Better Than Easy

by Nick Alexander

  I run a hand across my forehead and at the sound of gravel beneath Ricardo’s boots, I look up. “Sorry,” I say to Jenny. “I just have a headache coming, that’s all.” I turn to Ricardo and smile. “Hello!” I say. “This is a nice surprise.”

  Jenny glances at me and frowns, then stands to greet Ricardo, simultaneously reaching down for her handbag, which she lobs at me. “There’s some Paracetamol in there,” she says.

  Ricardo, is of course, Ricardo. Toujours, égale à lui même, as the French say: smiling, funny, relaxed, sexy. Quite how he manages to sit between his girlfriend (the one he’s leaving in a few days) and her best friend (his secret lover) and still have those serene gestures, still flash that cracker of a grin at everyone; quite how he can even now be funny and seductive, really is beyond me. And not for the first time, I can’t work out if I want him or if I want to be like him; for if I could only learn ten percent of Ricardo’s ease, my own life would, it strikes me, be ninety percent easier. His presence should, by rights, add to the stress of the day, but as ever he knows how to make people laugh, he knows how to make people smile, and thus despite almost insurmountable odds, it is Ricardo who makes a success of the trip.

  The only inkling of tension comes when Jenny, recovering from a fit of laughter at Ricardo’s sick impression of Ingrid Betancourt chained to a tree, grabs his head and tries to kiss him. He catches my eye, and, I think, in deference to my feelings, turns away, making it a peck on the cheek rather than a snog. He then scoops a shrieking Sarah onto his shoulders and jogs off along the beach.

  “Did you see that?” Jenny says. “Honest to God, I feel like I’m being phased out. Gradually.”

  “You are,” I think. “We all are.” I lie, “No, what happened?”

  “Nothing,” Jenny says. “It doesn’t matter. At the point we’re at, it really doesn’t matter.”

  But as soon as he returns – with a now beaming Sarah on his shoulders – she softens, apparently unable, like myself, to ever resist him for long. Even when she’s in the process of being phased out.

  He provides smiles and jokes and kiddie entertainment, and, after disappearing for a few minutes to the restaurant at the top of the hill, even supplies us with plastic cups of coffee and a key for the padlocked pedalos. This latter treat is designed to seduce Sarah, but although she almost accepts, actually taking both our hands at one point to leap aboard, a simple, unfortunate, “Don’t let her fall in! She can’t swim yet,” from Jenny puts an end to the possibility. Sarah’s grin slips to a frown, and within three seconds she has wrenched her hands free and is running, wailing, back to her mother’s side.

  So it is that Ricardo and I end up pedalling out onto the lake together in our very dirty yellow pedalo. The water is glassy smooth, yet as we reach the centre a chilling breeze hits us, so we head back to the edges.

  Only the cries of the cormorants and the steady chugging of the paddles disturbs the silence. It’s relaxing and heavenly, and we pedal without speaking for at least ten minutes, using simple pointing gestures to negotiate where to head for next. At one point as we follow the mini coastline I realise that a hillock is hiding us entirely from the beach and I lean in and give Ricardo a peck on the cheek. He looks surprised so I say, “I missed you!”

  He laughs. “You were hiding from me.”

  I nod. “That too,” I admit.

  He shrugs and shakes his head. “But here is too dangerous.” He nods over at Jenny as she, then Sarah and Tom slip back into view. We pedal on for a while before he says, “Jenny told me. About the gîte. You will buy it then.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I can’t quite believe it myself. We’re signing the day after you leave.”

  “Yes,” Ricardo says. “The fourteenth.”

  “You still think I shouldn’t do it,” I say.

  “Jenny thinks it is OK,” he says. “So maybe. I think it is brave.”

  “Crazy more like.”

  “Yes,” Ricardo says. “Maybe crazy too.”

  “It’s weird,” I say. “I honestly think it’s a mistake. But it’s as if I’m on a train, and it’s going that way, and I can’t seem to stop it. I think we weigh everything too heavily as we get older. When I was younger I just used to say, ‘yes,’ to everything, and things seemed easier. More fun maybe. So I think, why not?”

  Ricardo says nothing, so I continue, “At some point, you just have to decide to build something, you know? It’s like buying a house and …” I realise I’m rambling. I realise that I sound like I’m trying to convince myself.

  “I suppose,” I finally conclude, “that at some point you have to grow up and decide that here is where you will live, and this is the person, and just get on and make the most of it. Does that make any sense at all?”

  “Yes,” Ricardo says. “I understand that. But when you buy a house, even then you must ch … I don’t know. Never mind.”

  “No go on,” I say. “When you buy a house?”

  Ricardo smiles at me and grins. “No, really,” he says. “It’s not for me to say.”

  I stare at the opposite bank for a moment before completing the phrase for him, “You have to choose one that isn’t going to fall down. Is that what you were going to say?”

  Ricardo pulls an embarrassed expression and shrugs.

  “You’re right,” I say. “But the whole situation has led to a point where something has to give. I can’t explain it, but some big decision has to be made. Tom gave up his job, I gave up mine. We cut ourselves free for this, we organised a bridging loan to buy the place, we signed the compromise, and now, well, we have to do something new or go back to where we were. It just has … I don’t know, momentum.”

  “You could do something different,” Ricardo says.

  “Like?”

  “You could change your mind and go travelling. You could go to Africa. You could go to Australia. You could come to Colombia.”

  I laugh. “Yeah,” I say. “Right. We’ll tell them when we get back to shore. You can make the announcement. No, seriously, I’ve done the whole travelling thing. The next stage isn’t about moving. It’s about putting down roots.” Ricardo has stopped pedalling, so I add, “Hey, lazy boy, what is this?”

  Ricardo shrugs. “Here is pretty,” he says, nodding at the nearby bank. I stop pedalling too and the boat soon ceases to move forwards and starts to spin slowly towards the sun instead.

  “So what about Jenny?” I ask. “You have absolutely no desire to put down roots with her?”

  “No,” Ricardo says. “In the beginning, maybe, I thought. But now? No. I think maybe I want to have relationship with … you know … a man. I never do this. Never a proper man-friend like you and Tom.”

  “Crazy guy,” I say. “Men are the worst.”

  Ricardo shrugs. “I never tried. And my relationships with women haven’t worked out so well. So …”

  I snort. “You know, I never really believed in bisexuals. Not before I met you.”

  “You didn’t believe,” Ricardo repeats, uncomprehendingly.

  I drape one hand in the icy water and try to keep it there. “No,” I say. “I thought they were all secretly straight – just trying to be chic and kind of metrosexual like Bowie or Lou Reed. Or secretly gay, but too ashamed to admit it.”

  Ricardo nods. “In a way, I agree,” he says.

  Grimacing at the pain, I pull my hand from the water. I turn to him. “Shit that’s cold,” I mutter. “You agree, you say?”

  He shrugs. “I think maybe no one is ever really both. Maybe one and then another, but never really both. And as you say, I think there are many who never meet the right person, so they just carry on.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say.

  “Moi, je pense,” Ricardo, explains in French. – “Me, I think I prefer men really. But I never fell in love with a man before. It was just sex.”

  I swallow and look across the lake. “Shall we go over there?” I say, pedalling already. As we head back out into the ce
ntre of the lake, I shoot Ricardo a sideways glance, just in case he’s looking at me with meaning, with an expression that might explain what the past tense, what the before was all about. But he’s looking over towards the shore, over towards Jenny and Sarah. Over towards Jenny and Sarah and Tom.

  The Key

  For the journey home, we split into two cars, Jenny and Sarah travelling with Ricardo, myself being driven by Tom. I stare from the side window as we drive around the lake and wonder how on Earth we are going to make ends meet. I must let out a sigh at some point, because Tom says, “You’re really disappointed about Jenny, huh?”

  I pull my eyes from the mirror finish of the lake, and smile weakly at him. “I’m surprised she didn’t tell us straight away,” I say. “I am a bit shocked about that.”

  “I think she only decided a week ago,” Tom says. “For a while she didn’t think it was happening at all, so it’s not really her fault.”

  “No,” I agree. “Mainly I’m just worried about the financial side of things.”

  “It’s only four hundred Euros,” Tom says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “That’s probably ten people staying the night every month,” I point out. “So if we needed an average of forty beds a month over the year just to survive, now we need fifty. And I’m not that sure that fifty is going to be possible. I was never that sure that forty was possible to be honest, but if I had known this, well, I might not have signed in the first place.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Tom says quietly, then, “You worry too much. It’ll be fine.”

  “You keep saying that, but just saying it doesn’t make it so. We need a plan, and I don’t have one yet, and that is stressing me out.”

  “Maybe we can rent the flat to someone else,” he says doubtfully.

  “If the place was just about anywhere else, we could. But I doubt there’s exactly a waiting list of people who want to live up there full-time. The only option will be to do holiday lets on the flat. And that will only be a goer in summer. And even that means redecorating the whole place as well, and quite when we’ll find the time to do that …”

  “Jenny will help,” Tom says. “She promised.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Jenny said she was moving up there with us.”

  “Yeah,” Tom says. “Well, even without her, we will be fine. Tonight we can redo the spreadsheet.”

  “You can redo the spreadsheet till the cows come home,” I say. “But until we think of something new to put in the plus column, it ain’t gonna balance.”

  “No,” Tom says with a sigh. “OK then.”

  I check his features for clues. He has one eyebrow raised. “What?” I say.

  “Well, there’s no point discussing it really, is there,” he says. “Not when you’re in your doom and gloom mood.”

  I let out a heavy sigh and turn back to the countryside spinning past the windows. “You’re probably right,” I say.

  Tom places one hand on my knee. “It’ll be fine,” he says again. “You’ll see.”

  He drops me off with the picnic gear at the entrance to Place St Francois and heads off to find a free parking space – very probably a half-hour task. The second he drives away, before I have even arranged everything so that I can carry it, Ricardo has appeared from an alleyway. “Mark!” he says, super-spy style. “Over here.”

  I frown and carry the cool box, the blankets and the picnic basket over to him. “What on Earth?” I say.

  “Come,” he says, beckoning with his head. “We have to talk.”

  I frown at him. He looks a bit crazed. “I’ve got to get all this up to the flat,” I say. “You can help me.”

  “No,” he says. “Jenny thinks I have gone home. I wait here and then you come.”

  “Why?” I ask. “What’s this all about?”

  “I have something to tell you,” he says. “Many things in fact.”

  “You always say that,” I laugh. “But usually …”

  “Today, I will tell you something,” he says. “Now go, and come back quickly.”

  “Yes sir!” I mock, scooping the stuff up again and heading off across the square.

  When I return, he bundles me on up the alleyway. “If we’re heading for the park, it closes at sundown,” I say.

  Ricardo shrugs. “It’s OK,” he says. “I have keys.”

  “You have keys to the park?”

  He nods. “Yes,” he says. “The pompiers have keys. We train up there. And when people are locked in we have to let them out.”

  “Fair enough,” I say, following him up the steps.

  He lets us in through the iron gates and locks them behind him. “Are you allowed to do this?” I say, looking around at the long shadows cast by the setting sun. “It’s a bit spooky.”

  “At least you know there is no one else,” he says. “Or maybe another pompier.”

  I laugh. “Right,” I say, jogging to catch up with his stride. “What’s this about anyway?”

  “When we get to the bench,” he says. “Just around here …”

  As we round the corner – a path I have never taken before – the bench comes into view. Ricardo sits and pats the space beside him. Once again feeling like an obedient doggy, I sit. “What’s this about?” I say, shivering. “It’s all very cloak and dagger.”

  “Cloakan?” Ricardo repeats.

  “Never mind,” I say.

  “You’re cold?” Ricardo says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I should have brought a jacket. Now the sun’s gone.”

  He starts to take his own jacket off, but I shake my head. “I’m fine,” I say. “Now come on. Spill the beans.”

  “The beans?” he says.

  I shake my head. “Sorry. It just means tell me.”

  “OK, first a hug,” he says. “Because after … I don’t know.”

  I pull a face and hug him briefly, but my sense of intrigue is too strong, my heart isn’t in it. “Anyway why couldn’t you just tell me two hours ago?” I ask him. “God knows what I’m going to say to Tom when I get back.”

  Ricardo nods solemnly. “I do not know what you will say to Tom when you get back,” he says.

  “So come on,” I prompt.

  “There are many things … peut être c’est plus facile en français,” he says. – “Maybe it’s easier in French.”

  “Ça me va,” I say. – “That’s OK with me.”

  He continues in French. “Je veux …” – “I want you to come to Colombia with me.”

  “What?” I say, slipping into a frown of confusion.

  “I want you to come to Bogotá with me,” he says again.

  I shake my head. “I … It’s a lovely offer Ricardo,” I say. “But do you have any idea how much stuff Tom and I have to do?”

  Ricardo nods and sighs. I notice his hands are trembling. “You don’t understand me,” he says. “It’s my fault. I haven’t been clear. It’s because I didn’t want to tell … Anyway, I haven’t been clear. I want you to come to Colombia with me.”

  I shake my head slowly and look at him sideways. “Why exactly?” I say.

  Ricardo rolls his eyes. “I told you I want to …” he coughs. “I said I want to have a boyfriend next time. But it’s not true,” he says.

  “It’s not?” I say shaking my head slowly.

  “No,” Ricardo says. “I want you. I want you to come with me.”

  My brow furrows and my mouth drops. “I …” I say, but words fail me. Eventually I manage, “That’s crazy. I don’t know what’s got into you.”

  “It is crazy,” Ricardo says. “Yes, but it’s wonderful too. I haven’t felt like this since … I don’t know. Maybe never. We fit together.”

  “We fit together?” I say. “You are completely off your …”

  “You don’t see what has happened here do you?”

  I stare into his eyes, and see that I know what he’s going to say, and that it’s true. I open my mouth to speak, but I’m lost for words. And I realise that I�
��m desperate to hear him say it, because it is true, and because I have maybe never quite been able to believe anyone who has said it to me before. There are no sexual thoughts in my mind, but my stirring dick forces me to take note of the fact that I’m feeling aroused. “Don’t say it,” I say.

  “But don’t you think it too?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “Ricardo,” I say. “I really like you. I really like you. You’re brilliant, amazing … But …”

  “You don’t feel the same,” Ricardo says.

  “No,” I say. “Yes, I mean … I don’t know. This has never been an option. You were, you are with Jenny. I am with Tom. This was never destined to be anything other than …”

  “It is,” Ricardo says. “It is now.”

  “It is what?”

  “An option.”

  “It’s not!” I exclaim. “How can you possibly imagine that I’m going to run off with you to Colombia. I’ve never even been to Colombia. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Colombia on the fucking TV.” I frown. “OK, that’s a lie, I have. But you get my drift.”

  “You can discover a new place,” Ricardo says. “I can show you. You will love it.”

  I gasp at his absurd self-confidence. “What would happen to Tom? I couldn’t do that to Tom. And Jenny? What do you think it would do to my friendship with Jenny? I have known her for twenty years,” I say. “Twenty years, Ricardo. How do you think she would feel if she thought her relationship with you ended because you wanted me instead?”

  “Jenny always knew the relationship would end. And she decided, not me.”

  I shake my head. “How does that work? That makes no sense at all, and you know it,” I say.

  “Jenny is going back to England,” Ricardo says.

  I wrinkle my face to express complete and utter confusion. “She what?”

  “That’s why she won’t move with you. She wants Sarah to grow up in England. By September she is gone.”

  A crow sweeps, screeching, overhead – silhouetted against the last vestiges of light in the darkening sky.

  I wrinkle my nose. “Nah,” I say. “That’s not possible. She would have said.”

  Ricardo shrugs. “I’m sorry,” he says. “But she told me at Christmas. You remember, I went home early – I wasn’t so happy.”