We Are Not The Same Anymore

by Chris Somerville

  Eventually Chute turned off the highway and into one of the small streets that dead-ended at the beach. We were nowhere near where I lived. On both sides of the street were low-rise apartment buildings. Their windows were either dark or had their curtains pulled.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Chute said. ‘I want to show you something.’

  I couldn’t tell how angry he actually was, or what he might actually do to me if we were alone on a beach at night.

  The moon was illuminating the white foam of the waves. We walked slowly and awkwardly in the soft sand and then more evenly when it became more firm down near the water. There was the sound of the ocean and also the wind in my ears. Chute pulled the gun from his pocket and fired it once. There was a sharp crack and I jumped. He had fired into the ocean.

  ‘Jesus that gave me a fright,’ I said.

  Chute fired again. I was anticipating the noise, but it still gave me a start. I looked at the empty beach and the dark shadows of the houses behind us, all in a row down the beach. The ocean was loud. Chute held the gun out to me.

  ‘Do you want a go?’ he said.

  I took the gun off him hesitantly and held it. I’d never held a real gun before, but I’d had toys as a kid. I pointed the barrel out at the sea and turned my head away slightly and winced. I fired a shot. The gun recoiled and my hand felt like it was beginning to go numb. I fired again, this time with my eyes open. I couldn’t see where the bullet entered the water. I was really doing no damage at all.

  About twenty metres down the beach was a sign marking an unleashed area for dogs. It was mostly white and stood out well in the darkness. I lifted the gun and aimed at it with both hands. I closed one eye for accuracy.

  ‘See that sign?’ I said, and I fired the gun. The bullet hit the sign, it made a smacking noise and I was pretty sure it left a hole.

  ‘Lucky shot,’ Chute said.

  I lifted the gun again, exactly the same as I had before. I breathed out slowly as I pulled the trigger. I shot the sign again.

  Chute didn’t say anything this time.

  I lowered the gun. The sky above was filled with stars. I’d heard once that over a quarter of them no longer existed, and that if you followed their light back to the source there’d be nothing there but empty dark space.

  Chute was standing a few steps away, his arms crossed over his chest, looking at me. The wind was whipping around us. I pointed the gun at him, straight at his gut. He put both his arms out, to shield himself. He looked worried, and younger than he usually did.

  I closed one eye, the left one. ‘Bang,’ I said.

  The Chinese student

  Leonard Beckman was standing in the courtyard that served as a smoking area, near the entrance to the university library. His friend Thomas was standing with him, smoking a cigarette. It was a clear winter morning and Beckman felt tired. His shoulders were slumped. Thomas was bright-eyed and had been up since early, running. They lived in an apartment together, not too far from campus. Beckman was squinting into the sunlight and he thought to himself that he needed sunglasses, then remembered he couldn’t afford them. He put a hand across his forehead to shade his eyes.

  ‘Sometimes people ask me what I’m doing and I have to say not much, or I just shrug and avoid answering,’ Thomas was saying.

  ‘You have a job and you study.’

  ‘I have a job and I study, but apart from that what else do I do? I spend most of my time either sitting around with you or looking at girls.’

  ‘Looking at girls is okay,’ Beckman said.

  ‘Yeah, but I can’t really tell people that. I can’t say that to my mother when she calls. I’ve been sleeping with this really tall girl. I think she must have at least half a foot on me. It’s great. It feels like a real achievement, but it’s not something I can be telling everyone about.’

  Beckman nodded. He wasn’t really a great student, but he wasn’t really a bad one either. Earlier in the week he’d been asked by Professor Blanchard, one of his teachers, to read through and edit another student’s thesis. He had half an hour to get through before he met her. She was Chinese and Professor Blanchard had assured Beckman he’d be paid for the work. Each time a Chinese girl walked past he looked at her anxiously.

  ‘I don’t think I want to do this.’

  ‘Let me do it,’ Thomas said. ‘I’ll just go up to her and pretend to be you.’

  ‘I’ve thought of that,’ Beckman said. ‘But I need the money.’

  In Professor Blanchard’s office Beckman had tried to sit casually, with his sneakered foot resting on his knee, while the professor sat behind his desk and talked on the telephone. Beckman looked around the office and at the books and loose pieces of paper sitting on the desk in front of him. On the wall was a child’s drawing. It had been maybe done by the professor’s son or nephew. Beckman was pretty sure it had been drawn by a boy. Professor Blanchard laughed loudly into the phone. He had a deep voice and he usually wore Hawaiian shirts underneath his corduroy jackets. Beckman felt uncomfortable looking at him while he talked on the phone. Through the office door he watched Blanchard’s secretary, sitting at her computer, eat from a small tub of yoghurt. He heard the telephone being returned to its cradle.

  ‘The thing is,’ Professor Blanchard said, ‘try and get whatever payment you can out of her. I’m sure you could eventually get the university to pay you the difference, just I wouldn’t be too hopeful about that.’

  ‘How do I do that?’ Beckman had asked.

  ‘Try and negotiate. Have you ever done that before?’

  Beckman thought of his parents, both of whom he’d always considered easy-going. His mother was a civil servant and his father, before he’d died, had worked for the army writing computer code. His older brother had studied music composition at this university and sometimes Beckman wished that he had musical talent too.

  ‘Not really, no,’ he’d said.

  Now, in the sun, beside the library, Beckman closed his eyes. He could hear the air moving through the leaves above them. He didn’t smoke but Thomas smoked at their place constantly and Beckman didn’t mind the smell. Their apartment windows were usually open. Thomas dropped his cigarette butt to the ground and stepped on it. He gave his shoe a quarter turn.

  ‘You better go,’ he said. ‘You’ll be late, you’ll be standing her up.’

  Thomas bent over to pick up his cigarette and then threw it into a nearby bin. Beckman watched, half-expecting the bin to catch fire.

  ‘See you at home, love,’ Thomas said.

  Beckman didn’t own a watch but he figured he was late. At the café there was a girl just beyond the collection of metal tables, waiting. She had a green enviro bag at her feet. It was obviously her, but still he said, ‘Olivia?’

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Hello.’

  They stood for a moment. Beckman had his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He found her attractive, but then he’d expected to find her attractive. Her features were smooth; she looked like she was made from a delicate paper that would crinkle at the slightest touch. He looked away because he felt like he was staring. There was a short line at the café counter.

  ‘Do you want a coffee?’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, no. I don’t drink it.’

  ‘I’ll just get one,’ Beckman said, and turned to wait in line. He wondered how old she was. He was twenty-four and had two more classes to do before he graduated, but they could be the same age because he’d taken his time. While he waited for his coffee they stood together in a silence that, to a passer-by, couldn’t be mistaken as one between a couple, or even friends. Beckman smiled while biting down on his molars. His coffee was served and he took it from the counter in its weak paper cup and turned to her. He was taller than her by at least a head.

  ‘We should find a seat here?’ she s
aid.

  ‘Sure.’

  They sat at one of the empty tables in the sun. Olivia took a pair of sunglasses from her bag and put them on. They were black-framed and matched the colour of her hair. The university wasn’t very old-looking; it was mostly concrete and had been built in the seventies. Beckman watched a bus pull up across the way, the bus he usually caught, and a group of students line up to board it.

  ‘So you want me to look this over?’ he said, nodding towards her green enviro bag.

  ‘Professor Blanchard said your English is perfect,’ Olivia said.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘He said you’ve written for magazines and you have perfect English.’

  ‘Well, that’s very kind but it’s debatable.’

  When Beckman had started out at university he’d studied art, but then given it up. He could have told her this, and also that when he was eighteen he’d published a few stories in obscure magazines and once in the newspaper. But recently he’d published nothing and he didn’t really feel like going into that.

  Instead Beckman said, ‘Professor Blanchard’s been one of my teachers for a while now. We’ve known each other for a while, I mean. Of course I can look your work over.’

  ‘I’m not so great at the actual text.’

  ‘You speak English very well.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Beckman smiled. He liked the way she talked. Every word was pronounced correctly, as though she had practised in front of a mirror a hundred times, working her way through the dictionary, but she also extended some syllables, especially towards the end of her sentences.

  ‘I don’t mean to sound rude,’ Beckman said, ‘but Olivia doesn’t sound like a very Chinese name.’

  ‘My parents named me Li Wa. I changed it when I moved over here. Olivia was the name that fitted the best,’ she said, then reached down and lifted the green bag onto the table.

  ‘Everyone calls me Beckman,’ Beckman said. ‘Even my mother. I think it makes me sound like an old man.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ Olivia said.

  They paused for a moment. Beckman nodded at the bag on the table. ‘So what’s this about anyway?’

  ‘Chinese popular culture.’

  Beckman nodded again. The bag looked heavy and filled with more pages than he’d expected. He lifted his paper coffee cup and drank. A cold breeze swept through the tables and rearranged a few strands of her hair.

  ‘I have five hundred dollars left in my budget that I can pay you.’

  ‘That sounds reasonable.’

  ‘I’d have more, but I’m eager to finish up here and I don’t want to pay for another semester.’

  Beckman put his hand on the bag. They set a date for when he should be finished and he wrote down his phone number and handed it to her. Olivia did the same. He gave her his home number. He didn’t have a mobile phone and didn’t really like the idea of having one either. He stood, shook Olivia’s hand lightly and then lifted the green bag off of the table and walked off, swinging it at his side.

  When he returned the apartment was empty. He called Thomas’s name once and waited, but there was only silence. He closed the door behind him, put the green bag on the couch, then went into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. Beckman thought that he would allow himself to feel worried about the thesis until the coffee started to boil and then he would stop. In the hallway the phone rang and for a second he considered not answering. He picked up the phone.

  ‘How’d it go?’ Professor Blanchard said.

  ‘Good,’ Beckman said. ‘I have it here in a bag, it looks pretty long. How did you know I was home?’

  ‘How much did she offer you?’

  ‘Five hundred.’

  ‘You could have got more.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Beckman said. ‘I suppose so, but she said she didn’t want to pay for another semester here.’

  ‘You shouldn’t let her bully you, her father’s rich. He pays for her tuition and for her apartment. He owns some kind of company.’

  The coffee started to boil. Beckman held the phone against his head with his shoulder and turned the stove off and lifted the pot onto the kitchen counter.

  ‘Five hundred seemed pretty reasonable.’

  ‘Do you know she has a boyfriend?’ Professor Blanchard said.

  ‘She didn’t mention it.’

  ‘He’s rich too.’

  Beckman poured coffee into a cup, then took the milk from the fridge and closed the fridge door with his foot. Outside the kitchen window, if he angled his head in the right way, he could see nothing but blue sky and white clouds. The clouds moved along peacefully, undisturbed.

  Beckman said, ‘Do you really think my English is perfect?’

  There was a short pause. ‘I figured you could use the money,’ Professor Blanchard said.

  When Thomas returned home Beckman was lying on the couch listening to a record and reading a paperback. He was wearing his father’s old reading glasses, which suited his eyes pretty well. He’d found them at his mother’s the previous Easter, sitting in a box underneath her house.

  ‘Maybe I should take you out to dinner,’ Thomas said. ‘To celebrate.’

  Beckman shrugged. ‘I haven’t been paid yet, and I should probably make a move on it soon,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t need to do it that fast.’

  Beckman shrugged again. Although Thomas acted like he never had much money his father paid his rent and gave him an allowance at the start of each week.

  ‘Still, I bought some wine,’ Thomas said.

  Beckman took off his glasses, folded them and placed them on the coffee table in front of the couch. Thomas was in the kitchen and Beckman looked at him over the back of the couch. Thomas had placed a bottle in a paper bag on the counter. He turned on the light in the kitchen, though it didn’t do much. Outside, the sun was orange and setting.

  Beckman thought about Olivia, about taking her out to dinner and then sleeping with her. He imagined them living together and flying over to China to meet her family and everyone remarking at how different and tall he looked. He would learn how to speak Mandarin. He imagined buying her mother flowers.

  The next morning Beckman was shaving in their bathroom. He shook his razor in the sink, which he’d half-filled with hot water. He looked at his jaw in the mirror and ballooned one of his cheeks. He took his shaving brush and started to brush soap onto his face. The sink was about the size of a shoebox.

  Thomas was in the bathroom too, in the bath, with the shower curtain pulled so only his head and shoulders were visible. He had his eyes closed like he was deep in thought and Beckman was worried that Thomas was ignoring him. There was just the sound of the razor moving through the water in the sink and the occasional drip coming from the tap in the bath.

  ‘What’s her thesis about anyway?’ Thomas said finally.

  ‘I read the start of it last night in bed. I think it’s about how certain ideals of the Cultural Revolution are still present in lower forms of entertainment. Like trashy novels and sit-coms. I didn’t get very far.’

  ‘Is she good-looking?’

  ‘Yes, very.’

  ‘I knew I should have gone instead of you.’

  Beckman angled his face in the mirror, then lifted his razor to his face and began to shave slowly. Whenever he shaved he always enjoyed taking his time.

  ‘You’d have lost interest anyway,’ Beckman said.

  ‘Probably.’

  There was a shifting in the water. Thomas’s hair was wet and pushed back off his face. He took a cigarette from the pack that he’d left sitting in the soap dish. He still had his eyes closed and his movements were surprisingly confident. He’d told Beckman once that when he was in high school he’d been in a lot of plays. Musical
s mostly, but other, smaller, productions for his drama class.

  ‘Open that window won’t you?’ Thomas said.

  Beckman leaned over and pushed open the bathroom window. The cigarette smoke that had been hanging in the air like cobwebs was sucked outside. Beckman shook his razor back and forth in the sink again.

  ‘The other day I saw this girl at the supermarket and she was wearing these small shorts and I could see, on the inside of her thigh, she had this tattoo of all these roses,’ Thomas said. ‘She had these big white thighs, they were big enough to fit a whole bouquet on there.’

  ‘I don’t really like tattoos,’ Beckman said.

  ‘Me neither, but there was something about it that I found so attractive. Don’t you ever get that? You find something so distasteful you end up being aroused by it?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Sometimes things turn me on, like the smell of paint thinner or something, and I think, What the hell is that all about? Maybe something happened to me as a child.’

  ‘Paint thinner?’

  ‘I was just using that as an example.’

  Beckman ran the tap over his razor for a short burst. He angled his face the other way, pushing his thumb against the underside of his chin, like he was trying to gauge perspective.

  ‘One of these days I’m going to buy you an electric razor,’ Thomas said.

  ‘I find them too dry,’ Beckman said. ‘Shaving this way makes my face feel different. It feels cleaner.’

  In the lane below there was the sound of a car door closing, and then an engine starting. The bathroom window looked straight out onto the brick wall of the neighbouring apartment, and the upper branches of a birch tree. Sunlight, angled between the buildings, illuminated the wall. Beckman heard the tap coming on in the bathtub. Thomas had been sitting in the bath for over half an hour. Beckman let the water out of the sink.