Better Than Easy

by Nick Alexander

  “Mark’s best friend,” Jenny continues.

  I frown at the remark. It sounds like a challenge, and I almost rise to it. I nearly say, “No, you’re my best friend.” But I don’t. It’s just too hypocritical.

  I say instead, “Not sure about best friend. But she’s a very good friend. That’s for sure.”

  Knowing

  By sundown, I am actively wishing for Tom’s return. Without Ricardo the gaps left in my life by Tom’s absence are becoming all too clear – I feel lonely and horny. And I need to see him too – it seems that only when I set eyes on him will everything become clear: the depth of my feelings for him, the future of our relationship, what to tell and what not to tell.

  Of course when Tom finally does return, the world does not clarify instantly into a black and white tableau of obvious choices. He arrives tired and grumpy after a delayed flight next to an overweight woman and her screaming baby, and so he rants on about heterosexuals and children, and weight allowances for baggage but not fat or babies, and I listen and wait for something comprehensible to emerge from the muddy pit of my thoughts.

  I serve him a strong drink and finish cooking the special meal I have planned – caramelised endives and flash fried scallops – and the sight of it on the table finally does the trick of shifting him out of his journey and into the here and now of arrival. “Wow!” he exclaims. “This looks posh! We need candles for this.”

  While I uncork the wine Tom fetches then lights candles, and so it is that we sit down for a romantic looking homecoming dinner.

  Tom forks a scallop and groans through his full mouth. “God, this is gorgeous! What’s the sauce?”

  “Honey and balsamic vinegar,” I tell him. “Actually, the recipe was on the packet the scallops came in, so …”

  “Well it’s orgasmic,” Tom says. “God you could serve this in the gîte and everyone would think we had a cordon bleu chef.” He swigs at his wine and then sighs deeply. “Sorry,” he says. “I’ve been ranting, haven’t I?”

  I shrug. “It’s OK,” I say. “Travel is stressful.”

  “I swear it gets worse every time,” he says. “The airports are packed. Everything’s late. I’m sure the leg-room gets a bit less on every trip.”

  I look into his eyes for the first time in weeks, and this eye-to-eye contact makes me smile and I think, “We might be all right after all.”

  Tom smiles back. “Sorry. Time to forget it,” he says.

  “Don’t waste a sunny day crying about rain,” I say, grimacing inwardly as I realise where the phrase comes from.

  “Yeah,” Tom says. “Exactly. Is that a French proverb?”

  I shrug. “Not sure where I heard it to be honest. I think so though. Ne pas gâcher le soleil en pensant à la pluie.”

  “Have you seen much of Jenny and Ricky boy?” Tom asks, as if tuning in to the real origin of the phrase rather than my invention.

  “Not much,” I say. “Well, I saw Jenny when she got back last night. She was complaining because her mum had her eating macrobiotic all over Christmas. She lost another kilo though.”

  Tom pushes his bottom lip out and nods, impressed. “Losing weight over Christmas. Sounds impressive.”

  “No fun though,” I say.

  “No,” Tom says. “I can imagine.”

  “And I bumped into her briefly at the beach today as well. She seems fine. Tell me about your Christmas,” I say. The second I say it, I realise that I have forgotten, again, to buy Tom a Christmas gift.

  I think of the iPhone sitting in the other room and I think about who I have been calling with it. The guilt I feel at having been so wrapped up in my fling with Ricardo that I have forgotten to buy him anything at all is such that I actually break out in a sweat. I wonder if he will remember – if he will now ask me for the gift I promised him was waiting. I wipe my forehead.

  “Are you OK?” Tom asks.

  I nod and cough. “Yeah, fine,” I say. “Just suddenly overheating. Hot flashes. Must be the menopause or something. So how was work?”

  He frowns at me as if I’m being particularly strange, which I suppose I am, and then to my relief starts to tell me of the interminable hours in the foreign exchange office. I sit and half-listen and wonder if it’s now too late to get him something without drawing attention to the fact that I have forgotten – it clearly is. Plus, after my Christmas with Ricardo, any such gesture would be laced with more hypocrisy than I think I could bear – almost certainly the reason I forgot in the first place.

  There were, Tom is telling me, about ten clients a day. His uncle, who is also in foreign exchange, dropped by to chat a few times.

  “It was quite weird talking to him over the counter,” he says, still looking at me enquiringly. “But it made the time go better. He told me all about his love affair with Mum, which to be honest, I didn’t want to hear. He feels guilty that he never told Dad about it, but at the time I convinced him not to. I just thought it would hurt everyone concerned really. I still think it’s better that he never knew.”

  “God,” I say. “Your uncle and your mum – it’s a bit incestuous.”

  “Well,” Tom says. “I know what you mean, but it’s not really. People are just people, you know? She was a cute bird his brother was dating when they were in their twenties. Only, Claude fell in love with her – they both fell for each other really. And then Claude went away to Australia – so they spent a lifetime pining after each other. He really thinks he missed out on his one chance for true love. It’s pretty sad actually. But the big issue for him is that he never told Dad. That he lied to him for forty years. And now, well, it’s too late.”

  “He didn’t actually lie did he? I mean he just didn’t tell him.”

  Tom nods. “Yeah,” he says. “I know what you mean, but with something that big it pretty much comes down to the same thing don’t you think?”

  I blink at him. Did I somehow lead the conversation here? I trace the conversation back, but no, Tom made it happen. I wonder if my guilt is somehow oozing out. Or maybe everything in the universe will now unnervingly revolve around people and their affairs. Perhaps my brain is over-reacting to something which would have had no relevance, thrown into sharp relief by the same mechanism that makes you spend weeks seeing red Minis everywhere simply because your mate bought one. I decide that that’s probably the explanation.

  Tom peers in at me. “Hello?” he says. “Are you sure you’re OK?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I was just thinking about it all,” I reply. “Your mum was actually going to go off with him then? That’s what you said before, right?”

  Tom nods. “Yeah. Claude came back after, I don’t know, maybe forty years. And they fell in love all over again. I don’t know all the details even now – even Claude isn’t sure what she would have done. She was trying to work it out when she came down to Italy that last summer to stay with me at Antonio’s place. She was pretty weird – all sort of buttoned up and ready to explode. But I thought it was seeing Antonio and me together. I thought it was the gay thing freaking her out.”

  I shake my head. “It’s sad. For them, I mean. Never getting the chance. But I suppose at least your dad didn’t have to find out.”

  Tom nods. “I know. I don’t think they ever even actually – you know – slept together.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Not once?”

  Tom shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Otherwise your uncle might have been your dad.”

  Tom nods. “I know,” he says. “The timing’s about right too. But I think they were too old fashioned then.”

  “There was definitely no point telling him then,” I say. “I mean, if nothing even happened. What would have been the point?”

  Tom shrugs. “I think it’s worse in a way,” he says. “I mean, it wasn’t just a quick fumble behind the bike sheds – my mum spent her whole married life in love with her husband’s brother. That’s gotta be worse, surely.”

  I n
od. “I suppose,” I say. “But I mean, what’s the point in worrying about it now? They’re both …”

  “Dead, yeah,” Tom says. It’s OK. No, I think lies hang heavy after a while. Maybe even heavier and heavier the longer you keep them. He feels guilty about having lied to his brother for so long. But I still think it would have been madness. It would have fucked up his relationship with Dad. I mean, they never really got on that well anyway – but all the same, they only really had each other after Mum died. I can’t see anything good that would have come out of it, except maybe Claude could have felt better about himself.”

  “A selfish desire for contrition,” I say.

  Tom nods. “Exactly,” he says. “I mean, if he had told him before, at the time … there might have been some point – things would have been different maybe. But not forty years later … In a way, the worst crime is the fact that he didn’t tell him. It kind of undermined their whole relationship. But it’s too late now anyway.”

  I sit and stare at Tom. I can’t believe the conversation we’re having. I’m pretty certain we’re discussing us through metaphor, but I can’t work out how it happened, unless Tom truly is picking up on my guilt. And what, once we process the metaphorical discussion, is the moral of the story anyway? That lies undermine a relationship? Or that honesty does? That bad deeds should be admitted freely and quickly? Or never?

  I realise that I have been staring at my plate. I look up at Tom and see him looking serious, grave even. “Are you OK?” he asks. “You look a bit green.”

  I’m aware that my throat is dry and that my eyes are bulging as if the pressure of the truth waiting to come out is squeezing the water from my body. For surely, if Tom and I are to survive then we need to survive the truth, not the absence of truth. What basis could that be for a relationship?

  “I … I don’t … I don’t know why we’re discussing this,” I say, vaguely. My head feels swollen and dizzy. I lick my lips and wait for the words to come. I slept with Ricardo? Maybe better not to name him. I had an affair while you were away? But then if you’re going for half-truths, surely it’s better to smile and stick to no-truths-at-all.

  I look up at Tom. His own eyes are watering too. “I …” I say again. But the words still won’t come out.

  “Shit,” Tom says, slowly shaking his head. “That bad, huh?”

  With difficulty I swallow and nod. I bite my lip and stare at my plate again.

  “Jesus Mark!” Tom says.

  I nod slowly. “I know,” I say. “I don’t know how to say it, though. I can’t seem to find the words.”

  Tom half sighs, half gasps. He crosses his eyes, then closes them, and drops his head to his hand.

  “But how?” he says. “How did you know?”

  Living In A Fairytale

  Tom shakes his head sadly. “It was … look – I know it’s a cliché, but it was nothing,” he says. I’m sitting opposite him, my chin resting in my cupped hands. I consider saying, “You’re right. It’s a cliché.”

  I think I’m in shock – I feel a bit sick, a bit feverish almost. I’m not sure if I’m more shocked at Tom’s accidental confession or the fact that mine was cut off at the pass. I don’t know whether to feel saved or damned.

  The words, “Don’t worry about it, so did I,” manifest, ready for delivery. Surely that would be the adult, honest thing to say. But as Tom blunders on, my desire to help him out fades, and it seems more and more evident that what we have done isn’t the same thing, and that we don’t see it in the same way either. I get involved trying to work out which is the lesser crime.

  “It was just a guy off the net,” Tom says, his apologetic tone fading fast. “I met him twice. I was bored and horny. That’s all it was.”

  I nod at him.

  “I mean, it’s not really a surprise is it? You knew this would happen at some point.”

  I frown at him.

  “Didn’t you?” he says.

  I shrug. It seems to me more to the point that Tom knew this would happen – from the moment he started trawling the net, even before. It was, as they say in murder cases, premeditated.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say,” Tom says, now sounding almost belligerent.

  I haven’t said a word yet. I’m not quite sure why it feels like I’m in an argument.

  “Oh come on Mark!” Tom says. “Give me a break here. You know that gay relationships are complicated.”

  I clear my throat to speak. But then I can’t sort out which of the thoughts swirling through my speech centres needs expressing first.

  “Did you really think we were going to be faithful?” Tom says. “Forever?”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  Tom continues to stare at me, his expression – red and somehow superior – unchanged.

  I wonder if I actually said, “Maybe,” or if I just thought it. I clear my throat and say it again, a little over-loudly it seems, “Maybe. Once upon a time.”

  Tom laughs. It’s a sharp, ironic little laugh – mocking even.

  I shake my head. “What?” I say.

  “Once upon a time,” Tom says. “That’s the trouble.” I continue to frown at him so he expounds, “You just live in this fairytale land where people get married and live happily ever after. But life’s not like that.”

  I nod.

  “You expect everyone to be perfect all the time and then you’re disappointed when they’re not,” he continues.

  “I see,” I say.

  “This is pointless,” Tom says. “If you’re not going to say anything, this is pointless.”

  “OK,” I say. “So when you shagged Dante, and I saved your life, and you promised you’d never let me down again …”

  “Jesus Mark. How long are you gonna use that one against me for?”

  “And I believed you,” I continue. “That was a failing on my part?”

  “Mark!” Tom says. “Get real. Think about it. No one is faithful. Everyone lets you down at some point.”

  “Then why say it?” I say. “Why promise anything?”

  Tom shrugs. “To get you off my back I suppose,” he says.

  The words spear me; I physically recoil at the impact.

  “What does it matter?” Tom says. “So I stuck my dick in some guy’s mouth? What’s the big deal? Think about it.”

  I wrinkle my nose and stare at him in disgust. At this very second I truly hate him. I hate him as much as I have ever hated anyone. Ever. And it’s not because he’s had sex with someone. It’s because it was pointless. Tom gave away his word for something of no value whatsoever. But most of all, it’s because there is more bad faith coming out of Tom’s mouth than I would usually come across in a decade.

  “You know what Tom?” I say. “You’ve been having a go at me and, I don’t know … You haven’t even said sorry. How do you manage that?”

  “Sorry,” Tom says, pulling a face and shrugging, his voice that of a bored teenager.

  “You know what,” I say. “Why don’t you go fuck yourself … Oh, I forgot, you prefer to get someone else to do it.”

  Tom nods as if his worst suspicions are confirmed. He stands. “I knew it,” he says, turning and leaving the room. “That’s why I didn’t tell you,” he shouts as he opens the front door.

  The front door slams so hard I wince. And then it opens again – I assume he’s forgotten something and think, “So much for the dramatic exit.” But I hear Tom say, “He’s in there.” And then the door slams again.

  Ricardo’s head appears in the doorway. “Hi,” he says. “Is everything OK?”

  I shake my head and force a tight smile. “Please go,” I croak.

  “But what happen?” he asks. “Did you tell?”

  “No!” I interrupt, then straining to control my voice. “Now please just go. It’s just not the right time.”

  Ricardo nods. He walks towards me, squeezes my shoulder. “OK,” he says. “Sorry.” And then he turns and leaves the room. There’s a delay of m
aybe half a minute before the front door opens and closes again behind him.

  Paloma, always terrified by expressions of anger, creeps out from under a chair. She jumps on my lap and starts to lick my hand – an apparent attempt at comforting me.

  “He’s a bastard Paloma,” I tell her. I sit in the silence of the flat and try to work out in the great scheme of things, which is the greater crime; whose karma is the most damaged. Mine for a mini love affair with my best friend’s boyfriend: an affair that happened unplanned, against my will almost, and for which I have continuously been wracked with guilt. Or Tom’s quicky-behind-the-bike-sheds with a guy off the net, an act which, it would seem, doesn’t even merit the use of the word sorry. Clearly there’s no particular reason sticking one part of one’s anatomy into another part of someone else’s should register more than a two on the great Richter Scale of life. But then why bother? Why bother at all? And why be such a complete tosser about it afterwards?

  My crimes may be on a different scale but at least they happened by chance. At least they were unavoidable. Weren’t they?

  Tom’s homecoming dinner remains, half-eaten, on the plate. I can’t even bring myself to carry it through to the kitchen and so it sits there, apparently a symbol of our battle of wills.

  He spends the night at Jenny’s – I can hear them talking until the early hours of the morning. I try pressing a glass against the wall but I still can’t hear the words, only Tom’s voice droning on and on. It’s probably just as well. Any more anger and I would go upstairs and punch him.

  *

  The next morning we both spend as much time out as possible, and when our paths do cross at lunchtime we move around as if in a choreographed dance, studiously avoiding the horror of ever occupying the same space.

  The weather holds, so I spend the afternoon up in the Parc du Chateau reading a brilliant but somewhat depressing novel and watching the pompiers doing their daily training. I wonder if Ricardo has to train up here as well, and then wonder why he hasn’t tried to get in touch again. I expect Jenny has warned him off.