On the way back, she looked up at the ornate buildings and wondered how old they were. It was her first time in a foreign country, her first time traveling alone without her family. Sam felt buoyant, happy, in a way she hadn’t in months.
She was lost in thought when suddenly she slammed into something solid. A man.
“Jack the Ripper?” he said.
“Excuse me?”
Sam looked up. He was tall and very English, with a crooked grin and spiky hair. Definitely older, though she couldn’t say how old. Twenty-five, maybe?
“You here for the ten o’clock Jack the Ripper tour?”
“No,” she said. “I was just going to that bar over there.”
“Ahh. Well then, that must have sounded odd. You on holiday?”
“Yes.”
He handed her a pamphlet.
“Best walking-tour company in the city,” he said. “That’s not according to me. That’s according to Time Out magazine.”
“Thanks,” Sam said.
She scanned the offerings.
“Ooh,” she said. “The Blitz: London Turned Crimson.”
He laughed. “I have literally never heard anyone point that walk out,” he said. “Did you not see the Harry Potter walk? The Downton Abbey tour, where we take you to Lady Edith’s office and you get to press the keys on her typewriter?”
Sam shrugged. “I’m weird.”
“Clearly,” he said, appreciative. “I’m Clive, by the way.”
“Sam.”
She tried to assess whether he was flirting with her. Guys this handsome didn’t, usually. Perhaps one’s level of attractiveness got inflated overseas, the same way you had to be careful to remember that one pound did not convert to a dollar, but was instead worth a dollar and a half.
“Seems no one’s turning up for this thing,” he said. “And I’ve got to be back here in an hour for Ghosts of Victorian London anyway. Fancy a fifty-nine-minute stroll?”
So then, yes. He was flirting.
Sam was not so tipsy as to be blind to the question of whether this was an odd choice, going for a stroll with a stranger instead of back to the party she was supposed to be at. But he was so cute. It would make a good story. And she loved the idea of an hour in London that Isabella hadn’t planned, that was only hers.
Clive pointed out interesting things as they went along, as though he couldn’t help himself.
“Saint Paul’s,” he said. “Designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1675.”
And, “Here’s City Hall, where the young brides get showered in rice each afternoon at two.”
“You know I’m not paying you, right?” Sam teased.
He showed her the remains of the Globe Theatre. A ship anchored in the Thames, a replica of the one Sir Francis Drake sailed around the world four centuries ago. He led her through narrow alleyways that he said had inspired Dickens.
“How do you know all this?” she said.
“I’ve got a good head for memorizing facts,” he said. “And when I can’t remember something, I just make it up.”
She smiled, trying to discern whether he was serious.
“No, you don’t,” she said. “Were you a history major in college?”
“College is for people who need to be told how to think,” he said. “I’ve just been around awhile.”
Sam felt a flicker of disappointment, and then told herself she was being ridiculous. She was not going to marry the walking-tour guide whose first words to her were Jack the Ripper. She needed just to enjoy the hour.
“I did half a year at uni,” he said then. “But I had this professor who wouldn’t accept what I was saying one day in class. Didn’t like being challenged by me. He told me to stop talking. So I walked out and never went back.”
The proud way in which he said it made clear that Clive felt he had gotten one over on the guy, when, really, hadn’t he only succeeded at robbing himself of an education?
He led her into a tiny, quaint pub, where he knew the bartender.
Clive ordered himself a pint, and a half-pint for her. Sam wasn’t sure what to make of that. They sat down at a table in the corner. Underneath his jacket, he wore a fitted red T-shirt over jeans. His upper arms were more muscular than she’d imagined.
He told her he’d grown up in a small town three hours north and lived in Spain for several years. When he lost his job there, an office job, he returned to England.
They compared their favorite novels. When Sam admitted she had never read Ian McEwan, he pulled a book from his backpack and handed it to her.
“His newest,” Clive said.
“Are you still reading this?” she said.
“Doesn’t matter. You need it more.”
He pronounced matter without the t’s.
The book was wrapped in cellophane.
“A library book?” she said. “But what if you never see me again? You’ll get a fine.”
“I like to live on the edge,” he said.
He leaned in and kissed her. Sam felt an electric charge shoot through her body. After he pulled away, it was like she had completed a yoga class, then chugged half a bottle of white wine on a beach. She felt calm, subdued. She had never in her life been kissed like that.
“Whoa,” she said.
He laughed.
When it was time for them to part ways, Sam felt genuine disappointment. She considered tagging along on his next tour, but as if to rid her of this terrible idea, Isabella texted: Where did you goooooo?
“It was lovely to share a drink with you,” Clive said. “Shame you’re only here a week.”
“Ten days,” Sam replied.
She asked if he had a pen, and wrote her phone number on the back of one of his pamphlets.
Sam tucked it into his jacket pocket.
* * *
—
Isabella was ecstatic when Sam told her the story. She wanted all the details.
“I love that this happened on my birthday,” she said. “So was he hot?”
“Oh yes.”
“Good accent? Plummy?”
“I have no idea what that means,” Sam said.
“What does he do?”
“He gives walking tours.”
“I know, but what else? Where is he hoping to take that?”
“Nowhere, I don’t think.”
Sam recalled, then, Clive saying that he preferred giving night tours so he could sleep until noon.
“But like, maybe he’s a comedian or an actor and he does it to pay the bills,” Isabella said. “Or maybe he wants to write a memoir about it. Or maybe he runs the company. Does he run the company?”
“No, his friend does. Clive said the guy plans to make a walking-tour app for every major city in Europe.”
“That sounds cool,” Isabella said. “The friend’s job, I mean.”
* * *
—
Forty-eight hours passed without a call.
Every time Sam thought of how she’d given him her number, she wanted to die. She replayed their conversation in her head. It was lovely to share a drink with you, he’d said. Which meant, of course, Goodbye forever. He hadn’t asked for her number or offered her his.
But then, there was the Ian McEwan.
Maybe he could just tell she was the kind of person who was incapable of being in possession of a library book without returning it.
When Clive finally called, he said, “I was looking for change for the bus, and what did I find but your number.”
“Is that your way of saying you can’t stop thinking of me?” Sam said.
He laughed.
They chatted for a bit, but then abruptly, Clive said he had to go, without making any plans.
Sam didn’t tell Isabella, but after they hun
g up, feeling bereft that that was all, she texted him: I still have your book.
He texted back a few hours later: Dinner tomorrow?
“Make him sweat,” Isabella said. “Give it a couple days.”
Sam waited as long as she could to reply. Seventeen minutes.
* * *
—
She arrived to the restaurant early, wearing a black top and her new jeans, which Isabella said made her butt look amazing.
Clive was outside, reading a paperback. He had on the shirt he wore the night they met.
He kissed her hello, that kiss like a tranquilizer, and then led her inside, down a hallway and into a low-ceilinged room, packed full of people, all talking at once.
They got seated in a booth. Without asking her opinion, he ordered a bottle of wine and several dishes.
He told her about the legends who had once sat between these walls—Dickens and Twain and G. K. Chesterton.
When Sam said she’d never heard of that last one, Clive shook his head.
“What are they teaching you over there in America?” he said.
Later, Clive ordered something called spotted dick for dessert, raising an eyebrow at her, as if she’d come up with the name herself.
When the bill arrived, he said, “Do you have this phrase in America—going Dutch?”
An unpleasant sensation ran through her.
Was she being sexist? Why should it bother her that he didn’t offer to pay? But if she had known, she would have suggested someplace cheaper. Sam put down her debit card, mentally calculating where she could cut that money from her budget.
Clive came around to her side of the booth. He slid toward her until their legs were touching. Something chemical overtook every bit of sense in her head. Sam wanted to jump on top of him. To somehow crawl inside him.
“Here’s a question,” he said. “How old are you?”
“How old do you think?”
“Twenty-six?” he said.
He sounded both hopeful and doubtful.
“How old are you?” she said.
“Thirty-two.”
Sam was stunned. She couldn’t date a thirty-two-year-old. Her youngest aunt was thirty-two.
“I’m twenty.”
“Christ,” he said. “To be honest, I hesitated to ask you out because I had a feeling you were young. But not that young.”
“What do we do now?” she said.
“The smart thing to do would be to part as friends,” he said.
They had sex that night. In the morning while he slept, she looked at him. He was quite possibly the handsomest man she’d ever been this close to. Sam had liked him a lot before the sex, but now she felt addicted. She wondered if every woman felt this way, after.
She had only slept with two other people. She lost her virginity to her high school boyfriend, Sanjeev, after much discussion and careful consideration. They left for college still together, but he broke up with her in October of that first year. Sam, in turn, got drunk and went to bed with some rando she met at a party, just to punish Sanjeev, who wouldn’t have cared even if he knew, but anyway.
Sex with Clive was something entirely different. He knew what to do. His confidence, his assuredness, were intoxicating.
Sam got out of bed to use the bathroom and tiptoed around the apartment. In the living room, books were stacked on the mantel, on the floor, on every inch of the coffee table. She looked at the spines. Names she recognized but had never read. Borges. Pynchon. Kafka. Amis.
Sam sat on the sofa. She imagined herself living there.
She climbed back into bed beside him.
“You’re too old for me,” she said when Clive opened his eyes.
“Am I?”
“I can’t imagine dating someone in their thirties.”
“Good thing you’re going,” he said. “If you weren’t, I’d make a case for myself.”
“What would it be?”
“You’re clearly older than your years. Maybe I’m a tad immature and we meet in the middle. Something like that.”
“Sounds like a recipe for disaster,” she said.
They spent every night together until it was time for her to go home.
* * *
—
For the rest of junior year, they talked over Skype at least three times a day. They brought their laptops into bed and fell asleep that way. She was still up doing schoolwork for hours after he dozed off. Sam watched him sleeping and felt a longing she’d never known before. She showed up to work in the kitchen each morning, and Gaby would grin at her, all bleary-eyed, and say, “Oh, you’ve got it bad, don’t you?”
When Clive told Sam he loved her, this man she had met five times, it felt natural to say it back. When he suggested she come live with him for the summer, Sam knew she would go, even as she heard herself saying, “There’s no way I could.”
“Why not?” he said. “My flatmate’s gone until the end of July.”
“I couldn’t work,” she said.
“We’d find you something,” he said. “Just say yes. It’ll be brilliant.”
Since childhood, Sam had been an overthinker. She had always done the responsible thing, fearing that anything less would mess up her life. But this wasn’t her life. It was only a summer.
Her mother was furious. Beneath that fury, Sam could tell, was fear. “If you go, you’ll never come back,” she said. “You need to finish school first.”
“I’ll come back,” Sam said.
“We don’t even know this person,” her mother said. “And you’re going to live with him?”
Sam felt sorry for her. Three years earlier, her parents had the power to forbid her from bringing Sanjeev into her bedroom and closing the door, or going to a party before they’d talked to the host’s parents. Now it was up to Sam whether to cross an ocean and move in with someone.
“We won’t be living together. Not like that,” she said. “His roommate will be gone and it’s a two-bedroom, so—”
She let her mother fill in the blank.
* * *
—
Clive shared the ground-floor apartment in Walthamstow with an old friend called Ian, whose Midlands accent Sam could only understand approximately forty percent of the time. Ian was in Ibiza for the first month Sam lived there. In his absence, they played house, cooking dinner and dancing in the kitchen; walking around naked; snuggling on the sofa, trading sections of the Guardian.
He showed her his favorite British comedies on his laptop: Peep Show and Spaced and The Inbetweeners. When Clive hugged her, his chin rested perfectly on the top of her head.
They had a small walled garden out back. A previous tenant had planted thyme and oregano. Sam watered them and picked off the best shoots, feeling more adult than she ever had before. She wondered if a person with one life could go somewhere new and just start another. Once, a neighbor rang the bell and said, “This magazine came to my house in the post, but I think it belongs to your husband.”
Sam was amazed. The woman had clearly seen them together and assumed they were married. A year ago, a neighbor back home had mistaken her for her sister Caitlin, who was twelve at the time.
It was impossible to separate her feelings for Clive from her feelings about the city itself. Sam was in love with both. Walthamstow was as far from Isabella’s London as could be. For the first time, Sam felt like she belonged somewhere that Isabella didn’t even know existed, instead of the other way around.
There was an outdoor market on the high street, rows of tents bursting with fruit and vegetables, dresses and handbags, tins of nuts and spices the size of a drum. In a single block, she might see women in burkas, women in saris, women in ripped jeans, all mixed in together. She might stand still and hear a half-dozen languages spoken at once.
Ca
rrying out otherwise mundane tasks in a foreign country felt like an achievement. Small victories like catching the right train or learning the funny names of things in the grocery store: Rocket. Aubergine. Fairy cakes.
Sam went to every museum. She was in awe of the city. She felt like an infant, discovering the world. She sometimes went on Clive’s walking tours and pretended to be a flirty stranger.
Sam took photographs and then, alone back at the house, painted from them on blank postcards. She had never been the type who could set up an easel in public and go for it while strangers watched over her shoulder.
She painted an old church in Hampstead, boarded up, blackened by dirt and decay, the hands on the clock out front rusted and unmoving. She painted the homeless men sleeping beneath the overhang, their stuffed red shopping bags in a line against the door. She painted a proper British woman in a fur coat and hat, walking a beagle with a flowered umbrella in its mouth. She painted the window of a chocolate shop, and the double-decker buses on Oxford Street.
She sent all her paintings home to her mother and father.
* * *
—
Three weeks after Sam arrived in London, a friend of Clive’s got her a temp job in a legal office in Covent Garden. She was filling in for someone’s secretary who was out with a cold. It was only a one-day assignment, but Clive’s friend said if Sam did well, it might lead to more.
The day consisted of sitting at the sick woman’s desk, looking at framed photographs of her children, and answering the phone.
Saint John Foster’s office. No, I’m sorry. He’s not in.
Saint John Foster’s office. May I take your name and number?
The guy in the next cubicle waited until after lunch to pop his head up and say, FYI—it’s pronounced Sinjin.
Sam told Clive the story when she got home. They both kept bursting into laughter at random moments for the rest of the night.
Someone else Clive knew set Sam up with an interview at a nannying agency.
She filled out a long application, checking no on questions such as Have you ever shaken a baby in frustration? And Do you enjoy fire?
Friends and Strangers Page 9