Al's Well

by Dark, Gregory

  +++

  “There are lots of things weird, right, Mike, about us?”

  “Weird is our middle name.”

  “But, you know one thing that’s really weird? I mean, weird even within the weirdness?”

  “Do tell.”

  “The way, hon, I feel closer to you when I’m apart from you.”

  “I suppose that’s taking phone sex to its obvious conclusion.”

  “I love talking like this to you on the phone.”

  “Beats the real thing, huh?”

  “I’ve never talked, Mike, on the phone.”

  “You’re ‘Mike’ing me a lot.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I was hoping you’d tell me.”

  “I like the feel of it in my mouth.”

  “That’s reasonable.”

  “I like the feel of you, Mike, in my mouth.”

  “Mike again.”

  “I’m trying to get you all hot and bothered.”

  “Oh, I’m hot, alright.”

  “You are?”

  “And bothered, Trove.”

  “I’m gooey too.”

  “All dressed up, honey …”

  “You’ve got somewhere to go, Mike.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve got somewhere to come.”

  “How’s Al?”

  “Al’s in a mess. I don’t want to talk about Al right now. I don’t want to think about him. I want to think and talk about us.”

  “I think about us all the time.”

  “And talk?”

  “We’re talking now, Trove.”

  “Madrid, hon, …”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “We have to find a way, hon, in Madrid, to talk.”

  “Right.”

  “Not on the phone, face-to-face. Don’t say one-to-one.”

  “Why not? I won’t, but why not?”

  “Because it’s an awful phrase. It’s a ‘24/7’ phrase, an ugly phrase.”

  “It’s an …”

  “Don’t say that either, Michael.”

  “What?”

  “An American phrase, you were going to say.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Weren’t you?”

  “I was. And I’m sorry.”

  “See, the thing is, Mike …”

  “Yes?”

  “We have to find a way to talk also when we’re together.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, Trove.”

  “Madrid’s important, honey.”

  “And I’m sure Madrid will be jolly grateful to hear that.”

  “There are times for jokes, Mike, …”

  “This is so serious, Trove, I have to joke about it.”

  “Hasta la vista, then, baby.”

  “Hasta la vista, honey.”

  +++

  “He didn’t ever phone me, Mike, to tell me he and Petrova were, as it were, back together again. He phoned me to tell me something about the baby. That was the pretext. During the phone call he mentioned that he was meeting Petrova in Madrid. A casual mention, meant to imply a casual meeting.

  “I envied him Madrid. Have you ever been to Madrid?

  “Well, of course you would have been. It was stupid of me to ask.

  “You weren’t, I hope, even thinking of getting the train tonight. Nor, I hope, were you even thinking about checking into a hotel. There’s a spare bed. It’s all made up.

  “Good.

  “It’s a city to me, Madrid, of exceptional charm. Mike mentioned the trip en passant, as it were. Even more en passant that he was meeting Trove there. Which, because it was Mike, meant that it was really important to him.”

  +++

  “Hey!”

  “I’m so sorry, Trove.”

  “You delay the plane?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “You, I don’t know, interfere with the engine? Or the pilot?”

  “No.”

  “Then, what’ve you got to apologise for?”

  “You like me apologising.”

  “Take your clothes off, then, and apologise properly.”

  “I need a pee.”

  “Always excuses with you, Mike, nowadays.”

  “It took forever from Baracas.”

  “How many forevers can there be in one day? It also took forever getting here from Toulouse. The traffic outside of San Sebastian, unreal! That took forever, you know, that stretch through the Pyrenees? And your forever from the airport, that makes three. Pee quickly. Don’t pee forever. I don’t think I could cope with four forevers in one day.”

  “Cold, isn’t it?”

  “Go warm yourself by the heater, dumbo.”

  “Not here. Madrid. Here’s fine. Madrid, though, Madrid’s cold.”

  “Right.”

  “I didn’t realise Madrid could get this cold.”

  “Highest capital, Mike, in Europe.”

  “I didn’t know that either.”

  “It’s November, is what I’m saying. Madrid is the highest capital in Europe ...”

  “Not too surprising, then, it’s cold?”

  “I could think of things to warm you up.”

  “Still need a pee.”

  “Well, ‘Stand not on the order, Mike, of thy peeing, then ...’”

  “I wrote you this.”

  “Is it dirty?”

  “No, but I am.”

  “Yeah, but you’re dirty: sexy.”

  “No, at the moment, just dirty: grimey dirty.”

  “I like your letters, Mike.”

  “A bath might do me good.”

  “Just how long a letter is it?”

  “You’re right. I’ll have a shower.”

  “Don’t shower forever either. Leave the door open.”

  Dear Trove,

  I wonder whether I’ll be able to give you this. And if I do, when it will be.

  I’m going to try and give it to you at the beginning of our … sojourn together. There’s stuff in it we need to talk about – no, I need that we talk about. I hope I will find that courage.

  “Are there any dirty bits in this?”

  “What?”

  “Can I cut to the dirty bits?”

  “Read it all, Trove.”

  “How much longer you going to be in there?”

  “I just got in, for Christ’s sake.”

  At my end, I know I’m scared. I’m scared that if I reveal too much of myself to you, you will no longer love me. You will no longer like me, for Christ’s sake. And, at yours, there’s, I suspect, an element of ‘I’m not showing you mine until you show me yours’. I don’t know. I’m not in your head. I’m not in the least qualified to judge. I shouldn’t even be trying to guess. I’m sorry.

  I know you want me to write some sexy stuff. And I will write you some. But I need to expose myself first to you in other ways.

  “I agree with this bit, Mike.”

  “Which bit?”

  “I want you to write sexy stuff.”

  “Read on.”

  “How many bodies are you washing in there?”

  “Almost done.”

  This is so hard, so hard.

  I’ve found God.

  There it’s out. I’m guessing that’s the first thing I should say. It’s so difficult to tell you that, you cannot imagine. ‘Course I can’t imagine why either, but that, as they say, is life. It’s really hard to admit it. And the God I believe in?

  Yeah, He’s pretty much the old man with the long white beard, the da Vinci as an old man sort of God. I’m not too sure about concepts, as understood, of Heaven and Hell. But, yes, God, I’m afraid, for all the contradictions and uncertainties and ambiguities, for me He now does exist. I entirely understand those who don’t believe He does. Indeed I understand those people considerably more than I understand people like me. There, it’s out. A closet theist outed. Wha
tever it is, the opposite of atheist.

  (Talking of closets, I should also admit that I’m also a secret ‘Carry On …’ fan. I know I shouldn’t be. The urbane me is appalled by the very idea. But, there we go. I’m hooked. And there’s nothing I can do about it. It really is all very closet stuff. Even at home, I’d only watch them on one of the satellite channels – where they seem to be repeated endlessly – if Eva was out.)

  I’m not sure that either thing is defining about me. And maybe that’s a fear too. That nothing defines me because, finally, there is nothing there to define. I’m so scared – I suppose this is what I’m trying to say – that I’m only a shell. That inside there is nothing. A chocolate éclair full of shaving soap; worse: a parcel-the-parcelly sort of multi-layered, multi gift-wrapped … nothing.

  And I’m scared that all that nothing can offer is himself – in other words, nothing. I’m scared that what I think I feel for you is also hollow, that what I think is love is only a simulation of love or a pretend-love, a mock-one. And that it is the shell, which is real, which is telling me I should tell you all this. But is even the shell real? And maybe now I’m doing exactly what I earlier accused you of: talking so I don’t have to talk. Dissembling talking. Pretending to talk. …

  “Thank you, Mike.”

  “I’m sure you’re welcome. You want to tell me what for?”

  “What was in the envelope.”

  “The letter?”

  “That too. The tickets, I meant, to the opera.”

  “Ah!”

  “I found them.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Thank you, Mike. No-one’s bought me tickets before for the opera.”

  “Then, I’m twice as desolate, Trove, to disappoint you.”

  “They’re not for me?”

  “They’re for you.”

  “Then …?”

  “They’re for the ballet, Trove.”

  “Not the opera?”

  “It’s a bit like the opera, only without the singing.”

  “Quite a lot of dance, though, huh?”

  “Quite a lot. You going to put that book down, now?”

  “I haven’t got to the dirty bit yet.”

  “We could maybe write our own dirty bit.”

  “Just look at that view. Madrid’s so beautiful. Mike, you’re not looking at the view.”

  “Oh, believe me, I am.”

  “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Isn’t Madrid a beautiful city, Mike? “And yours, Trove, is a beautiful body.”

  “And you want to go sight-seeing?”

  “And flavour-tasting and bouquet-smelling and …”

  “Touch-touching?”

  “Especially touch-touching.”

  “Mike?”

  “Hi.”

  “I love you, Mike. Now and always.”

  “I love you too.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “See, you’re saying it all soft, all mushy: ‘I love you too’, all soft and marshmallowy.”

  “It’s a soft emotion, Trove. Famous for being one.”

  “No, it’s not. Did you hear the way I said, ‘I love you’?”

  “Not soft.”

  “Hard, Mike. Like it’s a liability. Which it is. Like it’s a liability, not (as the marshmallow would have it) that it’s an … unliability. Whatever the goddamn word is.”

  “Boon?”

  “That’ll do. Like it’s a liability, Mike, and not a boon. ‘Cause, guess what, Mike?”

  “It is a liability and not a boon?”

  “Maybe a bit of both. You know we’re not going to last.”

  “I think the chances are against it. Us, I should say.”

  “We’re never going to last, Mike.”

  “Not if you’re adamant, we won’t. We haven’t got even the ghost of a chance.”

  “Adamant?”

  “If you decide, before even we’ve really started, we’re not going to last, guess what, Trove?”

  “You think I’m being adamant?”

  “Entrenched, then.”

  “You think I’m becoming entrenched, Mike?”

  “You’re very sexy when you pout.”

  “I’m trying to talk. To talk talk, Mike.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We’re tired, Trove. Let’s make love, go to sleep.”

  “We need to talk. No, joking apart, Mike. Now. Your letter, for Christ’s sake, was all about the same thing. This goddamn letter, for Christ’s sake. We need to talk. Now, Mike.”

  “We’re not talking, honey. This isn’t talking. This is squabbling. Bickering. Making a noise to avoid a silence. These are anxious times. We do have to talk. We’re, neither of us, too practised at talking. But now’s not the time to start trying.”

  “Now is never the right time.”

  “Well, that’s true too.”

  “Is there anything, Mike? Between us?”

  “We know the sex is good.”

  “The sex is great.”

  “The rest … the talking … I think that’s best kept till the morning.”

  “But you know what happens …”

  “What?”

  “We wake up … I wake up, and you rouse aroused and … well, tomorrow morning too the sex becomes more urgent than the talking.”

  “Sex is a form of communication, honey.”

  “You ‘honey’ed me again, Mike.”

  “I did earlier.”

  “And I didn’t notice?”

  “I do love you, Trove.”

  “It is also, sex, a form, Mike, of not communicating.”

  “Well, come closer then, and let me not communicate with you till it hurts.”

  Chapter 12

  “Mike called me from Madrid. Three times, in fact. And in as many days. The first time, to be honest, I thought it was to rub my nose in it, you know? I’m in Madrid and you’re not, sort of nonsense.

  “Now I say that, there was that edge to Mike’s behaviour. Not as a constant, true. Nor even as anything overt. No, covert, rather. Subtle. A whiff, a taste, a hint. Something well hidden, quite deep. There was, thinking about it, a need Mike had somehow to be on a higher plane than you were. I’m not talking about moral high ground here. Not exactly. If the conversation were about licentiousness, say, he’d give you the impression – he didn’t say anything, just gave the impression – that if you were, I don’t know, a member of the Hell Fire Club or something, he was one of its founding fathers; if you’d broken into a house, he’d have robbed the odd bank.

  “You know, you’re much too attractive to be a hack. I’m amazed television hasn’t gobbled you up. Got you fronting the Six o’clock News.

  “Well, if they’ve got any sense at all, the job’ll be yours. Bright and beautiful, that’s the stuff normally only of hymns.

  “Mike claimed he was anxious to start co-habiting. He may even have said ‘desperate’. Trove, of course, was now homeless. Well, they both were, effectively.”

  +++

  “See, then – in Madrid, I’m talking about – it had to do with practicalities. I mean, it just wasn’t feasible, us living together. We neither of us had homes. Not ‘homes’ as any sensible person would understand the word. But, know what? If we didn’t exactly manufacture that situation, I wonder whether we might not somehow have encouraged it. No, not quite that either. I wonder – is what I’m saying – whether we might not somehow have allowed that situation to continue, rather than resolving it. I don’t know. I get kinda nervous around amateur psychoanalysis, especially my amateur psycho-analysis. Especially of me. I psycho-babble more than I analyse, and find myself blaming the fact that I forgot to put out the garbage last night on the fact that I wasn’t, aged six, invited to Marianne Sebac’s seventh birthday party.

  “He couldn’t see it, Mike. Couldn’t see that I was not leaving Al for him. Just thought, we loved each
other therefore we moved in together and therefore we lived happily-ish ever after. And I wasn’t ready. I just wasn’t ready. I’m not sure I would ever have been ready. But then …?

  “See, there was that about Mike which was incredibly … what was it? … naïve, I guess ... simple, maybe … simplistic, even. Maybe a bit of all three. For all his apparent canniness and insight, he still liked to label all his jars. Cause and effect, type of thing. You broke eggs into a pan and swirled them round, you got scrambled eggs. I think therefore I am: cogito ergo sum. She loves me ergo she must want to live with me. She’s left Al ergo she never loved him.

  “I doubt there’s a human being on the planet who’s that simple. And I certainly wasn’t. Nor was he, for Christ’s sake. But that’s where that kind of intellectual arrogance implodes in on itself. You know what I mean. ‘Well, of course, it’s not that simple in my case,’ so such thinking says, ‘but I’m me. Complicated. Superior to all you lesser beings. But you, you are lesser beings. Intellectual and emotional amoebas, incapable of any kind of complexity.’

  “There is that about the intellectually arrogant which aspires to the god-like, which tries to see all us amoebas merely as specimens. I think there’s a tendency for academics, for scientists and general smart-Alecs to do that. Maybe, you know, the thing that truly distinguishes both Einstein and Stephen Hawking is not the enormity of their brain, but the fact that that’s coupled with a great deal of humanity. Newton, I understand, was a really unpleasant s-o-b. Edison, too.

  “Mike wasn’t unpleasant. It wasn’t that simple. And he did have humanity. Mostly, I suspect, because deep down he knew he lacked the intellect to support his degree of arrogance. He was a bit like that scene in ‘Beau Geste’ where they stick rifles into the arms of corpses and line them up on the castle wall so the dastardly Arabs believe the fort is fully manned. Well, the crenallations of Fort Mike were also manned by corpses. And he knew it. Just felt that if he admitted that he’d have to surrender.

  “You know the craziest thing of all that? There was no frigging enemy. There was no-one attacking Fort Mike. No-one the least bit interested in attacking it. But he simply could not see that! And, yet, somehow he did. And saw it clearly. It was … No, how the hell do I know it ‘was’? … It seemed like he thought he’d gone to all this trouble, draping all those legionnaires into battlements, in the midday Saharan sun, sweat dripping down his back like ice-cream dribbling down a cone ... he had expended all that energy for a reason. Ergo there had to be an enemy. Cogito ergo sum.