by Chris Binchy
I hadn’t been in a bowling alley for years. It was the same as I remembered it, the same feeling that everybody there was compromising themselves in some way. Sticky carpets. Other people’s shoes. No drink. The awkward rangy kids who were old enough to go out but not to get into pubs had to settle for this, cruising each other in groups, all pretending that they were waiting for somebody more interesting. The families doing something together to prove that they could, full of suppressed resentment. The couples who must have had some enormous trauma in their lives to be doing this on a Saturday night.
And then there were the other groups like us, drunk and ironic, but beginning to realize that this wasn’t going to be as funny as they’d thought, regretting now that they’d paid for two hours in advance.
We all played on one lane. The girls started, and Alex and I went last. There was a lot of confusion, whose go it was, whose ball was whose, how the scoring worked, and every minute that went by Alex’s entire body seemed to tighten like a fist.
“What’s the problem?” I asked him as he stood there, chewing his lip.
“This is my Saturday night,” he said. “Babysitting a bunch of girls at a bowling alley.”
“We can get a drink or something later.”
“I could be doing that right now.”
“But you’re here, so what’s the point in getting annoyed about it? Just relax and enjoy it.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Camille asked me, coming over, all buzzed and smiley.
“He’s complaining,” I said. “He’s not happy.”
“Nothing new there.”
“You’re okay?” he said to her. “Not too drunk? Not laughing too hard?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“What?”
“You’re being obnoxious.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “You just enjoy yourself.” He went off to take his go. Camille and I stood beside each other in silence and watched as he hurled a ball straight into the gutter.
“You’re not even trying,” I shouted at him.
“Fuck off, David,” he called back. He wandered off to a Coke machine.
“Fuck off?” I called after him.
“Why is he being like this?” Camille asked me.
“He’ll be all right,” I said with no conviction in my voice.
“I don’t know,” she said, still watching him. “What am I going to do with him?” She rested her head on my shoulder. I didn’t move, just waited, the two of us standing leaning into each other. When he came back and saw her there, he pretended to smile to himself.
I went and took my go. There was a cheer in the background. I went and stood beside Alex.
“Did you see that?”
“What?”
“I knocked them all down or whatever. What’s that called again?”
“A strike,” he said. “Well done.”
“Thanks.”
“Another skill for your résumé.”
I looked at him. He stared straight ahead.
“What is your problem?”
“What?”
“You’re being rude,” I said.
He laughed in a way that made me hope for a second that it had been a joke.
“You’re the only person I know under seventy who would use the word rude,” he said then.
“Oh, shut up,” I said then. “Why did you ask me here?”
“Because I thought you might make it more bearable. I didn’t know you’d be as bad as the rest of them.”
“What? Having fun?”
“Doing a fucking sympathy number on Camille.”
“I wasn’t,” I said.
“It’s your turn,” one of the girls said to him. He went up. I could see that this time he was trying, but still it was a disaster. On my next go I got another strike. More cheers. I was good at this. Across the room I saw him talking on the phone.
It was a bad idea to have come. Whatever was eating him was beginning to threaten the whole stability of the night. She was okay. Her friends were around her, seemingly oblivious to what was going on. He came over to me, his jacket in his hand.
“I’m off,” he said.
“Now?”
“Yeah, I’m meeting Patrick in town.”
“You’re going to go in the middle of this?”
“Yeah, but look at them. They don’t need me.” We watched the girls, happy and loud.
“Is this because I’m better at bowling than you?”
“No,” he said. “What the fuck does that mean? You’re not anyway.”
“I was joking,” I said.
“I don’t care about bowling. I’m bored and pissed off, and I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Okay. Well, you better tell Camille.”
“I know I have to tell her. You don’t have to give me lessons on etiquette. I know what I have to do.”
“Have I done something to annoy you?” He looked at me as if he was going to say something, then stopped himself. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked.
“Why are you always here?”
“I haven’t been here in years.”
“I don’t mean this place. I mean with us. Hanging around all the time.”
“You invited me. Jesus.”
“Yeah, and you came.”
“What was I supposed to do? I didn’t know it was a problem.”
He sighed and shook his head.
“It’s not,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m just hassled. With everything.”
“I don’t know what that means. What are you talking about? Tell me.”
“I can’t. Do you not understand that? It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“Then why did you get me involved?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He shrugged. “Do you need a lift home?”
“No,” I said.
“Right. I’ll see you around.”
I watched as he went over to Camille and spoke to her. I saw a flash of disappointment or anger cross her face, I couldn’t tell which, before she nodded and smiled. It was a cold nothing of a smile that was for the benefit of anybody watching. She turned from him, and at the point where her eyes met mine, I looked away. I didn’t know what I should do, or if I should do anything. She didn’t seem like the kind of girl who would take shit from a boyfriend. But then what did I know? It could be different when she was on her own with him. Whatever the truth of it, being there in between the two of them all the time was doing me no good.
I had three months before the new job would start, and nothing else that was keeping me there. On the Monday of the following week I went to the bank and spoke to a manager. He looked at my statements and listened to what I had to say about my prospects and qualifications, his head bobbing with enthusiasm as if I had a monopoly on good sense. He kept nodding even when I told him how much I needed.
“Where are you going to go?” he asked at the end, when it was clear that I would be getting my loan.
“Brazil,” I said, as if I’d decided.
“Why wouldn’t you?” he muttered as he sat forward and started tapping the money through the ether over to my account.
I talked to O’Toole, and he said it was a good idea. He said once I was back by the start of October, then he would be happy. I gave my notice and worked out my final week in the bank with no sense of regret.
I toyed with the idea of leaving without speaking to Alex but in the end I couldn’t. It seemed like too big a thing to do.
“Where?” he said when I told him.
“You heard me.”
“Are you messing?”
“No. Why would I be?”
“Because they will eat you.”
“Who will?”
“Everybody. A child like you has no business in a place like that.”
“You’ve never been there. What do you know?”
He stopped and sighed.
“You’ll have to be careful.”
“I know that.”
“On your own in Brazil.”
“Yes.”
“Jesus. Why are you doing this?”
I said nothing for a moment, but if he thought about it at all, he might have been able to guess.
“It will be good for me,” I said.
“It might be. If they don’t catch you.”
“They won’t catch me,” I said, and then he laughed.
I met Camille in a café. She said she wanted to see me before I went when I called her. She asked me everything about where I would go and what I would do. She spoke to me without looking, smiling at me occasionally, little flashes of herself that only showed up how much was wrong.
“Are you all right?” I asked her in the end.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem it.”
“No. I’m okay.” She sat stirring the cup in front of her.
“Tell,” I said. “You have to now. I’m going away. I won’t be here when you decide you want to talk.”
She tried to smile at me.
“That friend of yours,” she said then.
“What about him?”
“I know it’s hard for you,” she said. I laughed before I could stop myself. A short little bark. She didn’t seem to notice. “Does he tell you anything?” I shook my head.
“Not really. I haven’t seen much of him recently.”
“Me neither. What’s he up to?”
“I don’t know,” I said after a second.
“He says he’s working all the time. He is. I know he is.”
“He seems to be.”
“I’m sorry to do this to you,” she said then. “It’s not fair. But I thought if there was something he was worried about, he might have told you. That’s all, I promise you. I’m not looking for you to tell me anything you shouldn’t. Just has he said anything? Do you think he’s all right? Should I be worried about him?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Is it all right me asking you this?”
“It’s fine. But I can’t tell you anything. Maybe he’s having a tough time at work. Maybe he’s fighting with his flatmates or his parents. I know he was worried about going back to college, but he hasn’t told me anything recently.” She was looking at me now, staring straight into my eyes, but she wasn’t finding what she wanted. “Ask him,” I said. “He’ll let you know if there is something wrong.”
“I have asked him. He says it’s nothing.”
“Then maybe it is.”
“And he’s been okay with you? Normal?”
I shrugged.
“Normal? Yeah, I suppose so.”
“Is this why you’re going away?” she asked me then. “To get away from us? From all of this?”
“No,” I said. “Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. It can’t be much fun watching this going on. I wouldn’t blame you.”
“That’s not it at all,” I said. “I do have a life of my own. I’m going away for fun, and because I won’t get another chance for a while.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said vaguely, but her mind had already drifted back to him.
Chapter Twelve
I slept in the lower bunk of a bed for ten hours. It was half past nine when I woke. There were no windows in the room, and I lay there not knowing where I was, trying to work out if it was day or night. I could hear the echo of talk in the hall outside. I got up and walked out into the darkness. The thick air smelled of exhaust and drains and fruit beginning to turn. I walked across the park in front of the hostel. There was nobody around, but there was noise everywhere, the sound of televisions from the apartments above, music from the bar on the far side of the square. The crackle and screaming of mopeds driven by bare-chested boys, girls in shorts and tank tops on the back. Beneath it all, in the moments when the noise dropped, I could hear the shushing roaring hum that was a city full of traffic and people, with the sea breaking somewhere in the background. I went into the bar. It was open to the street, a line of guys in blue shirts at the counter, some standing, some sitting on stools around a table in a group, like they were all at the end of a shift. There was a woman on her own, drunk and swaying and talking to the room in general, but nobody paid her any attention. They were all drinking beer out of bottles and frosted glasses, and it was loud. I stood at the counter. Nobody looked at me. The barman was at the far end smoking and talking to an old fellow. I stared over, and when he looked back up the bar at me, I nodded at him. He didn’t move. I could feel my face get hot, but still nobody seemed to notice me. Farther down the bar a guy slapped the counter a couple of times.
“Oi,” he shouted. “Oi.” The barman walked down to him, asked what he wanted, and got it for him from a fridge. As he was walking by me, I stuck out my hand.
“Hey,” I said. He stopped and looked at me. I asked him for a beer. One word. He said something back. I shrugged and pointed at a bottle the man beside me was drinking. He brought the same thing to me and I paid, giving him a note that had to be enough. There was a television behind the bar mounted on a wall, and there was a news program on. There were clips, footage of bus crashes and car pileups and other scenes of mayhem, broken bodies lying in bloody heaps. I drank and looked at the screen while around me people had conversations along the length of the bar. All shouting and arguing and laughing. When they needed him, they summoned the barman, by whistling, shouting, clicking their fingers. The woman came and stood in front of me saying something. I looked at her and smiled, turned away. She smiled back and reached forward and touched my face. She spoke to me again. The guy beside me laughed and spoke to me and took hold of my arm. He pointed at her, and the two of them started talking at the same time.
“Don’t understand,” I said. He was laughing at me now. She walked off, and he punched me on the shoulder, playing, and spoke into my face slowly.
“No,” I said. “Sorry.” His humor seemed to be on the brink of turning into something else. I picked up my bottle and finished it. I walked out. He shouted after me, and I didn’t look back. I crossed to the hostel, back into my room with no window, and turned on the fan. I lay there on the bed and tried to remember what it was that I was doing there.
When I woke in the morning, my first morning, there was a guy sitting on the bunk opposite looking at me. He was wearing a tank top and shorts and flip-flops, blond hair cut short.
“Hey,” he said. I was trying to remember where I was, how I’d got there, if I was supposed to know this person.
“Hello,” I said, sitting up, becoming aware of the fact that I was in my underwear.
“Did you just arrive?”
“Yesterday. Yeah.”
“You slept a long time. Are you English?”
“Irish. Are you American?”
“Canadian.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Just the accent.”
“Yeah. I know. Me too. Do you want to go and eat something?”
“Okay. I’ll need ten minutes.”
“I’ll wait for you out front. What’s your name, by the way?”
“David.”
“I’m Dirk,” he said.
“Dirk,” I repeated. “All right.”
I was trying to work out what he wanted when I was having a shower. The most benign thing I could come up with was that he was on his own and was lonely. I wondered why that would be, what could be wrong with him that he would be here on his own, like me.
“How long will you will be here?” he asked
me as we were walking down a dark narrow street toward the sea, a blue burst of color and light visible ahead.
“A couple of months. I was going to go down to Argentina after a while.”
He shrugged.
“That could be fun, I suppose,” he said. “But this is better.”
“Have you been there?”
“No. But I bet I’m right.”
We went into a café that was open onto the street one block away from the beach. An old guy with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth was wiping down a fridge when we sat down. The Canadian pointed at the menu and smiled and the man asked him a couple of questions and he just said yes to everything. We sat at the counter and smoked and watched the guy make juice out of fruit that I didn’t recognize.
He was a medical student from Ottawa, and he’d deferred his second year to travel. He arrived here six weeks ago, meaning to go on after a couple of days, but had stayed put.
“Why?” I asked.
“It suits me. That’s all. I can’t see how anybody couldn’t love it. I mean, I don’t know you. We’ve only just met, but don’t you get it? Don’t you know what I’m talking about?”
“I only got here yesterday. I haven’t really seen anything yet. I went for a drink last night.”
“And how was that?”
“All right,” I said. “Not much fun. Everybody was shouting. I didn’t know what was happening.”
“That passes,” he says. “You just have to get used to it.”
“Right,” I said. “And how do I do that?”
“Stop worrying. There’s nothing to be afraid of. All the trouble is in the hills,” he said, waving off into the distance casually as if it were another country. “Down here there’s nothing. The cops won’t let it. Too many tourists. It’s fine, no worse than anywhere. Obviously you have to watch out for yourself. Not be flash or anything. The thing is, it’s a very simple life. It’s sex and beer and football, and that’s it. That’s all you need to know. These people are like children. If you can be interested in these things, then you will fit in. And being a foreign boy is like being a girl at home. It’s a total reversal. You will get women everywhere coming up to you, whistling at you on the street, touching you in bars. You’re not married or engaged or anything. No committed relationship?”