The thief sat across from Arthur. The coat was too small and made him look like a boy who was growing too fast. Arthur watched him take it off. Then a waiter came with two menus.
“Hey, champ!” he said. “We got your egg whites already whisk’, and the milk is fresh from the cow.”
Arthur pointed at the thief. “This is my friend, Marcus.”
The waiter stuck the pen behind his ear. “I can tell,” he said, looking at their matching sweatshirts. “Twins, right?”
Arthur laughed, but the thief just sat there, as if waiting for something to happen.
“I’ll take an egg white omelet, with mushrooms and peppers,” Arthur said.
“Home fries?”
Arthur shook his head. “Trying to make weight for the big fight.”
The waiter turned to the thief. “How about you, boss?”
“Uh, I’ll have the same thing.”
“You want home fries?”
“He’s hungry,” Arthur said. “Give him double.”
“You wan’ a Coke to drink or something?”
“Yeah, a Coke,” said the thief.
“Ice and limón?”
“Okay.”
The waiter wrote it down on his pad and went away.
“Marcus?” the thief said to Arthur. “My name ain’t Marcus.”
Arthur could smell food cooking and it made him feel good.
“What was I gonna say? Robber? Gangster? Hustler? Pimp daddy?”
The thief smiled. “Why you being so nice to me, man? You from a church or something?”
Arthur looked down at his hands. His knuckles were thick and ached with chronic bruising.
“No, I’m a fighter. Twelve–oh, with ten knockouts in the first round. Got my thirteenth coming up. Title fight.”
The thief stirred in his seat. “For a second I thought you was gonna fight me.”
“Yeah,” Arthur said, “me too, but now we’re just two guys sitting down to a meal.”
It surprised him how much he sounded like his mother.
When the food was brought over, they ate quickly without speaking. The thief opened his omelet and removed the peppers one by one. Arthur watched him pile them on the toast plate, beside foil squares of butter that shimmered.
Then one of the dishwashers came out. He was sixteen, but had crossed the border from Mexico when he was thirteen. The dishwasher’s overalls were wet from pulling racks out of the machine. Arthur told him to slide into the booth. Then the waiter came over with black coffee and more Coke for the thief.
“When you’re not working,” Arthur said to the dishwasher, “come by the gym and I’ll train you a little. Cleaning pots gives you strong shoulders.”
The boy smiled and drank his coffee.
Then the thief leaned forward. “Día libre,” he told the dishwasher, “vete al gimnasio. You understand?”
When they had finished their coffee and the boy was back in the kitchen, Arthur asked the thief why he was robbing people if he could speak another language.
“There’s a word for that,” Arthur said. “It’s bilingual. And if you know two languages, why not five? Why not twenty?”
The thief laughed.
“I ain’t kidding. What’s your real name?”
The thief went to speak, and Arthur realized he had a stutter.
“William.”
“Billy?”
“Yeah.”
“Like Billy Graham—New York fighter from back in the day—defeated Sugar Ray when they were our age. He had 102 wins in his career.”
“How many you got?”
“Twelve, but like I told you, I got a big one coming up—you wanna come watch? I can get you ringside.”
The thief shuffled in his seat. “I was trying to rob you, man—”
Arthur felt confidence surge through him. “Well, you ain’t dead, you ain’t in jail, maybe it’s time for a second chance?”
“I don’t deserve no second chance,” he scoffed.
Arthur hesitated, wondering if he’d killed anyone during a robbery, or if he was in a gang. But the words came out anyway.
“It’s never too late, William. Where you live at?”
“With my uncle, but he wants me out.”
“Why?”
“’Cause his girl told him she didn’t want no kids.”
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“Your folks still around?”
“My mother, she in Virginia with her third husband and his kids, and I don’t know my father.”
“Me neither,” Arthur said, “poor guy.”
“How you figure that?”
“On account of how sorry he’ll be when I’m world champ, and got the Lambo, fly crib on Fifth Ave., fur coats, artworks and shit . . .”
William smiled. “You got big dreams, man, respect.”
“What about your dreams?”
“I’m just trying to keep goin’.”
“I could teach you how to fight. You got reach; that’s a big plus. Maybe I could get you a few bucks sweeping up the locker room.”
“I don’t like fightin’.”
“Serious?”
They were both laughing now.
“Then why you doin’ what you do?”
“To eat, man—my uncle don’t give me shit, and I gotta save up for when he kick me out.”
Arthur looked at their clean plates. At the pile of peppers on a side dish made by the thief.
“Go back to school then.”
“I can’t—you know how it is.”
“Yeah,” Arthur said, remembering the boys who had killed his pigeon. He wondered if William had a heart of snarling dogs. But then felt he didn’t. That it was most likely an empty place, never really lived in.
When the waiter came with the check in a plastic tray, William didn’t realize and just sat there.
Eventually, Arthur had to say something. He thought the thief would laugh again, but instead he blushed, then reached inside his hoodie and put the brown billfold on the table. Arthur took it and laid some bills in the tray. There were also mints. Christmas candies. Hard white circles with green stripes. Arthur wondered where the uncle’s home was—if William had a room and if his bed was made up, or if the blankets were rough and unwashed. If he had posters on the walls of people cut out from magazines—or if the paint was peeling and there were damp circles where the plaster had swollen with mold. Arthur took the emergency twenty-dollar bill hidden between his bus pass and tattered photographs of his mother, Sam the pigeon, and Mike Tyson.
“Whatcha doin’?” the thief said, looking around. “Why you giving me money?”
“I’m not giving it to you—I want to buy your knife.”
* * *
• • •
When Arthur got home that night his mother was falling asleep in front of the television. She had on a bathrobe and looked worn out.
“I was worried about you,” she said. “What time is it?”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Arthur reminded her, “I’m undefeated, remember?”
“You hungry?”
“No, I ate—say, you gonna be home tomorrow night, Ma?”
“I think so.”
“Good, because I got a friend coming over for a cooking lesson.”
His mother stared at him. “A friend?”
“Yeah.”
“From the gym?”
Arthur nodded. “Another fighter.”
The Hitchhiker
By dusk, Ben knew he was north of Birmingham, past the towers that circled the city like a crown of gray stone. It would be near impossible to get a lift at night. People only noticed him at the last minute, with no time to make a decision.
He had
never been such a long way. Thumbing lifts between villages back home, he had only to wait ten minutes before a tractor, or someone he knew from school, stopped for him to clamber inside.
He was hundreds of miles from Devon now. Spring had begun with a few warm days. The air smelled of tall weeds.
If nobody picked him up by nightfall, Ben’s plan was to crawl behind a row of trees, unroll the sleeping bag from his rucksack, then get inside and lie there until dawn caught him in its net. He would have to stay low, beyond the sweep of headlights. In the morning, he was certain there would be lorries, freshly laden, grinding upward to Manchester and the far north.
He had some money to eat, but not enough for a hotel or train fare to Scotland—where he’d been promised work with other people his age.
Soon it was completely dark. Ben wondered if he might see a prostitute, or if people might think he was one. Then a car appeared. He raised his arm, standing still so the driver could see his eyes. To his surprise, the vehicle stopped. He hurried toward it, rolling the backpack off his shoulders.
The woman was so tall her seat was pushed all the way back. She had on gym shorts and a sports jacket and was driving the car barefoot.
“I don’t normally do this,” she said. “But I felt sorry for you.” She told him her name was Diane, and that she lived in Walsall and was thirty-four—twice Ben’s age.
“Sometimes I drive when I can’t sleep,” she admitted. “You probably think it’s a waste of petrol.”
He thought of her bare white thighs, but did not allow himself to look down. Ben said she shouldn’t go too far from home. Maybe drop him at the closest junction. But when they approached the first exit, she showed no signs of stopping. Some time later, Diane left the motorway for an unlit slip road. In the distance burned the lights of an all-night petrol station.
“Leave me there if you want,” Ben said.
On the forecourt, the car filled with yellow light. Ben could see the woman clearly now. Her hair was dark red and there was a gap between her front teeth.
She unclipped her seat belt, then pulled a pair of flip-flops from the door pocket.
“I’d better fill up.”
Ben didn’t know if she wanted him to go, or was refueling to drive farther. He got out and stood by the door.
“Think I’ll go into the shop,” he said. “I’ll leave my bag, if that’s alright?”
When she lifted her head, Ben glimpsed the outer rim of a birthmark on her neck that she had tried to cover with long hair.
“Don’t worry,” she told him, “I won’t drive off.”
A motorcycle policeman in yellow and black stood, like a wasp, stirring coffee in a paper cup. When his radio crackled, he switched it off. In the toilet, people had scribbled and scratched their names on the wall. On his way out, Ben noticed a freezer with pictures of ice creams on the side.
Diane was in the car with the engine running. Ben opened the door and handed her an ice rocket.
“Get in,” she said. “I can’t drop you here.”
They bit their ice rockets without speaking. For early spring it was warm, and Diane had to open a window. An hour passed unnoticed.
“I’m such a loser,” she said, after telling Ben about her job in a chain restaurant, “but when I get home, I’m so tired cooking for other people—I just throw something in the microwave.”
She grew up in Northampton, but knew Devon as a child when her family had a caravan. She remembered the folding table, damp beds, a small television with its own aerial, birds calling from the trees at dawn, running with her younger brother until suddenly afraid they had gone too far. Fresh cockles from a van; it was as though they were swallowing the sea, she said. Then later on, the thrill of being up late. A bench near the seafront. The weight of chips on her lap; evening unwrapped like a steaming prize.
One day, her father came home from work and said their caravan had been stolen from the storage lot. Thieves must have seen it from the dual carriageway, then gone back at night and forced the gates.
Ben spent his holidays helping on farms, with evenings at the pub. Sometimes they all got drunk and tumbled onto Dartmoor.
When Diane laughed, hair blew in her face. Ben watched her push it away.
Then there was a sign for Blackpool.
“Let’s go,” Diane said.
“But you’re already so far from home.”
“C’mon,” she said, “it’ll be an adventure.”
They arrived before two in the morning. Ben was worried about groups of men, drunk and wanting to fight. But the streets were empty, except for a few seagulls who astonished Diane with their size. Many hotels were boarded up, and there were rust marks where letters used to be. Some buildings had lost their roofs, or been blinded by stones thrown from the street. Despite the decay, Diane said there was something about Blackpool that made her happy.
“It was once grand,” Ben told her. “During the war.”
“Then maybe it’s the ghost of other people’s happiness I’m feeling,” she said, turning onto the seafront.
When they saw the lights of an all-night fish-and-chip shop, Ben said they could get something to eat. The shop was bright and reeked of grease and vinegar. An old man in a white overcoat leaned against a fryer with crossed arms. His hair was cropped short, and his unshaven cheeks drawn in. After salting and peppering the battered fish and steaming chips, he held up a plastic bottle in the shape of a tomato. Ben shook his head.
“Good man,” the owner said. “A purist.”
Diane had parked near some beach steps. The smell filled the car quickly. They could see Blackpool Tower, and there were some lights—but the main attractions were closed down.
Diane got out and stood barefoot on the pavement. A seagull was in the road, wings snapping as it tried to spill the contents of a paper box. The beach stones were hard to walk on. After choosing a place to sit, Diane said there was a blanket in the car, so Ben went back. He wondered what would happen if he drove away. If she’d be embarrassed to tell the police she had picked up a hitchhiker.
Through the darkness they could hear the sea. Diane took a corner of the blanket and covered her legs. There was only one fish fork in the bag of food—but when Ben handed it to Diane, she speared a chip and gave it back. They could hear the waves and smell salt water.
“I admire you,” Diane said. “Just going where you want.”
Ben broke open the steaming fish. “It was adventurous of you to pick me up—I could have been anyone.”
“Probably not a good idea, right?”
“Except that it was me, and we’re here now on the beach eating chips.”
The white, scalloped pieces of cod came easily.
“Imagine all the places this fish went,” Ben said, “all the things it saw before getting caught.”
The meal took a long time to finish because they found there was a lot to tell each other. When Ben thought of a question, he asked it. Any question at all. Nothing seemed silly or personal. He wondered if this was how relationships started. He had kissed several girls, and even an older woman who was drunk at the pub and said she was getting a divorce. But he had never spent all night talking, telling a person things nobody had ever known or cared to ask about.
When there was only skin and hard pieces of batter, the greasy wrapping almost blew away. Diane caught it in midair, then anchored the paper with a few stones.
Ben wondered if he should kiss her now. He tried to imagine what his friends would say—how let down they would be if he did nothing.
But then Diane stood up and they ran down to the water, past shells and bushels of seaweed. The shells glowed white on the sand like magical objects. Diane turned one over with her foot. They could not see much of the ocean, just a dark mass, with the occasional white dot moving along the horizon with shrill gasps. The world felt uninhab
ited, as though everything they knew and counted on had come to an end.
When they were back on the blanket, Diane stared at him for a long time, and Ben thought something might happen. He pulled a bottle of cider from his jacket.
“This comes from an apple farm near me. A West Country orchard of Pendragons and Crimson Queens. The Pendragons are blood red and the juice comes out pink. It’s not very sweet, but makes good cider.” Ben looked at the bottle. “I was saving it for a special occasion, but forgot an opener.”
Diane took it from him, then pried the cap off with her car key.
“My brother showed me that.”
“Then let’s toast him,” Ben said, as cider foamed out.
Diane raised her arm. “To my brother Andrew.”
“To Andy! Wherever he may be tonight.”
Ben insisted Diane drink first. It was refreshing after the salty food.
“So where is Andy?”
She passed the bottle back.
“He died,” Diane said.
“Bloody hell, I’m sorry.”
“A week before his seventeenth birthday. One of the last things he told me was how upset he was about not getting his driving license. There was a nurse he wanted to ask out.”
When Diane smiled, Ben saw the gap between her teeth again.
“That was Andy,” she said. “Remember when I told you our caravan was stolen?”
Ben nodded.
“Well, it wasn’t. My parents sold it to pay for special treatments. But they didn’t work. Nothing worked in the end.”
Ben looked into the sky. Very dark over the sea where there was no streetlight.
“I still think about where he went.” Her voice was shaking now. “Where the dead go.”
Ben imagined what it was like after. Forcing themselves to eat. The silence where words and laughter would have been. An emptiness they would learn to carry around.
He tried to picture Diane’s face when she was told her brother was dead.
Their caravan would have been long gone by then, full of other voices, other bare feet on the thin carpet, other sleeping bodies under sheets in the curtained light. But in memory it would always be theirs, and never change or grow old, or belong to anyone else.
The Sadness of Beautiful Things: Stories Page 6