by Chris Binchy
We didn’t talk about work. He asked about where I came from and why I’d done that degree. He said that he had done two years of commerce before he changed to computer science. He’d met his girlfriend there, and the two of them were still together, getting married in a couple of months. He asked did I go out with anybody, and I said no. He changed the subject after that. He was different outside of work. He was quieter, seemed to think before speaking. In the office I felt that he was respected rather than liked. Too harsh. Too quick to be smart, aiming for funny but ending up sarcastic or dismissive or cruel. He had never been nasty to me. I thought that might have been because I was new, but eating with him out in the world, it didn’t seem likely. After we’d finished, he asked me what I wanted to do after this job. I looked at him, unsure of what he wanted.
“It’s just out of interest,” he said. “I’m not going to use it against you.”
“At the moment I’m still settling in here. I’m not thinking of leaving or anything.”
“Yeah. Sure. I know that. I’m just asking, is this job your goal in life? There are other things I’d like to do before I die. I’m sure you’re the same. That’s all I’m talking about. Just a conversation.”
“You mean in life or in work?”
“Both. Either. Whatever.” I wasn’t buying it. I wasn’t used to him in this setting, and he was hard to read, but I didn’t believe him. I kept it safe.
“I’d like to travel. I’d like to work in different countries. I’d like to make a lot of money. I’d like to meet a girl. Is this the kind of thing you’re talking about?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“I’d like to learn another language. I’d like to buy a house. Normal things.”
“But do you think you need the security that the bank gives you? You could stay with them until you retire. And get well paid for it. Is that something that you find comforting or terrifying?”
I smiled at him.
“Is this a test?”
“No. I’ve fucking told you. It’s just a conversation at lunch. Jesus, you’re suspicious.” I laughed at his exasperation.
“Okay, then. I think I’ll do other things in my life before retirement. I hope so anyway. I would like to work for myself at some stage.”
“I’m the same,” he said. “There’s a lot to do in the world.”
“Yes,” I said, and then a second later, looked at him sideways. He threw his hands up.
“I think we’ll talk about something else. This is obviously making you nervous.”
“You are my boss,” I said.
“Not here,” he said. “Only in there.”
“Yes, but you’ll remember this conversation in five minutes time when we’re back in there.”
“I think we both will.” He laughed then, and I began to relax.
“Trying to know the human being, not just the worker,” he said.
“I’m ninety percent worker. The other ten isn’t very interesting.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “You’re paranoid,” he said. “That’s interesting.”
In an ugly building, built on a beautiful street when they thought everything was going to turn out different, they had put in a bar. Something like a nightclub, but not quite. They called it a venue, and that made me laugh. An impression of a crap cabaret, something that you might have found thirty years ago in the back of the biggest pub in a very small town; there was such a conscious irony about the whole venture that they could have put inverted commas around the name, but everybody that mattered knew what was going on. They got the joke.
This was where Alex’s class had their end-of-year party. It was supposed to start at eight, but I didn’t arrive until half past nine, trying to make sure that I wouldn’t get there before Camille and him. It didn’t work. I recognized some of the people at the bar, guys I’d met with Alex at parties or out in town, but I didn’t say hello. I knew they would never remember me—always too drunk or stoned, too busy or important to have to deal with friends of friends, the general public who stumbled unwanted into their world looking grotty.
I stood at the bar and waited. It was packed, everybody shouting at each other and laughing over the plinky-plonky music. They were a beautiful crowd. Great bone structure. Their lovely clothes and smells and tight accents. Every word beautifully enunciated. Hey, hey, hey. How are you? Talk later. Later. Definitely. Absolutely. They were the same age as me, but it didn’t feel like it. They had such confidence and certainty of their own imminent glory that I knew doubt was something they would never even consider. I was sure I was going to do something stupid, spill a drink or bump into someone or choke to death in the middle of them, embarrassed and unaided. I stood rigid at the bar and fixed my line of vision on the door.
They were both flushed when they arrived at ten o’clock, pink-cheeked and glowing, which I chose to believe meant that they had been rushing.
“Sorry,” he said. “The taxi was late.”
“No problem. How are you?”
“Fine,” she said, leaning in and kissing me on the cheek. “You all right?”
“Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.”
“Why are you talking like that?” he asked me.
“I’ve been here for ages,” I said. “I’ve been soaking it all up.”
He looked at me. “Sorry,” he said again. “I’ll get you a drink.”
“This place is great,” she said when he had gone.
“Yeah. Used to be some sort of office.”
“Been here long?”
“What? Me or it?”
“You. It. Either. I don’t know.” She laughed. “I’m all over the place. I hope we didn’t keep you waiting too long.”
“Not at all,” I said. “I just arrived.”
“You told Alex you’d been here for ages.”
“Just punishing him.”
“But not me,” she said.
“Not you. Of course. How could I punish you?” I was trying to be charming, but it just faded away into oddness. She smiled and then didn’t say anything for a moment. Alex came back with drinks.
“Have you seen anybody?”
“No,” I said. “Nobody I knew.”
He looked around the room.
“There’s Patrick. You remember him? We met him at that thing in Deirdre’s place.”
Neither of us spoke.
“Me?” I said then.
“You.”
I looked over and saw the guy. I remembered him. At that party he’d asked me what I did, and when I told him, he’d laughed. “Who are you?” he’d said, too loud. “How did you get in here?” He had walked away before I answered, bored even by his own question. I was left standing on my own, a crowded room looking at me, wondering. I saw him later pissing off the balcony.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“I’ll get him. Introduce you,” Alex said to her. He went off again.
“How’s work?” she asked.
“Good,” I said. “Hard. Long hours, but it’s interesting. It’s a good crowd of people. Better than I thought it would be.”
“That’s great.”
“What about you?” I said. “Are you going to . . . Do you think you’ll . . .” I changed my mind. “What are you going to do for what’s left of the summer?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was going to go to Paris, but I’m not sure now. I might just try and get a job here for a while.”
“Paris would be nice.”
“Yeah. Sure. But I don’t know.”
“This is Patrick,” Alex said, arriving back. “This is Camille and David.”
“Good to meet you,” he said, shaking her hand. “At last. He’s been keeping you away from us, I think. He said you’re too good
for the likes of us, and he’s quite right.”
“Do you think?” she said. “Why?”
He looked at Alex, thrown for a second, and laughed.
“Very nice,” he said to him. “A fine thing. Lovely tits.”
“Thanks,” she said. “That’s really flattering.” She turned away and stared across the room at nothing. I smiled at Patrick.
“You need a drink,” Alex said to him. “Come on. I’ll be back,” he said to us, and the two of them went off.
“Nice guy,” I said.
“Is he a friend of Alex’s?” she asked.
“I’ve never met him before.”
“Lucky you.”
“He was very impressed,” I said.
“I don’t care,” she said. “Disgusting person.” She was pissed off. I felt like I should do something.
“You know what Alex is like. He’ll talk to anyone. He’s probably losing him at the bar.”
“Are all these people like this?”
Yes, I wanted to say to her. Yes, they are. Let’s go now and never come back, run away and live in Paris, you and me.
“No,” I said. “Most of them are fine, I think. I’ve met some of them, and they’re okay. He’s just—”
“A wanker?”
I laughed.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s about it.” She smiled then.
“You’re very loyal to Alex,” she said.
“Like a dog.”
“No. I’m serious.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “He wouldn’t hang around with these people if they weren’t all right.”
“I suppose so,” she said. “Still.” If there is a patron saint of selfless friendship, I hope he saw me at that moment.
“There are a lot of very beautiful girls here,” she said. I looked around for a moment and then smiled at her. I kind of shrugged. “You don’t think?”
I didn’t know what to say. “None as beautiful as you”? Puke. But then I didn’t want to come across as a sexless freak either.
“No. There are. Absolutely.”
“You should get introduced to a few. I’m sure Alex knows them all.” I thought there was something in her tone, something that she didn’t know about.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Out of my league, I think.”
“Do you want me to say nice things about you?”
“No,” I said. “Although . . . No.”
“I will if I have to.” She was looking straight at me, unsmiling, but I knew she was just trying something, seeing what I would do.
“No, please don’t. It’s just with work and all, I don’t have time now for a girlfriend.”
“I don’t think that’s the right attitude.”
“It’ll settle down in a while,” I said. “Then maybe I’ll try and find someone.”
“You know, Fiona really liked you,” she said quickly.
“Me?” I said. “She liked me?”
“She did. You sound surprised.”
“I am a bit, yeah.”
“Is it so unlikely?”
“I suppose not,” I said. “I’m just not very good at reading these things.”
“So what do you think?”
I smiled. She was pretending to be casual, but I knew that whatever I said would be analyzed.
“I think she’s nice.”
“Nice?”
“Yeah.”
We looked at each other in silence. She laughed out loud then, a big laugh.
“You’re funny, David,” she said. “I can’t read you at all.”
“I know. And I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.” I saw her think for a second, then Alex came back alone.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t get rid of him.”
“What a fool,” Camille said.
“I know. He’s not normally that bad.” She looked at him, skeptical.
“He left an impression,” I said.
“He’s just drunk. He was trying to be nice. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought him over.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“He’s an artist,” Alex said.
“Is he?” she said. “Well there’s more to being an artist than growing your sideburns and talking like a sex offender.”
“I’ll tell him that,” he said. “Have you been all right anyway?”
“Yeah. Fine. Talking with him,” she said, pointing at me.
“And how is he?”
“Mysterious.”
“This guy? Really?” And the two of them looked at me, like I was something in a cage.
The weeks fell into a pattern. He would ring me every couple of days, and I called them at the weekends. Sometimes we would meet before they went on somewhere else. They always invited me along, but most of the time I wouldn’t go. During the week they would come over to my place. It was small, a one-bedroom flat that my parents had bought a few years earlier as an investment when they moved down to the country. It was solid and blocky and the living room was a difficult shape, with a fireplace in the middle. It always felt like you were in the wrong chair or the couch was in the wrong position, but it was mine, I didn’t have to share. I kept it clean. It was so small that if I let it go at all, I would be buried in shit before long.
That was why they came. She shared with an odd girl from home who didn’t like other people. Alex lived in a flat with two waiters who left rubbish everywhere, milk cartons and fried chicken boxes and ketchup bottles. Socks everywhere. I remembered being around there watching a match and seeing one of his flatmates smoke cigarettes, tipping his ash on the carpet and standing the butts, still burning, on the coffee table in front of him when he was finished. Over and over. Eight butts at the end of the match standing tight together like skittles. I was the only one who seemed to notice.
He couldn’t bring her there. I knew that she stayed at night, but to spend an evening at my place was better. I’m sure he told himself that they came because it was comfortable for all of us. That we were bonding and that he was letting me know that we could all be together and it could be fine. It wasn’t awkward or difficult. I made tea and we watched films and ate chocolate and afterward he’d complain about whatever we’d just seen and then they’d ask about my work and I’d ask about what they were doing and it all seemed normal and fine. I tried not to consider that the reason that she was so relaxed with me might only be because she was so relaxed with him and he could vouch for me. I wanted it to be something else.
Sitting beside Camille on the couch, Alex on her other side, all of us staring at some film that I could not follow, I thought that this wasn’t so bad. He was here, and we were back to the way that we should be, and she was so close that if I shifted in the seat I could feel her warmth against me. I could look at her and hear her speak and wallow in her presence. She was in my space now, in my life. If I had known a few weeks earlier that this was where we would wind up, would I have taken it? Or would I think that I had sold myself short? Would I feel that I had abandoned my principles or that I had capitulated, exactly because this was easier?
But what principles were those? When I’d met them that night and gone with them, I did it because I believed that there was nothing to forgive. There was no great betrayal. She was just more interested in him than she was in me—I may not have liked it and would have preferred if things had turned out differently, but it wasn’t unfair. If I’d walked away that evening in the supermarket, it was easy to imagine myself sitting here alone, still feeling ripped off and wronged, alone and increasingly bitter, my sense of martyrdom and perpetual victimhood intact. Any other outcome seemed unlikely. But this was how things were now. She was sitting beside me on my couch, watching my television, holding a stupid mug with my name on it, a
s I stared straight ahead and took a certain amount of pleasure from the pain of my secret longing. I tried not to let it show, not to groan or whimper, but sometimes as she sat beside me she would stop moving and look in my direction. For a moment I would believe that she had suddenly realized what was going on and that everything that had happened between us since we first met at the party—my calling her, the night out, my abrupt disappearance and then arrival back into their lives—suddenly made sense to her. But then she would sigh as if she had been holding her breath and lean back and the night would continue as it had before.
He’d always told me about the girls he was with, more than I’d wanted to know. I waited for him to talk about her, afraid of it at first, not knowing how I would react, but then nothing happened. The opportunity was there for him, and he didn’t take it. Nights around in my house when she was out with friends, four cans in, watching some girl on the screen start to undress, everything was the same as it had always been. Except he never took the next step. He never said anything, and I found myself wondering why. Had the relationship between us changed to the degree that it wouldn’t be right anymore? Was this a more serious thing for him, where it felt wrong to share the details that had always seemed funny before? It scared me that that might be the case. It seemed to say something about him that I wasn’t ready for. I thought maybe he was nervous about my reaction and that maybe I should do something to let him know that it was okay. Whatever discomfort I might have felt wasn’t as bad as this, not knowing what was going on, having to try and guess what his motivation was. I tried to think of a way to prompt him into telling me, make some comment or joke about her that might set him off, but everything I thought of was too crude. And then I realized that he was sparing my feelings. He wouldn’t be thinking that I wanted to hear any of this stuff. He knew how badly I had wanted her. Why then would he risk upsetting me by telling me about what they got up to? It wasn’t that things had changed or that he didn’t trust me or that our friendship had been damaged somehow. It was that he was protecting me from something that he assumed would hurt me. He was more subtle than I gave him credit for. But I wanted to know. I wanted him to tell me everything.
