The Imperfectionists: A Novel

by Tom Rachman

  "You can't take those!" he exclaims. "What am I gonna wear?"

  "What have you been wearing this past week?"

  At the espresso bar, she tells Annika about the Irishman. "And I stole his boxers."

  "Why would you take some old guy's underwear?"

  "He's a kid, actually. From Ireland. Has blond dreadlocks."

  "Dreadlocks on a white guy? That is sad."

  "I know, but he's tall, which makes it slightly less horrific. Doesn't it? I'm a total idiot, though--I ran out without leaving him my contact details."

  "Look, you've got the guy's underwear--he'll turn up."

  But he doesn't. She phones the number on his business card and leaves a message.

  He doesn't call back. She leaves another. Again, no response. Finally, she visits his address, which looks like a boarded-up garage. He answers the door, blinking at the daylight. "Well, hello there!" He stoops to her low altitude and kisses her cheek. She pulls away in surprise. He says, "I clean forgot. You know that--I clean bloody forgot about your window. Aren't I terrible! I am sorry. I'll sort that out for you right now."

  "Actually, I'm going to have to file that insurance claim."

  He toys with a dreadlock. "I should get rid of these stupid things. Don't you think?"

  "I don't know."

  "Bit of a tradition about them. One of my odysseys."

  "Odysseys?"

  "Like,

  trademarks."

  "You

  mean

  'oddities'?"

  "Daft, though, aren't they. Come on--you chop them for me. All right?" He beckons her in.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I give you scissors. You cut them off."

  His place was clearly not intended as a living space. It is windowless and illuminated solely by a halogen lamp in the corner. A yellowing mattress is pushed against the wall, with a battered backpack beside it, a heap of clothing, juggling balls and clubs, a toolbox, and his spy thrillers and catechism. A basin and a toilet are affixed to the wall, without a divider for privacy. The room smells of old pizza. He rummages in the toolbox and emerges with a pair of industrial scissors.

  "Are you serious?" she says. "Those things are the size of my torso."

  "What do you mean by 'torso'?"

  "I'm just saying they're big scissors."

  "It'll be fine! Don't you worry, Hardy."

  He sits on the closed toilet seat. He's now almost the same height as she is standing. She rises on the balls of her feet and snips, handing him the first amputated strand. "This is actually kind of fun," she says, and cuts another. The discarded locks pile up like kindling. His ears, bared now, are bent slightly, like a rabbit's. He raises a mirror.

  Both are reflected: Rory studying his shorn head; she studying him. He grins at her and she laughs, then catches sight of her own face and recoils, shaking hair from her shoes.

  "That look okay to you?"

  "Looks brilliant. Thanks very much. My head feels so light." He shakes it, like a wet dog. "You know, I'm starting to think getting robbed wasn't so bad after all. I got my stuff back and I got a free haircut out of it."

  "Fine for you, maybe. I didn't get all my things back."

  The next morning, Hardy awakens thinking of Rory. At noon, she sends him a text message. Thereafter, whenever a mobile beeps she checks hers. But it's never him.

  She rues having sent that pathetic message ("I still have your underwear!") and hopes that somehow he never received it. After a few hours, she can't bear waiting any longer, so she phones him. He picks up and promises to "pop by" later.

  By midnight, he still hasn't showed. She phones again, but no answer.

  It's almost 1 A.M. when he appears, grinning, on her doorstep. She makes a point of looking at her watch. "I'll get the stuff now," she says. "It's kind of freezing if you leave the door open like that."

  "Should I come in, then?"

  "I guess." She fetches the plastic bag containing his underwear. "I hope those weren't your only pairs."

  "Course not." He takes them. "I wondered before why a thief would want my underpants. But now I see they're a pretty popular item."

  "So, okay, I guess that's all. Or, uhm, did you want a drink or something?"

  "Yeah, nice one, yeah. Lovely."

  "I have stuff to eat. If you want."

  "Super, super." He follows her into the kitchen.

  She opens a bottle of Valpolicella and heats up a casserole of lasagna that she had planned to bring to the office. (She cooks abundantly and expertly but eats none of it; she has seen the bricks of butter, shovels of sugar, gallons of double cream that disappeared into the mix, ready to reappear on her hips. So her creations--the Leaning Tower of Potato, the Seattle Swirl Cookies, the Sesame-Crusted Salmon Cakes with Lemon Tarragon Sauce--end up at the paper, spread out for the staff, nibbled by distracted editors, spilled on the carpeting, as she observes from her desk, feeding only on their praise.)

  Rory devours the lasagna, downs most of the wine, and chatters, all at once.

  "Lovely. Super." He tells her about his father, who owns a plumbing company outside Dublin, and his mother, a secretary at a medical-supplies company. He briefly attended university in Ireland but quit short of a degree and traveled to Australia, Thailand, Nepal.

  Next, he was in New York, working at pubs. He took a class there in improv comedy and performed at an open mike in the East Village. After that, he trekked through Europe, took a ship from Marseille to Naples, passed a few months in the south of Italy, then made his way up to Rome.

  She fills his glass. "I'd never have the courage to teach a class in anything. Not that I'm qualified to. Let alone in a foreign city. It's pretty brave."

  "Or

  plain

  stupid."

  "Brave," she insists.

  He asks about her work. "Hate to admit it," he says, "but I've hardly read a newspaper in my life. So bloody small, isn't it."

  "Small?"

  "The writing. You need to make the writing bigger."

  "Mm," she says. "Maybe."

  "What do you write about then, Hardy?"

  "Business." She sips her wine. "Sorry, I'm not keeping up with you here."

  "You won't keep up with me," he replies good-naturedly.

  "Can I pour you some more?" She does so. "Well, I was hired to write about personal finance and luxury goods. But I seem to have become a one-woman business section. We had this ancient guy in Paris called Lloyd Burko who used to do the occasional European business story. But now, essentially, it's just me."

  "Nice one, Hardy." He notices something in her expression. "What's funny?"

  "Nothing--I

  just

  like

  how you call me Hardy."

  "That's your name, is it not?"

  "Yes. But I mean how you say it."

  "How's

  that?"

  "Say it again."

  "Hardy."

  She smiles, then resumes: "Basically, financial reporting is this sinkhole at the center of journalism. You start by swimming around it until finally, reluctantly, you can't fight the pull anymore and you get sucked down the drain into the biz pages."

  "That bad, is it?"

  "Not really. I tend to dramatize. The sad truth is that I'm secretly into this stuff--I'm the kind of person who reads Morningstar stock reports on vacation. My feeling is that, at heart, every story is a business story."

  "Ah, right," he says.

  "But I'm weird that way."

  He carries his dirty plate to the sink. She jumps to her feet. "No, no--you don't need to do that." She stumbles. "Oh--I think I'm a bit drunk."

  In the restricted space of her kitchen, they are close. She looks up. "You're irritatingly tall. It's like an indictment of everything I stand for."

  "You're not so short."

  "Who said I was short? I'm a minimalist."

  He leans down and kisses her. "Your nose is freezing, Hardy."
/>   She touches it. She's no longer trying to sound clever. "Can you do that again?"

  "What?"

  "That thing you did before."

  "Calling you Hardy?"

  "No, the thing you did after that. The thing you just did."

  "What

  thing?"

  She kisses him. " That thing. Keep doing it, please."

  Activities shift into the bedroom.

  Afterward, they lie in the dark, side by side on her bed. "Can I get you anything?"

  "No, no, Hardy. I'm lovely."

  "I quite agree. A last bit of wine, maybe?"

  "A wee dram wouldn't hurt."

  She pours him a glassful and speeds back to the bedroom in bare feet. Before entering, she says, "I wasn't cold before, I was just nervous." She hands him the glass.

  "My nose, I mean."

  He sips. "Delicious."

  "You sound a bit drunk. Nice drunk, though. Charming drunk." She leans into him. "What's that tattoo, by the way?"

  "It's a wolf. I got it done in Sydney. You like it?"

  "A wolf? I thought it was a seal. A seal howling at the moon. Anyway, it's very nice." She kisses his shoulder. "It's so nice to have someone here."

  The next day at the espresso bar, Annika asks for details. "Did your Irishman fix the window?"

  "We got slightly drunk, actually."

  "Oh

  really?

  Continue."

  "No,

  nothing."

  "No,

  something."

  "Okay,

  something."

  "And the window?"

  Hardy hires a glazier--she doesn't want Rory to feel pressured about it each time he drops by. But a week later he hasn't dropped by again, hasn't called, hasn't answered her messages. She visits his place, ready for a sad scene. But when he opens the door he kisses her on the mouth and asks where on earth she's been. She ends up taking him home, feeding him, watering him, giving him lodgings, as before.

  "I like coming here," he says, propped up in her bed as she dresses for work the next morning. "You have a proper bathtub."

  "Is that the extent of my appeal? You're overlooking my shower."

  "I prefer baths myself."

  "You're not going to vanish again, are you?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Vanish. As in absence of Rory. Deficit of Rory. Apartment devoid of Rory."

  "Don't be batty. I'll give you a ring."

  "When?"

  "How's about tomorrow?"

  "When you say tomorrow, do you mean two weeks from tomorrow?"

  "I mean tomorrow. Actual tomorrow."

  "As in two days after yesterday?"

  He doesn't call. She wants to scream. But this is how he is: easygoing, which means tough-going for everyone else. She can hardly be surprised at this stage. She collects him from his hovel down the road in Trastevere as if he were a puppy, rescued from the pound for the umpteenth time, wagging at the sight of her yet certain to scamper away the minute she absents herself. His time without her, as far as she can tell, is occupied by reading books on the CIA and drinking plonk with his Italian hippie friends.

  His improv classes turn out to be more hypothetical than real. But everyone needs something they do, she decides, especially if they're not doing it.

  What money he has comes from his father in infusions that arrive irregularly, so he is flush one week and broke the next. He spends it strangely: on a lime-green alarm clock, for example, although he has no reason to get up in the morning and no food in his apartment. When he's broke, she hides money in his jacket pocket. Now and then, she encourages him to start those improv classes, or seek employment of another kind--teaching English, perhaps. But his dream is to make it as a comedian and he's convinced that fame is around the corner, though how he might achieve this in Italy is beyond her.

  What's more, while he is a cheery fellow, he's not a markedly funny one. Hardy refuses to hear his stand-up routine. She's polite about this but firm.

  One afternoon, Annika asks her, "What if I found Rory a one-off gig?"

  "How would you do that?"

  "You don't sound too enthusiastic."

  "No, I am. Tell me."

  Annika saw a flyer advertising a fund-raiser at a local pub for the Vatican Radio soccer team. The organizers already have a band arranged but are looking for other acts.

  "It wouldn't pay, but it'd be practice for him," Annika says. "And no pressure--just a bunch of friendly drunks."

  "You're more intent on getting his career going than he is," Hardy says.

  "I

  noticed."

  Hardy and Rory meet up with Annika and Menzies at the pub. The crowd is large and boisterous, and a drum kit is set up on the stage at the back, with a microphone stand before it. They find a free table.

  "This is marvelous, this is," Rory says and disappears to count the crowd.

  Hardy grips Annika's leg under the table. "I'm so nervous."

  "You're nervous?" Annika says. "You're not the one doing it."

  "I know, but ..."

  Rory returns, beaming.

  "You're excited, then?" Menzies asks him.

  "Absolutely. Not a lot of opportunities in Italy to do stand-up in English."

  "Almost none, I'd think."

  "You're probably right."

  "What sort of comedy do you do?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, how would you describe your act?"

  "You're gonna love it."

  Hardy leans toward Rory and whispers, "Might be time to buy a round." She slips him a fifty-euro note under the table.

  He taps Menzies on the shoulder. "I'm getting this one, folks. Same again, ladies?"

  The emcee--an Englishman who normally delivers somber bulletins on Vatican Radio but is this evening dressed as a Harlequin--jogs across the stage. "Ready, everybody?"

  "I think it's me now," Rory tells the table. He nods at Hardy and heads for the stage. The patrons part before him and strangers slap his back.

  Annika tells Hardy, "Nothing to worry about--it'll be fun."

  The crowd murmurs as he climbs onto the stage. He tugs the microphone baffle down tight, shades his eyes from the spotlight. "All right," he says.

  "Who is this guy?" a drunk bellows.

  Rory identifies himself.

  Derisory hellos spray back at him.

  Hardy squeezes Annika's leg again. "I can't bear this."

  "What are you worried about?"

  Rory begins his routine. "The Internet is amazing, isn't it." He clears his throat.

  "Did you realize the U.S. military invented it? It's true. I read that. They wanted to be sure that if there was a nuclear war everyone would still be able to get pornography." He pauses for laughter.

  No one laughs.

  "And," he persists, "come to think of it, if the world was at the brink of destruction, with Armageddon and all that, perhaps a bit of a wank would be in order."

  A few dubious snorts.

  Hardy closes her eyes and lets go of Annika's leg.

  "Since this is a Vatican crowd," he continues gamely, "I thought I'd talk about religion. I'm a Catholic myself. In the Bible there's that section on God killing everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah. But I don't get it. I mean, we know why everyone in Sodom got punished. But what did the Gomorrans ever do to anybody?"

  Once more, the room is silent.

  "This," Menzies whispers, "is what's known in comedy circles as 'dying.'"

  "That's not helpful," Annika responds.

  "I feel like I'm going to be sick," Hardy says. "I have to get out of here. Is it going to be obvious? I don't want to hurt his feelings."

  "Maybe it'll get better."

  Rory changes topics. "Let me tell you about my girlfriend. This girl--have you heard of the biological clock? Hers is at about half-past midnight. She is so desperate, you have no idea."

  "Maybe," Annika suggests hurriedly, "you should take this opportun
ity to go to the toilets."

  Hardy hustles away.

  As she passes the bathroom mirror, she raises her hand to block the reflection and enters a stall, sits, her chin on her hands. The echo of Rory's voice drifts in. She plugs her ears. After ten minutes, Annika taps on her stall. "It's safe to come back now."

  "I drank too much--that's the story if he noticed."