Robert grins at me. “He lives!” he shouts theatrically. The loudness of his voice makes me half close my eyes.
He pushes past me. I stare wistfully at the empty space on the doormat where he had stood, and slowly turn back into the house, pushing the door closed behind me.
“You are sleeping your life away!” says Robert. My mother always used to say the same thing.
“Sleep is an essential part of life,” I say. “Without sleep we die.” It’s the defence my father used.
Robert is unpacking shopping on the kitchen table: oranges, bananas, high protein milk. “Sorry?” he asks. His voice indicates that he’s not particularly interested.
“You have to sleep, that’s all. Look what are you doing here?”
Robert looks up at me and shrugs. “Fixing you breakfast, what does it look like?”
I yawn; I sigh.
“Can we get some light in here?” he asks. “I take it the shutters do actually open?”
I nod. I wander to the window and push them open. They clack back against the wall. The sky is deep Mediterranean blue; the air is cold. Light rushes into the kitchen.
“Not a lot of point though,” says Robert.
I look at him questioningly.
“Staying alive, if you’re just going to sleep all the time.”
I sigh heavily.
He lines up the six oranges on the table and glances at me. “So when you say that you’re busy, that would be busy, like, sleeping?” he asks.
I nod. “Well I try,” I say rubbing sleep from the corner of my eye.
“Very sexy,” he says.
I force a grin at him. “Yeah well I haven’t done my face yet,” I say. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
Robert nods. “Nice towel too,” he says.
I look down at my towel. It’s yellow; it’s a towel. I frown at him. “Call next time. I’ll put on a suit,” I say.
As he whisks past me towards the sink, he touches my chin. “I’d love to see you in a suit. I bet you’d look great. Huh! Imagine!” he laughs.
I sit at the table. I push a space between the books and magazines and Robert’s breakfast articles for my elbows. I don’t tell him that I wear a suit every day from Monday to Friday, that I have ten of them in the wardrobe. I just watch him in silence, one eyebrow raised.
“Well, I’ve already been to the gym and I’ve done my weekly shopping at the market,” he says.
“Umh,” I say. “Martha Stewart would be proud.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. What are you doing?” I ask him. He’s opening and closing the doors to all of my cupboards. It makes exactly the same noise as when he knocked on the door.
“Is there actually any logic to your cupboards?” he asks, slamming another door.
I half smile at him. “Not really. What are you looking for?”
“The juicer,” he says.
I frown.
“Orange squeezer,” he says.
“There isn’t one.”
He turns towards me and places one hand on his hip. “This is a man who doesn’t have an orange squeezer,” he says.
I open my eyes as wide as I can. I nod. “This is,” I say.
Robert sighs. “You can tell so much about people from their cupboards,” he says. “Yours are a disorganised mess. Jees, I can’t even find any plates!” He lifts up a roll of scotch tape. “I mean, what’s this doing here?” he asks.
I shrug.
“And the plates?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Sorry. All in the dishwasher.”
Robert bends down, opens the dishwasher.
“It’s dirty,” I say.
“Then why don’t you switch it on?” he asks.
The rapid-fire rhythm of his voice is winding me up. I imitate it. “Because it’s not full!” I say.
Robert leans against the counter. “But you don’t have any clean plates!” he says.
I feel slightly feverish, slightly dizzy. I realise I’m getting angry and sigh. “I didn’t need any plates,” I say, “I was sleeping.”
Robert smiles at me. “So cute, yet so dumb!” he says. “So, tell me, dearest Mark. You eat breakfast off the floor do you?”
I roll my lips into an ‘o’. I stare at him. The patronising use of my name really bugs me; I chew the inside of my mouth. “When I do get up, well, I don’t really do breakfast Robert,” I say.
“You don’t?”
I shrug. “Actually, most mornings I just eat a yoghourt.”
Robert nods at me as though this is the strangest information he ever heard. “Yoghourt,” he repeats.
I smile; I nod. “Yoghourt,” I say.
He says, “Yoghourt,” once again and turns to the refrigerator.
I roll my eyes at his back. “Robert look,” I say. I raise a hand to my forehead.
He bends down, peers into the fridge.
“No-one asked you to come here,” I say.
He pulls the bin to his side. He picks up an aubergine and drops it into the bin. “How can you live like this?” he asks.
“Robert, for God’s sake!”
He drops some onions into the bin.
“They’re fine, stop it!” I stand. “Will you just mellow out for Christ’s sake?”
I walk over to him. “Get out of my fridge!” I say pushing him aside. I reach in, pull the yoghurt pack from the fridge and stuff it into his hands. I point to the dining table. “Sit!”
He sits with the yoghurts in front of him. He stares at them.
I sit opposite in silence. “What?” I ask eventually.
“Jesus!” he says.
I shrug. “What?” I wipe little beads of sweat from the side of my forehead.
“They’re still in the cardboard,” he says.
I nod. I scrunch up my eyebrows. “They come that way,” I say.
He shrugs. “Whatever,” he says.
I shake my head. “No hang on,” I say. “I don’t get it … What’s the problem with the cardboard?”
“Well you’re supposed to unpack them before you put them in the fridge.”
I shrug. “Who says?”
“Well it’s like just dumping your shopping still in the carrier bag straight in the fridge.”
I shrug again. “Sometimes I do that too. If I’m in a hurry.”
Robert looks at me and slowly shakes his head.
“I couldn’t be bothered, I was in a rush. That’s all. So what?”
Robert nods knowingly. “Hum,” he says.
“What?” I say.
He shrugs. “Your house is a mess.” He gestures around him. “Your fridge is … disgusting.” He nods at me. “But this, Mark.” He taps the pack of yoghourts with a finger. “This is about as lazy as it gets.”
I suck air through my teeth. I stand and walk over to him.
I pick up the oranges, the bananas, the Sports-Plus High-Protein Milk™. I put it all back in the bag. Robert looks up at me, he looks sad.
I grab his arm, lift him to his feet and lead him gently to the door, he doesn’t resist. When I push the bag into his chest, his arms move up to hold it.
His eyes are deep dark pits; something tells me that this has happened to him before. A lot.
I shake my head and open the door, and silently he walks out.
As he opens his car door he glances back at me – he looks about twelve years old.
Country Life
It’s February, nearly the end of another winter in this damned house. I’ve been looking at the small ads, toying with the idea of giving away the chickens and moving back somewhere where people just drop-in for coffee.
It seems that it hasn’t stopped raining once since last September, only an impression, I know. I spend my time driving into Nice, invited to friends dinner parties, or going out for a drink, on my own, always searching, always hoping.
I’m battling through this with a forced smile on my face because I only have to think of my mother to know just how
fast a social life can dwindle if you walk around with a face like a smacked arse. But the truth is, I hate it, I was never designed to spend evenings alone, staring at the rain, poking the coal fire, eating pasta in front of the TV.
I don’t function properly alone, and though it’s unbearable being in the wrong relationship, tonight it seems to me that nothing could be worse, truly nothing could be worse than this dreadful, droning emptiness.
I’m drinking too much: the pile of empty bottles to be recycled is proof enough. I am sinking into depression, which is of course why the mountain of empty bottles is still sitting there. I’ve called Claire twice this week; my drunken tears will end up terrifying her. Tonight I spare her.
Tomorrow I have a dinner with the gay motorcycle club, and tonight, as I go wearily to bed, that rare desire comes over me, the desire to pray. This only really happens in moments of desperation because I don’t really believe in God, or certainly not God as we were taught at school, but I guess I believe in some vague kind of benign force. I don’t tend to say it too loudly though; it sounds a bit Star-Warsy after all.
Lately, in this winter, this depression, this loneliness, I have been having trouble believing in anything at all. Even my friendships seem to have become complicated now that I am alone. People who have invited me to dinner for years, simply because they wanted to see me, now sound as though they are inviting me because they feel sorry for me.
When I ask them to dinner and they refuse, I am left wondering if I have not become so depressing that no one can bear my company. Maybe it’s just paranoia, then again, maybe it’s true – maybe I have become my mother. Maybe it is genetic after all and I will end up alone and on Prozac. Hell I am alone, and the only reason I’m not on the Prozac that the doctor gave me is that I’m too stubborn to take it.
So perhaps it’s because I have reached the bottom of my pit, that I have ground my face down in this misery until I just can’t bear it any more, or maybe it’s something to do with Paolo Coelho’s metaphysical story I read this morning, but whatever the reason, as I lie down, after I turn out the lights, just before I settle into a surprisingly restful slumber, I pray.
“Please help me. Please send someone to save me. I hate this. I don’t deserve this. I can’t stand it much longer.” My breath shudders with the angst I am feeling, the edge of a sob. As I drift off, strangely, I have a feeling that I have been heard; I imagine the wheels of the universe already grinding, squeaky and slow, into a new, better configuration.
The next day the winter sun is out; the sky is a deep shade of blue. I feel refreshed and optimistic. I ride my motorbike to Antibes to charge up the battery. The motorbike too has been abandoned these last few weeks.
I sit in a café and for a while I enjoy it all: the bike, the cool air, the sunshine. And then I think of the wheels of the universe and I start trying to give it a helping hand.
I wander around town drinking coffee after coffee, hyping out on caffeine and watching every man who passes by. I wouldn’t want to miss the one that the universe has sent, but of course there is no one and I start to feel sad, so I return home. I am fighting to keep my edge, fighting not to sink into another pit.
By eight p.m. when I have to leave, the outside temperature has plummeted to five degrees, so I take the car. As I drive I remember the prayer and add to it.
“Look, if you need an opportunity then here it is,” I say. “If I need to act for this to happen then I’m acting. There will be fifty people there tonight and I only need one. I’m not asking for Tom Cruise, or Albert Einstein. Someone nice, someone I don’t find physically revolting, someone who makes me laugh, someone I can be friends with, have fun with, talk to late at night as I drift off to sleep.” As I say this I imagine a man. He has brown hair, a warm smiling face and he’s winking at me. “If you can send him tonight,” I add desperately, “then that would be perfect.”
This strikes me as a little presumptuous. I wonder momentarily if it is possible to ask too much of an infinite force, it being infinite and all. Just in case I add, “Oh and if for some reason that’s not possible, just a nice evening will do.”
I know I don’t mean it. I expect that The Force realises too.
I park the car and walk around to the front of the restaurant.
Two friends from the club are stamping their feet against the cold, talking into their mobile phones. I push inside and the noise and smoke and heat of the restaurant are momentarily overpowering. I force through the gathering towards the coat-stand, creaking, overloaded with heavy motorcycle gear.
As I wriggle out of my jacket and reach to hang it on the top of the pile, he’s suddenly there, grinning at me. He says, “So where’s the crash helmet?”
I feign embarrassment, bite my lip. “Sorry … Car,” I say.
“Shame on you.” He holds out a hand. “Hugo.”
I freeze; I stare. I know that this is him. Even as I think it, it strikes me as ridiculous, but it feels like truth. It feels like someone somewhere in the universe has heard me, I grin stupidly and shake his hand.
He smiles at me, and he winks. He actually winks.
When the time comes to eat, I manoeuvre myself, or more precisely we manoeuvre ourselves, side by side. Hugo contributes by giving up his seat to fetch his wallet from his jacket. When he returns, the seats between us have been taken; he sits down next to me.
The meal is terrible but then they always are. “This is a motorcycle club not a gastronomic one,” I say to someone who starts to complain. I don’t care though, I am happy.
Hugo is a dancer and he’s very funny. A touch of camp, a little finesse in every gesture, but also a biker, a drinker and a smoker, a great buzzing contradiction of humour, blokeiness, and elegance.
Someone is talking about organising a party – he needs go-go boys. “Hey what about Hugo?” asks Jean-Paul. “He is a dancer after all.”
I grimace with embarrassment. Hugo tries to explain that contemporary dance isn’t quite the same thing as gogo dancing.
I smile, warmed by his efforts to explain this without making his aggressor feel stupid. I feel as though I am sitting next to a log fire, as though I am warming my cold, frosty body next to it. I realise that I have been on the edge of hypothermia. Hugo is saved when five of us decide to join in, to jokingly conspire to harass him.
“Well it is dance, and it is contemporary,” we say, “after all.”
Jean-Paul cottons on, exaggerates along with the rest of us to demonstrate that, in fact, he was actually joking as well – that he intentionally initiated the joke and Hugo gives in, stands on his chair and shows us just how well he could do the job.
It’s nothing; it’s a mere joke. But we’re all impressed by the roll and the groove of his body. Personally I am awe-struck.
“Hey, do you strip as well?” asks Jean-Paul.
Hugo slides back into his chair with a laugh. “Sure!” he says. “I’ll strip. But I never go further than my flowery boxer shorts.”
We laugh.
“Oh, and flip flops,” he says. “I never dance without flip flops!”
We laugh, we drink, we fool around, and once or twice he mockingly pinches me.
As I drift off to sleep, I think of him, see his face, see the movement of his body, imagine stroking the smile lines around his eyes.
I know that I’m in love again and the world is transformed from a terrifying desolate winter into a playground of possibility, of snuggling in front of coal fires, and walking side by side through the frost. I think how hard the fall will be if this doesn’t happen.
I try to stop hoping, try instead to work through all the reasons why it might not happen in my mind. But as I lie awake, revelling in the mere thought of him, as I hear the rain start again, I think it sounds beautiful.
The next day I call the club secretary. He gives me Hugo’s surname: Damiano.
Monday is shopping day, it takes all day to find exactly what I am looking for. The name rolls around my head.
“Hugo Damiano.”
In the evening I look him up in the phone book, pack up the gift and seal the brown, padded envelope. I scrawl the address across the front. I remember, too late again, that it’s easier to write while the envelope is still empty.
Tomorrow I will post them, and he will, or will not understand – it’s a test. A test that this is truly the man the universe has sent, that he has noticed me, that he knows only I could have sent that package.
It’s a test that he has the sense of humour to find it funny and more than anything that he can fall in love with someone who sends him flowery boxer shorts and flip-flops through the post.
I will not call though. He has the gift, and if the test fails then it must fail.
A week drags by. I cave in and call.
A man answers. “He’s in Sweden. Working. Sorry,” he says. “He’ll be back on Friday though.”
Funny that. I had thought of lots of reasons it might not work. But I never even imagined that he might not be single. “How dumb. How stupid. How typical,” I tell myself.
“It’s his brother,” says Isabelle when I call her. “Or a friend, or someone he lent his apartment to.”
I hope, but I don’t really believe. The week passes slowly. Finally Friday arrives. It grinds past like a bad film in slow-motion.
Saturday is worse.
Sunday, I start to feel like I’m getting over it. “If he can’t even be bothered to reply,” I tell myself, “then he’s not worth worrying about.”
But I feel sad. I feel surprised and disappointed – I hadn’t imagined this ending at all.
Monday evening arrives and I’ve pushed it from my mind. I put some pasta on to cook. Enough for one, again.
The cat sits on my lap in front of the fire, wide-eyed at the spitting wood.
The phone rings, I look at the number on the display; I stare at it, a local number. I wait till the last ring, the final ring before it goes onto voicemail then swipe it from the cradle.
“Hi it’s Hugo,” he says. “Do you remember me?”
“Hi,” I say, “I erh …”
“I just wondered if you wanted to come to dinner, tonight, with some friends?” he says. “It’s a bit late I know.”
50 Reasons to Say Goodbye Page 14