by Stephen May
And once divorced, she’d be able to go everywhere, do anything with anyone, and even if I wasn’t in jail I’d be wearing a wig in a gated community somewhere remote, terrified that every knock on the door was going to be the police or the press. Or both, knowing how interdependent they’ve become these days.
I’d be sitting in the dark, bewigged but alone, brooding. I would, finally, have become Russell. I’d be in a worse place than Russell. Old Knoxy didn’t have to worry about the terrible moment when Siggi of Iceland had a heart attack so ending the supply of natural hair.
As I run, this suspicion grows in the aggressively cancerous way that suspicions do, and that’s when I notice the woman jogging ahead of me.
She looks pretty good from the back, but I’ve been fooled like that before when out running, fallen for the old 1861. You know, looks eighteen from behind, but sixty-one face on. You get a lot of that in California.
She’s running confidently but at a moderate pace and I’m gaining steadily. I like overtaking people. If you’ve ever done any running, you know the small but important thrill it gives to pass someone without huffing or puffing, but as though you were simply moving at a natural pace, moving at, what is for you, a very modest speed. As though you were, in fact, taking it pretty easy today.
As I approach her though, something happens. The woman goes sprawling forward with a yelp and face-plants herself on the road. She rolls over whimpering, holding her knees. As I sprint towards her I can see that her wincing face makes her an 1836 or thereabouts. Which is OK. That’s a perfectly acceptable year.
‘You all right?’
I offer my hand and she grabs it while trying for a watery smile. She has a strong grip and hauling her to her feet is no problem because she’s light and moves from a sitting position to standing easily. She’s fit all right, there’s a bounce to her. She has a guileless, open face. Honest dark eyes. Firm jaw. Long unruly curls of unruly hair the colour of dark chocolate. She has a wonky front tooth. The one on the right is at an angle and slightly crosses its neighbour. This is rare in California. Well, it’s uncommon here among people who have any money at all. That is, it’s rare among white people.
‘I think so. More shocked than anything.’ Ah. She’s English. Possibly East Anglia, there’s a slight but definite agrarian roll to her vowels. She rubs her hands together; they are streaked with blood and grit. She makes a face again. And then rubs her knees. She has good legs I notice. Slender but muscular. Good trainers too. Expensive without being ridiculous. And worn. This is someone who runs regularly at least. Not a dabbler. She’s too small to have been a netball whizz, but I could see her jinking down the wing at hockey no trouble.
‘Thank you,’ she says with an embarrassed smile. I love her teeth. God bless the UK. A cheer for the English heedlessness of their teeth.
‘That’s quite all right.’
‘Hey, you’re English.’ Her smile grows wider and I catch a glimpse of her exciting dental wonkiness again.
‘Guilty as charged I’m afraid. Why are you here? Holiday?’
She frowns, the assumption that she’s a tourist is a mistake. ‘No, I wish. Work.’
‘Oh yes, what business?’
‘It’s boring my work.’ She looks around. Blows on her hands. ‘Look, thanks for stopping but . . .’
‘I know – you want to get on with your run.’
‘Do you mind? It’s just that I get grumpy if I don’t run in the mornings.’
‘No, no, go ahead. I’m the same.’
‘But . . .’ She stops. ‘Oh dear, I feel a bit weird.’
‘Look here’s a bench.’ And she lets me help her to it. She’s really shaken up.
So we sit on the bench and she composes herself and after a few minutes we start to chat about stuff – about the UK, about the shitty weather, about work. About what we listen to while running. She’s listening to cheesy eighties pop. A-ha, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet.
She’s some kind of systems analyst so she’s not wrong about her work being boring. But it’s interesting about the big corporations she works for. Among others she works for both Coca-Cola and Pepsi. I ask her which she prefers.
She smiles. ‘I can’t possibly tell you that.’
‘No, of course not. Rude to ask really. Sorry.’
‘Anyway, I prefer water.’
She nods gravely in agreement when I tell her how I feel I have to keep running so as not to disappoint my trainer. How it almost feels like he’s my boss. We swap stories of aches and pains. It’s a fun twenty minutes, more fun than running anyway, and easier on the joints.
There’s a pause.
‘Are you an actor?’ she says. I laugh.
‘No, why?’
‘It’s just . . .’ She tails off, looks at the ground again, twists her wild hair. Finally she looks up. She looks embarrassed.
‘It’s just?’
‘It’s just you look so . . . so like one. You look like someone who might be in films,’ she says in a rush.
‘Why thank you, ma’am,’ I say. ‘But I’m not a film star. I’m just . . .’ But what? What am I? ‘I’m just a guy,’ I finish lamely.
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ she says. And then more shyly. ‘Married?’
‘Not married,’ I say, without a beat. I’m amazed at myself.
‘Girlfriend though, right?’
‘Yeah. A kind of girlfriend. I suppose.’ You Judas, I think. Your girlfriend is the kind that’s really a wife. I’m possessed, clearly. Bewitched.
She doesn’t let her face fall, I see the effort. She says, ‘And I’m going back home in a few weeks anyway.’
Another pause. And then she seems to come to a sudden decision. She stands, stretches and puts out her hand.
‘I’m OK now,’ she says. ‘Thank you and –’ She stops and looks at the ground, scuffs at a tuft of grass that is breaking through a crack in the pavement. She is still holding my hand.
‘And what?’
‘Nothing, really nothing.’ She’s still holding my hand, which she notices suddenly and drops. I laugh and she grins.
‘No, go on,’ I say
‘Really. It’s silly. I can’t say.’ She looks at the ground. Then looks up and pulls again at the dark thickets of her hair.
‘Yeah, you can. In fact you have to now.’
‘Oh, well . . .’ There’s a long pause. She looks at the ground again. And then up again. Catches my eye. She has great eyes, as black as those of any seductive landlord’s daughter. Intense with a serious stillness, even when the rest of her is embarrassed and fidgety. ‘It’s just that . . . Oh look. I’m just going to say it . . . I’d be up for a coffee sometime soon if you wanted.’
OK it’s just coffee and there’s no firm date, but nevertheless it’s only the second time I’ve been asked out. Getting asked out is not something that happens to me. It didn’t happen even when I was looking my best, not even when I was very occasionally being told I had something of the look of Bono. Not like Russell, women were always stopping him, even when he looked his worst. Hungover, unwashed and in the same army combats he’d been wearing for a fortnight, girls were still forever passing him notes in lectures or stopping him in the street to tell him he was a babe. Most of the time Russell would just frown and walk on.
And that’s what I should do now, isn’t it? Frown, jog on.
It’s not what I do.
‘Yeah. I’d like that,’ I say.
‘Really?’ She seems surprised and delighted. And she gives me the chance to see the endearing untidiness of her smile again. I smile back.
And she gives me the number and I’m thinking, yes, it would be easy to say I have some architecture appointment downtown. Volleyball, say. Or wrestling something that might account for scratches and bruises. Very easy to spend an afternoon with wonky-smile girl. It would be manageable. My heart twitches. My stomach fizzes. And of course I have nowhere to put the number. I have to hold it folded in my fist.
&nb
sp; ‘I should memorise this number then swallow the paper,’ I say, then feel a fool.
‘It’s what I’d do,’ she says, deadpan.
‘Oh, wait. I don’t even know your name,’ I say.
‘Ah, right, yes.’ She’s all bashful again. ‘Catherine.’
And I wait because now she’s supposed to ask me mine, but shyness has made her ditsy. It’s quite cute really. ‘And I’m Russell, by the way,’ I say.
‘Oh good,’ she says. She looks relieved. I’m puzzled. There’s a beat before she says, ‘It’s a nice name.’
Is it?
‘Listen,’ she says. ‘You carry on with your run. You’re much faster than me. I don’t want to hold you up.’
‘OK,’ I say, ‘Bye then.’
‘Bye.’
‘Bye then.’
‘Bye.’
But I don’t actually turn around and run off – we keep eye contact the whole time – should I kiss her? Maybe just chastely on the cheek? In the end we hug. She smells of fruit and sweat. Her breasts springy against my chest, her hands strong around my back and shoulders. Her lips press against my neck for a fraction of a second. She smells of cheap hotel soap and sweat. God, I could do it right now. But I turn and begin to run.
Conscious of being watched, no, conscious of being admired, I remember everything my architect has said and my stride is long and regular, my back straight, my head up, my arms pumping loose and easy. There’s a blue tram up ahead clanking and bumping its way down this wide boulevard that is Hyde Street and I set overtaking that as my target.
And when I’m about a hundred yards away from where I left Catherine, closing in on the tram, I feel the sting. It’s sharp and bloody painful. They have some vicious bugs out here in the golden state. I don’t stop though. I don’t want to look like I’m getting out of puff, so I just rub my arm and keep going. I run faster, move close to a sprint in fact, and after a minute the sting doesn’t hurt. When I do finally stop to look there’s the tiniest red mark where the bloody insect did his thing. And I wonder briefly if it was a bee that is now lying dead somewhere having ripped himself apart dealing with some non-existent threat to bee-kind, or whether it wasn’t a bee but a wasp still flying around all blithe and unconcerned having zapped me out of pure grumpy badness.
Actually, I don’t mind wasps, never mind bees. I don’t even mind flies or roaches all that much. The insects I hate are butterflies. Yes, they can be beautiful from a distance, but see them close up and they’re hideous. Like finding a decomposed corpse under the finest silk bedsheets. Butterflies are liars. The ultimate in 1861 tricks, I don’t see how anyone could ooh and ahh over them.
I start to run again past the coffee kiosks, the coffee shops, the hurrying office kids clutching corrugated cups of double expressos and skinny lattes. This place runs on coffee, the way England runs on booze. I remember how Russell was contemptuous of people who bought coffee in Styrofoam cups.
‘It’s a tax,’ he would say. ‘A cappuccino tax. You see these minimum-wage suckers spending five dollars on hot water and a muffin and then having to work for two hours to pay for it. One hundred dollars a month. That’s twelve hundred dollars a year – that’s a holiday. It’s a good guitar. It’s a motorbike. It’s a very decent French wine. It’s a long weekend in Mexico with good coke and two imaginative ladies. It is, in fact, all the things that make life worthwhile. All swapped for a milky drink. Pathetic. Shows a lack of backbone.’
I’m deep in the financial district now. The place where San Francisco has been most Manhattanised. Though the truth is the whole world has been Manhattanised. Every city now has iconic statement buildings. Bank-statement buildings you might say. They all have their towers, their shards, their needles, their pins, their fins, their gherkins, their fuck-you middle fingers. Their rigid digits. And after those sky-taunting gestures come all the steel and glass cubes. The galleries housing the same butterfly colours and shapes of the same conceptual art, replicated on the same postcards in the same gift shops. I’m sure Timbuktu will have a museum of modern art by now. I bet Kinshasa has a sculpture park. Cities like to wear what all the other kids have. They all want the fashionable gear.
The sting is already fading and I force myself to pick up the pace even more. The further I get from this Catherine and her shy, crooked smile, the more ridiculous I feel. The more disloyal. ‘Just coffee,’ I say out loud. ‘Just coffee.’
I think about the other time I was asked out. By Sarah. It was she who made the first move on me a lifetime ago in the council and that was just for lunch, and look where that led. And sprinting to overtake that thought is the next one. Yes, I must marry her. As soon as is decent – which will be a while yet after all. We’ll find a way to make it work. And I won’t even wear the marital condom of a pre-nup.
And, as soon I’ve finished this run, I’ll call this Catherine and tell her even a quick espresso is out. I’ll tell her I was dazzled by her. I’ll tell her that in the bright smiling light of her I wasn’t thinking properly. I’ll find a way to let her down that also makes her feel good about herself.
Twenty-six
CATHERINE
It was the right guy this time. She took the trouble to check and all she has to do now is wait. Five to ten days. The stuff has to travel to the brain, or the heart or the lungs, until it finds an important tunnel or valve, where it sits all snug, swelling gently till it blocks it. This has the predictable and deadly result and then, as the blood slows, stops and congeals in the arteries, the stuff dissolves to nothing. Efficient and undetectable and not even that expensive.
She could maybe head home now, start to get ready for Abkhazia – but that’s what she did before and there turned out to have been a cock-up, so she resolves to wait. To be really sure. She feels blue though, the way she always does after an action, so she phones home but it doesn’t help. It never does. Her mum witters on about her sister’s kids – Harry is in the school chess team, Ruby is being a bit of a handful – but she doesn’t really even ask about what Catherine is up to. She never does and hasn’t really ever since Catherine joined the Army. To be fair, Catherine hasn’t encouraged it, but it’s still hard sometimes. Sometimes she needs a mum to be there just like everyone else does.
She goes through her yoga routine and her meditation and she does feel better, but she’s still sick of this mid-priced room. Maybe she could upgrade for the last few days of her stay. A junior suite maybe, with some space to stretch out properly? She knows she won’t though – she doesn’t like unnecessary expense – but it feels good to know that she can if she wants.
In the end she decides that there is nothing for it. She’ll have to write. She sets up the laptop and after a quick hour of eBay and FB, she gets started. The King Arthur story doesn’t seem so great now that it’s actually underway but her rule these days is to finish anything she starts; she has too many unfinished pieces of work already. Finally, finally, she gets going and it’s hard but after a few false starts and a bit of pacing and swearing she seems to get into some kind of a groove. She gets her young heroine to the cave where she finds Arthur and the other knights sleeping, and she manages – with some difficulty – to wake them up and they are immediately waving their swords and calling for their steeds and all ready to save England from whatever disaster was afoot. War, dragons, sea monsters, ogres or green knights – they are ready to take them all on. Her heroine – now called Harriet because Heidi was too foreign somehow – has explained that she’s sorry to disturb them. There is no war, there are no dragons, no green knights, but there is a nasty bully at her school and maybe – now that they are all awake – they could help deal with that if they like. Arthur and his men say they would be delighted.
It takes her about half an hour to get that scene done, and she’s pretty pleased with it and so she decides to have a bit of a break, watch some TV, catch up with the news.
It’s familiar stuff. Another teenage berserker howling his rage at the world in a hurrica
ne of lead. Mothers bent double with grief, held by cops on whose body armour they then begin pounding, in whose faces they start screaming, choking, drowning in their own tears and snot. Dead children under olive-green army-issue blankets, stretchered in convoy to the ambulances whose futile lights spin feebly like those at the drab lunchtime discos of her youth.
It’s Catherine’s view that all this could be avoided. Give every teacher a gun to keep in their desk. Regular INSET days to make sure they know how to use it. Killer appears at the door toting his piece and bam, he goes down. Fight fire with fire.
It wouldn’t always work. Maybe the whining loser would get the kids and the teacher in the first class he came to, but he’d find a whole militia blocking the corridors when he tried to move on to the next. Seems simple. Gun control is never going to happen, so work with what’s possible. It wouldn’t be expensive, needn’t cripple any school-authority budgets. A gun is cheaper than one of those Smart Board things they use now. Lots of teachers would probably buy their own weapons anyhow, like they buy their own textbooks.
The phone breaks into sudden spasms on the table next to the bed. Madam. She doesn’t do chit or chat. She’s straight to business which suits Catherine. She has news about OR. The long-awaited organisational review. She needs to talk about finessing budgets, refreshing priorities and what that will mean in practice.
‘We’re having to chunk up I’m afraid.’
‘What?’
‘We’re all having to do more work. It’ll be just temporary I’m sure, till they get the review sorted. But it means we’ll all have to do more plate-spinning. Sorry about that.’ And Madam goes on to speak about intelligent investment and redeployment pools and competitive migration, as well as all the stuff that Catherine will have to decode later to find out details of her targets and deadlines and all that.
‘OK got it.’
‘And we should have a real chat when you’re back in London. We haven’t ever had a proper one-to-one have we?’
‘Look forward to it.’ And then she remembers something. ‘Oh, I’m taking some extended leave. When this gig is over, I’m going to see Tough. In Abkhazia.’
