by Rhys Thomas
“I’m sorry you had to drive.”
“Hey, it’s the weekend. You should be allowed to drink.”
“It’s Thursday.”
“That still counts.”
“You’re funny...” He paused to let his thoughts catch up to his mouth. “You’re funny too.”
“Thanks, but you don’t have to say that just because I said it.”
“I mean it!” he blurted. “You’re super funny. You’re great, Sarah. I think you’re awesome.” The click of indicators at a junction.
He watched the line of houses through the window as they threaded down the neat black roads of his estate. The rate of his heartbeat crept up again as the journey neared its end.
His friends, as ill-informed on the subject of the opposite sex as they were, insisted that being friend-zoned was a real thing, but Sam genuinely believed true love must find itself in friendship just as much as in passion. True love, for him, was not like in the films, all lust and sweat; it was warmer and more solid, sinking itself deep into the heart so as to make it unshakable. People like Abraham Lincoln had true love, not Justin Bieber. That one might have no chance with a girl because of a preexisting friendship was an incredibly depressing thought to him, and one he refused to believe.
The car stopped and he unclipped his seat belt. The quantum vibrations that she was detonating sang through his body.
“Thanks for the lift.”
She looked so gorgeous.
“Can’t I come in for tea?”
His mind rushed into his house, upstairs, to the hidden chest where he kept his superhero things.
“Tea? Yeah, sure, sure. I’ve got loads of tea.”
They went up the driveway, him leading her, heart rate chugging.
She didn’t even mention the wooden partitioned tea box as she chose English Breakfast. He left the Fortnum & Mason tea set in the cupboard—that would be overkill.
In the living room she checked out his CD collection.
“You’ve got a lot of Queen albums.”
“Don’t judge. Have you ever heard A Night at the Opera all the way through?”
She shook her head and Sam felt a gust of confidence as he crossed the room and took it from the shelf, with Sarah close to him, and pushed it into the player. She didn’t move away. He skipped it to a song called “’39.”
“I love this song. It’s about time travel. Brian May has a doctorate in astrophysics.”
Sarah smiled, and there was a pause.
“You’re cute,” she said.
The two of them stood in the living room and he saw the surprise on her face when the perfect Queen electric guitar riffs didn’t come on, but instead earthy acoustic guitar started up, hopping simply along a major scale. She nodded her head and smiled.
He thought he might be in Heaven. It was almost as though he was in a new reality, as though he was on a quantum wave, a blister on the skein of time, and this world he found himself in had peeled off the real one, a double, and soon it would pop and he would never have really spoken to Sarah that first night and everything he’d done since would dissolve as he woke up in his bed and everything was just the way it had always been.
But she was here, looking around the room, at his entertainment system, his music and film collections, the prints of comic book artwork.
“You must have a good job,” she said.
“It’s okay. It’s not as hard to get a mortgage as people think. It’s just the deposit.”
She looked somewhat forlorn now as she gazed around the perfect coving and handsome plasterwork.
“It’s nicer than my flat.”
They sat on the sofa, one knee up, facing each other, and all of a sudden he felt like a bit of a cheeseball, like a businessman trying to impress a date with his spicy flat in a marina with a little metal balcony outside some French windows.
“I only have this because I’m boring and I want security.”
“Everyone wants a home, though, even if they don’t realize it.”
They looked at each other for a long moment and then she said, “What?”
“What?” he repeated.
“Why are you looking at me?”
“You’re pretty.”
He just said it, a trapdoor falling open under him, a flash across her face.
Make the move! the little people in his heart called out in unison. He remembered his resolve in the bathroom of the pub. Where was that courage now?
“What’s your favorite film?” he blurted.
“Maybe Totoro. My Neighbor Totoro? The Japanese cartoon?”
“I haven’t seen that.”
Her eyes widened. “What? You should come over to mine one night and we’ll watch it.”
“I’d like that.”
She sipped her tea and the song ended.
“We could do it next week, if you’re not busy. I could do my speciality—Thai green curry. Do you like it?”
“I love it,” he said. “Spar do these amazing Thai green curry sandwiches.”
“Thursday?”
“Thursday.” This was too fast again, but this time he didn’t feel the compulsion to rally against the chaos. “Yeah, great.”
She nodded.
“So,” she said.
“So.” He smiled.
Sarah got up and went over to his Blu-Ray collection. “That’s funny. I thought you’d have them in alphabetical order.”
“They are in a rough order. Genre, I guess, then by year.”
She ran her fingers along them.
“Why don’t you like talking about yourself?” he said.
Her fingers stopped.
“You changed the subject in the car when we were talking about Edinburgh.”
She carried on looking at his Blu-Rays.
“You noticed that, huh?” She turned to him and smiled. “Let’s leave it for another day.”
“Yeah, of course. I didn’t mean...”
“It’s fine,” she said. “I broke up with my boyfriend because he was a dick, but it’s okay now. I’m normal. Hey, you know what? I’m really tired. You don’t mind if I go, do you? I’m suddenly shattered.”
Oh, he thought.
“Of course not. Sorry I’m keeping you.”
“No, not at all, it’s just all of a sudden, you know?” She yawned.
He cursed himself for being such an idiot. He took her tea and led her to the door. The air outside was arctic.
“So I’ll see you Thursday?” Her glasses reflected the porch light.
“Yeah, should be good.”
He felt deflated by her sudden U-turn.
“Listen. I didn’t mean anything b—”
She stepped toward him and he thought, Oh my God. But she didn’t kiss him. She put her arms around him and they hugged and he found himself gripping her tighter than he meant to, her tiny frame, and pulling her closer for a second. He was sure he felt her bones relax into him, and he thought from some far-off corner of his mind, there are few more special things in the whole human canon than a hug. He wanted to kiss her, but he just couldn’t. His mind rationalized his cowardice by trying to persuade him that kissing her would spoil this moment. She pulled away and looked at him. The end of her nose was red.
Be brave, his father had said. The two most important things in life are to be brave and to be good.
But at the exact same time the thought that had been haunting him from the start reared its head. If you keep this up, you will have to tell her about your family.
“You’d better go. It’s freezing,” he said, his voice quick.
Her eyes fell away from him. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, you’re right.”
He felt so stupid now. His heart and mind were seesawing; he thought he could feel a piece of his soul fa
lling apart. And yet, like always, he did nothing.
14
MONDAY MORNING. A beautiful, chill October morning with a deep blue sky. What a lift in the body the hatching of love can bring. How it makes the world appear benign. How it brings up a screen between problems that, before, seemed so massive. Left to his own devices in the office that morning, Sam spent a pleasant few hours clearing a huge wedge of work, even finding time to water and prune the bonsai tree on his desk. The food guy had Cherry Coke in his van, Mr. Okamatsu was on a business trip and, all the while, rather than dread the coming Thursday—his date at Sarah’s house—he looked forward to it with eager anticipation. If anything, his brush with death had galvanized in him the will to live.
At lunch in Tesco he had chicken nuggets, chips and beans before heading into the store, wandering the aisles, alighting in the men’s health area. He wasn’t expecting anything, but he felt it only responsible for him to take care of himself.
Such a selection these days: thin feel, comfort, ribbed and dotted, extended pleasure, mutual climax, tickle me. It all felt a bit sordid. He only wanted something simple; to pull out a pink raspberry-flavored double-ribbed would almost certainly be a blunder. He picked up a box of ultra-safe and thanked God for the self-service checkouts. Entombed as his condoms were in a sturdy Perspex security box, he dreaded the checkout supervisor coming over to take off the security toggle. But the gods had answered him because as he scanned them the checkout island didn’t call for assistance. That the toggle was still on, and the box was still surrounding the condoms, was not a problem—he’d smash the box open with a hammer in the privacy of his back garden. He left quickly and almost had a heart attack when he triggered the theft alarms. An error had occurred. Think! Rather than be accosted by Security, his mind worked at preternatural speed. He turned quickly and made a beeline for Customer Services, surreptitiously producing the condoms in the Perspex box. The woman, fifty, large, short hair dyed plum, her name badge reading Theresa, observed Sam above the horizons of her half-moon glasses.
“I think these set off the machine. When I scanned them, nothing happened.”
They both stared at the offending article on the counter. Condoms. CONDOMS.
“Have you got your receipt?”
He didn’t, of course.
“I’ve left it at the till,” he said, ashamed.
We’ll just go over to the till and find the receipt and I’ll be on my way, he thought. No need to take the condoms with us. Let’s just leave them here and collect them later. But Theresa did feel the need, lifting them up, resting them on her forearm, as Sam followed her to the till, at which a pretty young mother was purchasing a fruit salad.
“Sorry, love,” said Theresa, as she riffled through the raft of abandoned receipts, the box of condoms placed proudly on the top of the machine, the young mother looking at them, looking at Sam. Sam smiled at her but then worried that it might come across as a very creepy smile, so he stopped and went beetroot.
Why this? he thought. Why did it not happen with a Blu-Ray? I buy lots of Blu-Rays.
At last Theresa found the receipt and waddled on back to Customer Services, with Sam in tow.
He felt he had to say something. “I’m so sorry about this.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, loudly. “You got nothing to be sorry about. You’ve got nothing to apologize for. It’s good you’re buying them.”
A clever quip on how he should not continue his line in the gene pool? Hard to tell.
He stowed the emancipated condoms safely in the boot of his car to prevent further humiliation and headed back to work.
He spent some time emailing his clients about the parts that had gone down in the Suez Canal with the stricken tanker, and that they still hadn’t got back to him about, because everybody was avoiding the discussion about who was going to pay for air shipping.
At three o’clock Sam went into the warehouse to check the deliveries going out that day. At the far end he noticed a group of girls sitting on pallets eating sandwiches. The Romanians. It was the first time he’d seen them. Even from this distance their beauty was clear. Just the way they sat, long backs curving over their food, legs crossed. They had long, healthy hair the color of sunset on the trunk of an oak tree, and they ate silently, po-faced, staring at nothing. There was a skylight in the ceiling and a shaft of sunlight illuminated them.
“You okay, Sam?” Mark, standing next to him with a clipboard.
“The Romanians?” he said, quietly, nodding up at the angels.
“Their last day.”
“They’ve finished sorting?”
“Yup. Ten million parts.”
“Jeez.”
Sam and Mark stared at the girls for a long moment until Mark hit him on the shoulder with the clipboard.
“Come on, let’s do this,” he said, indicating the pallets of orders that needed double-checking.
* * *
He knocked on the door and waited. He was nervous, but there was no dread. Through a small blurred-glass window in the front door he saw the hallway light come on and a shape moving down the stairs.
“Hi,” she said.
For a second he got caught between heartbeats.
She led him up a narrow flight of stairs with woodchip wallpaper, bubbling at the skirting. At the top of the stairs they came to a long landing with two doors on the left. It was dark, but an orange streetlight outside the window at the front of the house illuminated a swirly patterned carpet. And it also illuminated a strange architectural feature. At the end of the landing, with the doors on one side and a banister on the other, was an open space the size of a room, as if a room had been meant to go there but they hadn’t put the wall up. The square of carpeted space had a comfy-looking chair on it, a tall lamp for reading, a small side table and a crammed bookcase.
“That’s an unusual space,” said Sam.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” She paused at the second door, her small hand on the handle. She was wearing a baggy American sports T-shirt and a pair of skinny jeans, and as the dim light painted her she tilted her head to one side. “But the window gives good light for reading. And you can look down on the street.”
She led him into the living area with a kitchenette in one corner. It was neat, but the furniture was old and mismatched. She had a pink portable TV on a small rickety coffee table, with a DVD player propped up on a phonebook underneath.
“Not quite the same as your place, but it’s okay while I save money. It’s cheap.”
More bookcases on one wall, chock-full of old-looking paperbacks, the shelves sagging under their weight. There were, on closer inspection, an enormous number of books, stacked up at the side of the bookcases and scattered in piles around the room. It reminded him of the comics in his attic.
“Have you read all these?”
“Mostly. I have trouble getting rid of things. Sad, isn’t it? I had to hire a van to get them here.”
“How long does it take you to read a book?”
“I read, like, three a week, maybe. But I just pick them up in charity shops.”
He couldn’t perceive how it was possible to read so fast.
“I don’t watch much TV,” she added.
He sank into the cushion-laden sofa. There were pictures on the walls, watercolor landscapes and black-and-white photos of New York that must have been here pre-Sarah. A tasseled lampshade threw warm light and dark shadows. She sat next to him. Her hair was tied back, and he noticed how the red was fading out, dark brown roots emerging.
“How was your day?”
“It was...great,” he said.
They looked at each other for a moment and both smiled awkwardly, lost in a moment, and then she sprang to her feet. Over at the kitchenette she chopped vegetables and sliced chicken and chatted happily to Sam about an event on the bus to work earlier th
at day, when an elderly man had told her about his wartime experiences in the tropics. As she spoke, Sam listened and flicked through an orange-spined paperback with yellowing pages. À Rebours by J. K. Huysmans. There was the faint scent of paper degrading.
Across the room Sarah smiled at him. Despite the nerves, it felt good being hidden away in a bedsit above a boarded-up shop, where nobody knew he was, apart from the girl cooking dinner in the corner. He’d never had a girl cook for him before, and it felt...nice. He felt like a frog that had hopped off a sinking lily pad to a safe new one.
They ate at a small table with a folding flap so it could be stored against a wall when not in use. The Thai green curry was delicious—she’d put sweet potato and sliced mangoes in it—and they drank cheap rosé wine and she did most of the talking. She couldn’t tell exactly what it was that had made her want to be a librarian but had loved books since early childhood when she had discovered, just as Sam had, Harry Potter. She said box sets and Netflix were replacing the novel at the moment, but books will always come back—all people care about is stories, doesn’t matter what format. She’d traveled a little bit—Peru and Australia—but not much. It was almost exhausting, being bombarded with all this information, though there was something strange about it all, as though she were telling him everything without actually telling him anything.
“Life’s funny, though, isn’t it?” she said.
The wine had made his vision hyperreal.
“Yeah.”
“A friend of mine used to have this idea of life being like a rocket tree.”
“A rocket tree?”
His wineglass had pictures of cacti on it.
“So when you’re young, everyone you know is dangling from the branches of this big tree that’s safely stuck in the ground by its roots, but as you get older and life gets going the tree suddenly blasts off, like a rocket ship, into space and you’re all heading for the stars together.”
“Uh-huh.”
“At the start it’s easy to hold on. Everyone you know is on there, and it’s not too bumpy. But then the wear and tear of blasting off gets to the tree and it starts shaking. A few people fall away and you watch them drop through the clouds. And, you know, it’s quite shocking when it first starts happening. But anyway, you keep going, and more and more people can’t hold on, right? You look at their faces. They want to keep their grip, but it’s too hard and they just can’t. Their hands aren’t strong enough and away they slip, back from the stars and down into the real world, you know?”
