The Foreigners

by James Lovegrove

  “Anna, you don’t have to go on if you don’t want to.”

  “But I do have to, Jack. You have to know what kind of a person I am.”

  “I know that already.”

  “No, you don’t. You think you do. There’s a big difference. The kind of person I am is an opportunist. An exploiter. If someone can’t help me, I want nothing to do with them. Like my family, for example. My parents, my brothers. Do you know when the last time I had any contact with them was? Over twenty years ago. Twenty years! I don’t know where they are now. I assume they’re still in Bucharest, but I’m not sure. I don’t even know if they’re alive or dead. As soon as I could escape from life with them, I did. I left them without a second thought, without a backward glance. I didn’t fall out with them. I simply didn’t need them any more. And that’s how it’s always been with me. How it’s had to have been. You don’t advance in life by making sentimental attachments. Sometimes I even think of myself as a vampire. I know, I know. Romanian. How clichéd. But that’s a good description for the way I’ve behaved. Like a vampire. Find victims, suck them dry, move on.”

  “Everyone uses other people to some extent.”

  “Do you, Jack?”

  “I think so.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Anyway, all these bad things you’ve supposedly done – they’re in the past. They don’t matter now.”

  “They’re in my past, and my past makes me who I am now.”

  “No, how you act now makes you who you are now. A past is something that can be wiped clean. The Foreigners showed us that.”

  “Really, Jack? Can you forget the girl at the Riots? Can you wipe her clean?”

  Parry momentarily foundered. “All right, no. But I can make her a lesson to learn from. A mistake not to repeat.”

  “Well, maybe not everyone’s like you. Maybe not everyone can learn.”

  “Look, Anna, I still don’t understand. What are you getting at? Are you trying to make me despise you? Because you’ll have to try a lot harder than that if you are.”

  “What I’m trying to do is set things straight. I haven’t been treating you fairly this past year, Jack. I’m trying to explain what’s been going on in my head. You see, it wasn’t adultery, you and me, until after we had to stop seeing each other. It wasn’t adultery, as far as I was concerned, because you were supplying the one thing missing from my dream life, the one thing Hector was not giving me. The adoration. Adoring me and being the man for me to adore. You were the missing piece of the puzzle. So in that respect I was using even you, the last person on Earth I would ever want to use.”

  Parry laughed, and how querulous it sounded, how brittle. “I think I was quite happy to be used like that. I think I still would be.”

  “Regardless,” Anna said, brushing this aside. “I saw nothing wrong in what we were doing until Hector and I, so late in the day, thawed to each other and I realised how I had underestimated him and how, in a different way, I had underestimated myself. It’s a shock to be confronted with your own failings, particularly if they’re as great as mine. It’s a shock to discover you’re a self-centred, calculating, manipulative bitch.”

  “Anna –”

  “Yes, yes, you’ll leap in chivalrously here and tell me what you feel I need to hear. But face it, there must have been times this past year when you’ve thought exactly that about me. ‘What a bitch. Cutting me out of her life without giving any good reason why. Letting me hang there, close to her but just out of reach.’ It would have been easier for both of us if I’d simply said we could never meet again, but the trouble is I like you. I like you too damn much for that. I like talking to you. I like your certainty, your positiveness. That’s me being selfish again. And there’s Cissy, of course. She brags about you to her friends at school, did you know that? ‘My mother’s friend, the FPP captain. He’s really cool.’ Actually, I think she considers you as much her friend as mine. So that has complicated everything, you being so damn nice. So damn dependable. So damn trustworthy.”

  “You make them sound like bad qualities.”

  “That’s just it. In my world they are. If I could bring myself to hate you for even a second, then my problems would be solved. But I can’t, I just can’t.”

  “Not even after last night?”

  “Of course not. Although what happened last night has a lot to do with why I’ve decided to say all this to you now. I’m still not clear what made you attack Guthrie out on the terrace. I only caught the tail-end of it. I know you didn’t much like him from the start. I imagine he said something crass about Foreigners or Sirens or New Venice or the FPP and you’d been getting so tightly wound up all evening by everyone else asking you about the shinjus that you finally snapped. Was that it?”

  “There was a bit more to it. Quite a bit more.” Could he repeat to her Reich’s comment about him and Cecilia? He felt he ought to, simply so that he would look less like the villain of the piece. Then again, what difference did it make? No matter what Reich had said, he should never have grabbed him and threatened him. He should have just walked away. “But, well, yes. He made a remark, a thoughtless remark, and I lost my rag. And I’d had a bit to drink, too, of course. You must know I’m deeply embarrassed about what happened.”

  “I’m sure you are. You’re so principled, Jack. And that’s why you’re not the sort of person I deserve to be with and why you should steer clear of me. I could be very dangerous for you.”

  “I think you should let me be the judge of that.”

  “Oh, so you know me better than I know myself?”

  “No, but I know myself better than you know me. Look, I’m not the saint you seem convinced I am. I’m a lot harder than I appear.”

  “You’re hard on the outside, but not on the inside. And I’m the opposite. You wouldn’t like what you found if you got to know me really well.”

  “But I love you, Anna.”

  The words came out unbidden, startling him. He could scarcely believe he had said them, but at the same time he knew he had been going to say them all along, ever since receiving Anna’s message instructing him to meet her for lunch. Somehow, whether or not an appropriate moment in the conversation arose, he had known he was going to admit to her how he still felt about her.

  Abruptly Anna’s face became as immobile and unreadable as a Foreigner’s mask.

  Then, softly and sorrowfully, she said, “I know.”

  A year ago it would have been I love you, too. Today: I know.

  Inside Parry, something cracked like glass in a furnace. Cracked and started to fall away in fragments.

  “And I’d thought you might have...” Anna frowned. “Not ‘grown out of it’, that’s the wrong phrase. Kicked the habit? I don’t know. But last night when Guthrie put his arm around me in the library, I saw the way you stiffened, the little flinty flash that came into in your eyes. That’s the look a man gets when he sees another man staking a claim on a woman he considers his property.”

  Parry wanted to tell her she was mistaken. But she wasn’t, was she? Not really.

  “I pretended to ignore it, of course,” Anna went on. “I’m very good at pretending to ignore things, especially at parties. I know how to keep my sweetest smile on. But then when I came out onto the terrace and found you and Guthrie at loggerheads, it was obvious to me what was really happening.”

  “So is there something going on between you two?” Parry felt bitterness eating away at him like an acid. “You and Mr Bighead from L.A.?”

  “Is it any business of yours if there is?”

  Christ, that was cold of her. Shockingly cold.

  “Perhaps not,” he said. “But surely I have the right to ask. Surely you owe me that much.”

  “But this is what I’ve been trying to get across. If you could just listen to your voice, Jack, could just see the look that’s on your face... This is why you should have nothing to do with me.”

  “I deserve an answer.”

  �
��Do you? After all, even if there is something going on between me and Guthrie, what difference does it make to you?”

  “All the difference in the world. To our friendship, if nothing else.”

  “If you really thought we were just friends, then the idea of me having a relationship with another man wouldn’t bother you.”

  “And if we really were just friends, you wouldn’t be avoiding answering my question.” Parry was half convinced, half hoping that what he was involved in here was nothing more than a negotiation. He did not want to believe that Anna was finally, after all this time, pulling up the drawbridge for good. Rather, he had to believe that this was a challenge to his talent for persuasion, something for which a successful outcome could be achieved through the diplomatic skills which made him such a good FPP officer. “So, come on. Are you and Reich involved?”

  “What do you want me to say? What do you want to hear?”

  “The truth, of course.”

  “All right. No. We aren’t.”

  “Well, then. There you are.” He sat back, satisfied.

  “You believe me?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? I never thought he was your type, anyway.”

  “Not my type?”

  “Too young, too dumb.”

  “I’d have thought that made him ideal for me. I know plenty of women my age and in my situation who’ve taken ‘young, dumb’ men as their lovers. And actually, Guthrie may be young but he isn’t stupid. He’s passionate and extremely articulate.”

  “And conceals it well behind a mask of utter crassness.”

  “You’re still jealous of him, aren’t you? Even now. Even though I’ve just told you there’s nothing going on between him and me, you still feel the need to assert yourself over him.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I really wonder about men.”

  The waiter, concerned that sir and madam were evincing so little interest in their food, came up to their table and enquired if everything was to their satisfaction.

  “Everything’s fine,” Anna informed him, “but I think we’re done here.”

  “Of course, Mrs Fuentes. Will there be anything else? Dessert? Coffee?”

  “Just the bill, please.”

  With an impassive bow, the waiter picked up their barely-pecked-at meals and glided away.

  “Anna...”

  “What?”

  He had to know. He hated himself for asking but he had to know. “Just tell me. Tell me straight. Is there still a chance? For you and me? Any chance at all?”

  A pause. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Do you want me to change in some way? Because I will.”

  “No, you idiot. No! That’s just it. I want you to stay exactly as you are. I want you to continue being the Jack Parry I know and ... like.”

  “But?”

  “I don’t know if there is a but. I only know that I’ve made a mistake. I should have done this much earlier. Cleared the air between us.”

  “I doubt it would have made any difference.”

  “Not to you, perhaps.”

  The waiter returned with the bill. Normally Parry would have wrangled with Anna over which of them should pay, both knowing that he would concede to her in the end but both also knowing that it was important for his peace of mind that he didn’t do so without putting up a fight. Today there was none of that. He could not summon the energy to offer so much as a token protest as Anna brandished an IC card at the waiter. He did not even propose to pay the tip, as he sometimes did. He just sat there and looked on as Anna invited the waiter to add a more-than-generous gratuity to the total, in response to which the waiter wrung his hands in a prolonged and unctuous GRATITUDE.

  Anna rose from the table and shouldered the black leather backpack she often carried with her as a handbag. Parry, not knowing what else to do, rose also, and together, Anna walking just a pace or two ahead, they left the Touching Bass and headed across the Alto Rialto in the direction of one of its quartet of supporting hotels, the Da Capo.

  Many of the sightseers and restaurant patrons on the concourse turned to watch Anna as she passed, some of them recognising her, others (it goes without saying, mainly men) simply admiring her looks. She drew their gazes like a magnet draws iron filings, as heedless of them as they were attentive to her. Glances were directed at Parry, too, but few rested on him for long. Even if anyone recognised him, the beautiful woman with him was inordinately more interesting. Aesthetically, she was out of his league. That much was obvious to anyone who looked at them. But she was out of his league in another way, too. This he understood now. Within Anna there were complexities that were beyond his ability to fathom and perhaps beyond the power of their feelings for each other to surmount. The ambition that had driven her on since childhood, impelling her to take the course through life she had taken, was, it appeared, a source of perplexity and distress to her, and this was something he would be able neither to comprehend nor to alter. At the heart of her lay a whirling core of confusion that would always send him spinning centrifugally away whenever he came too close to it. For this reason, she would remain essentially unknowable to him. She would always be, in the least specific sense of the word, foreign.

  Neither said anything to the other until they were traversing the short walkway that bridged the gap between concourse and hotel. Halfway across, Anna broke the uncomfortable silence.

  “I suppose I can’t not ask.” She tapped the area of her forehead where the bruise was on Parry’s. “This?”

  Parry felt a blush threaten and fumbled out some excuse about not switching the light on in his bathroom last night and then stumbling in the dark and striking his head on the door jamb.

  “Oh dear,” Anna said, and her mouth crinkled at one corner. It was the closest she had come to a smile since arriving at the restaurant, and though it was half-hearted and short-lived, Parry was inordinately glad to see it.

  Then they were atop the Da Capo, and as they approached the staircase that led down to the lifts, both heard strains of a sinuous, eerie, lilting music, carried to them across the rooftop on the breeze. It was faint and enchanting, the sort of sound one might imagine fairy music to be.

  Parry saw his opportunity. “I think I’ll stay up here a little longer,” he said, nodding in the direction of the music.

  Anna looked relieved, as though, like him, she had not been relishing the prospect of the journey down, the two of them penned together in a lift car for over a minute. “Yes, why not? It’s a lovely day.”

  “You take care,” Parry said.

  “This isn’t goodbye, you know, Jack. I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t goodbye.”

  Parry nodded, yet to be convinced.

  Anna was halfway down the stairs when, remembering something, she about-turned and came trotting back up.

  “I nearly forgot.” She unslung the leather backpack, delved inside and took out something square and made of paper, which she handed to Parry.

  It was a flyer, and it consisted of a blank sleeve, inside which was a circle of card printed to resemble a seven-inch vinyl single, complete with textured grooves. On one side of the central label, around the hole stamped in the middle, were the words:

  The Trad Music Revue!

  New Venice Residency

  The other side of the label bore a list of dates, times and venues for all of the performances of Guthrie Reich’s bands in New Venice.

  “And what do I want this for?” Parry asked, eyeing the flyer as he would have a forged banknote.

  “I don’t know, I thought perhaps you might want to go to one of Guthrie’s concerts. To show him there aren’t any hard feelings.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “This isn’t a test, Jack. It’s a chance to patch things up if you want to, that’s all. It might surprise you to learn that, in spite of everything, Guthrie doesn’t hold a grudge against you. In fact, after you stormed off last night, his first words were, ‘That guy has spunk.’”

  “A
s a compliment, it loses something in the translation.” Parry reinserted the “single” into its sleeve, then folded the flyer in half and slid into his inside jacket pocket. “Well, I’ll think about it.”

  “How kind of you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Anna, having furrowed her brow at him for a moment, turned and made her way back down the staircase. At the bottom, she went left and was lost from view.

  Moments later, Parry was on the other side of the rooftop.

  The Da Capo’s famous wind garden consisted of several dozen crystech “instruments”, weird and outlandish sculptures of every shape and size – tall and short, slender and squat, solid and hollow, vaned and tubular, squared and curvilinear, geometric and quasi-organic, some resembling worms, others like elaborately spined and finned deep-sea fish, others reminiscent of a child’s construction blocks, others vaguely harp-shaped, others akin to nothing else on Earth. Each was of a different hue, so that together they formed a sparkling, sun-catching assemblage of ruby and emerald and sapphire and topaz and citrine and amber and aquamarine and more. And around them, into them, through them, over them and under them, the wind blew, its irregular pulses and ebbs eliciting strange hums and keening hoots and abstract tinkles and undulating whistles and flittering trills and vibrant, shivery drones. The notes were of various pitches and keys that shifted according to the intensity of the wind, so that sometimes they clashed discordantly and sometimes they merged together into a muddy, meaningless blare, but sometimes, just occasionally, through some adventitious gust, some quirk of the breath of the breeze, they massed into a single, brilliant, shimmering chord that swelled to a majestic crescendo, as though drawing strength from its own sonority, resounding like the trumpets of heaven, thrilling to the soul.