To Be Someone

by Louise Voss

  I said nothing, but tears welled in my eyes.

  “Speak to me, Helena, please.” Sam shook me gently.

  I looked at her and took a long, deep breath. “When can we go to Santorini, then?”

  “As soon as we book somewhere to stay?”

  “Fine.”

  I had been sure that was the last I’d see of Vinnie, and I was heartbroken. I intended to phone Ron and pull out of the dinner party that night, but Sam nagged me until I agreed to go anyway. She said, rightly, that Ron was new in my life (I’d recently hired him with a vague idea of getting some of my old songs remixed by hot new producers, although nothing had come of it thus far), so it wouldn’t do to let him know how antisocial I really was.

  Plus I might meet a new man there (not that I wanted one). Plus, I so rarely went to these sorts of functions. Plus, I was a professional. Plus, it would be good to have something to take my mind off Vinnie. Etc., etc. I eventually caved in. I had bought a new dress to wear, the cab was booked, I’d even been looking forward to it, albeit with trepidation.

  Sam stayed long enough to zip up my dress and do my hair for me, before she drove back to her flat for another night in watching ER and wondering who Timothy was out having fun with. She’d been gone about five minutes, and I was just putting on my lip liner, when there was a hammering at the front door.

  Assuming she’d forgotten something, I ran down the stairs and flung open the door, lip pencil in hand.

  Of course, it was Vinnie, standing there all spruced up and cleanshaven, clutching a bottle of wine.

  I was flabbergasted. I stood there, open-mouthed, as he grinned jauntily at me.

  “Don’t forget to color in the rest,” he said, gesturing toward my outlined lips. “Right, what time are we off?”

  I hung on to the doorframe, blinking in disbelief and fury. “You have got to be fucking joking.”

  Vinnie had the gall to look surprised.

  “Is it canceled? What are you all dressed up for, then?”

  I was approaching meltdown. “How dare you!” I spoke through gritted teeth. “I can’t believe your nerve, I really can’t. You were all over some whore in Richmond Park this afternoon. How could you think that I’d ever want to clap eyes on you again, after seeing that? Just get lost, and don’t bother coming back.”

  Vinnie slapped the side of his head as if he had forgotten that he’d snogged someone else in front of me only hours earlier.

  “Oh! You mean Miyuki! Man, we weren’t all over each other. We’re just housemates, you know, old friends.” He paused. “You saw us walking through the park together, didn’t you? Hey, you should have called out. I’d have introduced you!”

  Miraculously, I stayed relatively calm; i.e., I didn’t actually kill him. “No, Vinnie, I didn’t ‘just’ see you walking through the park. I saw you lying on top of her, dry-humping away like a terrier in heat. I saw you suck the face off her. I saw you whisper sweet nothings in her ear. And now I learn that you live with her, too! Please don’t insult me by telling me you’re just friends. God, it’s so obvious now. No wonder you never liked to be seen out with me; no wonder you said you were ‘embarrassed’ by what a mess your house is.”

  Vinnie grinned. “Listen, it’s fine. She doesn’t mind if I see other women, honestly. She’s cool.”

  That really was the final straw. To my utter disgust and humiliation, I burst into tears.

  “I MIND!” I bawled.

  I was about to slam the door in his face and retire to bed with a bottle of vodka, when a black cab bumped along the path outside the front gate, tooting at me. There was no way I was going to let Vinnie see he’d ruined my evening as well as my life.

  Mustering up what vestiges of dignity I could, I snuffled, “Excuse me, I have a dinner party to attend,” and shot back in the house to grab my makeup and handbag. Ron lived in Highgate, so I had a good long cab ride ahead of me in which to apply enough slap to disguise the fact that I’d been crying.

  I locked the front door behind me, ignoring the fact that Vinnie was still standing outside the porch behind me.

  “Have a nice life, asshole,” I hiccuped as I barged past him, grabbing the bottle of wine from his arms on the way.

  It was only once I was barreling safely around the North Circular, having just about managed to repair the damage to my face, that I looked at the bottle I’d purloined from Vinnie. It was Blue Nun.

  I left it in the taxi.

  It must have been a remnant of the discipline I’d learned in Blue Idea, the same consummate professionalism that had gotten me through a grueling national tour knowing that Sam was lying in a hospital bed, but I was great that night. Vinnie’s betrayal at least had one positive effect: It swept aside all my qualms about meeting new people.

  From the moment I sat down at the snowy linen and sparkling crystal–set table in Ron’s house (which was ultramodern, architect-designed, and overlooked the cemetery; it had a very public-toiletesque exterior, but was beautiful inside), I was in top form, caring about nothing, allowing my wineglass to be filled repeatedly. I didn’t even feel too ashamed for not having brought a bottle myself—I told Ron I’d left it in the taxi. He waved away my apology with a flourish of his napkin.

  I knew I was a hit, and I loved it. Suddenly I wondered why on earth I didn’t get out more, why I had wasted yet another year for the sake of Vinnie’s infrequent attentions.

  The other guests were Clint, Ron’s young boyfriend, who wrote screenplays and was an absolute sweetheart, and a couple named Maggie and Gus—she worked for Reuters and he was deputy program director for a London radio station called New World, which I never listened to. I apologized profusely for Vinnie’s absence, and told them he had caught a nasty stomach bug from eating some dodgy shellfish, and had not been off the toilet for the past five hours. Wishful thinking.

  Gus and Ron had been at university together. “Isn’t she fabulous? Didn’t I tell you she was awesome?” Ron kept saying to Gus about me, and Gus kept nodding, until Maggie looked quite annoyed and stabbed her fork into her champignons farcies with enough force to make Gus desist.

  Over the course of the evening, in answer to their questions, I told them all about Blue Idea: what it had been like, how we got our first deal, how it felt to be in front of a crowd of thousands and thousands, what I missed about it, what I’d loathed about it. How I managed to remember it all so well.

  I told them that I could remember most of the key events of my life through the songs that had been in the background, the “soundtrack to my life”; not Blue Idea songs, because so much work and sweat and tedium went into the perfecting of each of them, but other people’s songs, the ones that struck me deep down, in a way I knew I’d never forget.

  “I have a theory, right?” I said, elbows on the table, on my second glass of Beaume de Venise. “If I were a DJ, I would play the only records that had done that for other people, because if you think about it, it’s rarely the completely crappy songs that people remember and weep over for years to come. My theory is: Say something totally momentous happens to you when you’re listening to the radio—for example, you open a letter saying you’ve won a million pounds. If the particular record being played at that moment is, say, ‘Agadoo,’ then you just forget that you even had the radio switched on. But if it’s something brilliant, maybe, ‘Life on Mars,’ then forever afterwards you associate that song with winning the money, and get all nostalgic when you hear it.”

  Ron joined in with Gus on the enthusiastic nods, and handed round the after-dinner mints.

  I was on a roll. “So I reckon if you got people to ring in with the songs that meant something to them, then you’d have a fair chance of getting a decent show. Of course, you’d have a few morons saying that they lost their virginity to ‘The Birdie Song,’ or whatever but anyone who has that as their favorite song probably isn’t articulate enough to ring into a radio station and request it. Because that’s the other thing.… ”

 
I quickly checked that everyone’s eyes weren’t completely glazed over, but they were all still agog.

  “It wouldn’t be enough to just make a request; I’d make them explain why the record meant so much to them. In detail. Right down to what color underwear they were wearing that night. If they couldn’t remember exactly what was going on, then I wouldn’t believe the record could be that important to them.

  “Take today,” I plunged on recklessly. “I was in the park, having a picnic with my best friend, Sam, when we saw”—at the last minute my sense of circumspection thankfully returned—“her boyfriend, kissing another woman.”

  Tuts and sighs rippled around the table.

  “We were playing a tape at the time, a song that Sam hadn’t heard for ages, and that she’d just told me she really loved.”

  “Which one?” interrupted Clint curiously.

  “Sinead O’Connor, ‘Nothing Compares 2 U,’ ” I said impatiently, wanting to get on with the story.

  Clint swooned theatrically. “Oh, I just love that record, too. Her face on the video! Makes me want to cry just thinking about it.”

  “Yeah, yeah. So, anyway, I reckon that if Sam hadn’t liked the song, she wouldn’t even have known we’d been listening to music at the time. But since she did, I’d put money on the fact that forever more, when … Sam thinks of her lousy, two-timing dickhead of a boyfriend”—(I may have thumped the table at that point)—“she’ll think of that song, and watching clouds, and eating quiche, and how prickly the grass felt, and she’ll feel really, really sad and hurt and betrayed.”

  I was about to have to leave the room to go and splash cold water on my face, when Gus spoke. “How would you fancy a job on New World, as a DJ on the evening session?”

  The salty tension that had been building inside the bridge of my nose suddenly disappeared.

  “Pardon?” I asked, clutching the tablecloth. Now they were all nodding, like it was catching, and beaming moronically at me.

  “We’ve got a slot opening up soon. I think you’d be perfect for it.”

  “But I don’t know how to DJ,” I burbled.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll learn. We’ll train you up before you start. The main thing is, your music knowledge is great, your name is already well-known, and you’ve got a great new idea for a show.”

  I was astounded. “I have?”

  “Yes, definitely. A kind of confessional request show? I think it would be terrific. What do you say?”

  After three seconds thinking about it, I finally joined in with the nodding. “Okay. Why not?”

  THINKING ABOUT GOD AND TOBY

  I LAY IN BED LATE ONE HUMID NIGHT, UNCOMFORTABLE ON A creased-up fusty sheet which I hadn’t bothered to change for weeks, drowsy from the pill I had to take to make me sleep. I had taken off my eye patch and was tracing the stitched-up socket where my eye once was. The skin had healed, but it was twisted and velvety, like a stick-on scar, and the absence of my eyeball made the space feel concave and hollow. I marveled at how even I had kind of managed to become accustomed to being one-eyed: Like anything else, it was a process of adjustment. It was a bit like having contact lenses, really; you eventually just got used to fiddling about with sterilizing fluids and screw-top containers, intermittently blurred vision, and the ever-present fear of a lens popping out at an inopportune moment. Not that anything could pop out of that sealed-up space now, but the rigmarole of adjusting eye patches and being vigilant about not bumping into lampposts was vaguely comparable. Having to pay attention to one’s vision instead of taking it for granted.

  Even if I was getting used to it, though, it didn’t prevent me from loathing and detesting the fact that my eye was gone. I wished fancifully that it would just come back, the way my mislaid hearing had. But it never would, and neither would Sam. Or Toby. It surprised me that I was still thinking about him, after the beery debacle, but I was—albeit with a lot more reservations and a lot fewer expectations.

  It was two A.M., and despite the pill, I still couldn’t get to sleep. I wondered if I ought to say a prayer, to ask for some sort of spiritual guidance and healing. What with my hour of need being at hand, and all.

  But I couldn’t do it. It somehow didn’t seem to work anymore. It wasn’t that I ever stopped believing in God; He just didn’t seem to be around very much.

  Perhaps I’d gotten too confused over the years. I had briefly dabbled in so many different esoteric and spiritual practices that the easy faith I’d gobbled up in high school had been usurped by something more … well, cool. It wasn’t cool to think of God as a white-beardy man peering anxiously down at us from His cloud. God was a spark of pure light. God was an essence. God was all around us. God was inside me. God was an energy. I’d had so many different people tell me what God was, or wasn’t, that I no longer knew what to think.

  I wanted to ask Him to help me, only I didn’t know to whom to address my inquiry. Angels didn’t seem somehow senior enough, and Jesus seemed too busy. It was a dilemma. But, apropos the Plan, I didn’t think God would kick me out if I suddenly turned up on the Other Side prematurely. Whether He was big or small, cloudy or solid, I was sure He would understand. That idea about suicides being eternally damned was a medieval concept; I’d read that somewhere. Besides, Blue Idea had given tons of cash to charity, surely that would stand me in good stead.… I might have a bit of extra karma to work off, like calories after Christmas, but it would be a small price to pay to see Sam again, and to not feel this emptiness anymore.

  It was quite funny, really. I could still recite all twenty-six lines of the Creed, faultlessly. I knew how to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo until my voice turned into white noise. I could do the Yang Style Tai Chi Long Form and the yogic Sun Salutation. I’d wrapped myself in white robes and meditated in silence for hours, and been put in touch with my angels (right before they took early retirement, apparently).

  The only thing I still didn’t know how to do was to get anybody, or anything, to help me cope with what I was currently going through. When I thought about religion, I felt like a tourist trying to buy a 50p pencil sharpener in the Harrods sale while being shoved to the back of the queue by diplomats’ wives waving Platinum Amex cards. Overlooked and invisible. I was in the right shop, but all the shop assistants were busy swiping credit cards, or else were standing about examining their fingernails and ignoring me.

  I supposed I should have gone back to that therapist, the one who visited me in hospital—but therapy wasn’t what I wanted. It was too rational, somehow, and I was afraid that I’d end up getting talked out of the Plan. End up calm but forgotten. No, no, that would be no good.

  After I finally got to sleep, I dreamed about Salisbury Cathedral, and about Toby and Ruby. They were adjudicating a Great Continental Quilt Bob-Sleigh Race between two teams: me and Sam versus Vinnie and Sam’s ex, Timothy. The event was being held in the cathedral close, on the long stretch of smooth gray path outside the west front.

  Toby sat on a big throne in the cathedral doorway, wearing a bishop’s miter, and Ruby sat on his right-hand side in a fetching sparkly crown. As we raced past them, I relived the feeling of thrilled fear I always got when Sam and I used to play there as kids: that all the stone saints and gargoyles looking down from their ledges and drains and corners could actually come tumbling off on top of me; that the whole towering stone facade could topple down and crush me at will. It was as much a sensation of respect as of fear, the power of the building pouring into and through me.

  Sam and I beat Vinnie and Timothy to the finish line.

  “Well done, you’re the winners!” Ruby said graciously to us. “Here’s your prizes. You”—pointing a magic wand at Sam—“get six mini-packets of M and Ms, and you”—pointing at me—“get a lifetime supply of being my mummy.”

  I was delighted.

  I woke up freezing cold, with my duvet on the floor and a fresh pack of memories of the cathedral shuffling themselves around inside my head, sharp as knives, summoned
by the dream. As I wrapped myself up in the chilly quilt, I turned the cards over in my head before me, one by one. I was surprised at how many there were. Even at eight or nine years old, Sam and I used to love going on guided tours up the cathedral tower, retracing the steps that the drunken shepherd must have taken before he made his maiden flight.

  Memories of walking outside along the cathedral roof’s base, knowing that its waterproof lead coverings heated up in summer and became soft to the touch of our small fingers, as though the roofs were all lagged with giant slabs of gray toffee.

  Memories of looking up the tower, from the inside now, and seeing the crisscrossing scaffolding of thick oak rafters, jumbled together, the veins and supporting arteries of the spire, getting closer and tighter toward the top, a giant pyramidal bird’s nest of twigs the thickness of a man’s torso.

  Memories of climbing from ground level up and up the tiny winding steps carved into the thickness of the walls, round and round until we felt dizzy, with vertigo and the joys of a secret hidden place.

  Memories of daylight filtering into the narrow stairwells from arrow-slit windows, throwing weak dusty stripes of light on our faces.

  That’s odd, I thought. All those memories, and no accompanying song anywhere, not even the vague low chants of the cathedral choir singing matins. It felt like watching television with the sound turned down.

  The other effect of my dream was that I couldn’t stop thinking about Toby. If his friend Bill had been telling the truth, that Toby really was mad about me, then I owed it to him to see him just once more. I had retrieved from my car the receipt with his sister’s address scrawled on it, and put it for safe keeping into the Hel-Sam box. The receipt was still scrunched into a ball about the size of a hazlenut—I was putting off unwrapping it until every other part of the Plan was ready.