is the only good thing about the dinner. I could get through quite a bit with her holding my hand, I think. She’s my best friend, poor or not. She’s my best friend, despite having seen me drool on pillows. She’s dragged me out of the girls’ toilets when I was wedged between a bowl and a sanitary disposal unit. She still wants to spend the last night of the world with me even though I ditched her the last time.
I try to look at the bigger picture. It’s not a choice between Amy and Rachel. Even if I can’t have Rachel as more than a friend, it occurs to me now, with extreme clarity, that I don’t want Amy. I don’t want to go overseas with her. I want to be here, with my family, helping them with the fallout of the sale.
The conversation turns from transmigration to 50 Shades of Grey, so I block my ears and close my eyes. Under my lids is a world without books. I look around for a while; feel the flatness of it, the general grey of the landscape – the rubble and bleakness of it. I choose to open my eyes.
I go to the bathroom to work out the speech I want to give, the thing I want to say to change our family back to what it was – basically what I’ve been thinking at the table, but a little more ordered.
I come back but everyone’s headed for the door.
‘I’m going home, to the bookshop,’ George says to Mum. She leaves with Martin. Dad walks in the opposite direction, despite me calling after hi
m. I’m not sure where he’s going, but he’s going there with a purposeful stride. Mum’s giving Lola a lift to Laundry. She offers Rachel and me a lift too, but I kiss her on the cheek and tell her I’ll call later.
‘I know this was my fault,’ I tell her.
‘It’s not your fault, Henry. It’s no one’s fault.’
Rachel and I watch until she’s in her car, and then we start walking. ‘How could I have let this happen?’ I ask. ‘How could I not know how it would feel to lose the bookshop? I’ve got a great imagination.’ I say it over and over all the way to Laundry. I’m trying to make myself believe it. ‘Flats,’ I keep saying. ‘Flats.’
‘It’ll be okay,’ Rachel keeps saying.
‘How?’ I ask her when we’re standing in line, waiting to go inside. ‘How will it be okay? It is the end of the world. It is the actual end of the world.’
‘It’s not.’
‘You’re right. The end of the world would be better than this.’
‘Henry,’ she says, and out of nowhere. ‘I love you.’
And it’s a small spot of light in the darkness.
It’s brilliant, unbelievably brilliant. Life is still shit, but it’s great at the same time. Honesty and bravery are contagious, so I take Rachel’s hands. I’m shaking a little, which is to be expected, since I’m about to tell her that I love her too. I do love her. It’s been obvious for a while now, to everyone probably, except to me.
‘Rachel,’ I say.
‘Henry,’ she says, and makes a serious face. I realise she actually has to try to make it. She still seems sad some of the time, but it’s no longer her default expression.
‘What, Henry?’ she asks.
And then Amy appears beside us, takes my hand from Rachel’s, and says, ‘Thanks for keeping him warm. We got together Friday night. Didn’t you know?’ She smiles, turns my face to hers, and kisses me.
I know, for certain, that when I’m old and I’m losing my memories, I will always feel the warmth of Rachel’s hand leaving mine.
I blink, and Rachel’s face has changed. She’s smiling harder. It’s fake, but only I would know it. ‘That’s great,’ she says to Amy. ‘Really great.’ She points to the line that’s moving. ‘You should go inside. See Lola.’
‘I don’t want to go. I promised you an apocalypse and that’s what you’re getting.’
‘I’m okay,’ she says. ‘I set you free.’ She makes a silent swishing motion with her hand. ‘We’ve spent a great day together, and you should be with Amy, especially after losing the bookstore.’
I don’t want to be with Amy. I want to be with Rachel. But I can’t say that while Amy’s listening, because that would be shitty and I don’t want to be that guy. I can’t let Rachel leave, though, so I turn around and ask Amy to please give me a minute and some privacy, and then I say quietly to Rachel, ‘Do you love me?’
She looks at me, her eyes serious. ‘You’ll always be my best friend. I love every single thing about you. I would not want to live without you. But I don’t love you in the way you’re asking me if I love you. What I meant before was, I love you as a friend.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I say.
‘Believe me,’ she says. ‘I’m fine.’
‘And the kiss?’
‘It didn’t mean anything. Henry. I’ll probably go back to Joel. There’s nothing for you to feel guilty about.’
I don’t believe she doesn’t love me, but I do believe I’ve lost her. She’s wearing the same face she wore when she first came back. A stranger’s face. I can actually feel a chasm opening in my chest. ‘Are you coming in to hear The Hollows play one last time?’ I ask, because I have this feeling that the next time I see her, Rachel will have blocked me out completely, like she did after the last last night of the world.
‘I’ll see you both in there,’ she says, and walks ahead of Amy and me into the crowd.
I take a seat outside because I need air. I need to talk to Amy. It’s an understatement to say that this is turning into a really shit night. I’ve lost the bookshop. I’ve lost Rachel. I’ve got what I wanted sure, only now I can’t believe I wanted it.
‘Henry, what’s wrong?’ Amy asks.
‘We’re selling the bookshop,’ I tell her.
‘I know,’ she says, and smiles. ‘You’ll make a fortune from that place. I could never work out why you didn’t sell it before.’
Because I love it. Because I love books down to the full stops. I love them in a way that’s beyond logic and reason. That’s just the way it is. I love them the way those people in the Letter Library love them. It’s not enough to read, I want to talk through the pages to get to the other side, to get to the person who read them before me. I want to spend my life hunting them, reading them, selling them. I want to serve customers and put the right book in their hands. I want to be there to console Al when he realises that the book he’s writing has already been written. I want to talk to Frederick and Frieda. I want to listen to the book club. I want it all. And I want it to go on forever. And if it can’t last then I want to want it right up to the very final second. And I want a girl who wants me the same way. Dust and all.
‘What do you love about me, Amy?’ I ask.
‘I love a lot of things,’ she says.
‘Name one. Please. I need to hear it.’
She thinks, and says, ‘I love how you’re always there.’
I know she does love this about me. She genuinely does love this quality about me. I scratch my head and think about that. I almost laugh. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, standing up. ‘But that’s not enough. I can’t be with you, Amy. I need someone who loves more about me than the fact that I can always be located.’
‘It’s more than that,’ she says.
‘It’d have to be a whole lot more to be enough.’
I realise tonight how much Amy hates being alone. Her idea of torture is an overseas trip without a friend. I understand that. But the friend can’t be me. ‘You can’t take Greg overseas?
‘He stripped you and gaffer-taped you to a pole. He threw you in a car boot.’
‘He did,’ I say. ‘You really need to wait for someone better.’
‘If Rachel’s who you want, you’re wasting your time,’ she says. ‘She doesn’t love you, she just hates me. I have the letter to prove it.’
‘What?’ I ask, remembering the letter that Rachel spoke about on the first night she arrived. ‘What letter?’
Amy doesn’t answer.
‘If you ever felt anything for me, please, tell me about the letter.’
She gives in, and to her credit, looks ashamed. ‘She left it for you on the last night of the world in Year 9. You took me up to your room and while you were in the bathroom, I flicked through the book on your bed. Rachel had left a note in there telling you to look in a book in the Letter Library. I can’t remember the title.’
‘Was it the Prufrock?’ I ask.
‘That sounds like it,’ she says. ‘I found it when we went downstairs. I took it. I wanted to spend the last night with you and I thought if you read it, you’d go to her.’
‘And the letter said?’ I ask, but I know what the letter said – I love you. ‘Do you still have it?’ I ask, and she says she put the letter into another book, one she didn’t think I’d look in.
‘A book with a yellow cover,’ she says, and I close my eyes in frustration. ‘The author had a Japanese name that started with K.’
‘Kazuo Ishiguro?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Never Let Me Go?’ I ask.
‘Possibly,’ she says, and I leave her behind.
I push my way into the bar and through the crowd to find Rachel. As I do my optimism takes over. I’m thinking about a lot of things and one of them is Rachel’s letter. She loved me once. If the past is as real as the present, if the growing block universe theory is right, and I choose to believe it is, then somewhere on my time line, Rachel still loves me. She’s putting that letter in the Prufro
ck and waiting for me to reply. And somewhere up ahead there’s a future that’s waiting to be written. And now? Now is ours if we take it.
I call her name as I move through the crowd, not caring what I look or sound like. I call her phone but get no answer. I leave a message telling her I’m coming to the warehouse and she should meet me there.
I’m about to leave but I see Lola standing on stage, alone. She’s barely strumming loud enough to make a sound, and people are starting to yell things at her. I wave, and she finds me in the crowd, and smiles sadly. The lights have a diamond glint to them. She looks lost in their glow.
I push my way close to the stage, and she comes close and bends down so she can hear me. ‘She’s not coming?’
‘I didn’t apologise, not directly. I left a message on her voicemail to say I needed her tonight. She left one on mine to say she thought it’d be easier to say goodbye to a machine and skip the whole thing. Fuck it, I do put the music before her but she is the music.’
I don’t say I told you so. What’s the point in that? I haul myself up on stage instead. The Hollows might have played their last song, but I’m still here. I can’t sing, but fuck it, at least she won’t be alone.
Lola starts a song that I know by Art of Fighting. We finish that one and start on some Ben Folds. We’re almost at the fourth song when Lola stops because the crowd is yelling for me to stop singing and it’s seems unlikely that Hiroko will show up now.
Lola’s apologising to the crowd and taking off her guitar, putting it away, when there’s the sound of clapping. It catches on and everyone’s clapping and then we see Hiroko pushing her way through the crowd, carrying a triangle.
‘Didn’t have time to bring my glockenspiel,’ she says when she’s on stage.
‘Thank God,’ Lola says.
I leave the two of them up there, playing their last song.
It might not be the last night of the world, but it feels like I don’t have any time to lose.
Rachel
Love is important. I was wrong.
