by Chris Binchy
Would she drop everything, forget about Alex, and say yes? I believe you. I can see it in you. Let’s go. Even at my most upbeat that was hard to believe.
When my phone rang and his name came up on the screen I would look at it and not know what to do. I never answered, and now when he left messages I listened to his voice, familiar, but already a part of an earlier life that I was leaving behind. His tone was friendly, conciliatory, and what he said was always the same thing. Haven’t seen you in ages. It would be good to catch up. Go for a drink or something. Anyway. And then he’d trail off, losing momentum as he spoke into the emptiness, not knowing whether I would listen to the message or whether the things he was talking about would ever happen again. It felt like we were both staring into that silence between us, not knowing what to do. I began to get nervous, wondering if the time had come to force myself into action before he gave up on me. At work I was plugging into other people’s problems and coming up with good solutions in a way that my bosses were beginning to notice. At home I cooked meals and watched television and slept. I was trying to convince myself that this was my life, when in fact everything was in a state of suspension. I had stuff to deal with and was holding myself back for no reason at all.
But then on a Friday evening I was in a supermarket in town at seven o’clock. It was the end of the week, and I was going to get a film and go home, watch it on my own, and go to bed. I had nothing I needed to be doing all weekend and was happy to keep it that way. Then, as I was standing in a queue at the express counter, behind me his voice said my name. I turned and saw the two of them. She was smiling, her face lit up as if she was just delighted to see me. My stomach turned over. Everything that was in my shopping basket seemed to communicate a message about my lonely single existence. One chicken breast. An onion. Two bananas.
“How are you, stranger?” Alex said, all upbeat and normal, for her benefit, I thought. “I haven’t seen you in months. Where have you been?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I was completely wrong-footed, trying to think, but I didn’t have time to work out how I should behave. I rubbed my neck. “I was doing exams and studying and stuff. Lying low, you know.” I shook my head. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone. I’m half asleep.”
“It’s good to see you,” Alex said. He patted me on the shoulder, the way he always did, and I flinched at the contact, surprised. I didn’t mean to, but he didn’t seem to notice anyway. “Why are you wearing those clothes?” he asked me then.
“I’m working now. I got a job.”
“Oh, yeah? Where’s that?”
“In a bank. In the financial center.”
“Cool. What kind of thing are you doing?”
“Just . . . programming stuff really.”
“Wow. So. We’ve missed you around the place. I was saying to Camille that you were doing exams and that, but I didn’t know you had started work already.”
“Yeah, a while ago,” I said.
“You should have given me a call.”
“I know. I know. I was just settling in and just . . . You know, doing nothing really.”
“How did your exams go?” she asked.
“Fine, I think. Seemed okay. I’ll find out. Trying not to dwell on it.” I smiled at her, small and nervous.
“No problem for him,” Alex said to her, looking at me. There was a lot of eye contact going on. “You wouldn’t know it, but he’s a very bright boy.” I tried to smile at him. I knew what he was trying to do, and it was okay.
“You’ve lost weight,” she said. “You look run-down.”
“Do I?”
“I’m not surprised,” Alex said. “Locked away for months. When’s the last time you were out?”
“We went out after the exams,” I said.
“That’s it? Are you not going out with work people?”
“They’re older. And I’ve only been there a while.”
“So what are you doing now?” she asked.
“Now? Just shopping a bit. I’m going to get a DVD and go home.”
“We were going to eat something and then go for a drink after,” she said. “Do you want to come along?”
“Thanks,” I said. “You’re very kind, but I’m tired.” Before I could do anything Alex took the basket out of my hand and put it down on the ground
“That’s not a good way to spend a Friday night,” he said. “Come on.” He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me along. I felt myself resist. I didn’t want to go. I could have broken away from him. Told him to fucking leave me be and stop dragging me. Made a scene and not let him off the hook just like that. I could have stuck to my principles, walked out without looking back and gone somewhere else for my shopping.
But she was there, all warm and friendly. If she was aware that there was an issue between me and Alex, she was doing a good job of hiding it. And it was good to see him. I felt that without thinking. A comfort in his presence, a happiness that came from somewhere very deep when I heard his voice. I knew if I thought about it I could make myself angry again, but for what? A problem that I didn’t know how to resolve had resolved itself. I let myself be pulled along. It happened very quickly. I went with what felt right.
“Okay,” I said. “If you’re sure I’m not intruding.”
“Not at all,” he said.
Later in the restaurant, after we had eaten, she went to the bathroom, leaving Alex and me alone for the first time. As she walked away, the atmosphere went with her. There was a moment of silence as we sat waiting to see what was going to happen next.
“So,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. It hung there in the air between us, not sounding the way I’d meant it.
“No, really, I am.”
“I know. It’s grand. Just forget it.” I tried to smile at him.
“Right,” he said. “But I want to tell you this—”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“I do. Just quickly.” He leaned forward and spoke quietly. “I didn’t mean to embarrass or hurt you, but I love her and it’s not something stupid or casual. I hope you can see that. I wanted to tell you so that you would know that I wasn’t just messing around.”
“All right,” I said. “Thanks.” I couldn’t think of what else to say.
“And then when I saw you in the shop. I didn’t know what to do. I would have preferred to talk to you before on your own because Camille knows nothing about any of this. But then I just thought, fuck it. I’m not going to ignore you if you’re standing beside me in a supermarket. After twenty years we’re not going to fall out over something like this, are we?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want that.”
“I wasn’t just being a selfish prick or putting you down or anything. I’m not messing around here. This is a serious thing.”
“I know,” I said. “I believe you.”
“Great. Thank you. So how are you?”
“I’m fine. I missed you around the place.”
“I missed you too,” he said. “I did make the odd phone call.”
“Well. You know. Washing my hair. Crying myself to sleep. Hard to find the time.” He laughed, and that was when she came back.
“Are we finished?” she asked.
“Let’s go and have a drink,” I said.
“That would make me happy,” Alex said, and so we went.
At three in the morning we were still out in a club full of shit-faced people. We stood around a table shouting at each other. I was happy. It seemed that the rest of the summer could be like this. Out with friends and hanging around. So I didn’t get her, and he did. What did I expect? Good for him. I could find someone else. There were other girls, and now, drunk and with this situation
resolved, that could be enough.
I liked her company. Putting my doomed love for her to one side, she was easy to talk to and funny and bright, and she seemed to like me. Maybe he had talked me up in an attempt, conscious or not, to lessen his guilt. But there was a feeling of something shared between us, something unspoken. All that leaning in and touching and laughing seemed to imply some sort of connection.
When he was off at the bar late on, near the end of the night, she said it to me.
“Did something happen between the two of you?”
“No,” I said, sounding certain before I had even thought about it. “What do you mean?”
“I haven’t seen you once since Alex and I started going out. I thought maybe you weren’t happy about it or something?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all. I was just busy with exams and stuff. That’s it.”
“But has he even talked to you since then?”
“Yeah. We’ve talked on the phone. Of course we have.”
“I just wondered,” she said. “Because he mentions you a lot and yet we never see you.”
“That’s just bad timing. Exams. New job,” I said. “It’s good to see you now.”
“And you,” she said looking at me.
“He’s a great guy, you know?” I didn’t mean to say anything like that, but I was drunk at an emotional time.
“I know that,” she said. “And he’s so happy tonight.”
“It’s been fun,” I said. There should have been something else. One more sentence would have settled the issue, but nothing came to me, and then I started thinking. I went backward when I shouldn’t have. “And I had projects to get finished,” I said. She nodded. “But we’ll see some more of each other now then. I hope.”
“I hope so too,” she said, and then Alex came back. Some time after that we said good-bye to each other on the street, promising to meet again the following week at a party for Alex’s college class.
Chapter Seven
It didn’t take long for me to see the mistake I had made with her. It was easily done. The eye contact, the conspiratorial tone, the misunderstanding of personal space that made her stand half a step too close. The way she said my name. It all seemed to suggest that there was something about me that she had seen and liked. I found it easy to talk to her, and if the conversation continued for long enough, I was afraid I would end up telling her everything. It was possible she could see it all anyway. The touching, the easy open laughing. The staring. I thought it was all for me. Something specific and personal.
But as the three of us began to spend time with each other, I understood my error. She was like that with everyone. With waiters and barmen, with taxi drivers and women in supermarkets, with the people she knew from college that we ran into on the street. And I watched as they reacted. How they stared after her as she walked away. How they looked at me or Alex or whomever else was with her, trying to figure out what it would take to be a part of her world. Hating us for being closer to her than they were, wondering how to get rid of us. A quick bullet in the neck or a knife in the back. These people caught my eye sometimes, and I always looked away, partially because I was embarrassed at how wrong I’d been but also because I wasn’t sure what I was doing there.
It was jealousy first. I knew it wasn’t my place to feel it, but that didn’t stop me. The private part of her being was now reserved for Alex, while what I had thought was intimacy, something for me alone, turned out to be a gift given to everybody. I wondered was she using it. She lived in a different world, one that opened up in front of a beautiful flirty girl with a warmth that would make anyone do anything for her. I saw it over and over where people bent the rules, gave her something extra, unlocked the door where for anybody else they would have just shaken their heads and turned away. “For me?” her attitude always said when somebody did something nice for her, as if it was the first time. “For me?” The hand going out, touching the arm. I wanted to believe it. It would make my mistake more understandable, what I had missed out on less valuable. The first time I saw her lose her temper, it felt like a victory, as if I’d been right and her mask had slipped. But afterwards she would be the same again, and I had to accept that it was her. Ultimately it didn’t matter. It didn’t change anything. I was still smitten.
She could see how it was between Alex and me, and she didn’t get in the way. We each fell into our roles as if we’d been practicing for them. I was the friend with a connection that went back so far that it couldn’t be questioned. She was the new arrival and a significant person. I would defer to her opinion on everything—watching TV, making tea, picking films to watch. Would you like? Can I get you? Any preference? We ganged up on Alex, making him the butt of every joke because, I thought afterward, we were each punishing him for the presence of the other. It was easy to make out that he was feckless and incompetent and disorganized, laughing at his posing, at his dropped tenners and his lost phones and his late arrivals, all flustered and red-faced and baffled by how it could have happened again. He would sit there and take it with a smile on his face, happy that we were all together and getting on well.
But as much as she tried and as much as I wanted to seem normal, it didn’t always work. Some days it was just too much effort, and neither of us could be bothered. A silence would fall when Alex left the room. She maybe thought that I was sulking or didn’t know what to say to her. She didn’t know what was going on in my head. What it was that I found difficult about the situation.
When we started hanging around, I watched her, fascinated. There was what I could see, what I already knew. But there was the rest. The way she moved and sat. The way she talked, the shape of her mouth when she spoke and the things she said. The expressions that she used too often that I listened out for, like a private joke that only I understood, something I knew about her that not even she was aware of. I had an idea of who she was that night when I saw her first, and as I got to know her, I tried to reconcile that notion with reality. She was beautiful. That never changed. Never. First thing in the morning. Pissed and staggering. After a hard night out. Dying with a cold. It didn’t make a difference. But how could it? There was no explaining it. Why even try? It was a physical thing when I saw her first, a reaction, and that wasn’t going to change. She was something that happened to me.
But the rest? It was only later when I looked back that I realized how much I learned about her. The way she seemed to come to attention when she met somebody new, performing now, interested in finding what was going on with them. We talked about what was happening in the world around us, silly loose pub talk, but she wouldn’t let things go, challenging people she disagreed with. What are you saying? What do you mean? I don’t understand? She could be dismissive. Arrogant, even. And she’d never let the point go. She would laugh in the end, when somebody broke the discussion up so that the night could continue, but if somebody really annoyed her she could turn. Her love for everybody else would intensify a little to show the transgressor what it was that they were missing.
The more we hung around, the closer I got. She was comfortable with me to start with, and as time passed, the level of contact increased. She held me when she kissed me to say hello and good-bye and pulled me by the hand when she saw something interesting. She pushed me around and hit me and hugged me, and all that easy physical affection made me happy but also drove me mad. I would go home later with her smell still on my clothes. Alex got territorial in response. I doubt he knew he was doing it, but sometimes when she got too close to me he would put an arm around her, pulling her back to him, nuzzling into the warmth of her neck, kissing her and keeping her away from me.
She was patient when Alex and I would do stupid things together. You silly boys, she would say when we’d stayed out all night and were too hungover to speak. When we sat surrounded by rubbish and dirty clothes in his place and she arrived. When we bickered abou
t stupid silly things that neither of us cared about. The two of us together and her looking in, all mock exasperation, humor, and a motherly affection.
But all the time I could see that they were getting closer, the familiarity that had grown and still grew between them. The silence, the way at the kitchen table in the morning he reached out without looking up from the paper to touch her, knowing where she was, and the way she reached down and took his hand without interrupting the conversation that she was having with me. The way that they managed to have me around them without making it seem like I was intruding. She knew I came with his territory, and she accepted it. Because she loved him. I could see that. Every time she touched me, every time she laughed at something I’d said, every time her eyes fixed on mine as she burst with the enthusiasm of telling me something, of making me know what it was that she had to tell me. All these moments, I could have fooled myself and chosen to forget what was going on. But the fact was that we were brought together by him, and our friendship and everything that belonged to it came about as a result of him.
At eleven o’clock one day Frank asked me what I was doing for lunch. I said I had no plans, and he asked did I want to go out and get something. At half past twelve we left the building and went out across the river to a place that he said he liked. I was wondering did the fact that he’d asked me mean that he would be paying, or was it just that he wanted somebody to eat with.
