Better Than Easy

by Nick Alexander

  “Wh …” I say vaguely.

  “Merci,” Chantal thanks the girl. Then to me, as she sweeps away, she throws, “I’m sorry, I’m late.”

  The girl calls her back. “Vous avez oublié …” she says. –“You forgot …”

  Chantal leans back, snatches her daughter’s boarding card from the counter and then struts off towards the security gate.

  I frown at the check in girl.

  “Are you travelling sir?” she asks me.

  I shake my head slowly.

  “Then please step aside,” she says, nodding to indicate the people behind me.

  I nod. “Yes,” I say. “Sorry.” I turn to see Chantal already thirty meters away joining the short queue for security. I glance back at the sign again, checking that it really does say CAIRO, and then, still not quite sure what I’m doing, I start to follow her. When I reach the queue, she is fumbling in her flight bag. She sees me in her peripheral vision but turns her back to me. I pull a face and tap her on the shoulder. “Chantal!” I say. “What’s wrong with you?”

  She half turns her head; just enough to almost look at me. “Va t’en,” she says. – “Go away!”

  I frown in surprise. “Oh,” I say. “Why are you being like this?”

  She looks at me now and I realise that she looks scared. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I … I don’t have time.”

  I glance at the clock. “No …” I say, working out that she has plenty of time. “So, Egypt …” I add thoughtfully.

  “Pourquoi vous ne vous occupez pas de vos propres oignons?” she asks. – “Why don’t you mind your own onions?”

  It’s not the welcome I expect from someone to whom I’m about to give two hundred thousand Euros.

  “OK …” I say, thoughtfully. “You have an Egyptian passport …” I’m still working this out here. I feel like my brain is stuck in first gear. “Your boarding pass says Shenouda …” I say, wrinkling my nose. “Why does your boarding pass say Shenouda?”

  “Excusez-moi,” she says sharply addressing the people in front. “Je suis en retard … je peux?” They nod their acquiescence and she moves two places forward in the queue.

  Muttering a, “Sorry – I’m not travelling,” to the same couple, I queue jump with her.

  “Excuse me,” she says again. “Could I?”

  I glance to the front of the queue. In three more hops she will be at the metal detector. In three more moves they will ask me for my own boarding card and turn me away. And any opportunity will be lost – but any opportunity for what exactly? I don’t know what I’m doing yet, but I do it anyway. I shout, quite loudly, “Chantal!”

  She glances at me in a ratty, rodenty kind of way, and then she scurries forward another place in the queue.

  I cast around, and see a security guard twenty meters away. I stride over to him. “Excusez moi,” I say loudly. I glance at Chantal and see that she is watching me.

  “Oui?” the guard asks.

  “Cette femme. Avec l’enfant,” I say loudly, pointing at her theatrically. – “That woman with the child.”

  I see her break out of the queue and walk briskly, then run towards me.

  “Is she in the right place for boarding?” I ask just as Chantal reaches my side. She grabs my elbow, and starts to drag me away.

  “Tout va bien?” the guard asks me, now frowning. – “Is everything OK?”

  I smile at him broadly. “Yes, sorry,” I say, as I am led away. Chantal’s fingers are digging into my arm. I prise them off.

  “What are you doing?” she hisses.

  The truth is that I have absolutely no idea. “What are you doing?” I retort.

  “It’s none of your business,” she says. “Please … this is none of your business.”

  “Tomorrow I’m supposed to be handing over a cheque for the gîte. I’d say it is my business.”

  “Please,” she says, indicating that I should lower my voice. Her daughter, who has been staring wide-eyed at me, starts at this point to cry. Chantal jiggles her and scans the hall nervously. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, hopefully.

  I frown at her. “A flight to Egypt, a false passport, a false name …” I say, checking it through as I say it. “A missing husband too.”

  “And?” she says.

  “Reminds me of Anne Darwin,” I say. I think that she will have no idea what I’m talking about, and am about to explain, but those final two words make her freeze. The colour drains from her cheeks. In fact, I have never before seen quite such a sudden and marked shift of a human complexion from pink to grey-green. I think, “Bingo.”

  She stares at me, silently chewing the inside of her mouth. She has a cold glassy expression – a look, I realise, of hatred. “I don’t have to stand here and listen to this,” she says, unconvincingly making as if she is going to walk away.

  “You can talk to me, or you can talk to security,” I say, nodding at another guard, this one carrying a gun.

  “What do you want from me?” she whispers.

  And I have no idea what to answer. What do I want from her?

  “Well?” she prompts.

  I stare at her. “I don’t like her.” That’s my first thought. I think that I have, up until now, got her completely wrong. Then I think that no matter what I’m supposed to be buying from her, I don’t want to give her my money. I don’t want to give her any of it.

  “Tell me what you want,” she says again, her tone more friendly this time.

  But I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know why I’m holding her up, other than that something is wrong. “What’s wrong with this picture?” as the Americans say. I don’t even know quite what I don’t want. Except that maybe I don’t want to pay two hundred thousand Euros to a dodgy woman with a false identity who looks like she’s in the process of fleeing the country. That strikes me as a clever thought, a useful thought. I hang onto it.

  “I can’t buy it …” I say, more to myself than to her. “I can’t buy your gîte.”

  “What do you mean?” she asks. “Why not? You have bought it.”

  “No,” I say. “I can’t.”

  “It’s too late,” she says. “You signed the agreement.”

  I nod and think about this. “With who though? With Chantal Ancey or with Mrs Shenouda?”

  She glances nervously around the hall again and then looks back at me with narrowed eyes. Hatred again: she looks like she would happily eradicate me like the rats she shoots with her shotgun. “You want a discount?” she asks, her tone somehow sly. “Is that it? How much?”

  I shake my head slowly. “No,” I say. “I want … No … I don’t want it.” And as I say this I feel a weight slip from my shoulders. Just saying that sentence for some reason feels good, and I realise where this is heading, and it feels like escape.

  “I don’t understand,” she says. “Why now?”

  “Because I can’t,” I say. “Because I don’t trust you. I have no idea who you are, even.”

  She wrinkles one side of her nose at me and then, amazingly, she smiles icily. “I see. That’s what you want then? You want me to pull out of the sale?”

  I frown at her and nod. “Yes,” I say flatly.

  “You want the twenty thousand?” she says. “The cancellation fee? Is that it?”

  I push out my lips. “No,” I say. “Not really. That’s not the point.”

  “But if I cancel …”

  I nod. “Yes,” I say. “I know.”

  “I can’t,” she says. “I can’t afford it.”

  “No,” I say vaguely. “I suppose you must decide what’s best for you.”

  She gasps and stares at the ceiling. She rubs one hand over her mouth. When she looks back at me her eyes are still filled with loathing, but they are glistening with tears too. “OK,” she says. “But you let me go. When I get to … when I get there, I will phone the notary. And you don’t contact anyone about this.”

  I smile thinly and
pull my phone from my pocket. “Yes,” I say. “But you had better phone him now.”

  “I don’t have time,” she says. “My flight …”

  “Ten past ten,” I say quietly as I find the number for the notary and hit the call button. “It boards at ten past ten. You have ages.” I hand her my iPhone.

  “I don’t have time,” she says again.

  “Oh give it a rest …” I say, my patience wearing thin. “If I have a word with security you’ll have loads of time. Is that what you want?”

  “But …” she says, shaking her head, then shaking the iPhone at me. “I don’t know how to use this anyway.”

  “It’s easy,” I tell her. “You talk into it and the person on the other end talks back.”

  “There won’t be anyone there yet, it’s too early,” she says.

  We both hear the voice of the notary’s secretary answering. Chantal raises the phone to her ear. “Maître Damiano s’il vous plaît,” she says. “What do I say?” she asks me. “He doesn’t know … he doesn’t know anything.”

  I shrug. “Tell him you changed your mind,” I say.

  She gasps at me and shakes her head in disgust, then speaks (actually, for some reason shouts) into the phone. Her voice trembles as she says, piercingly, “Oui, Maitre Damiano, oui … Chantal Ancey de Chateauneuf d’Entr … Oui, voila … Je me retire de la vente.” – “I’m pulling out of the sale … yes … I know … yes … I’m sure … yes … the paperwork? OK you can send it by email … yes … I can’t, I’m going away … Unusual, yes, I know … I’m sure … Disappointed, yes, I’m sure. Yes. Yes please do. Your fees, yes, I know. It’s not a problem … Of course. Thank you. Yes, I’m sure. Thank you.”

  As I listen to all of this, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing and I wonder if I have any choice. It feels somehow like destiny, only I don’t believe in destiny. Bumping into her today surely isn’t nothing though. Perhaps through this chance meeting, I am to be saved from something, fraud maybe; maybe from a life with Tom in the gîte – maybe it would have been that bad.

  The conversation over, Chantal thrusts the phone back and snarls, “Happy?”

  I pout at her. “Not exactly happy,” I say.

  “Anyway, it’s done,” she says.

  “You need to sign the documents,” I say.

  “Yes, well, of course,” she says. “As soon as they arrive. He’s sending them to me by email.”

  I frown at something sly in her voice and realise that she isn’t going to sign the documents, and that there’s no way … unless … “If you don’t sign them I will call the police,” I tell her. “You do realise that?”

  She stares into my eyes, clearly calculating the odds, working out the consequences like a chess player computing future moves.

  “I will give them your name, and your false name. I’ll tell them where you flew to,” I say, racking my brain for more. “This isn’t enough,” I think. “This isn’t going to work. I’m gonna have to call security after all.” An image of myself being questioned all day by police comes to mind. And I really don’t have the energy. “I will tell them about Egyptour …” I continue.

  At the word, Egyptour, her face shifts into a grotesque mask of pure, unadulterated disgust. And at that moment, I know that I have got her.

  “How?” she asks. “How could you know that?”

  I shrug cockily. “Just do the paperwork.”

  She shakes her head and turns to leave. And then she turns back and she spits at me. She actually spits at me. The dollop of gob lands on my sweatshirt. I look down at it, and I think, “Gotcha.”

  “You really are a very unpleasant woman,” I say with surprising calm.

  “I hope you die,” she says. “I hope you die of …” And though she doesn’t finish the phrase, I somehow know that the missing word is AIDS. That alone seems reason enough not to buy her gîte.

  I watch her jump the queue, and then I watch her place her bag on the conveyor belt, and I consider calling security anyway, just to punish her, but then before I have managed to decide she too is gone.

  I stand and think, “What the fuck happens now?” And I suppose the answer is: nothing at all.

  For there is no more Ricardo and no more gîte. Soon enough Jenny will be leaving, and very possibly Tom will fuck off too. It seems pretty likely that in the midst of this maelstrom, I have made the biggest mistake of my life, perhaps the biggest mistakes of my life, plural. And yet, which they were, I’m not quite clever enough to work out. Was it buying the gîte or not buying the gîte? Sleeping with Ricardo or taking Tom back?

  But one thing is certain – there is no joy in this chess move; it leaves only emptiness. I feel very sleepy. I feel overwhelmed with a sudden sensation of exhaustion, dizzy almost, as if I have taken a sleeping pill. I just want to go home and sleep. I wonder if I’m going to faint. I need to get home and eat and sleep. But of course Tom is at home, and I don’t want to see Tom; I don’t want to see him at all. I don’t want to explain to Tom that the dream is over, that there will be no rhubarb and no dog. I’m not strong enough to deal with his emotions on top of my own. I realise that Ricardo is probably still in the airport – a stone’s throw away behind the barriers but out of touch. I think that I could call him; that he would maybe even come back, miss his flight. In fact, in the hope of scraping me off the ground at the last minute, I’m almost certain that he would. But the truth is that I don’t want to see Ricardo either. I don’t want to see anyone. I don’t want to talk about it or think about it or do anything with it. I just want to curl up and die. OK, that’s over-dramatic: I don’t want to die. But I really would like to curl up in a ball for the next few months. I really would like to wake up in springtime and have someone else tell me what happened next.

  Better Than Easy

  I open the car door and slip into the driver’s seat. I stare unfocusedly through the windscreen and wonder, in more ways than one, where to go now. I fumble with the keys and slide them into the lock but I don’t start the engine yet. I think logically that I might cry, but the feeling’s not there. I just feel empty.

  I sigh and wind down the window and watch a couple get into a car opposite and then drive slowly away, their tyres squealing on the painted floor.

  As I reach for the seatbelt my arm rubs against Ricardo’s letter, and I gently release the belt and pull the envelope from my top pocket. The envelope is grey and unmarked. I tap it against my left hand, wondering if I have the energy to read it and then I shrug and rip it open. As I pull out the letter – two handwritten sheets on photocopy paper – a photo falls to the floor. I see, as it falls, that it is the photo of the beach house. I leave it where it lands and shake open the letter.

  Ricardo’s handwriting is spidery and challenging to decipher. Plus the letter is written in French. I frown at the first two words for an instant before realising that they alone, are in Spanish.

  Mi Amor.

  I have failed to express myself. How do I know this? Because you are not here with me. I expect that will sound arrogant, but it is not that I am such an amazing “catch” simply that if you knew how deeply I feel about you – I think that you are someone who would appreciate that. I don’t think it’s something anyone reasonable would turn down lightly.

  But yes, that sounds arrogant, and that is my problem, for I’m not so good with words, not when it comes to this emotional stuff anyway. Whether I say it or write it, it always looks theatrical or corny to me. I’m sure that will be the case here as well, but at least I don’t have to face the embarrassment of saying this stuff to your face.

  Of course what I want to say is that I love you – yuck, those words: so dramatic, so overused, so meaningless. So I won’t say that. Instead I’ll say that the days we spent together made me happier than I remember ever being. This is the closest thing to whatever I want that I have found. It’s so close I didn’t quite think it was possible.

  I have to tell you as well that I don’t want to spend a
holiday with you in Federico’s house, but that I want to spend all my holidays with you. I don’t have some rose-tinted picture of what our lives would be: we would argue and fight like everyone else, but I can’t think of anyone I would rather do that with. I would love to look at you one day and realise that we made it; that we got old and wrinkled together, that we spent a whole life of sex and arguments, of holidays and good times and bad times, and that through it all, we had been together.

  Why you? I don’t know. For some reason I believe. For some reason, maybe the way I feel when we have sex, maybe the way we laugh when we talk … I can’t explain it, but it just seems to me that if I can manage a whole life with anyone it will be with you. Of course I may have got this all wrong. Maybe Tom is the one you need. He is cute and he is clever – despite what you think I like him a lot. So maybe he just needs time to change, time to commit, time to be able to feel secure enough to burn his bridges. And if this is so, then you can see something I can’t and what can I say except good luck to both of you?

  But if it doesn’t work out then I hope you will let me know. In fact, even if it never happens I hope you will keep in touch. I would always be proud to have you in my life even if it’s just as a friend.

  But of course that’s not what I want. You only get one life and it’s supposed to be lived madly, excessively. I think the reason I want you is because you are crazy enough to know that; I think maybe you’re as mad as me, maybe even crazy enough to suddenly still change your mind and come with me.

  I think that you are tempted and that now you are thinking about it and worrying about cats and bills and plane tickets and money and visas and commitments to gîtes and sale contracts and letting down friends and it will all seem insurmountable, but it isn’t – it’s just a series of steps, a series of things to be dealt with and I will be there and we will do it all together, we will fix it all together.