You Are Not A Stranger Here

by Adam Haslett

  was tidy: the bed made, the curtains fastened in place, laundry piled in the corner hamper. He returned his suit to its hanger, fitted his brogues with shoehorns, and put his tie on the rack fixed to the inside of the wardrobe door, wondering, all the while, how long this order would last.

  A C R O S S T H E C O M M O N , kids scurried over the public courts, swatting at tennis balls that arced slowly in the damp air. Along the perimeter, people jogged on the asphalt path. James crossed the green, headed toward a line of trees whose branches swayed against a darkening sky. There was food in the refrigerator, he reminded himself, and a guide to the evening's television awaiting him should he lose his nerve. Beneath the trees, he took a seat on a bench. The occasional car passed behind on the far side of the stone wall that surrounded the common. Music from an open window rose and fell on the wind, losing itself in the hushing sound of the trees. A couple, hand in hand, walked along the park's edge. Just off the Underground, their briefcases weighed heavily in their hands; his tie was loosened, she wore sneakers. James watched as they disappeared through the gate, headed for the warren of row houses that stretched over south London toward the river. It was seven-thirty, the light beginning to go, and parents were collecting their children from the football pitch. Nearby, a gardener stowed tools in the municipal shed before padlocking the door behind him. A middle-aged woman in evening dress hurried a terrier over the edge of the grass, 120

  pulling it back toward the lights of the houses, visible now through the gate's arch.

  James opened his letter pad and began to write on the small, lined sheets:

  Dear Father,

  Today I left my job at Shipley's. We've been doing very little business, and they won't miss me. This isn't for lack of effort on my part. I've worked long days and made lot of calls, but the market is bad just now and no one has made a sale in three weeks. My manager was helpful and said I could take my holidays straightaway. The hardest thing was saying good-bye to Patrick, the fellow I've told you about. We'd become quite friendly, he even asked me for a drink this evening, but I was afraid of what I might have been tempted to say. I don't suppose he notices my glances at the office. This must all seem rather odd to you, worrying about the young man across the desk. At my age, you'd already married Mum. I wonder what you really make of it.

  He could just make out the words on the page when the streetlamp across the wall came on. He closed the pad and returned it to his pocket. The common was dark. Above the faint glow of the city rose the lighted towers of the housing estates at Sand's End. The distant sound of traffic crossing the 121

  river floated toward him over the grass, making the space before him seem vast, the darkness rolling in quiet waves up to his feet. A few minutes passed before he heard the first steps on the path, slow and intermittent. Then to his left, a shape moving through the trees, catching the corner of his eye, vanishing as he turned to look. The streetlamp felt like a spotlight now, blinding him to the darkened house. He unzipped his jacket and put his hands in the pockets of his jeans. A light flickered by the hedge beside the tennis courts, lit the tip of a cigarette, and was gone, leaving behind the glow of an ember. James felt his breathing become shallow; he dropped his shoulders and told himself to relax. Here and there leaves were brushed aside by shuffling feet. Rising from the bench, he headed for the small copse beyond the gardener's shed, impatient for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light. He leant against a tree, training all his senses on the darkness. Nearby, a man groaned softly. From over the wall, music still floated. Several minutes passed before he sensed a figure approaching. As the man came closer, James saw he was wearing a suit, his tie pulled down from the collar of a white shirt. Late thirties, James guessed quickly, unsure whether to advance or retreat. The visage emerged from shadow--a broad neck, double chin, the features of a once handsome boy cloaked in the flesh of a man's face. Their eyes had met and James already felt with paranoid terror the disappointment he would inflict were he to step away now. The man attempted a half smile, generous and disarming. James cast his eyes to the ground. The hand on his shoulder came as a surprise, but he 122

  fell into the touch, making of the man's extended arm an embrace. Afterward, walking home, the air felt cold against his face. His breath became full again and he jogged the two blocks from the gate to his front door. On the stairs, he felt lightheaded, as though all of a sudden his blood had gone thin, and he took the last flight more slowly.

  A W E E K PA S S E D . On Tuesday, the office called about a semidetached in Parson's Green; they couldn't find the paperwork. James let the machine answer and phoned back the next morning. How was the holiday going? Simon asked. Where had he gone off to? A village in Cornwall, James said, just a bed-and-breakfast, a quick walk to the sea. Wonderful to have time on his own.

  Matinees were cheaper than evening shows and London was full of movie houses. He watched the films he had missed over the last few months, soon moving back further in time to the repertory houses--seventies classics, the Italian directors, the films of Dirk Bogarde. If he rose at eleven, had a leisurely breakfast, and chose a long picture, the matinee would consume most of the afternoon, and evening would soon be upon him. He cooked at home and visited the common at night. Each evening, as he sat on the bench waiting for the light to fade, he wrote a letter to his father, even if it was only a few lines, being sure to place it in an envelope as soon as he returned to the flat. 123

  One Friday night he arrived home from the cinema to discover the fridge was empty; he had seen a double feature, and it was now past closing time. Just as happy not to have to cook, he showered and changed before heading out for a curry.

  The place was crammed with an after-work crowd that had stayed for supper and was getting progressively drunker. He sat on his own at a table near the kitchen, reading the newspaper. Just as his food arrived, he heard a voice behind him.

  "Is that you, Finn?" He turned around and saw a broadfaced male of his own age, his complexion brightened with alcohol, leering down at him. "Clive Newman, from Stockwell, you remember--football in the fog." Without waiting for confirmation, he went on. "Crazy coincidence, hey? I'm back for just a week, Hong Kong--banking--and Trisha's here too, girlfriend of mine. Why don't you come over then, Jamie? That's it, right? Jamie?"

  "James."

  "Right. Eat with us," he instructed, lifting the dish of rice from James's table and heading for his own. What could he do? He picked up the rest of his food and moved reluctantly to the front of the restaurant, where a group of seven or eight sat around a table covered with beer glasses.

  "Everyone! We have here Stockwell's finest actor--

  H.M.S. Pinafore, wasn't it, Finn?" A few of the assembled chuckled absently while the others continued to chat. Someone had passed his tandoori down the table and a young woman in pearls and lipstick was picking at it with a fork.

  "Did we order this?" she asked.

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  "Actually . . . ," James began, but Clive had his arm around him and had begun to speak.

  "Have you ever been back, Finn? I was there last year--

  Old Boys' Day--cricket versus the school side and all that. For a prep school they do quite a job--tents, speeches--the whole routine. None of the fellows showed up, though, just a pack of geezers." The table's food arrived and people began spooning the oily mixtures onto their plates. "Where do the years go, hey? Lost there somewhere."

  Despite himself, James's mind wandered back: chapped legs in winter; the mud-soaked parquet of the basement changing rooms.

  "It's all ahead of us," Clive Newman said. "Christ, we're only a quarter century old, aren't we, my angel?"

  "Yeah," the girl sitting next to James said, appearing not to have heard the question. Trisha was an ethereal-looking character with a mass of hair as light as the skin of her face. Her eyes were large and protruding, as though she were forever alarmed. James thought them an unlikely couple.

  "Are you in business too, then?" she asked in a
soft voice, beneath the rising chatter of another round of drinks. She was speaking to James alone, removing Clive from the conversation with the quietness of her tone. Clive turned to his food and was soon caught up in discussion with a man sitting across the table.

  "Well," James began, "at the moment I don't do much of anything."

  "Do you enjoy that?" she asked, apparently uninterested in the whys and wherefores.

  125

  "I can't say I do."

  "Me neither." She looked down the table, sizing up the young woman in pearls, whose shiny brown hair hung in a gentle curl to her shoulders. Over the cacophony of deeper, male voices, this woman's nasal inflection rose. The accent was well-to-do, the repartee with her male companions conducted with nonchalance, perhaps a little disdain. Trisha looked down again, inspecting her hand of painted nails, pressing back strands of frayed cuticle with the edge of her thumbnail.

  "I take it you're not working at the moment," James said. She laughed. Pushing her plate away untouched, she fiddled with a pack of cigarettes. Her smile stiffened, came to pieces, and appeared again, as though attached to strings pulled by other hands. Then she leaned in closer to James and said even more quietly than before, "This isn't as it appears. I'm here in what you might call a professional capacity. Your friend Clive wanted a little company while he's in town. I think he's an asshole. But if he stays conscious I guess we'll be sleeping together in a few hours." She sat up again in her chair and smiled vaguely at Clive, whose bloated face had grown redder with drink.

  "You can laugh at me now," she said nervously, out of the corner of her mouth. Then she turned to James again, pulled in by the intensity of her thought. "You can go ahead and tell me what a worthless life this is." Her whole expression reached forward in anticipation, as if she saw a blow to the head coming and was determined not to flinch.

  James felt as if he had been yanked from a stupor, pulled 126

  into the tight space of this woman's fury, and to his surprise he didn't feel like turning away.

  "No," he said, "I don't want to say that. Honestly."

  She leaned her elbow on the table, resting her head on her hand. She looked disappointed. Around the table people were calling and laughing, conversation having given way to anecdotes shouted over the din.

  "So are you rich or something?" she asked beneath the noise. "Is that why you've got time on your hands?" Gathering her plate back, she picked at a piece of bread.

  "No," James replied, feeling a sudden tenderness for this stranger. "To tell you the truth, I'm dying."

  The girl froze for an instant, torn from her own form of complacency. His words seemed to filter through her mind, her expression passing from confusion to incredulity to a kind of somber calm.

  "I'm sorry," she said, and James thought it genuine. "Do you have long?"

  He looked into her large black eyes, then down at his hands.

  "Difficult to say. Probably not."

  She was the first person he'd told. A year and a half the medications had worked, and then suddenly they were no good. A resistant strain, the doctors said. For a moment, he felt again the devouring shame that he'd let this disease he'd been so warned of into his body, let it in because he wanted pleasure and somewhere along the way believed people he shouldn't have. But he'd learned early in life there were things 127

  it was best not to think about. The shame passed and he didn't let his mind pursue it.

  Suddenly, Clive was leaning over them, putting his arms around their shoulders, his bulbous face inserted between them.

  "What are you two going on about?" he said, louder than necessary. "Just here a week, Finn, want to see my girl." He cupped Trisha's head in his hand and kissed her roughly on the lips. "Go on then, push over." James moved down a seat. Over Clive's shoulder, the girl looked at him and for a moment he felt his tenderness reflected in the concern of her gaze. Clive began to caress her cheek. She managed to smile at him before closing her eyes.

  Later, standing in the restaurant's foyer as the group prepared to leave, Clive insisted James join them all the next evening at a pub on the King's Road. Laughton, another classmate, would be along. James muttered an excuse--a project at work, long hours.

  As she leaned against Clive by the cigarette machine, the girl came no higher than his shoulder.

  "It was good to meet you," James said but a waiter glided between them and when he'd passed, the girl had looked away; repetition would seem overbearing, he thought. He waved good-bye, and ahead of the others, made his way out of the restaurant.

  On the curb in front of him a bus pulled alongside the shelter, and a small group of passengers stepped off the rear platform, disbanding as they gained the pavement. He headed east, behind the quickly disappearing figures.

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  T H E B E N C H B Y the wall of the common was empty, the streetlamp already on. He should go home, he told himself. But then there was a rustling of feet by the beech hedge, the sound of shallow breath. He kept walking. At the copse, he saw an unshaven man in a tank top picking his way carefully around the glimmer of the ground's muddy patches. James moved farther toward the shed and waited just in from the path. Men, young and old, wandered among the trees, stopping now and again to pierce the shadow, a white piece of clothing or the whites of their determined eyes catching a speck of lamplight and floating for an instant in the darkness. He let them pass by, trying still to convince himself, as he always tried, that he would thank himself for turning away. Soon a man with thinning black hair, wearing a suit and polished shoes, approached and hung beside him. James remained still, reminding himself to breathe. There were muffled greetings, a hand placed flat on his beating chest. He reached out to loosen the man's tie, and then their lips met. James closed his eyes and the pent welter of longing rushed into his limbs. He ran his hands down the man's back, pressed his shoulders, grabbed at the back of his head. In the now perfect darkness, he had the oddest sensation it was the girl from the restaurant he was embracing, her slender frame, her plight. He moved more gently, holding her like he would hold an old person, or someone who has lost their strength, trying to forgive by the way he touched. Then he felt the scratch of stubble along his neck, ran his hand past the dangling tie, and it was no longer the girl he was pressed against 129

  in this dance of apparitions, but his father. The hands at the fly, the condom, the warm mouth, they all came as a disappointment. O N E M O R N I N G A month later, a man from British Telecom knocked on the door. For weeks, James had thrown his post in the garbage unopened and the habit seemed to be attracting unsolicited visits. They had sent warnings, the man said, they had tried to contact him by phone, but his service had now been disconnected. Was there a problem? He told James there were installment plans for people with financial difficulties.

  "It's not the money," James said. "I don't want a phone."

  The man looked confused, as though perhaps James were a disturbed character and the service under discussion that of a halfway home. He peered through the front window, presumably looking for the person in charge. The previous Tuesday, the cable service had gone out, and soon thereafter, James had noticed that the newspaper no longer appeared on the doorstep each morning. Stepping into a taxi on the way to a cinema one afternoon, he had seen two men in sunglasses knocking at his door, and recognized them as employees of the collection agency Shipley's used for its rental properties. They must do a sideline in credit cards, he'd thought, for while he ignored his mail, he had been careful to pay his rent.

  "Here," James said to the man as he picked up the tele130 phone, which he had wrapped up in its cords and placed at the foot of the stairs a week before, "I imagine you've come for this."

  T H AT E V E N I N G , A S the light faded over the common, he wrote:

  Dear Father,

  We are well past the summer solstice now and the days are getting shorter. I suppose it's with this sort of observation a letter should begin, in the safety of neutral facts. Since I've st
opped working, time has slowed. I

  think a lot about the past, and the memories tend to make the present less real, like the memory of you standing at the back door in your blue suit, leaning your head against the stone as dusk encompassed the yard. Some days I feel as though I am still in that yard, watching you, wondering what you're thinking. Do you see me there? Do you remember?

  You will be glad to know I've been responsible

  about my money. Everything's been drawn up and

  signed. Mum should have no problem with it. I find you now and again here on the common, bits and

  pieces of you scattered in the woods, but as the days go by, so the need lessens. I'll be coming home soon. 131

  He remained seated at the end of the bench, listening to the trees and the music from the flat behind. His breath was shallow, though not from excitement. In the vestibule, his hands shook as he held his key to the lock, and he had to steady himself against the wall. On the stairs, he made good use of the banister.

  I T WA S A rainy morning later that week when the doorbell rang again. Wary of the bill collectors, James looked through the curtain to identify the visitor. It was Patrick, his colleague from Shipley's. James was supposed to have returned to work five days ago, but by that time he'd unplugged the phone. If they had been trying to call, he knew nothing of it. He considered letting the doorbell ring, pretending to be away, but his nerve gave out and he went round to the hall. Patrick stood in the doorway in a raincoat, his red hair clustered into dark strands by the rain.

  "James! You're here!" he bellowed. "What's the story, mate? We thought you were dead down a ditch somewhere."

  James stood staring at this young man over whom he had fretted so during his year at the office, catering, invisibly, to his whims and preferences, whims and preferences James had likely imagined to begin with--an elaborate set of spinning wheels, attached to nothing.

  He hadn't spoken to anyone in over a week and found himself caught off guard by Patrick's presence, as though this person ought to have moved on by now, the way a thought 132