Better Than Easy

by Nick Alexander

I shrug again. “It depends on circumstances I suppose.”

  Jenny nods thoughtfully. “So what about you?” she asks.

  “Me?” I say, trying to stifle the panic in my voice.

  “Yeah, are you shagging someone else?”

  I shake my head. “W… Why would … ?”

  “Someone called … maybe …” she says teasing me.

  I’m struggling to retain my composure here.

  “I don’t know … erm … Tony maybe?”

  “Tony?” I say.

  “Yes, Tony.”

  “Who the fuck is Tony?”

  “Your friend!” Jenny says. “The one you’ve spent all week with.”

  “Oh!” I say. “Tony!”

  I take a deep breath and recover my wits. “I forgot, you haven’t actually met Tony, have you,” I say.

  Jenny laughs. “Oh,” she says. “Not a looker then?”

  I shake my head. “He’s sweet. But, no. Definitely not. Anyway,” I add, embroidering as I go along. “He’s already got a partner. And a lover. I think his life’s quite complicated enough. He’s shagging his best friend’s partner. That’s what all the angst is about. Should he stay or should he go?”

  Jenny nods. “That’s twisted. It happened to a girlfriend of mine in England. Her best friend was shagging her husband. She lost them both in one go. And they were really close too. Awful business.”

  Selfish Contrition

  At midnight when I get back, I close the shutters and sit in the darkened flat. Lit only by the bars of orange light from the streetlamps outside, the place looks strange and alien, yet at the same time, the difference is refreshing. It feels for some reason like it’s been ages since I really saw the place and the unusual darkness enables me to do that. It’s my flat, and I love it. And of course if the gîte works out I will have to leave it. I have barely thought about that.

  The street outside is silent, and with the exception of Paloma purring – she has jumped on my lap immediately – and the humming of the fridge, the world is silent. It feels almost as if everyone on the planet, with the exception of myself, is asleep.

  I’m feeling a little sick, so I sit and wait for it to pass. Initially I think the cause is Jenny’s cheap wine, but slowly it dawns on me that the cause is more psychological. What I’m feeling is guilt. The sickening stomach churn of a guy who has spent the evening lying to his oldest friend. I think about this, and then about the fact that pretty soon I will no doubt be actively lying to Tom as well, even if only to make sure that the stories I have told Jenny tie up. I think about the twenty years I have known her, about all the things we have been through together from failed attempts at sex to shared traffic accidents. I remember suddenly that I am Sarah’s godfather and imagine Jenny explaining to her why they suddenly stopped seeing uncle Mark all those years ago.

  I notice a strange taste in my mouth, and then an unusual quantity of saliva, and finally a burst of acid reflux forces me to stand and run through to the bathroom. I kneel and wait, but nothing comes; so after a few minutes I return to the lounge. I wish I had someone to talk to about it all. A sort of gay tribal chief who would dispel wise advice. It’s the kind of thing I would usually discuss with Tom or Jenny, and this makes me realise anew how truly fucked-up the whole situation is. And then I think of Isabelle, once a close friend, now living in Canada. Three a.m. in France makes, I calculate, ten p.m. in Canada. A little shocked at how quickly we forget people once they’re out of sight and living in a different time zone – I reach for the phone.

  A man’s voice answers, presumably her Dutch boyfriend. While I wait for him to fetch Isabelle, I think about the fact that I’m an English guy dating another English guy in France, and having an affair with a Colombian, and that I’m in the process of phoning a French friend who lives in Canada with a Dutchman and I wonder when the world got so complicated. The big global mix-up seems to have happened so suddenly, and almost entirely unnoticed.

  “Salut l’étranger,” Isabelle says, her voice bright as a spring morning. “Ça fait longtemps!” – “Hi stranger. It’s been ages!”

  I ask her about life in Toronto and she tells me that it’s, “Géniale, mais glaciale.”– “Brilliant but glacial.” She tells me excitedly about her new job as a photographer’s assistant, quite a difference from her previous job as a nurse, I point out.

  “I know,” she says. “Tell me about it. But things are different here. No one cares about what you are, they just want to know what you can do.”

  And then she realises that it’s three a.m. in France, and I admit that I can’t sleep, so of course she asks me why, and I finally get to spill the beans. The account takes almost half an hour, and she only comments a few times to say, “Uhuh,” or “Well, yes,” or “No! He didn’t!”

  When I get to the end, she says nothing, so I wait for a moment and then prompt her, “Well?”

  She clears her throat. “I think … well, to start with, I think you shouldn’t have told me,” she finally says.

  “You could have said before,” I point out.

  “Yeah. But it’s interesting,” she says. “I wanted to hear. Only now I’m not so sure.”

  I sigh. “You’re not going to feel some moral need to tell Tom or something are you?”

  Isabelle laughs. “No!” she says. “It’s just, well, I was thinking really, that the only way to deal with it is never to tell anyone. Ever.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’s pretty bad really, isn’t it?”

  “So what about Ricardo, or Rick or whatever. Does he love Jenny?” she asks.

  I sigh. “I don’t know really,” I say. “I don’t think so. But he might be saying that just to …”

  “To make it seem less bad. Sure.” she says. “And Jenny?”

  “Does she love Ricardo?”

  “Yeah.”

  I scratch my head. “I don’t think she’s letting herself. I think she suspects something wrong – nothing specific – certainly nothing to do with me. But all the same.”

  “And what about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, who do you love?”

  My chest is so tight – I’m having trouble breathing. I blow through my lips in an attempt at evacuating the stress. “I love Tom,” I tell her. “I do. But it’s, you know, comfortable love. It’s almost like he’s just a friend these days.”

  “And Ricardo?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “I don’t think so. I think I’ve got that, you know, new person, obsessive thing happening. I think it’s more attraction than love. New things, different things, are always so much … shinier? Do you know what I mean?”

  “Of course I do,” Isabelle says. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have run off to Canada with Lars, would I?”

  “It’s a mess, though isn’t it,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Isabelle says. “It is. But of course you don’t know Ricardo really do you. You haven’t known him long enough.”

  “No,” I say. “I mean, I feel like I do, but logically I suppose I don’t.”

  “What’s his biggest fault?”

  I shrug even though she can’t see me. “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Yeah, so you don’t know him at all. Because he sure has one somewhere.”

  “No,” I say. “I see what you mean. Sorry about dumping all this on you, only I needed to talk to someone,” I say.

  “No, it’s fine. Lucky it’s me,” she says. “Because you really shouldn’t be telling people about stuff like this.”

  “So I should just, you know, keep it to myself, forever? That’s what you think.”

  “Yeah. It’s the only way with affairs. Never tell anyone,” she says, definitely.

  “I’m not sure I’m capable though,” I say.

  Isabelle clears her throat. “Then you shouldn’t be having affairs,” she says.

  “I just feel so guilty, every time I lie. I feel half the time like I’m on the verge of owning up to it all,” I say.

/>   “I understand that,” she says. “But your desire for contrition is entirely selfish.”

  “That sounded very professional,” I say. “You could do this for a living.”

  “What, the desire for contrition being selfish? Oh I read it in a book. Toronto is self-help city. It said that most of the time, owning up to things is about wanting to demonstrate what a wonderful honest person you are, and basically, fuck the consequences.”

  “That’s quite profound really,” I say.

  “Yeah. It was a good book,” she says. “It’s true though. I mean, it will feel good for you to tell the truth, well, for a moment it will. But then everything will come crashing down. It would destroy you and Jenny, and you and Sarah, and you and Tom maybe, though you gay boys tend to be more understanding about these things. You have to decide what’s more important I suppose. Happiness or honesty.”

  “And Jenny and Ricardo. It would be the end of them presumably as well.”

  “Yeah,” Isabelle says. “No one left alive. A sort of relationship neutron bomb. The only things left standing would be buildings. You need to think long and hard before you do that.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I can see that. So I just stop the affair and take the secret of it to the grave.”

  “Well, stop or don’t. Whatever.”

  “You don’t think it matters?”

  “It’s not that. It’s more – I doubt you’ll have much control over it. These things tend to have a life of their own. But whatever happens. You have to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Sounds like experience,” I say.

  “Sorry?” Isabelle says.

  “Sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” I say. “You didn’t by any chance meet Dutchy before you split up with …”

  “Oh no,” she interrupts. “I would never have an affair.”

  “But if you did you would never tell anyway.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Even me?”

  “Even you.”

  Best Friend

  I’m woken at eight a.m. by the sound of Jenny’s washing machine – apparently off balance – in the room above. As I slowly come to (I have only slept for three hours) I decide that it’s not the sound of a washing machine, but the builders repairing her bathroom. And then, with a sick feeling, it dawns on me that the noise is no other than Jenny having sex. It’s the repeated thud of her bed banging against the wall.

  The feelings that this generates – arousal at the thought of Ricardo pumping into her, jealousy that it’s her not me, guilt that the last place his dick visited was myself – are so diverse, so unmanageable, I simply pull a pillow over my head to shut out the noise. But it doesn’t work; so I eventually get up and put the radio on, repeatedly turning it up until I can no longer hear them.

  I brew coffee and make toast, but just as I sit down to eat it, I realise that I can still hear banging. Marvelling at Ricardo’s tenacity, I glance at the clock, calculating that they have been shagging for at least sixty minutes. Only then do I realise that the noise has changed in tone, nature and direction.

  I frown and cross the room to the door. When I open it Ricardo glances behind him, and surreptitiously slips into the room. It all looks somehow very theatrical, very résistance, very Allo Allo. I grin at the thought.

  “I was knocking for ages,” Ricardo says.

  For some reason, probably because of the Allo Allo thought, I answer, “Yees. So I ‘erd.”

  He frowns at me, and I snap back to reality. “What are you doing here?” I say. “I thought we agreed.”

  Ricardo shrugs at me, somehow self-importantly. “I wanted to see you,” he says. “I was upstairs.”

  I nod pedantically. “Yes,” I repeat. “I heard.”

  Ricardo frowns again, and then blushes. “Oh,” he says. “Sorry.”

  I shrug. “It’s fine,” I say. “Really. But you shouldn’t be here.”

  He smiles and opens his arms and steps towards me. “I just wanted …” he says.

  I take a step backwards. “Ricardo, are you crazy?”

  He shrugs and half smiles. “What?” he says.

  “What happened was mad, but this? This is dangerous.”

  “No,” he says. “Jenny is busy. She put Sarah in the bath.”

  My mouth drops and I shake my head and let out a gasp of disbelief.

  “I just wanted,” he says, stepping forward again. I notice that he looks very young today, halfway between sweet naivety and demanding child.

  “This isn’t right,” I say. “You can’t go upstairs to Jenny and then … it’s just not right.”

  “I can’t not,” he says, solemnly. “I can’t just walk past your door.”

  He’s wearing a tightly cut brown suit and an open necked white shirt. I imagine his body behind the material. A mini porn movie runs through my mind involving me dropping to my knees, unzipping his trousers and fishing his dick from the silky folds, sliding my hands over his buttocks and pulling him towards me.

  My dick starts to harden, and I almost start to weaken, but then he winks at me, and there’s something in that wink – over confidence, maybe even arrogance – and instead I step around him and put my hand on the doorknob. “Sorry,” I say. “But I can say ‘no.’ We had an agreement. You need to go.”

  Ricardo’s smile fades entirely. He shrugs and looks a little petulant. “Sorry,” he says. He rearranges his dick to disguise his bulge, and when I open the door, he peers upstairs and steps back onto the landing. “You’re right,” he says, then, again, “Sorry. I’m stupid.”

  I close the door on him and return to bed, where, after running more slowly through the porn-film, I start to doze. As I edge towards sleep, I ponder that the moment just passed was a parting of the ways, each route leading to a different future. I could have sunk to my knees, and that would lead to one place. I could have dragged him into my bed and made him late for work, and that might have led somewhere slightly different. I could have told him I never wanted to see him again and that would have been the end. And at the instant I finally sink into sleep, I think that just saying, “No,” and putting an end to this craziness once and for all would be the only option which makes any sense. I wonder why I haven’t already done that; and then I contemplate the fact that Isabelle may be right: maybe these things do have a life of their own. And if they do, can it be said that there is truly such a thing as freewill at all? Or am I just a bottle bobbing in the waves waiting to see which way the tide will go?

  It’s lunchtime when I reawaken, and the sun outside looks glorious so I shower and dress quickly before heading to the beach. On the way I stop and buy a pan-bagnat, the local sandwich – a Niçois salad in a bun.

  Being a weekday, the beach is much quieter, just a few office workers incongruously dressed and eating their lunch.

  Two beary gay guys are sunning their hairy chests at the edge of Castel Plage, the larger guy’s head resting on the rounded stomach of his boyfriend, and I feel a pang of jealousy that Tom isn’t here with me. Or Ricardo. I force the image back to Tom. I’m pretty sure anyway that Ricardo would never be able to do that. Not with a guy anyway.

  I cross the pebbles to where a small bowl has formed, and position myself so that I’m tilted towards the sun. I select Patti Smith – Twelve on my iPhone and eat my sandwich. And then feeling vaguely naughty for my laziness, I fall asleep again.

  When I wake up the album has ended and I can hear a child’s voice nearby.

  I sit up and blink at the brightness. I pull my sunglasses down over my eyes and realise that Jenny and Sarah are sitting just in front of me. They’re putting stones into a bucket.

  “Sleeping Beauty wakes up,” Jenny says, turning to face me.

  “Bonjour,” Sarah says brightly.

  I blink at them. “French,” I say. “She’s speaking French.”

  Jenny nods. “Yeah. She’ll be teaching me at this rate. Have a nice kip?”

  I link my hands above my head and
stretch. “Yeah,” I say. “What are you doing here?”

  Jenny shrugs. “We were walking along the beach and we found you.”

  I clear my throat.

  “I was worried about someone nicking your iPhone to be honest.”

  “Yeah,” I say, glancing down at it. “I had it in my hand, but then I fell asleep.”

  Jenny creases her brow at me. “Well,” she says. “You want to at least keep it out of sight.”

  I yawn and stretch again. “God I’m knackered today,” I tell her. “I couldn’t sleep last night.”

  “No,” Jenny says. Something sharp in her tone of voice makes me study her features for clues. “Nor me,” she adds.

  “Really?” I say. “Maybe the moon or something. I phoned Isabelle in Toronto. She’s having a great time.”

  Jenny nods at me. “I know,” she says.

  “You spoke to her?” I ask.

  Jenny shakes her head. “I mean, I heard,” she says. “You were talking for hours.”

  I feel myself pale. “You heard?” I say.

  Jenny nods. “That’s why I couldn’t sleep,” she says.

  “Erm, how much could you hear?” I say trying to sound relaxed.

  “Oh everything,” Jenny says solemnly.

  I swallow hard. “I …” I say.

  “Joke!” Jenny says. “No, but seriously, it was noisy. And it went on and on. You sounded like you were reading a book to her or something. What the hell were you talking about?”

  I take a deep breath and force a neutral expression. “Oh nothing in particular. Everything. Tom, the gîte, you, Ricardo.”

  Jenny nods. “Well, next time, sit in the bedroom would you? Your lounge is right under my bed. It did my head in.”

  “You should have banged or something,” I say.

  “Oh I couldn’t,” Jenny says. “I’d think I was turning into my mother. She’s always banging on walls. So she’s OK? Isabelle?”

  “Who’s Isabelle?” Sarah asks.

  “She’s the lady who used to baby-sit, do you remember?”

  Sarah nods thoughtfully, and says, “Yes.” Then she turns conscientiously back to her task, which apparently is to fill her bucket with white stones.