Men Like Air

by Connolly, Tom

  ‘Going to get a coffee,’ she said. ‘Back in a minute.’

  Leo lifted a chair from its position at the back of the room and placed it silently beside the bed. He threaded his hand through the tubes to rest it on William’s arm. ‘I’m here,’ he whispered, and both men enjoyed the sight of each other. A nurse came and Leo moved away to give her room to work. He went to the window. Steam rose from vents on the roofline into a vivid blue sky. The streets below played him a silent movie and on to the screen stepped Joy, leaning backwards as if assaulted by the sunlight and fishing sunglasses out of her bag. She sipped her coffee then bowed her head, and went down on to her haunches. She put her cup down and held her head in her hands. Leo pressed against the window to watch her. He heard the nurse leave, and far below him his sister rose to her feet and commandeered a taxi which stole her from the scene. Her coffee cup remained abandoned on the sidewalk, unnerving Leo with the way it made 58th Street resemble the scene of a disappearance.

  From the bedside, Leo grew quickly familiar with the hospital’s sober rhythms, the porters and nurses passing left to right and right to left, the sounds from off-stage, the beat of the monitors hooked to William’s body and the warm, pacifying simplicity of crisis. Within an hour, he could not imagine life beyond this place.

  The nurse returned. ‘How’s he doing?’ she said.

  Leo whispered, ‘No sign of life at all, apart from his breathing.’

  ‘Breathing is right up there, when it comes to signs of life,’ she said.

  He left messages on Joy’s cell at three and five and seven. At nine o’clock, he called the apartment and told the machine that William was fully awake and the nurses had sat him up in bed.

  ‘I’m here,’ she said, urgently, her voice squeezed as she leaned her ribs across the arm of the couch.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I found myself standing on West 36th Street, no idea how I got there.’

  ‘In a taxi,’ Leo said.

  ‘We were meant to be bulletproof. And everything in the apartment feels like make-believe.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ he assured her.

  ‘When I was outside, looking at our building, I felt sure that my life would not be waiting for me inside. I took a Restoril and some 5-HTP and dreamt the apartment was full of people and I moved through them, asking if they had seen William, but his name meant nothing to them.’

  ‘Maybe the Restoril wasn’t such a great idea.’

  ‘It turned into an orgy but everyone wanted Susan not me, and I ended up serving coffee for them all and asking them, “Don’t you find her too painfully thin?”’

  ‘Just a stupid dream,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  It was silent for a while between them.

  ‘I love you, sis,’ Leo said.

  ‘Thank you very much, Leo,’ she said, chilling him with her detachment. ‘I bathed and put on a little make-up, put on my raincoat to come back to the hospital and sat on the couch, just for a moment.’

  She stopped abruptly, as if something had occurred to her, and Leo heard only her breathing, and then even that seemed to stop. He had watched all day the way the fast-moving clouds sent shadows and sunlight swooping across the hospital walls. Now, in the silence, the walls darkened and the evening closed in on him.

  ‘You there?’ he whispered.

  ‘And I’m clutching my bag to my lap as if I’m eighty years old and I cannot move, I cannot get up from my seat and I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

  Leo hesitated, unsure what to offer. ‘They’re pleased with him. He’s talking a little.’

  ‘He should be here with me.’

  ‘No,’ he said, as kindly as he could. ‘You should be here with him.’

  ‘It’s funny. I spent all this time wanting to look after that girl more than we do and now I could kill her if I went near her.’

  She hadn’t known she was going to say any of this, nor did she mean to hang up as abruptly as she did.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Leo said, to the space she had vacated.

  The next morning, she appeared at sunrise, well before visitors were allowed, a show of devotion wasted on William, who was uninterested in everything, even the kisses she dotted across his face and hands as she settled beside him, kisses that prompted Leo to retreat to the chair in which he had spent the night.

  William allowed the luxury of detachment, the gift of his vacant, broken state and empty eyes, to permit him to observe his wife unflinchingly. Her face seemed a mix of doubt and accusation. She laid her head down on the bed.

  Leo watched William’s fingers twisting gently in Joy’s hair. The sun moved off the room and left a cool, flat light that was more painterly. Leo beheld the scene from afar and included himself in the family portrait. As if reading his mind, William turned his head, with agonising slowness, and sent a minuscule smile across the room to Leo’s appreciative ever-presence. As Joy lifted her head, Leo was amazed to see William close his eyes and feign sleep. He watched his sister unable to be still, nor grasp the value of doing nothing. He observed her as she aimed accusing looks at the nurses who came and went, as if saying to them, Are none of you going to tell me to go home and get some rest, give me some pep talk about playing the long game, it being a marathon not a sprint? It was Leo who finally did that for her. He kissed her cheek. ‘You look tired. He’s asleep anyway. I’ll walk you home.’

  ‘If you think so…’ she said, and appeared perfectly reluctant to leave.

  She scooped the fresh air into her lungs and asked Leo if he minded walking at pace. She needed to get her blood pumping, she said. She looked powerful and tall to him and he struggled to keep up. He saw her look at a woman and a man in the window of a dive bar, breaking from a wet, open kiss to put bottles of beer to their lips. He watched her stop and stare at them until they saw her and stared back.

  ‘I hate being alone here,’ she said when they entered the apartment.

  Leo made coffee and watched her pour a glass of wine.

  ‘Argentinian…’ she said, aloud but to herself. ‘Vibrant, muscular. Ar-jen-teena. A handsome people.’ She downed the first glass.

  ‘You alright?’ Leo asked.

  She raised her eyes at him and he acknowledged that it was a stupid question.

  She took a bath with the second glass. Leo browsed a volume of The Earth from the Air and fell asleep on the couch. He was woken by the sound of Joy talking indiscriminately. ‘Everything is random,’ he heard her say. Despite the fug of his short, broken sleep, it was clear to him that he was not meant to take up the baton of conversation.

  ‘We never really know anyone, not truly,’ she said.

  He didn’t agree and he didn’t say so. Two-thirds of a bottle of malbec was reminding her that that it was pure chance that she was living the life she lived.

  ‘I so nearly turned back at Southampton as we boarded the liner.’

  ‘I remember.’ He yawned. ‘Thank God you didn’t. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.’

  He watched her arch herself backwards on the chair towards the living room window and crane her neck to look at midtown. The alcohol made her head movements unsteady, like those of a child constantly buzzed by new thoughts and sights and sounds.

  ‘A thousand windows looking back at me, telling me I could be standing in any other room in the world right now, if I had done one thing differently in my life. It’s all so flimsy.’

  He fell asleep again as he listened to her go to the bathroom and brush the red dye of Latin grape off her teeth. He felt a blanket settle on his body and heard the door close.

  When he woke, he called her and she picked up immediately. ‘Wait a second, Leo. I’ll take the sirloin. Rare to medium rare.’

  Leo listened to the buzz behind her voice. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘The Clinton Corner House,’ she said.

  ‘I thought you guys boycotted any restaurant with the name “Clinton”?’

&n
bsp; She called her waiter back and Leo listened to her ask for a side salad instead of fries, in a separate bowl. ‘I do not like bloody salad,’ she told the waiter, and, ‘It might be time to lose some weight,’ she told Leo.

  ‘There again,’ Leo said, ‘I thought you boycotted every restaurant that isn’t the Red Flame.’ He put his shoes on and sipped some tepid coffee.

  ‘Have you ever thought it remotely possible that William could be having an affair?’ Joy asked.

  ‘With the drug girl?’

  She gasped. ‘I had prayed you wouldn’t have a clue what I was talking about but you know.’

  ‘I know that he isn’t. Hasn’t. Wouldn’t.’

  ‘You don’t, actually. You two think you’re inside each other’s heads but he was starting to tell me something.’

  ‘Not that.’

  ‘I’m so angry. I’m so angry that for the first time I’ve reason to be furious at him and I’m not allowed to be. It’s choking me. You can’t be jealous or angry with a husband in ICU and he’s made it impossible to love him just when I have to most.’

  ‘You’re wrong about this.’

  ‘Leo, you’re my brother. Mine, not William’s. Tell your own sister you know, one hundred per cent absolutely know for certain, that he isn’t in love with her.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as absolute certainty so I can’t tell you that.’ Nor could he tell her that he loved William more than he loved her. ‘But he promised me he wasn’t and I have complete faith in him.’

  He was leaving the building now, wedging his cell under his chin as he put on his coat and looked for a taxi.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’m hungry. See you in a bit.’ She hung up.

  Already, the corridors leading to William’s room felt like home, the only place on earth Leo wanted to be. The scent of disinfectant and the film of gel on Leo’s hands were the flames and hearth of crisis, that much-maligned state of being in which life finally offered him the clarity and purpose he craved. It was a long time since he had felt this good. He threw his coat aside and drew the chair to the bed. William was asleep and Leo rested his hand on William’s arm. He was here to save him.

  20

  The quantities of jelly spread over Finn’s testicles seemed generous. He was not accustomed to undressing in front of strangers. He watched the monochrome screen, his right testis larger than the left (what was that about?), and nervously voiced his relief at avoiding an erection. The almost friendly sixty-year-old nurse ventured that not many men became sexually aroused when waiting to discover if they’d got cancer of the balls.

  ‘When you put it like that…’ Finn agreed.

  The fractional trace of a smile made her exactly the sort of woman by whom Finn still, at nineteen years, six feet and eighty-five kilos, wanted to be held. He was regretting his decision, when given the choice of removing his jeans and underwear altogether or pulling them down to his knees, to plump for the latter. It had seemed the more dignified option but how wrong he had been. The nurse handed him an economy-sized roll of heavyweight tissue and told him he was ‘through’, a word to which he attached a short-lived terminal negativity as he wiped himself dry and hitched up his trousers – short-lived because she soon added, ‘You’re all clear. Those little guys you can feel are non-cancerous polyps. Very common. And unless they grow large or painful there’s no need to do anything about them. You are fine.’

  ‘Not dying?’

  ‘Not even a little bit.’

  It struck Finn that this moment was possibly the first time he had felt strongly, in the positive sense, about being alive. With Dilly, he felt free in some ways but he was not himself with her, so the pleasure he experienced with her did not apply, strictly speaking, to him. Even when she had been visiting the most glorious of sexual acts upon him, he could tell that there was a difference between joy and pleasure. Right now, he felt a happiness manifest as optimism and lightness, and that was entirely new.

  Finn headed out and the fresh air made his skin cold where the gel had been. He took a call on his new phone from Leo, who launched straight in.

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘I’m all clear. It’s a tulip.’

  ‘A polyp?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Very good,’ Leo said, withdrawing the concern from his voice for fear of sounding ridiculous. He paused, and in the space where he might have mentioned his brother-in-law’s accident there was, instead, silence.

  ‘Thank you, Leo,’ Finn said.

  How good that sounded. ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘You okay? You sound sad,’ Finn said.

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘I can tell you’re not fine but I won’t stick my nose in,’ he said. ‘I know when adults are lying.’

  He walked a block of silence before Leo replied.

  ‘My brother-in-law is in hospital after an accident and I’m concerned.’

  ‘Will he be okay?’

  ‘Yes, he’s gonna be fine.’

  ‘Fine like you’re fine, or really fine?’

  ‘Really really fine,’ Leo said. ‘He’s doing well.’

  ‘That’s great. I’m sorry it’s happened.’

  ‘Thank you. You back at the gallery?’

  ‘No. I’ve got to go somewhere.’

  ‘Okay,’ Leo said, cautiously. ‘But you are coming back?’

  On the opposite side of First Avenue, there was a new building of small, stylish-looking apartments, like pods. In one, Finn saw a middle-aged woman sitting with her back curved over an upright piano keyboard, playing a piece of music one-handed, her left ear listening intently to her own playing, her fingers working a series of notes that only the walls of her apartment could enjoy. And he bet himself that she and Leo would be perfect for each other, living the deeply felt, unexpressed life. He saw his own reflection at street level and the knowledge that no one would consider him capable of such thoughts. Now, although a guardedness about him remained, he told himself that Leo was almost certainly an okay human being.

  ‘Yes, Leo,’ Finn said. ‘I would like to carry on working for you, please.’

  ‘Oh,’ Leo said. ‘Very good. Well, then… I’m pleased.’ His voice faltered and he hung up.

  The Gay Hussar was quiet. Finn leaned forward on the counter to look for signs of life. The owner appeared from the restrooms holding a bucket and a mop. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Looking for Amy?’

  Finn nodded.

  ‘She’s not in today.’

  He slumped and she laughed to herself. ‘Don’t slash your wrists.’ She gave him the address of a Japanese restaurant in the East Village. She rolled a cigarette, sitting on the bench on the sidewalk, and texted ahead to Amy as she watched Finn go.

  Amy stood alone, out in front of the restaurant. Her hands were clenched and her stance compact and neat as she scanned the street. When she saw Finn, she bowed her head and smiled at her feet. She removed a hair clip from the bun in her hair. It fell almost to her shoulders, like a wave too modest to make a splash. They said ‘hello’ at the same moment. He was shaking a little. She took both his hands and went up on to the tips of her toes to kiss his cheek, then led him inside to the kitchen at the far end of the restaurant. She introduced him to her aunt and uncle, who were preparing food. They were in their late forties, and attractive. The uncle had a quiff and the looks of a film star. They spoke to Amy in Japanese and her right foot lifted behind her and rested against the calf muscle of her left leg, just as Finn had seen it do on the first evening.

  He had never eaten Japanese food. Dilly had at one time implied that she had eaten it on a trip to Osaka, before it became evident she had not yet been to Japan and she’d blamed Finn for getting the wrong end of the stick. The aunt brought food out to them at a table by the window and teased her niece.

  ‘What she say?’ Finn asked.

  ‘She’s being stupid,’ Amy said, unable to look him in the eye.

  He told her she looked really nice
but the start of his sentence was buried beneath the sound Amy made putting the lids of the miso soup on the table, and she replied, ‘It does, doesn’t it?’ Her aunt called out from the back of the restaurant and Amy shook her head shyly. ‘My aunt and uncle are trying to embarrass me,’ she said.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Finn said, and boy, did he mean it.

  ‘They are very nice people,’ Amy said.

  ‘Nicer than mine,’ Finn said through a grin.

  ‘It doesn’t seem fair, does it,’ Finn’s uncle had once said to him, ‘that another sixteen-year-old boy is dead at your father’s hands and you have your whole life ahead of you.’

  This had liberated Finn, in allowing him to realise just how unintelligent the man was. It made a mockery of the anger and violence. It didn’t bring it to an end, but it gave it a certain crucial insignificance. Finn had no longer felt touched by the violence after that, knowing that he would one day be free of this man, while the man would never be free of himself.

  Amy and Finn took a walk and Finn was aware that he had not spoken in a long while and the silence began to press against the walls of his head and the more he tried to conjure up a conversation, the further he got from finding one.

  ‘I just found out I don’t have a tumour on my gonads.’

  Not what he’d planned.

  ‘Gonads?’

  ‘My balls. Testicles.’

  ‘Right.’ Not what she’d expected, and she laughed.

  ‘They scanned them,’ he said.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she said.

  ‘The woman at work calls them my snow globes. I don’t know why I’m not shutting up.’

  ‘The woman at work knows about your… them?’

  ‘She knows everything.’

  ‘Right. She sounds efficient.’

  ‘That’s what she is.’

  ‘That’s excellent, about your balls.’

  ‘I’m really pleased,’ he deadpanned, and she laughed again.

  The silence returned, so he broke it. ‘About my balls…’

  ‘About your rocks…’ she said.

  ‘About my nuts…’