My Biggest Lie

by Luke Brown

  She didn’t see me until the questions had finished and she had left the front to sit back down. When she glanced up and saw my face in the window she staggered. The whole room was still watching her and the woman nearest to her called to ask if she was all right. Sarah composed herself, took a cold look to reassure herself that I was not a ghost, or perhaps to reassure herself that I was a ghost, then she shook her head and sat back down, next to the man I would learn later was named Fernando Salvatierra, the man who put his hand around her shoulder and pulled her into him. A supportive hug of congratulation, that’s what I told myself it looked like. I watched her whisper something in his ear before quickly writing something down and passing it to him. He looked up sharply and I side-stepped away from the window. I had a chance then, I realised, to turn and walk down the corridor, out of the building and away. But I didn’t. I sat down in the corridor instead with my copy of Hopscotch, pretending to enjoy it. I was here in the spirit of fun and affection, not desperation. I had to look like I believed this when she came out. I wanted her to think we could still be an adventure.

  Fernando was out of the door before her. He strode down the corridor, looking directly at me. What did he see? A threat, I hope, a threat disguised as a pale Englishman, hiding behind a scruffy beard and a paperback.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, as he passed.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, turning around to watch him walk away, and then back to the throng of people leaving the room. At the back, catching my eyes and looking purposefully away, was Sarah, walking towards me. I stood up and put my book away. She made as if to walk past me and I thought for a moment she was going to manage it, but she turned back, telling the woman she was talking to that she’d be back in a few minutes. And then she looked at me.

  ‘Liam,’ she said.

  ‘Just someone who looks like him.’

  ‘Liam,’ she repeated as I stepped towards her. We hugged each other.

  ‘You were brilliant,’ I said.

  ‘Thank God I didn’t see you before I was brilliant. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Making a grand gesture. Do you remember? This is what I used to do.’

  We were still hugging.

  ‘Your grand gestures are getting grander. And less effective. You’re going to have to let go of me soon, you know.’

  ‘Is it me holding onto you?’

  ‘Not only.’

  She let go. I held on. Then I let go.

  ‘I’m really cross with you,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t be here. I’ve got stuff to do here all weekend.’

  ‘You’re not pleased to see me at all.’

  ‘I’m dismayed to see you. I’m dismayed that part of me is pleased.’ Her smile went serious. ‘This is just a ten-minute coffee break. There’s stuff happening all night too. I’ve got no time to see you.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said.

  She looked at my face and relented. ‘There’s a bar across the road. Wait there for me. I’ll be out about six, we can get an hour or two. This is fucking awful timing, Liam.’

  ‘I heard you were here.’

  ‘You stupid fool.’

  We hugged again and then walked together down the corridor and some stairs to where she was taking her coffee break. Once the weekend was over, she was travelling to another city, Recife, for a month, to catalogue an eccentric artist’s private archive. In just two months our lives resembled nothing like our lives.

  When we went downstairs, Fernando was leaning against a wall, waiting for her. I knew for certain then. ‘Er, this is Fernando,’ she told me when he stepped towards me. ‘This is Liam.’ We nodded at each other, no handshake, no fucking kiss. ‘I’ll see you later,’ she said, and I walked away from her as she walked into the canteen with him. As I opened the door to leave I turned around at the same time as she turned and looked at me. Our eyes met and an awful punch of hope hit me in the stomach.

  Arturo had gone pale as I told him this story. He had his head in his hands. Hernán had come back and lost interest; now he was talking to Aleman.

  ‘Liam?’ Arturo asked, eventually. ‘How are you alive?’ He stood up and embraced me. I felt the strength of his arms, smelt the fruitiness of his shampoo, hugged back and held.

  ‘Thanks, Arturo.’

  ‘Will you break up now?’

  ‘I … it’s my fault. I don’t want to break up with her.’

  ‘Did you not hit him?’

  ‘I did not hit him.’

  ‘Strange.’

  ‘It was only a suspicion at this time.’

  ‘Still. A suspicion. Strange.’

  ‘So, you don’t actually suspect me of desiring Lizzie.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Or you would have hit me.’

  ‘Ah. Naturalmente.’

  ‘Why not me?’

  ‘You’re too … nervous, English. I am not jealous of you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You sound upset.’

  ‘You should be jealous of me.’

  ‘That’s funny.’

  ‘That’s not funny.’

  ‘No, it is funny.’

  ‘What about Ana-Maria, then?’

  ‘You get lucky.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  Hernán turned round. ‘What are you laughing about?’ he asked Arturo.

  ‘He thinks I am jealous of him.’

  Hernán fixed Arturo with a telenovela star’s pregnant stare.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ I said, and went out for a cigarette. When I came back they had begun to argue and I quickly lost track of what they were saying. I tapped Arturo on the shoulder, pointed at Hernán and said, ‘Ignore him.’ Hernán spat an insult in my face. I got off my stool and went outside for another cigarette. The sky was dark now; we’d been drinking for hours. My heart was jumping and I breathed deeply, slowly, trying to put myself back into real time. I hadn’t eaten all day, too sick with jealousy in the morning, too full now. If I kept this up, perhaps, like Bennett, my heart would just give up the fight. Was that what happened when you forgot what it was fighting for? When I collapsed, would anyone rescue me? Sarah had rescued me once already after Bennett had died. I couldn’t keep expecting her to.

  Back in the bar Hernán was at one side of the counter, talking to Aleman; Arturo was at the other, brooding.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ I said to Arturo.

  ‘What?’

  I looked up at Hernán. ‘In keeping with your philosophy, why haven’t you hit him yet?’

  ‘You think I should be jealous of him?’

  ‘He isn’t as good-looking as you, I admit. Or me. But doesn’t he always want you to think bad of Lizzie? How much is it him? I saw him after your concert, watching you talk to Lucila. He looked at you like he hated you.’

  ‘No. Hernán is my friend.’

  ‘OK. Well, Lizzie is your girlfriend.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Don’t start that again.’

  He screwed up his face. ‘I need something.’

  I rummaged in my pocket.

  ‘This is not what I meant,’ he said, and he walked away in the direction of Hernán.

  I ordered another beer and listened to the sounds of the bar swarm into white noise. I shut my eyes and dropped my head and …

  An outraged shout snapped me out of my trance. I looked up to see Arturo push Hernán. Hernán pushed him back and shouted something else, and in response Arturo swung and punched him in the face. Before Hernán could reply, Aleman had rushed from behind the bar, grabbed Artruo and bundled him out of the door. Hernán addressed the room, his hands outspread. There were only a few of us left and soon his eyes rested again on me, on my own at the bar.

  I got up, unsteadily, looked around to see if I was leaving anything behind. Hernán strode up to me and pushed me. He said something nasty about my mother that I could understand by now. He was ridiculous. I had an urge to lean over and kiss him on the cheek. I stood up and pushed pa
st him to the door but he grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. I blocked his punch but it knocked me back and I tripped over my feet. I was scrambling back up when he kicked me in the side. Ooh, I heard. He backed off then, unsure if he’d gone too far. I stood up again and looked at him. He was smaller than me but tougher-looking. He came forward again and I blocked another of his punches with my arms. Next thing, we were rolling around on the floor together, grasping each other’s wrists. Aleman arrived and pulled Hernán off me. My glasses had fallen off somewhere and a kind old man handed them back to me, shaking his head. It is very hard to be a hard man who wears glasses. That was my excuse. Hernán was struggling to break free from Aleman. ‘Vamos,’ commanded Aleman, and even I understood that.

  Outside, Arturo was preparing to do what was dramatically demanded: return to the bar to announce passionate threats to Hernán. I played my part and physically restrained him from this, while Hernán struggled with Aleman. Each struggling pair could see each other through the door and Hernán and Arturo shouted back and forth at each other. We were all performing well. Arturo wasn’t struggling very hard. A few metres down the road, a phone box, or what I had thought was a phone box, opened, and a policeman stepped out, looked towards the commotion and strode towards us.

  ‘La policia,’ Arturo shouted through the door, and led me calmly round the corner before breaking into a sprint. I ran after him. This was becoming fun.

  Now we were in Mundo Bizarro, my favourite bar, just round the corner from the hostel. We’d slowed to a walk after running around a couple of corners and then hailed a cab. I’d thought the running was a bit excessive, but Arturo knew his police better than me. We were in the extremely good mood that comes from having had a fight and successfully fled from a policeman. He was very pleased I had hit Hernán: ‘We are brothers now.’

  We sat at the bar, drinking Fernet-colas and taking trips to the bathroom. I waved at a couple of women I recognised from the youth hostel. They came over and we flirted with them, we were charming and funny and deranged and stupid. We were some of these things. I bought us all drinks, and when the women gave us chaste kisses on the cheeks and went home it was disappointing but OK, like something awful had been avoided. The relief quickly vanished as I realised I was going to have to go home with myself again soon.

  Half an hour ago it had been nine, but now it was two in the morning. I was out on the street with my arm round Arturo. He was slurring something about brothers in my ear. He stumbled and we fell against a shop front, laughing. He grabbed onto my belt and pulled himself upright. Careful, I said, as we walked past one of the phone boxes the policemen sat in. I wasn’t sure where we were walking; I was just walking, with Arturo. When he disappeared into an alleyway and started pissing against the wall, I copied him. We finished and zipped up and then I came towards him.

  He was surprised when I put my hands on his waist but not shocked. He smiled at me, a cocky smile. He didn’t pull away when I kissed him. He let me kiss him. I put my hand in his hair and kissed him more firmly. He put his hand in mine and kissed back. We kept going. He took my hand and placed it on his stomach, pushed it down into his jeans. And just as I felt his cock and wondered how I was going to get out of this, and whether I wanted to, he spun away, laughing, spinning through two more circles back into the street. His hand shot up suddenly and for a second I thought he was requesting permission to ask a question, that or making a Hitler salute – and then a taxi pulled up behind him. ‘Adios, Inglés,’ he called, opening the door and getting in.

  But before the car drove away he wound down the window and stuck his head out. ‘Remember,’ he shouted. ‘Tell Lizzie we were at the game.’

  Chapter 15

  Despite the unalterable pain of every breath in this foul Sarah-less world, I still went to Spanish class and was beginning to improve. I ordered my morning cortado and lunchtime ravioli with a disciplinary flourish and could comment, idiotically, on the weather to incredulous waitresses. I would normally run into Lizzie in the corridors of the language school, but after three days I still hadn’t seen her. On the fourth, I saw her appear at the end of a corridor. She glanced in my direction, held my stare for a second without expression and walked back into a classroom. It wasn’t a look that encouraged me to wait for her to come out again.

  Later that afternoon, she sent me an email. The hostel’s communal living room was quiet that day and I read it on the computer there. Lizzie knew what had happened in Sao Paulo; Sarah had written to her the next day while I was out with Arturo.

  She hadn’t wanted to tell me that you had split up because she realised you hadn’t told us, but after you surprised her like that she felt she had to. I don’t want to have a go at you, Liam. It’s weird you didn’t tell me you and Sarah had split up, but I can see you hoped you hadn’t. You cheated on my oldest friend and she dumped you: it’s not the best basis on which to begin a friendship. I think you came close to telling me back at the gallery that day, and it sounds like you half-told Arturo at the weekend. I can see you’re a mess. But you being a mess doesn’t entitle you to mess up my life. Arturo came back ranting about what you said about Hernán, about how he’d worked out what was going on, how you’d helped him see what was happening. I can’t understand why you’d break my confidence like that. I trusted you. Why would you do that? Sarah’s obviously better off without you and so are we. You’ve left me with a pile of shit to deal with, but I will deal with it, and Arturo and I will be fine. There’s nothing for me to hide any more. Thanks for that. I suspect that’s not the case with you. So long, Liam. I hear Mexico City’s nice this time of year. Lizzie.

  Tangled together with the shame of being caught out in a lie was the usual relief. The slow doomy wait to be revealed as the person I like to think I’m not was now over. And just as I had feared, so too was my friendship with the person I liked more than anyone else I had met here.

  I wrote back a quick reply, accepting her judgement of me. There was a moral certainty to the email I couldn’t help thinking was sometimes dubious. Any moral certainty from our untested generation appeared that way to me, but that was probably my flaw and it wasn’t the time to argue about that. I promised her I had never told Arturo her story about Hernán. I was sure I hadn’t; I’m not one of those drunks who loses track of what they’ve said to people. I’m too well-practised at being drunk to do that. I regret what I say with awful clarity. So I told her that I had seen Hernán bad-mouthing her and tried to protect her. I apologised that this had gone wrong, thanked her for looking after me, and then I retreated to my room to absorb myself in my sentimentally noble sign-off and feeling sorry for myself.

  Lizzie didn’t reply and the next day I skipped Spanish. Hans came to find me afterwards. It was his last week in the hostel; he was flying back to Germany on Saturday.

  ‘What have you done to that attractive teacher?’ he asked me. ‘I said hello to her in the corridor today and she looked like she wanted to spit at me.’

  I took him to a bar and told him the story. When I’d finished I waited eagerly for his put-down, for the insensitivity that might transmute the situation into comedy. It didn’t come. Instead he reached over to give me a hug and I struggled to resist the urge to push him away. When he left two days later I was glad. We’d taken our friendship into the emotional territory it had been designed as a holiday from, and as we ‘celebrated’ his last night, in Mundo Bizarro, we talked to everyone except each other.

  The next week I started Spanish classes again. I needed something to concentrate on. Lizzie avoided me successfully and each time she did I grew more melancholy. I began to spend my afternoons in Alejandro’s bar. I’d sit right up at the counter, drinking coffees for the first half of the afternoon and beer into the evening – adding new pages to Sarah’s epic love letter but devoting more and more of my time to the other notebook, to piecing my novel together. I had to do something. I couldn’t eat food any more. Sleep was a pornographic dream, starring Sarah, Sarah,
Sarah. I don’t think I had ever been more miserable, more furious. Writing the novel was a distraction from that, a discipline in self-awareness, in forgiveness and contrition.

  Alejandro arrived most evenings at six and sat at the other end of the bar. He would give me a curious glance and then pretend to ignore me while he bantered with the barman in his impregnable Spargie. For the first two evenings, we said nothing to each other at all. The young man I had seen him argue with before never appeared again and by the third evening Alejandro and I were smiling at each other. Our game had become quite amusing to ourselves. ‘Uno mas cerveza para mi amigo aqui,’ he ordered and the bartender placed a small beer in front of me. ‘Por favor,’ I asked the waiter, ‘dices “gracias” de mi al Señor.’ ‘El pibe dice gracias,’ the old bartender said solemnly to Alejandro after wincing at my Spanish. Alejandro turned to me and smiled and held his glass aloft. I mimicked him. ‘Salud!’ we said simultaneously, and I went back to writing about him in my book.

  That evening, with a polite nod towards me, he had left the bar before I had chance to buy him a beer back. I was ready the next day when he walked in and nonchalantly ordered him one, barely glancing at him. He grassy-assed and carried on his daily chat with the bartender. He was wearing a good suit, dark blue with a very faint, almost imperceptible grey stripe woven within, matched with a paler blue shirt and a dark tie loosened to undo the neck by one button. I noticed it because I was writing it down in my book. Alejandro wore a full beard that might have looked scruffy without the balance of his impeccable tailoring. There was something in his smartness that was trying to rebel. That was one way to look good in a suit. I struggled to imagine him as a lawyer.