‘Aidan’s making a right mess of putting his bed together,’ Jodie is saying. Rory hovers just behind her, doing that united-front thing that couples always do when they’re introduced to someone. ‘Are you any good with flat-packs?’
‘Let’s have a look.’
Aidan stands in the doorway as Sinead inverts a long, wooden panel and stands it on its end.
‘No,’ she says to Jodie, ‘wait. This must be part of that.’
Jodie stops, and the two of them bend over the instructions.
‘You’re right.’ They look about them, hands on hips. ‘If that fits in there, then that means—–’
‘That this one goes here.’
They laugh at their own ingenuity. Rory, by the window, looks over at Aidan and shrugs. ‘I’m going out to get some wine,’ he says.
All the surrounding rooms are still and empty; this room, the kitchen, vibrates with food and talk and people and candles. My flat, Aidan thinks, and leans back in his chair. Sinead has soaked a napkin in melted candle wax and is poking the flame with its edges, the light flaring up to pool on the ceiling.
‘That’s not the point, though, is it?’ Rory says.
‘It is!’ Jodie exclaims.
‘It’s exactly the point,’ Sinead chimes in, hooking her feet around the chair legs so that she seems to levitate out of her seat.
A week ago, in a restaurant, Sinead had told him that her favourite food at the moment was rocket. ‘A highly incongruous name, don’t you think?’ she’d said, as she held up a fragile, limp, serrated leaf. He’d bought it for her tonight, but most of it lies untouched on her plate. Her clavicle is more pronounced than last week, he notices. Unless you knew, he thinks, she does a pretty good job of pretending. Unless you knew, you’d never be able to guess that underneath all that – the smile, the hair, the chat, the careful makeup, the exact clothes – was a broken heart. He imagines it as a fractured china cup in a paper bag, with sharp, snagged edges that could rip open its casing with one slight move.
‘But the problem with those kind of trousers,’ Jodie says, ‘is that everyone can tell what kind of pants you’re wearing. I think that’s more information than most of my colleagues need.’
Sinead laughs, ‘Yeah, but have you seen those high-cut maxibriefs?’ She shakes her head. ‘Not pretty.’
Women are amazing. Within two hours of meeting, they’re discussing underwear. Aidan stacks up plates and carries them to the as yet unused draining-board. Rory lifts his wineglass from the debris on the table and wanders into the front room. Aidan turns the tap, feeling the pleasure of doing something for the first time that you know you’ll be doing over and over again. Water drums into the aluminium sink. A reverberating bass suddenly sounds from the other room and he realises Rory must have got the stereo up and running. There is a slow run of notes, a shift in tempo, then a woman’s voice – high and pure – floats out over the top.
His body acts faster than his mind. He is letting the plate he is washing slide back into the water and turning towards her while his thought processes are still catching up: why does this music give him a strange feeling and where has he heard it before and who does it remind him of and someone, who is it, plays this track over and over.
The effect on Sinead is faster and more dramatic. She crumples into herself, her face sliding into horror and fear. She starts up, stumbles across the kitchen, clamping her hands over her mouth and nose as a kind of coughing sob tears out of her. ‘Oh, Christ,’ they hear her say, and she is scrabbling at the clasp of the windowed doors and then is out into the garden, swallowed up by the gloom.
‘Shit,’ says Jodie.
‘Get Rory to turn that off,’ Aidan says, as he pushes through the doors after her.
The garden is cold and not yet familiar enough for him to navigate with confidence in the dark. He is striding through the dew-soaked grass when the black shape of a tree looms up in front of him. He stops, rests his hand against knotted bark. Listens. Distant traffic. The spiralling threads of the music still going inexorably on. Stifled sobbing coming from – where? He dips his head, leans closer to the tree. The far wall. Near the crappy ornamental fountain. He edges closer.
‘Sinead?’ he half whispers.
He comes upon her more quickly than he thought. She has both hands over her mouth and is bending over as if in physical pain. The sound she is making is not inhuman, but it’s like nothing he’s heard before – high, ululating, childlike. He hesitates, wondering what kind of sound it would be if she took her hands away and let rip, how loud it would be, how many gardens it would travel. He puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘Sinead.’ He can’t think of what he wants to say. ‘Please,’ is what comes out. ‘Please don’t. Please.’
She straightens up, still with her head averted, still with her hands over her mouth. Then he has his arms around her, tight, and her body is shuddering against his.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she is saying between sobs, and he is telling her to hush, his chin against her hair, and her fingers gripping the wool of his jumper, her face crushed into his chest.
‘Sssh,’ he says, ‘it’s all right now, it’s all right.’
The music is abruptly silenced and they are surrounded by dark and stillness and quiet. Her sobbing is slower now, less high-pitched and frantic. He feels her shift in his arms and he wonders if she wants him to let her go, if she wants to step away, and he loosens his hold on her, but she is just moving her face, letting her head fall into the curve of his neck. Aidan puts his arms around her again.
‘It’s all right,’ he murmurs. ‘You’re going to be all right.’
It’s never usually possible to pinpoint when a friendship begins, the moment when a casual acquaintance moves up a gear. It’s usually a gradual, incremental process that takes place over many evenings, or many drinks or many chats on the phone; a slow attrition of differences or a slow discovery of similarities. But with Sinead it’s easy. Aidan can narrow it down to the day, the hour, the minute: when she phoned him on the morning she’d left Marcus. He’d been in the office, working at something on screen and had pickcd up his phone, unthinking, to hear her voice: ‘You knew, didn’t you?’ He had sat up straight, knocking his mouse to the floor. ‘All that time, you knew. Sinead—–’ he’d begun, scrabbling to retrieve his mouse, already knowing he could never lie to her.
‘God,’ she says, pulling away. ‘I’m so sorry, Aidan. It’s ridiculous.’ She half laughs, wiping at her face, ‘I can’t go two hours these days without this happening.’
‘That’s OK,’ he says. The sudden distance between them, filled with chilled autumn air, makes it seem more difficult to comfort her.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she mutters, her breathing still unsteady, as she turns to go back up the garden. ‘It’s stupid. It really is.’
He follows her. Her tears have soaked into his neck. Later that night, when he undresses, he’ll find mascara-black trails where they ran down his body.
Aidan was quite good with jet-lag. He’d had to get used to it in a job that could send him half-way round the world without a day’s notice. So when he arrived in New York he’d been surprised to feel it – a slight nausea, a thickening of the head, leaden limbs – while he was sitting on the bus taking him to Manhattan Island, bag on knee, passport still clutched in his hand.
By the time he reached his hotel, it was worse. He stumbled into his room, tripping on the rug, and closed the door. He’d intended to unpack his laptop, lay out his notes in preparation for the next day’s meeting. But he reckoned later that he must have fallen asleep before he actually hit the mattress because his last recollection was crawling over what seemed like metres and metres of crinkly, haemorrhage-red counterpane.
When he woke, sensations filtered through to his consciousness like images on to photographic paper. The light outside was a liquid indigo. He was lying on his back, diagonally across the bed. Incredible thirst. Cold from the air-con. Light too bright
. Tongue dry and swollen. Traffic and sirens from the street below.
He turned on to his side, his vision swimming with nausea and exhaustion. He sat up, and tentatively shook his head. Was he drunk? Hung-over? Ill, perhaps? He hadn’t yet worked out where he was and what he was doing here. But this was nothing too unusual: he hadn’t ‘lived’ anywhere for the past three years, spending months in Japan, then New York, then LA, then Berlin, then London and then back again. Hotel rooms. Temporary apartments. But that had all changed. He was now going to be based permanently in London. He was buying a flat. His own flat.
Aidan flopped back on to the pillow. It was all coming back to him now: he had accepted a contract with the UK-based branch of an American firm. He was staying at Marcus’s place. With Sinead. While he waited for everything to be sorted with his flat. While Marcus was working in New York. Which was here, in fact. Where Aidan was right now. A hotel in New York. To finalise the designs on an animated music video.
A red light was flashing on the phone next to his head. He turned, stabbed at it with his index finger, and listened blearily to a recorded electronic voice. A message from Marcus to meet him at eight at the corner of Broadway and 57th. He brought his left arm up in front of his face and stared at his watch as if he’d never seen it before. Its round face, reinforced with black plastic, a neat circle of tiny numbers. The lurid, pointing hands, split like protractors. He’d heard about a woman who, in the days when they used uranium for glow-in-the-dark watches, used to lick the tip of her brush before painting the luminous clock face. Ingested all that carcinogenic poison over years and years. Died of leukaemia in the end.
Aidan squeezed his eyes shut then popped them open again and, with effort, squinted at his watch. Small hand – seven. Large hand – three. Or between three and four. Which meant? Seven twenty. Shit.
He leaped off the bed and waited until he regained his balance. His clothes felt stale and stiff, but there was no time to change. He slapped his pockets: wallet, hotel keys and the crinkle of paper in his breast pocket. Aidan pushed his fingers into it and felt hard, sealed edges. Envelope. He remembered: Sinead’s letter for Marcus that she’d given him this morning. He’d seen her fold the tightly written pages into three, slide it into an envelope, lick its edges and press them down. Yesterday morning. Whenever.
The bones in his legs felt jointless and malleable as he walked down Central Park West. Joggers and rollerbladers lashed past him. He wondered about hailing a cab, but decided the air would do him good. To his left, the trees of the park rustled and swayed; two men were throwing a baseball between them, the orange sphere ricochetting through the darkening air. His neck and shoulders were crunched up, his forehead stretched with the beginnings of a headache, and as he walked he tried rolling his arms inside their sockets to relieve the pulling on his neck.
At the intersection of Broadway and 57th was a Duane Reade chemist’s shop. The apartment Marcus was renting until the job finished was further west towards the Hudson River. After checking up the street to see if he was coming, Aidan ducked into the shop to buy some painkillers. He hadn’t seen Marcus for six months, having moved into the flat after he’d already left for New York, and didn’t want to be dragged down by a headache.
He stumbled up and down the aisles. Nail varnish. Moisturisers. Shampoos. Toothbrushes. Chocolate. Potato chips. A song came on the store’s intercom, a hit from about fifteen years ago; a song that at one point he and Marcus used to listen to when they were at school, on Marcus’s Walkman with two headsets. He hoped that Marcus would arrive before it ended, so that he could drag him into this strip-lit shop to listen. Razors. Vitamins. Suntan lotion. His body clock thought it was one in the morning. Toiletry bags. Hair accessories. Leg waxers. Sanitary towels. Slimming powders. Deodorants. Pharmaceuticals. At last.
He stood by the display of coloured, striped, logoed boxes, mesmerised. Throat sweets. Hayfever sprays. Antiseptic cream. Painkillers. There were twenty or so varieties. Did he want Tylenol, Motrin, Advil, Excedrin or Anacin? Soluble or insoluble? Aidan rubbed his palm over his face, smelling sweat and fatigue, stale air and travel. Coated or non? Capsules or pills? Caffeinated or not? Bottled or foil-wrapped?
Then there was a hand pulling at his shoulder and Marcus’s voice, oddly American in intonation: ‘Hey, Aide, how are you doing?’
He was grinning, tanned and dressed in his architect uniform, sunglasses hanging, folded, from his grey shirt pocket. A jumper was tied by its arms round his waist. Aidan moved forward with a slight lurching movement, pleased to see him yet confused, unable to remember how he and Marcus usually greeted each other, whether they hugged or shook hands or nodded or did nothing.
‘You look rough,’ Marcus said, as he closed his fingers briefly around Aidan’s. ‘When did you get in?’
‘Couple of hours ago.’
‘New jacket?’
‘Yeah. You like it?’
‘No.’
They smiled at each other, their right arms falling to their sides in unison.
‘So, have you had to touch base yet?’ Marcus said.
‘Touch base?’ Aidan repeated, one eyebrow raised (an ability of his that Marcus had always envied). ‘Where are you from? California?’
‘Yeah, very funny. Listen, what do you fancy doing tonight?’
‘I’m not sure. I’m feeling a bit wrecked to tell you the truth, so—–’
‘Oh, don’t be such a wuss. We have to go out. You’re only here for…how long is it?’
‘Five days.’
‘Exactly. So I think we should head down to SoHo and—–’
Marcus broke off. Two American-Chinese women were coming down the aisle towards them, chatting, wire baskets bumping against their legs. Aidan didn’t really look at them, but noticed at this point that one had cropped, spiked hair, and the other a long, silky ponytail and an impossibly short suede dress. Aidan stepped aside to let them past, still waiting for Marcus to finish his sentence. But Marcus was holding his ground, hands on hips. He was widening his eyes and grimacing, and for a second Aidan didn’t know what he was doing, pulling a strange face like that, and was wondering if there was anything wrong, when he saw that he was grinning at the two women, who were staring at them, then looking at each other, then laughing and looking back at them. ‘Hi,’ the short-haired one said as they passed.
What happened next happened fast: the women walked on, one glancing over her shoulder, towards the end of the aisle. Marcus touched Aidan’s sleeve, said, ‘Hang on,’ and went after them. ‘Hi. Hi. Hello,’ he heard him saying to them, stepping between them, ‘how are you?’
They giggled. The long-haired one hoisted her basket on to the other arm. ‘Are you British?’ he heard her say.
And Aidan just watched. Either jet-lag or surprise or disbelief or all three kept his mental deductions at bay. When his friend disappeared around the corner with the two women, Aidan found himself actually turning back to the pharmaceutical display and selecting a blue box of Advil. Then he walked into the next aisle and picked up a small bottle of mineral water. As he approached the till, he glanced around for Marcus but, not seeing him, stood in line and waited.
Just as he was handing over his purchases and feeling around for his wallet, something came through the air, whizzing past his ear, to crash-land on the counter in front of him. Aidan jumped back in surprise, then saw what it was. A box of condoms. Three. Trojans. Spermicidally lubricated.
Marcus appeared next to him, delving in his pockets and bringing out a ten-dollar bill. ‘Right. OK. We’re sorted,’ he said, ‘Thanks,’ he said to the cashier, as she gave him his change, and, handing Aidan his things, pushed the condoms into his back pocket. ‘They’re heading for a club over in TriBeCa,’ he began, in a low voice, as they walked towards the door, ‘but not till later. We could meet them there or we could all go for a drink first. What do you think?’
Aidan’s brain was picking up the momentum of what was happening. He stopped just outside th
e door so abruptly that Marcus fell into him.
‘What are you doing?’ he said.
Marcus blinked, ‘What do you mean?’
‘What do I mean? I mean what are you playing at?’ He gestured at the women, standing a few yards off on the sidewalk – who, he now noticed, were probably still teenagers – and back at Marcus’s pocket where the condoms were. He watched, incredulous, as a weary smile insinuated itself into Marcus’s features.
‘Aidan, you’re not going to come over all pious on me, are you?’
Fury flared in Aidan’s chest, adrenaline arrowing through his system, banishing all traces of exhaustion. ‘Pious?’ he repeated. ‘Pious? This has absolutely fuck all to do with piety. Does the word “Sinead” mean anything to you? Anything at all?’
At the mention of her name, something flickered in Marcus’s face. Something recognisable, identifiable. Then it was gone, as quickly as it had come. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I think we should go for a drink with these two. Are you up for that or not?’
Aidan stared at him, aghast. ‘No. I’m not.’
‘So what do you want to do?’
‘Marcus—–’ he began, then stopped. ‘I just think—–’ Vocabulary eluded him. ‘Do what you want.’ He waved his hand at him. ‘We – we can’t talk about this now.’
Marcus didn’t answer, but stood where he was, his face turned towards the girls, one foot balanced, jiggling, on top of the other. ‘I can’t desert you like that,’ he muttered, still not looking at him. Aidan watched him, wary, curious as to which way he would go.
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