Two Sketches of Disjointed Happiness

by Simon Kinch

  Mom asks me how work is going. She has cooked meatloaf and steamed vegetables. The smell fills the kitchen, the meatloaf resting in the oven while we wait for my father. I tell her work is going very well and say how I stayed to help Robert prepare some files. My father comes in and we eat. He asks the same questions and I tell him about how I stayed to help Robert prepare some files.

  After dinner I flick through the cable channels and find an old Woody Allen film. Halfway through, my father comes into the room and asks if he can watch the news. I can kind of guess where the film is going, and hand him the remote. I ask him if he would like a beer, and return with two Budweisers from the fridge. After half an hour, my father is asleep in his chair, his shirt unbuttoned and the ends of his trousers beginning to rise up his calves due to the way he is sat. I switch the TV back to the Woody Allen film, but miss the end, before also falling asleep in my chair.

  TWENTY

  It was only when the gas in the studio had run out that I realised it had come from a canister. My eggs still had a translucent film across the whites, and the skin of the chorizo had yet to shrink and curl. I followed a copper pipe from the hobs, finding the empty canister in the cupboard under the sink. I put the pan of eggs and chorizo out on the roof terrace, in the hope that the scorching sun would cook them through. I cut some bread and returned to the pan, scooping up pieces of egg white when they appeared cooked.

  I had nothing to do that afternoon, so lay out in the sun, reading the thriller set in Stockholm. I read a paragraph at a time, the blinding heat forcing me to close my eyes in between. In these moments, my mind would fall on how and where I could buy gas.

  When the sweat began to run down my arms, I went inside. I stared at the empty gas canister, then went to run a bath of cold water. I sat staring into the gush of water from the tap, as it slowly filled the tub. The water pressure caused a kink in the flow of water, where the width and the depth of the stream swapped. The sunlight coming through the studio, via the open bathroom door, refracted though this kink, creating a vivid green and cyan. Staring into the water, I pictured Alyson naked, leant over the bathtub. For weeks, she had mentioned again and again how she fantasised about having sex in the bath. With her parents away one weekend, we went to the bathroom, running a bath of bubbles and scented oils. Such was her excitement though, she had us both stripped off even before the bath had filled, bending over the bathtub and pulling me up behind her.

  I looked back at the bath of cold water and turned off the tap. I then stripped and plunged straight in, shivers running across my browned skin.

  I have no idea how long I lay under the water, my eyes closed, my hair fanned out, my lips and nose just above the surface. When I opened them again, I pulled my head out of the water and sat up. Water ran down my back, and droplets from my elbows. I focused on each wall, but couldn’t shake my disorientation. Everything felt foreign: the bathtub, the walls, the studio outside the bathroom door. It was the feeling of waking up for the first time in a bed that wasn’t mine, searching for my bearings. I thought again of my bed below the window in Madison, then pulled the plug on the bath.

  Taking a handful of cash from the bookshelf, I went to the Alameda. I could only think of seeing Clara again. The promenade was nearly empty. A few people sat outside restaurants; a man walked his dog past the columns. Crossing the Alameda, I found the bar with the hatched trellis we’d eaten at the week before. Inside, I ordered a caña, taking it out to a table and lighting a cigarette.

  Over the afternoon, I stretched out another caña and a tapa of carrilladas. Instead of tucking in ravenously as I had before, this time I carefully poked at the meat in its broth, making it fall into its separate strands. Several times, the barman came out to see if I’d finished what was in front of me, but had to return empty-handed each time.

  Shortly after 5pm, Clara passed. She was as surprised to see me as I was to see her – for all my waiting, I’d never really expected she’d walk past. The hovering barman took her order and she joined me.

  She began by complaining about the heat and then her shift. I analysed every hand gesture, every facial expression as she spoke. All I could think about was that I’d left that club too hastily the other night and she would still be resentful because of this, but there was nothing in her body language to say she was. She instead seemed to pick up exactly where we’d left off, eating these same carrilladas at this very table. Eventually, I accepted it hadn’t been a big deal to her at all. I asked if I could buy her a whiskey and Coke and she said yes.

  I returned with two lowball glasses. ‘How perfect that you were out in this street, Granville,’ she smiled cheekily. She span the ice round in her glass with the straw. ‘There’s a film on tonight and I need someone to go with.’ I tried making out I might have something on, but she said I had nothing of the sort. I made another protest that I may well have something to do, but she just giggled at this. ‘Something more important than accompanying me?’

  She was hungry, and only for pizza, so we finished our drinks and went to a small pizza parlour at the end of the Alameda. As she ate, I told her about my new studio. She listened and nodded, glancing up as she picked slices of fried eggplant off the pizza topping, eating these separately.

  The temperature had dropped and there was a light breeze. As we walked to the film, I felt us sharing a fleeting contentment with life. Clara mentioned how good the pizza had been. I felt a lightness from the beers and whiskey I’d drunk. We got to a small, winding cobbled street, devoid of people. At this point she looped her arm through mine, not saying anything, just smiling.

  The screening was in a large courtyard, a part of the university. We took two chairs near the back. I whispered to Clara, asking which film we were watching. ‘They normally show an old film,’ she whispered, then told me to be quiet, as it was about to start.

  The projection started and Clara shot me a quick smile as the titles to Breakfast at Tiffany’s appeared. Leaning towards her, I asked her if she’d seen the film. She shook her head gently, her eyes not leaving the screen.

  As the film played, I repeatedly glanced from the projection of Audrey Hepburn, across to Clara. She was resting her chin on her hand and kept it there for most of the film. The skin of her forearm had an incredibly soft appearance, evenly tanned and unblemished. If you looked closely enough, you could make out tiny indentations, the little craters of hair follicles. Her eyes flickered across the screen, scanning the subtitles from left to right, the pupils darting, the whites unchanging.

  At the end of the film, everybody stood up almost at once, creating a clatter of metal chairs scraping across paving. Clara smiled at me again and we joined the other cinephiles in filing out of the courtyard.

  On the way back, she didn’t loop her arm through mine and, instead, talked avidly about the film, with large hand gestures. She insisted we walk back past my apartment and I agreed.

  We arrived at my door and she looked across the street. Her father knew the owner of the bar opposite, she told me. I invited her up to see the studio, but she said she had to work the next day. ‘Another time,’ she told me and kissed both cheeks, letting her hand linger on my shoulder.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Every morning, I pour myself a cup of the office’s tarry filter coffee and walk back to my desk past the stationery cupboard. Here, each day, I take a fresh black biro. Blue seems to make me scrawl, but in black I take more care and, besides, black ink doesn’t seem to blot as much as blue.

  If I look over my partition, to the right of my computer screen, but to the left of the pot plant on Edith’s desk beyond, I can see right across the office, to Laura’s desk. Normally, her face is obscured by her monitor, but if she moves her head from behind her screen, occasionally I catch her gaze and she sends me the tiniest wry smile. Her eyes hardly ever leave the screen, though, and, when she does look away, it is usually to accept a pile of files from one of th
e firm’s lawyers.

  Today she wears a black cardigan, trimmed with sequins. To me, this detail is tasteless and I find myself thinking back to the simpler cardigan she wore the other day, and regretting that I didn’t return her compliment.

  I spend the morning considering whether to ask her out for coffee. I’m sure she will say yes, at the very least out of politeness, but when lunchtime arrives, I duck out of the office without her noticing.

  After eating at the table by the door at the burrito place, I take an extended wander through the shopping streets. Everyone appears to be a touch happier today for some reason, though I can’t figure out quite why.

  I find myself in a homeware store, incuriously picking up objects and then placing them back on their shelves. A set of wooden coasters, a model of a stork made from wire, then some scented candles.

  An aisle away from me, an old lady with a turned-up nose examines a floral photo frame and then passes it to her friend. The second lady takes a pair of glasses that hang from her neck on string and pushes them to her face. She then turns the frame over in her hands, before holding it at arm’s length.

  The first lady has picked up another photo frame and is now discussing that. I have stopped where I am, to witness this vapid exchange. I dig my hands into my coat pockets and strain to hear what they are muttering to each other. It is none of my business, I know, but that they should come here to examine photo frames makes me pity them. But this pity only lasts for a moment, before being sharply replaced by self-awareness that it is myself I should judge, spending my lunchtime alone, peering over a homeware store’s shelves at a pair of shoppers I have never met, before trudging back to my office to spend the afternoon updating files on clients I have never met either.

  I refocus my vision, away from the background of these fussy ladies, to the shelves just in front of me. I stare blankly at a row of bubble bath and scented oils, think briefly of Alyson leant over the edge of that bathtub, then push my hands further into my coat pockets and march out of the store.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Señora Rosales held the same elegant posture she always did at breakfast. Again she wore her wide-brim hat. I asked what she’d done over the weekend. She told me that she’d been to Cádiz to pass a couple of days by the sea with a friend, to a little secluded beach that could only be reached by a zigzagging path from the coastal road. Her skin looked fresh and healthy, in the way only the salty sea air can make skin appear.

  As a thank-you for sorting me out with the apartment, I insisted she come over for a light dinner one evening. She took to this idea, saying that that night would be perfect, as she needed to hand over some apartment keys to a Swedish couple in my part of town at 8pm. She would bring dessert, she added.

  I bought two sole from the fishmonger, then visited the grocer with hands like brown paper, collecting lemons, parsley, potatoes and chives. I must have spent nearly half an hour in a small wine shop, first trying to decipher the labels and then indecisively flitting between different bottles. I settled on a chardonnay and handed the shop assistant a five euro bill.

  On the way home, I stumbled upon a place that sold gas. It would have been hard to call it a shop – more like a disused garage, with canisters lined up against one wall and a ­wall-papering table forming a desk. The vendor wore an ill-fitting jumper and jeans covered in grease and oil. His hair was receding, but his goatee was neatly trimmed. I had to make two trips back to the studio: one to return the groceries, the second to heave the canister back, stopping in the street several times to rest my arms, before finally arriving at the studio soaked in sweat.

  That afternoon, I took a coffee in the bar with the hatched trellis. I waited until 6pm, but Clara didn’t pass by. With little else to do, I read as much as I could of the thriller set in Stockholm. I found myself getting annoyed at the denseness of the main character and that the plot didn’t seem to be headed anywhere. Putting this book to one side, I picked up the Benjamin essays. There had once been a cover, but the binding had fallen apart, leaving many of the pages loose. I read a chapter on fashion in 19th-century Paris, then one on boredom. Everything we do, Benjamin surmised from Emile Tardieu’s L’Ennui, is a vain attempt to escape boredom – yet everything that was, is and will be, appears as the inexhaustible nourishment of that feeling. I turned this over in my mind. I tried to relate this to myself and thought whether it was really boredom I was trying to avoid, sat in the street, in front of an empty coffee cup, waiting for Clara, yet with no arrangement made to meet her. I then thought of her, working at the hostel reception, taking reservations, checking in guests; and then of the sole in the fridge, wrapped in white fishmonger’s paper.

  Señora Rosales arrived dead on 8.30pm. She had brought a bottle of white wine, too, and a corkscrew, assuming I didn’t yet have one in the apartment. She handed me two slices of cheesecake, bought from a dessert counter and loosely wrapped in plastic sheets, telling me to put them in the fridge.

  I’d moved the table out onto the rooftop and we laid out what we had. I had cooked the sole simply, in lemon juice and parsley, and served it with boiled potatoes. I complemented Señora Rosales on the wine. She smiled, saying it was her favourite. We talked a little about the business. All her money, she told me, came from northern European holidaymakers, but despite this, they were a people she would never understand. There was a simultaneous openness and falsity about the locals of Sevilla, she said, that made people of most other nationalities seem bland and shallow. She told me about the village she’d grown up in near Sevilla and how she’d moved to the city when she’d married her husband. We didn’t talk any more about him.

  To emphasise certain points she made, Señora Rosales would lean forward and touch my forearm as it rested on the table. When she began talking about a small bar I should visit, a small bar with climbing wall plants and a rickety old piano, she spoke intensely and took hold of my arm firmly, only releasing it when she had finished her description.

  We finished the fish and I cleared the plates. Señora Rosales complimented me on my cooking and we started on the cheesecake. I was feeling a little lightheaded and sleepy due to the wine. As she spoke, I was distracted by a sound from the street, that half-sounded like my neighbour greeting someone. I turned my attention back to our conversation again. Señora Rosales was describing how now, early summer, was the best time of year in Seville, before the nights became unbearably hot in midsummer. She leaned towards me as she spoke and, as she did, her top loosened. My eyes looked into hers, matching the intensity of her gaze, and I only once glanced at her cleavage for the tiniest of moments when I blinked, taking in the curve of each breast, the V of her blouse collar, the angle of her collar bone. Her eyes didn’t leave mine, the pupils darting across my face, the whites unchanging. I suddenly became aware of footsteps in the stairwell and glanced over. I looked back at Vicenta, who seemed not to have heard the approaching footsteps at all, and then looked back over her shoulder, towards the stairs again, to see Clara emerge.

  Everything froze, except Vicenta. She continued to talk, looking directly at me. I gazed past her, straight at Clara. Clara looked at me, then at Señora Rosales’ back, then at her arm stretched out towards mine. Clara didn’t say anything, but as she looked back at me, her eyes asked me the most innocent and naked questions possible. They asked me about the film we’d watched together, about how she’d looped her arm through mine as we’d walked. They asked me about this woman opposite me, about the wine glasses and cutlery. About the arm stretched out towards mine. About that first time she’d seen me, when I had arrived tired and grumpy at the reception of her hostel, and how her smile had been enough to persuade me to stay.

  Vicenta’s speech slowed as she noticed my gaze drift past her. I snapped back into the conversation and Vicenta responded, slowly picking up her pace.

  I glanced over her shoulder again, back towards the stairwell, only to see Clara’s expression drop
away, and by the time I could send another glance her way, she was nowhere to be seen.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Getting into the office early to finish a file Robert needs by mid-morning, I take advantage of the empty office to move Edith’s pot plant a couple of inches to the right and my computer screen a couple of inches to the left. When Edith eventually gets in at 9am, she doesn’t notice, or at least I think she doesn’t. Anyway, my line of sight to Laura’s desk is slightly less obscured, as is hers to mine.

  The top drawer of my desk is beginning to fill with black biros, so once I have finished up the file in question, I set about sorting the contents of the drawer. I create a neat pile of biros and secure them with an elastic band. I then take a pile of redundant documents to the shredder and feed them through one at a time, taking special care that the names and addresses are severed by one of the blades.

  Laura has abandoned the sequined cardigan, opting for a white blouse and maroon pullover, much more to my taste. At eleven o’clock, I time my run to the office’s kitchenette with hers. She pours herself a cup of the tarry filter coffee, before handing me the pot. I ask her what she did last night. This seemingly sudden interest in her and her life makes her grin and she replies by telling me she went to the cinema. I ask her what film she watched, but I don’t recognise the title. She laughs and says I must have seen posters or adverts for it; it’s been number one at the box office for a month. I shrug. Feeling the conversation has reached a dead end, I insist I have to get back to work. Laura asks if I’d like to get a coffee at lunch. I think back to my lunch hour standing in the homeware store, gazing blankly at the scented candles and oils, and decide anything would be better than that. We agree to leave at one o’clock. I take my cup of coffee and head back to my desk.