[2014] Looking for Leon

by Shirley Benton

  “As you’ve said yourself, if it hasn’t happened by now, it probably won’t,” Colm said. “Let’s just try to enjoy our last few days here. I’m pretty happy to hear we’re going home now though. I’ve enjoyed feeling like I’ve been living in Vegas for a while, but I think now the time has come to hit the road.”

  “What? The great explorer actually wants to go home? What’s that all about?”

  “It’s about you,” he said, stroking my hair. “I don’t need to go travelling around the world any more to find what it is I’m looking for. Now, I have it. I want to go home and make you a part of my home life, and to become part of yours. The sooner that happens, the better.”

  “Oh, Colm, that’s so sweet!”

  He shrugged. “Besides, I’m starting to miss the simple things of home, like Cheese and Onion Taytos.”

  “Watch it!” I said, feigning indignation at having the same level of priority as a bag of crisps, but secretly thrilled at what he’d said before he’d made a joking comment to make himself look like a hard man. Becoming a part of Colm’s life sounded damn good to me.

  “Anyway, it looks like we should book our flights,” Colm said. “Give me a second – I’ll get my company credit card from my room, and we can book them now.”

  I turned my attention back to my computer as Colm left, and started to look for flights. As I skimmed the search results for flights, I went through a range of emotions. Relief was the dominant one. It would have been just typical of the way things worked out for me that Leon would come out of the woodwork now that Colm and I were together. What would I do then? Thankfully, it appeared as if Leon had absolutely no interest at all in ever having anything else to do with me. Blessings came in the oddest of guises sometimes.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  That Wednesday I made my way downtown after I finished work, armed with a hugely specific shopping list. I was a woman with a plan. Colm had done nothing since Isolde’s email but talk about how he couldn’t wait to go home and start enjoying life in Ireland for the first time in a very long time, even going so far as to say we should spend some of our own money on getting an earlier, pricier flight home on Thursday or Friday because we had no actual work commitments lined up after that – I vetoed that in favour of letting Éire TV pay, spending at least two full days in bed, and then enjoying a wild (70s) weekend in Vegas.

  So I’d come up with the great idea of surprising Colm with a special Irish dinner to help speed up the time to our homecoming. He’d seemed a bit down the previous evening, and although he’d insisted he was fine when I’d asked him what was up, he wasn’t himself. We’d been too busy all morning and afternoon doing our final interviews to talk properly, so I was looking forward to having a proper chat over dinner.

  For the sake of my job prospects, I’d done as Isolde had asked and had informed certain members of the media that I was abandoning the search, but I’d kept it as low-key as possible. All of the local newspapers, some of the national ones and a few of the national magazines were interested and we filmed all of my interviews with them in case Éire TV came knocking on my door again looking for footage, but there was no longer the same mania surrounding it all since LVTV had pulled the story. I had to give Lindy one thing – she’d been damn good at her job. If news of my impending departure had reached Leon, it thankfully hadn’t caused him to turn up in the MGM lobby. I’d felt horribly false during the course of the week’s interviews, talking about how sad I was that things hadn’t worked out differently while my lover filmed me saying these things. Colm had been understanding itself after each interview as I apologised over and over and assured him that he was the one I wanted, but I still felt like a cow about it. But at least now our work was done. I had nothing scheduled for the rest of my time in Vegas and could focus on nothing else but Colm from this point onwards.

  I smiled at the thought of the evening ahead as I let myself back into my room. One of the beauties of a suite was having a kitchen and the ability to cook. Of course, I had no kitchen utensils, so Philippe had offered to lend me a rucksack full of pots, pans and all the paraphernalia. The plan was to cook a Sunday dinner for our Wednesday night meal: roast chicken, mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables, gravy, the lot. I was going to buy the cooked roast chicken in a nearby deli, so technically I was cheating, but the kitchen just had hobs and not an oven. Still, I felt content and domesticated a few hours later as I mashed butter into potatoes until they were as smooth as silk. It was going to be a plain dinner, as Colm wouldn’t touch parsley or any of the other trimmings, but it smelled damn tasty. The pièce de résistance of the whole thing was that I’d managed to source some typically Irish things from a shop downtown. I’d bought Tayto crisps, Brennan’s bread, Barry’s tea and Kerrygold butter, which should please Colm no end. Okay, so we were going home in a few days, but it wouldn’t be the same getting these things at home – everyone knew they tasted much better when you were far away, especially if you were dying to go home.

  I’d told Colm to come to my room at seven o’clock as hungry as possible. I’d had to wash, chop and cook for an hour and a half, which was about eighty minutes more than I usually spent on preparing dinner, but it was worth it. I’d set the table in the sitting room with Philippe’s fancy, flowery plates and champagne flutes. Scented candles were dotted around the room, their smell mingling with the medley of aromas coming from the kitchen.

  At exactly seven o’clock there was a knock on my door. I put on my best domestic-goddess smile as I opened it.

  Colm stood there with a face like thunder.

  “Come on in!” The goddess smile faltered.

  He marched in, the air around him charged with tension. If he noticed the Taytos and candles and thought there was anything strange about them, he didn’t mention it. He was too busy circling the room, looking at the carpet.

  I picked up a jug of water and posed like a 50s housewife. “Welcome to Irish night in Vegas,” I said. “Tonight, we’re having a typical Irish Sunday dinner on a Wednesday night, accompanied by a bottomless cup of tea. The smell of Barry’s Tea brewing is the smell of home!”

  My sales patter seemed to be falling on deaf ears. Colm was facing the window, seemingly determined not to make eye contact with me. Suddenly, he whipped around.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “What? Where is that coming from?”

  “Yes or no?”

  I frowned. “Of course I trust you. Why do you ask?”

  “Do you think you know me well enough by now to share your troubles with me?”

  “Well, yes.” I frowned. “Colm, where are you going with this?”

  “Who is Elaine?”

  I froze. I racked my brains to think of how Colm could possibly know about Elaine. Nobody knew about that situation except my family and some old friends that Colm didn’t know. How was this possible?

  “Who is Elaine, Andie?”

  I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry. “Why do you ask?”

  “You’re not answering my question. Who is she? What happened to her?”

  “How do you know about her?”

  He shook his head. “Why don’t you want to tell me about her?”

  “There’s nothing to tell.” I felt the blood drain from my face.

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Where the hell is all of this coming from?” I slammed the jug of water onto the table.

  Colm ran his hands through his hair. “When I was here yesterday and you went to the bathroom for a shower, I needed a pen and paper for something, so I picked up that battered-looking jotter that’s always lying on your dressing table. You had a pen stuck into it, and that’s the page it opened at . . .”

  Oh God. “You read my diary?”

  “I didn’t know it was a diary! If I had, I would never have picked it up in the first place! I never dreamed it might be a diary – who even keeps one of those any more?”

  “Well, me, for one, obviously! But you didn’t just pick
it up, did you? You read the damn thing! How could you do that?”

  “I didn’t mean to! Once it was open, the words on the page just jumped out at me! I swear, I didn’t read more than a few lines. But what I saw was enough to tell me loud and clear that you’re hiding something from me.”

  I said nothing.

  He sat down on the couch and patted the space beside him. “So how about you tell me about Elaine right now?”

  “Stop backing me into a corner! You read my diary, and then you think you have the right to know everything about me?” My voice rose with every word, and the end of my sentence wasn’t much more than a squeak.

  Colm stood up like a bullet and threw his arms in the air. “This isn’t about your stupid diary! I’ve spent the past while telling you everything – every last little thing – about me and my life. I’ve never told one single other person the kind of things I told you. I completely opened myself up to you – and then, not only do I find out that there’s something you’re not telling me, but also that I’m some sort of pet project to you! I thought you wanted to listen to me because you cared about me, but from what I read, you’re doing it for your own selfish reasons – to help you through whatever the hell this Elaine situation is. So what happens when you get over it? You’ll no longer have any use for me, is that it? Well, you needn’t think I’m going to sit around waiting for that to happen!”

  “Colm, you have this all wrong –”

  “No. What I got wrong was telling you everything in the first place. This is exactly why I kept my business to myself before. You’ve just proved that I was right to do that. And that’s how I’ll keep things in the future, too.”

  He walked towards the door.

  “No, Colm! Come back here – we need to talk about this!”

  “If you want to talk, tell me about Elaine. Right now.”

  “I will tell you, but just not now . . . it’s a long story . . .”

  He shook his head. “Forget it. It’s over, Andie.”

  “No! Don’t be ridiculous, Colm! Don’t ruin what we have!”

  “We have nothing. If we don’t have trust and honesty, then we’ve nothing to build on. I’m just glad I found out now before I let you hurt me even more.”

  “Colm, don’t go! The last thing in the world I would ever want to do is to hurt you – and if you did read my diary, you’d know how crazy I am about you –”

  “I told you, I only read a few lines.”

  “What did you need a pen and paper for anyway?”

  He threw his arms up in the air with a furious look on his face. “I had this crazy idea that it might be nice to write you little notes and plant them where you least expect it, just to brighten up your day – in the lid of your lipstick, inside your shoe, places like that. God, I really got all of this so wrong, didn’t I?”

  “No, you didn’t! Oh Colm, that sounds so lovely!”

  He crinkled up his face and sneered at me. “‘So lovely’? A few seconds ago, you were tearing strips off me for reading your personal information. Well, I’m glad I did – if I hadn’t, I’d still be like a sap thinking that you actually gave a crap about me. It doesn’t matter now anyway. It’s too late. It’s gone.”

  “No, Colm! You can’t just walk out when something bad happens in a relationship! You talk it through and you work it out – that’s how these things work!”

  “And I’d know that if I wasn’t such a sad inexperienced twat, is that it? Don’t patronise me, Andie. Go and find some other fool to make a project out of, and leave me alone.”

  He stormed out. After a few stunned seconds had passed I followed him, of course – what else could I do? Let the best thing that had ever happened to me walk out of my life? When he heard the door of my hotel room banging behind me, he whirled around. I ran up the corridor after him. Then, he started to walk back towards me. I halted, every tensed muscle in my entire body relaxing in relief. He was going to give me a chance to explain. Thank God.

  He walked right up to me, and I mean right up – our noses were practically touching. I put my arms out to throw them around his neck. The look on his face when I did so was like a slap to the face.

  “Don’t you dare!” The disgust in his voice followed up the slap to the face with a thump to the side of my head with a blunt object. “Listen to me, and listen well, because this is the last time I’ll ever speak to you. Don’t ever come near me again. Do you understand me?”

  My legs shook. For a few seconds, I actually thought I was going to faint. Nothing had ever scared me so much in my life as the hatred in his voice did right now. It was then I realised that the real Colm, the Colm that had been so hard to find under the façade, was gone. The mask that carried him through his life was back, and he wasn’t going to take it off for me or for anyone from now on. I’d blown it.

  “I asked you a question,” he snarled.

  Suddenly, I remembered the days when I’d found Colm vaguely intimidating. Those days had nothing on how he was now. Tears instantly pricked at the back of my eyes. It was sheer willpower that allowed me to keep it together enough to turn my back on him and walk back to my room. I walked instead of running because some part of my brain had realised, between leaving the room and facing Colm, that I hadn’t brought a key out with me. The tears dripped down my face, but I bit my lip and refused to allow a single whimper escape until I was sure Colm was gone – although I wouldn’t have been surprised if he could see the trail of tears following me back up the corridor, if he’d been looking – it felt like I had a hose attached to the back of my corneas.

  Of course, he wasn’t looking. When I reached my hotel room and was forced to turn around, he’d gone. I leaned against the door of my room, slid down it and howled.

  Eventually, I managed to pull myself together enough to go down to Reception and get another key for my room. I prayed all the way down that Philippe would be there to get the key for me on the QT, but in keeping with how my day was going, he hadn’t started his shift yet. I had to go through the ignominy of explaining my locked-out predicament to a perfectly manicured and coiffed receptionist who just couldn’t stop staring at my bulging eyes and violet cheeks.

  I eventually got back into my room, where I stared down the barrel of a six-pack of Taytos that I knew would be devoured within the next hour just to get me through the trauma.

  I opened my diary and read the words that had caused so much trouble.

  Colm has a lot of issues, but I’m making it my mission to guide him through them. I’ve found that helping him has been helping me get through all the Elaine stuff that’s rolling around in my head. Maybe if I can do something for him, it might bring me nearer to closure on Elaine.

  Ouch.

  Reading over what I’d written again and trying to see it through Colm’s eyes, I could see why he was confused. My words actually made me question my own motives. Was he right? Was my anxiousness to help him really a bid to help myself feel better?

  I did a lot of thinking over the next few hours, along with a lot of eating, and admitted things to myself that I hadn’t dared to go near up until now. Colm was right. This was one of those situations where you try to convince yourself that you’re doing something for someone else, but you know in your heart and soul that you’ll get something from it too . . .

  Yes, I loved Colm, and I wanted to do everything I could to make him happy. If encouraging him to share everything that he was carrying around with him would help him find the road to happiness, then of course I would do that. But I hadn’t exactly found that path myself, had I? I’d veered off into a wilderness of my own a long time ago, one that ran parallel to the route Colm had been taking. Maybe there was a part of me that felt better about my own problems when I was trying to help someone else with theirs. It made me feel I wasn’t alone, but not only that, it stopped me from having to face up to mine. At least Colm now wanted to do something about his, to move on.

  A conversation I’d had with Leon decided
to pop up in my head to say hello. My face burned with shame as I remembered what we’d said.

  “It’s been a tough few years.”

  “In what way?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. Forget I mentioned it.”

  Leon sat back and regarded me speculatively. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

  “No, but I’m sure you don’t want to hear me moaning on about stuff I can’t change.”

  “Maybe you can change it, though.”

  “Trust me, it’s a situation I definitely can’t change.”

  “Okay, but maybe you can change how you feel about it. Hey, how about this? Tell me what’s bothering you, and I’ll give you an outsider’s perspective on it.”

  I frowned. “Why would you want to hear the problems of someone you’ve just met?”

  “I haven’t just met a random someone. I’ve met you. Go on, try me.”

  And try him I did. I told him everything about the Elaine situation, from start to finish. As I spoke, I couldn’t quite believe that I was vocalising the story and the thoughts that had lived inside my head for years and years, mentioned to nobody until now. But that was Leon all over. His easy manner made confiding in him the most natural thing in the world. I’d never even considered sharing any of this with anyone before. It was buried away in my head, because bringing it up made it all real again.

  “I don’t know who I am any more since all of this happened,” I said when I’d eventually finished recounting everything. “The me I knew has disappeared inside of myself.”

  “Everyone loses their way from time to time,” Leon said. “The thing that’s important is recognising the need to find your way back, and making sure you take steps to do just that.”