by Chris Binchy
“What time does this say?”
“Two o’clock.”
“And now it’s . . . ?”
“A quarter to five.”
“So?”
“I was there,” I said, pointing at the seat.
“You were there. You were there. So what if you were there?”
“I knocked on the door.”
“When?”
“When you arrived.”
His voice was getting louder.
“Why didn’t you speak to me? Why didn’t you say something?” He had more to tell me, but he stopped. Then started again. This time in Portuguese.
“I didn’t know it was you,” I said, but he kept shouting, getting louder all the time. I said it again, trying to make him hear me, but I didn’t even know what I was saying anymore. He wasn’t listening, and I couldn’t understand him. I knew that he was wrong to be getting so annoyed, that he should let me explain, but he wouldn’t. I wouldn’t stand there and be shouted at.
“You’re a bad policeman,” I said at him, and it disappeared into the confusion of two languages being shouted at the same time. Then I said it again. This time he stopped.
“What did you say?”
“I said you’re a bad policeman.” We stood maybe a foot apart, facing each other. He was the same height as me, heavier build. He had a gun on his hip, and in the silence I became very aware of that fact. It was not a clever thing to have said. He could have done anything. He laughed out loud, and I thought I was in real trouble. But then he slapped me on the shoulder and took the keys out of his pocket. We went into the office, and he sat behind his desk. He offered me a cigarette, and the two of us smoked as I told him what had happened and he typed it up. When I left he shook my hand, still chortling away to himself, and I walked off, still shaking.
A crowd of us went to the same place in Ipanema. I sat on the curb talking to a girl, an American in the middle of a six-month trip. She was half drunk and obviously hadn’t spoken to anyone for a while. She talked to me about television, food, the things that were going on around us. I looked at her face as she spoke. She had a scar that curved in a C on her top lip, which seemed to make what she said more thoughtful. When she looked at me to emphasize a point, she touched it with a quick familiar movement and turned away. She was telling me what her life was like back in Minnesota. The steamy buzzing summers with sprinklers in the day and crickets at night, flat low suburbs with space everywhere, in between the houses, between the gardens and the roads, the pools and the decks, as if they had to use it up. The cool supermarkets that smelled of coffee and cinnamon, the misting sprays that made the fruit and vegetables shiny and too beautiful to disturb, too elegant to eat. The old women on the tills, their hair piled up on their heads, Scandinavian and Irish and German names on their tags. Anderson. O’Neill. Schmidt. She told me about the winter, the first snows that came in October and stayed until April. The city center joined together by heated corridors three stories up, the streets beneath empty of people. The breath that froze in your nose, the crackle of the fur on your hood, the days off school when it got below minus twenty.
“It sounds amazing,” I said.
“It’s not, really. I just miss it. I’m sure where you’re from is just as interesting.”
I laughed.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing. It’s just damp and gray and complicated.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t been thinking about it very much.”
We sat on the pavement of a street that was blocked off, drinking beer from cans and smoking on an evening that was so warm and damp and airless it was like being inside an animal. She talked about her family and a guy with whom she’d broken up a week before she’d left. What a prick he was, she told me, but if he’d appeared suddenly beside her now, I thought she would have thrown him to the ground and straddled him.
“What about you?” she asked after a while to be polite. “What do you do?”
“I’m a musician,” I said.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Why not?” And she laughed, confused.
“Cool.”
They all went on somewhere else, some club that would go till morning. I left them on the street, hugging people I’d never spoken to, shaking hands. I kissed the American girl on the mouth, just quickly, to show her that we were closer, and she laughed. I had seventy-five cents in my fist and a couple of notes in the pocket of my shorts. The bus came, and I dropped the money in the slot, walked through the turnstile. We went into the darkness of a tunnel, and when we came out, two guys got on, young fellows, skinny, muscled, flexed. They jumped the barrier, and the driver didn’t even turn. They came back and sat across the aisle a couple of seats ahead of me, one behind the other, and draped themselves across the benches. Their voices were too loud. When they turned back to look at me, I dropped my eyes and then stared out the window at the shops and restaurants flying by, the newspaper and rubbish blowing in the breeze that was coming up from the sea, the curled-up bodies lying asleep in doorways. In the glass of the window I watched the reflection of the two boys as they looked at me in a moment of silence and then turned away.
The following day I went back to the Internet café. I was trying to find out where I wanted to go next. There was an island just off the coast down south. I checked my e-mail. There was a message from my father, saying that he hoped I was getting on well and that if I needed money to let him know.
“Do not hesitate,” he said. “Do not be embarrassed.”
And there was one from Camille. She said, “It was lovely to hear from you. Glad everything is going well and I wish I was there. You are missed. Get home safe. Love C xxx.”
I read it again and couldn’t understand why what she had written thrilled me as much as it did. I tried to remember what it was that had driven me away from a situation that had surely been moving toward some kind of resolution. That escalating tension had been there for a reason. From here it seemed much clearer. When I went back, things would be different. I would tell her everything. There was nothing to be afraid of, no embarrassment about how I felt, no moral dilemma in acting on it. Alex had known all along that I loved her, and he hadn’t let that fact hold him back. He was a friend, but he’d been wrong. It was simple. I closed the window on the computer and got up to go. A shiver passed through me, a flash of doubt that I felt in my stomach, but I wouldn’t let it take hold. Uncertainty was like a habit. I sighed and distracted myself by thinking of the next place I had to go.
I traveled by bus for two days, trying to sleep the whole way, leaning against a window as people beside me came and went. I woke at various points and saw what was going on. I watched São Paolo beneath us as we went up a motorway on the side of a hill, spreading farther than I could see, as if the whole of the country was covered in orange lights. The other people on for the whole trip started to nod at me and smile. When we went into garages, we would stand on the forecourt beside our bus having three-word conversations and smoking. I am tired. Give me fire. You want drink? I saw how people on the bus arranged themselves in the seats in the most comfortable way possible, propping each other up, wrapping themselves around their neighbors even if they were strangers. I half-woke when a woman got on at three o’clock one of the mornings and straightened myself up to give her room, but then she put her head on my shoulder and fell asleep. I tried not to move, but when I woke two hours later she was asleep in my lap and I had my arm across her waist.
On the boat out to the island we bounced along, the bags piled at the back getting wetter with each fall. Nobody seemed to care. It was a Friday, I realized then; the others there were down from the cities for the weekend, and you could tell that they were already unwound, laughing at the hoppin
g and the waves, oohing and aahing when we rocked too heavy, and I began to wonder, but their laughter brought me back from worry.
“I like England,” the girl sitting beside me said.
“Do you speak English?” I asked her, and she nodded. “Is this a good island?” I said then. She shrugged.
“What’s your name?” She didn’t know what I was talking about.
When we arrived and hopped up onto the rickety jetty, I had no plan. I had picked the island out of a guidebook because they said it was quiet and a place to relax and I was ready for that after forty-eight hours on a bus. As soon as I walked onto the beach, a guy came up alongside me. A mover, about thirty. He spoke to me without looking.
“What you need? What you want? You have hotel?”
I was going to walk away, but I had no idea where I was going, so I said yeah. We walked together along the sand, and he said nothing.
“How much?” I asked him then.
“What do you want to pay?” he said.
I told him a price that was too low.
“Okay,” he said. “Here.”
We turned off the beach and walked up a path through the trees. I looked around. A wide flat beach with nobody on it, green hills rising out of the water ahead. There was no sign of any of the people that had come over with me. I followed the guy up, and he went into a house at the side of a dirt road. It smelled of cooking, and I could hear a baby crying. He called out as we walked in, and a girl stuck her head around the door.
“Oi,” she said. He brought me up to a room. A spare room. There was a cot and a computer on a desk.
“When are you going?” he asked me.
“Three days?” I said.
“Okay. If you want to eat, tell us,” and then he was gone. I got into the bed, and when I woke up it was Saturday afternoon.
In a hall beside a scrubby football pitch in the middle of the island there were three hundred people gathered dancing. Everybody was there. Outside the air was cloudy with smoke from a barbecue and buzzed with the noise of generators. Speakers pumped out music in the four corners of a space that had a corrugated roof and only one wall. There was a bar at one end, and I stood at that, drinking beer. I was watching the crowd move in unison, bouncing together and singing a song that went from a recognizable verse into a mad kind of chanting frenzied chorus, the floor shaking as they began to jump again. I found myself on the edge of it all. A woman in her fifties reached over to me and pulled me over to her group.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. She said something back to me that I wouldn’t have understood even if I had heard it. “You show me,” I said, thinking that she didn’t know what I was saying, but she did it anyway. She put her arm around me and guided me through the steps, some basic movement tied into a rhythm that she steered me through, our bodies sticking to each other in the heat. She took me out into the middle of them and I had to do it. I had to dance with them, try and do it the way they did. After a while I stopped thinking about it, and it became easier.
Chapter Fourteen
I thought it would be cold when I got home, but the air was clean and the sun was trying its hardest. The trees on the road were beginning to turn. I went down to my parents’ place directly. They were happy to see me. My mother talked about how brown I was and said that I looked well. I slept and had baths and ate from the fridge. I watched television and read papers, and after three days I went back to Dublin. In my own space I began to feel excited about the work that was coming. I allowed myself to imagine what this job would be like, all going well. The things that I would do and what it would take to achieve them.
Alex rang me at home the next day.
“I heard you were back,” he said.
“From whom?”
“My mother. She knew before me. Why didn’t you call? Is it shit to be home?”
“Not really. Better than I thought. The weather is great.”
“The weather. Are you talking to me about the weather?”
“It’s nice to hear your voice.”
“Did you have fun?”
“It was great. Do you want to hear all about it?”
“If we meet in a pub, I’ll happily listen to anything.”
“Is Camille around?” He sighed, a little dramatic huff. “What?” I asked.
“I’ll find out,” he said.
“Is there a problem?”
“Nothing. Just. I have to ring her.”
“Yeah. So? I’d like to see her.”
“Oh,” he said. “Listen to you.”
“What?”
“Did you get a bit uppity while you were away? Do you need a beating to sort you out?”
“No,” I said. “I’m fine.”
As I was about to say good-bye, he spoke again.
“I’m glad you’re back,” he said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’ll be good having you around again. I missed you. Your conversational skills, if nothing else.”
I met them at a bar in the center of town. I arrived late, and the two of them were already there, sitting outside at a table. They got up when I arrived.
“Look at you,” Camille said as she was hugging me. “Welcome back. I missed you.”
“And you.”
“You’ve lost weight,” she said, patting my sides like I was a horse.
“Maybe a bit.”
“You look well,” she said, standing back from me.
“So do you.”
“Don’t mind her,” Alex said as he shook my hand and gave me an awkward kind of pat that turned into a near hug. “You look exactly the same. Maybe a little weaker.”
We sat, and they asked the questions that they should ask. Where and how and who. I talked for half an hour, but I began to feel embarrassed.
“So what’s been going on here? How have you been?”
They looked at each other and kind of smiled.
“Fine. Nothing really going on. I’m back in college,” she said.
“And I’m doing bits and pieces.”
“But nothing happened? In three months.”
“You know what it’s like,” Alex said. “Working. Sleeping. Out at the weekends. Just normal.”
“Right.” I looked at him, waiting for him to think of something.
“Hey, you’re the one who’s been halfway around the world. We just stayed put. Nothing ever happens here.”
He looked away down the street, unfocused and unhappy. I wanted to ask him if he was all right, but it was hard with her there. I spoke again before the silence built into something unmanageable.
“I’m glad I went,” I said. “But I was happy coming home when I did. It’s good to be starting into something new. And I can go back again. It’ll always be there.”
“And would you do that?” she asked.
“Maybe. I didn’t like it at first. The people are very physical. They touch you and shout and they laugh in your face. It was too much. But then it became normal, and I started doing it too.”
“Shouting at people?” Alex said
“No. I mean watching people. Making noise to get the waiter’s attention.” I banged my fist on the edge of the table and the glasses clinked. Around me people turned and looked.
“Don’t do that here,” Alex said. “It doesn’t work, and people will think you’re an arsehole.”
“I find myself staring at girls on the street here now,” I said. “It’s interesting. If you look for even a second longer than you’re supposed to, they don’t know what to do.”
He laughed.
“What?” I asked.
“There’s a thin line between seductive and creepy,” he said.
“I’m not trying to be seductive,” I sa
id. “Just looking. But they notice.”
“Maybe they like it,” she said.
“Really?” Alex asked her. “Would you? This fucking gimp staring at you in the street?”
She smiled.
“Well, it’s different for me. I know him.”
“But I’ve changed now,” I said.
“So it seems,” she said.
“Did you find yourself?” Alex asked. “In your couple of months away, did you discover some new truths about who you are?” I looked at him and hesitated. She was staring at him. “What?”
“You’re being a dick.”
“I’m just messing with him,” he said. She shook her head and turned away from him.
“You know everything that’s here,” I said, touching my chest with my fist. “There’s nothing new.”
I was glad to leave them after an hour. Alex said he would give me a ring during the week to meet up sometime.
I rang O’Toole on the Monday to let him know I was back around the place if there was anything he needed me to do. Things I should be reading up on.
“You can help do up the office if you’re looking for a job,” he said. “I’ll pay you cash.” I laughed. “What’s funny?” he asked then.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just wasn’t expecting you to say that.” He cackled to himself. I still wasn’t sure if he was serious. “Do you really want me to get involved in this?”
“Yes,” he said. “Look, we’re setting this up from scratch. The place needs to be decorated and fitted. Stripped out and redone. Get a carpet put in. Straightforward stuff. We won’t be starting for a month. I’m not going to sit around and spend a couple of grand watching someone do work I can do myself. It doesn’t make sense. I would have thought an enterprising young lad like you would jump at the chance.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
“Hold on now,” he said. “Are you any good? Have you experience? References?”
“Not a lot,” I said. “No.”
