Better Than Easy

by Nick Alexander

  “I know you so little.”

  “It is true though, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it’s true.”

  My eyes are watering, maybe the onions, maybe tears. I swallow with difficulty. Tears then.

  Through watery vision, and with a lump in my throat and a sick feeling in my stomach, I dice the aubergine and add it to the pan, which I slide back onto the ring.

  As it starts to sizzle again, words from the TV are lost, which is a good thing, and yet, I strain to hear them all the same.

  “How often did you decide you were never going to see me again?”

  “ …”

  “ … love your … eyes … smile …”

  “ … spoils everything … still time … my love.”

  I spin around and throw open the kitchen window again. Icy air blasts in but at least the sound of the falling rain drowns out everything else. I turn back to face the cooker. I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.

  “Jesus!” I mutter. I clap my hands and say, “Dinner!”

  *

  When the food is ready, I close the window and steel myself and return to the lounge where I crouch beside Tom. He pulls a face and nods over at Jenny, who I see is weeping profusely.

  “Today was our very last day together, our very last in all our lives. I met him outside the hospital as I had promised at twelve-thirty …”

  Jenny wipes her eyes and looks over at me. “I’m allowed to cry,” she says. “I’m a single girl tomorrow.” Then she sits bolt upright – as if someone has just applied an electric shock to her temples. She pulls her mobile from her pocket. “Shit,” she says. “Is that the … Shit! I’m supposed to be at Rick’s. Shit, shit, shit!” She jumps up, sweeps Sarah into her arms and clumsily stumbles towards the front door. “ … leg’s gone to sleep … fuck. Sorry!” she says. “Bye!”

  “I cooked …” I protest, but the front door is already closing behind her.

  I shake my head. “Crazy lady,” I say.

  “Sorry. Actually I should have remembered,” Tom says. “She did tell me.”

  “I should have remembered,” I think. “Ricardo told me.”

  “Those last few hours went by so quickly.”

  “How can she forget though?” I say.

  “As we walked through the station, I remember thinking: this is the last time with Alec. I shall see all this again but without Alec.”

  Tom shrugs. “She drank the best part of a bottle. And we smoked. She has extenuating circumstances.”

  “Yeah,” I say, my voice strange, strained. “I expect she’s pretty upset.”

  “She’s doing OK really, considering.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Do you think we shall see each other again?”

  “I don’t know. Not for years anyway.”

  I cough. “Anyway, I hope you’re hungry.”

  “I could eat a ‘orse,” Tom says. “The film’s only got five minutes to go. Shall I stop it?”

  I shake my head and stand. “Nah,” I say. “You’re fine. Is that Celia Johnson?”

  “Yeah,” Tom says. “And Trevor Howard. Great film, but she irritates the shit out of me really.”

  “Yeah?” I say, looking at the screen. She looks quite magnificent to me.

  “I love you with all my heart and soul.”

  “I want to die. If only I could die.”

  “Well,” Tom says. “You just want her to stop complaining and run off with him really, don’t you? That’s what any normal person would do.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I … I’ll go serve dinner …” I add, turning away.

  A Tiny Goodbye

  Getting up before sunrise has never really been my thing. Sure, there is something magical about seeing that great ball of fire burst over the horizon, something far more optimistic than its poignant daily disappearance; but the sick feeling I get in my stomach, the seemingly endless hunger for food, the tendency to feel fragile and emotional – it’s just not worth it.

  But Ricardo’s flight is at nine, and he wants – he insists – to be there for seven, so at five thirty I’m staring wretchedly at a coffee cup, trying desperately to keep my mind blank, trying hard not to think of anything that my fragile, emotional, sleep-deprived state might blow out of proportion. And of course, today of all days, there is plenty of ammunition.

  At six I creep from the house leaving Tom sleeping soundly. This isn’t about deception for once, it’s just that my final goodbye to Ricardo is emotionally complicated enough without running the unlikely risk that Tom will decide he wants to come.

  By six thirty, I’m helping Ricardo lift his suitcase, a vast wheeled affair, into the back of Tom’s Mini. He smiles at me vaguely. “Thanks for this,” he says. He manages somehow to look pale, early-morning puffy and pink, presumably from the exertion of carrying the case down the stairs.

  “It’s too early for you,” he says, as he climbs in beside me.

  “Yeah,” I reply.

  “It shows,” he says. “You are very white.”

  I laugh weakly and slap my cheeks. “My blood doesn’t circulate before ten a.m.,” I say, pulling my seatbelt on, checking the mirror, and pulling away. “And I slept really badly. I always do if I have to get up early. As though the alarm clock might not work.”

  “I set two,” Ricardo says. “My phone and a clock.”

  “Me too,” I say. “But it doesn’t help. Anyway, I’ve seen you on better days.”

  “Yes,” Ricardo says. “I don’t sleep too good either.”

  I don’t ask why, and thankfully he doesn’t expound.

  As I drive along the morning-quiet Promenade des Anglais, even though it is still dark the streetlamps start, one by one, to flicker and extinguish. Ricardo stares silently from his side window beside me. For this I am grateful. I had been expecting some last minute plea and I’m glad not to have to muster the emotional strength to deal with it.

  To fill the void and dissuade any need for talk, I turn on the stereo. Tom has been listening to my Holcombe Waller album – the reason I couldn’t find it in the flat. I ask him every time to make his own copies for the car but he never listens and my CDs always end up scratched. The CD picks up where apparently it left off, in the middle of “My Little Wrecking Ball.”

  I glance over at Ricardo to see if the music meets with his approval but he’s still stolidly facing the other way.

  Halfway along the prom, workmen are putting out bollards to protect them whilst they mow the central isle, and the traffic suddenly becomes more dense. Ricardo glances at his watch, and I say, “You’re fine! You have two hours.”

  “I know,” he says. “Mais ça m’angoisse toujours. Je pense toujours que je vais être en retard.” – “It always stresses me out – I always think I’m going to be late.”

  A moped weaving through the traffic clips my wing mirror and Ricardo has to open his window and readjust it with all the usual, “No, a bit lower, higher, a bit more, left,” palaver that this always seems to imply.

  As he winds the window back up I notice that Holcombe has moved on to the next track, one of my favourites.

  Because you love me, you love me; ooh you really love me;

  yes you love me, you love me, nothing comes above me …

  A favourite, yes, but I’m really not in the mood for it right now. I reach out to change tracks but Ricardo raises his hand blocking my path. “I like,” he says. “This is an English singer?”

  “American,” I say. “Holcombe Waller. Weird name, huh?”

  I glance at the car clock. Two hours! In exactly two hours time my life becomes simpler. And yet the thought of that simplicity leaves me feeling anxious. God knows Tom and I have enough adventures before us, but it feels like my life is just about to go back to black and white after a brief stint in colour. I put the thought down to sleep-deprived emotional poppycock. Tom and I were fine before Ricardo appeared; we’ll be fine once he’s gone, won’t we?

  Because you
love me, you love me; ooh you really love me;

  yes you love me, you love me, nothing comes above me …

  I glance sideways at Ricardo and quickly reach out and hit the skip button and suddenly I can breathe again. Ricardo clears his throat in reproach or emotion, I’m not sure which, so I unnecessarily adjust my rear-view mirror, as if this feigned involvement in the art of driving will disguise my failure to react.

  I swing around the airport’s one-way system, and as we arrive at terminal two I resist the urge to go to the drop-off point, cutely signposted as: Kiss And Fly. Kissing and flying, would, I decide, be a cowardly act. Instead, bracing myself for the full, tearful goodbye drama, I point the Mini into the multi-storey car park. It is – I think a little coldly – no more than the situation requires.

  We check Ricardo’s mammoth suitcase – he has to pay a whopping eighty-Euro surcharge – and then cross the marble floor to a coffee bar.

  “How come they only booked it as far as Paris?” I ask. “I thought you could book them all the way through these days.”

  “I’m only going to Paris,” Ricardo says. “For one week – to my cousin’s. Then next Wednesday I fly Paris – Bogotá.”

  “Oh!” I say, surprised and a little put out that his departure isn’t quite as definitive – or at any rate, his destination not as distant as I had imagined. “I didn’t know … anyway, I thought your cousin had a house on the beach.”

  Ricardo laughs. “I have big family. You will see. Anyway, this way, when you change your mind, it’s not so far.”

  I laugh, falsely. “I won’t,” I say. “Change my mind, that is. At least, not in a week.” I instantly regret the second sentence.

  “We’ll see,” he says.

  I blow through my lips and shake my head. Ricardo grins at me.

  “Incredible,” I say. “I can’t work out if you’re cute or arrogant.”

  “Both,” he says, “probably.”

  “Well, whatever … you don’t listen. Because I’m still saying the same thing here.”

  Ricardo shrugs. “I just think …” he says.

  I wait for him to continue, then prompt, “You just think what?”

  “Sorry,” he says. “Not think. I mean, I just believe.”

  A waitress appears before us so we order two espressos.

  Ricardo shrugs. “I think what you believe happens. And I believe this … I don’t know why.”

  I frown. “That’s, like, a tautology, or … no, not a tautology. But if you believe something will happen because you think that things you believe will happen, happen …” I shrug. “Well, it’s circular or something.”

  Ricardo frowns at me.

  “Sorry,” I say. “It’s too early for philosophy.”

  He shrugs and reaches for his coffee.

  “Anyway,” I say. “How would that work? I mean, if Tom and I believe something else. Whose beliefs win out?”

  Ricardo grins. “Maybe it depends how much you believe,” he says. “You. Maybe, you do. But Tom, he doesn’t.”

  I sigh. “You underestimate Tom,” I say.

  “Maybe,” Ricardo says.

  My coffee arrives too and I stir in sugar in silence. “Actually, you don’t like him much, do you?”

  Ricardo frowns at me. “Not true,” he says. “I make no … jugement.” He says it French-style.

  “Judgement,” I say. “It’s the same word.”

  “Everyone is different. Everyone is crazy,” Ricardo says. “But everyone is different. I think some people build houses. And some knock them down. You don’t call a plumber to fix the electricity.”

  I frown at him.

  “Tom is not a bad person. But he’s not the right person for building houses.”

  “Oh, like, horses for courses,” I say.

  Now it’s Ricardo’s turn to frown.

  “It’s an English thing …” I say. “Means the same as the business about the plumber and the electricity.”

  “But maybe I am wrong. Maybe it happens. For Tom, I hope.”

  I laugh. “Not for me then?”

  “No,” Ricardo says. “You I think will be happy. You are a builder.”

  “I spent most of my life knocking things down,” I say. “Actually, I think I’m a demolition expert.”

  Ricardo looks at his watch. “I have to go,” he says.

  “But …”

  “I know,” he says. “Unreasonable. Airports do this to me.”

  “OK,” I say, downing my coffee and dropping some coins on the counter.

  “You should come to Paris,” Ricardo says. “You could buy a ticket …” he nods over at the Air France ticket machine. “Just for a few days. It would be fun.”

  I smile at him and shake my head. “Optimistic to the last,” I say.

  He opens his arms to hug me, mafia style. He smiles deeply, making the skin around his eyes wrinkle, and then he opens his mouth into the big white Ricardo grin, and I step towards him and he wraps me in a back-slapping bear-hug.

  “I will see you,” he says. “In Paris or Colombia. But I will see you.”

  “You’re a crazy guy,” I say. “You know that though.”

  He holds me far enough away to look at me. “And you, not at all!” he laughs.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I suppose.”

  “So,” he says, glancing at the security gate where a small queue is forming. “Oh!” he exclaims, fiddling with a pocket and then producing a crumpled envelope. “I wrote this before … I didn’t know you bring me today. Is nothing, but … it has my email address.”

  I nod and take the envelope from his grasp. “OK,” I say. “Thanks.” I smooth the envelope between finger and thumb, and then use it to tap him on the shoulder. “OK, then, go!” I say.

  He nods slowly, winks at me, and then spins away across the hall. I sigh and follow on more slowly, waiting for the emotion to hit me. By the time I reach the end of the queue, he is already on the other side putting his belt back on and picking his jacket up from the conveyor belt. And then he gives me the tiniest of goodbye waves and is gone.

  I stand there for a moment, an obstacle in the middle of the milling crowd, with airport announcements ringing out around me and electric cars whizzing past and wonder at the fact that I’m not crying, that I’m not even tearful. Nothing. No detectable emotion. I sigh and spin on the shiny floor pointing myself towards the exit and start to walk.

  Inside the painfully slow, motorised, revolving door contraption – what is the point? – I can see that outside the sun is shining and that it’s going to be a beautiful day. Through the transparent plastic partition, beyond the idiotic rotating plastic pot-plant, I can see a woman struggling to negotiate the revolving doors with both a toddler and a heavy suitcase. She looks like … Oh! I wave but she doesn’t see me. I think, “Now what are the chances of that?”

  I stand outside in hesitation for a few seconds and then I turn and head back into the terminal building.

  Vaporising Hope

  By the time I get back through the doors Chantal is nowhere to be seen. I scan the check-in counters, and then move far enough into the hall to see the seating area of the coffee bar. I turn and peer at the queue for the security checks, but she isn’t there. For a split second I think that I see not Chantal but Ricardo – in uniform – a momentary lapse of reason. It isn’t, of course, Ricardo; in fact it’s not even a pompier but a security guard. I cast around for Chantal again and am just starting to wonder if I’m imagining things when I glimpse her again, this time a hundred meters away coming out of the toilets and speeding off towards the other section of the building.

  I start to walk briskly, but she’s moving so fast that without jogging I am merely keeping up with her. I almost start to run, and then realise that I don’t really know why I’m chasing her anyway. She pauses, hikes her daughter up a little higher, stares at a notice board, and then spins ninety degrees and crosses briskly to an empty check-in desk.

  As the gap start
s to narrow – I can see her now lugging her case onto the conveyor belt, placing her passport on the counter – I wonder what, other than, “Hi,” I am going to say to her. And then I realise I can ask her for her mother’s phone number. Slightly breathless, I reach her side, but busy with the check-in girl and her view to the right blocked by her daughter, she doesn’t see me.

  “Un seul bagage?” the girl asks her … – “A single bag? Do you have any of these prohibited items? Did you pack your bag yourself? Has anyone asked you to carry anything?” And then she notices me and frowns over Chantal’s shoulder. “Vous êtes ensemble?” she asks. – “Are you together?”

  For a moment, Chantal thinks the girl means her daughter, and replies aggressively, “Of course we’re together!” but then she realises and turns to face me.

  I smile at her. “Bonjour!” I say.

  She frowns, and opens her mouth and then closes it again. Then she turns back to the check-in counter and says, “Non.”

  The girl frowns at me, shrugs, and returns her attention to the computer screen.

  Chantal half turns again. “Why are you here?” she casts over her shoulder.

  I shrug. Something in her tone makes my smile fade. “I was here,” I explain. “I brought a friend – the guy you met yesterday actually. Ricardo. He’s flying to Paris.”

  Chantal frowns at me. She doesn’t look happy to see me at all and I wonder why this should be. She turns back to the check in girl who slides her passport back across the counter.

  Chantal reaches for her passport and closes it so quickly that she actually makes a slapping noise on the counter, and that gesture makes me suspicious – it makes me look at the document. I’m too late to see the inside, but just quick enough to see the Arabic writing on the cover before it vanishes into her pocket.

  Chantal glances sideways at me as the girl slides her boarding card to her and launches, in a bored tone of voice, into the home-run of her check-in spiel. “L’embarkement est à dix heure dix …” she says, ringing 10:10 with a flourish of her biro, then Gate A24. I step forward and glance at the boarding card. I read the word, Shenouda, and wonder where that is. I glance up at the display board above our heads and see that it says, “AF340 CAIRO.” I look back at the boarding card a second before Chantal swipes it away, and see that Shenouda is the surname. Shenouda, is her surname.