Alan looks across as if tempting me into a void. I remain as stone, and he ebbs back to surround me.
“So, tell me, Peter, how have things been?”
It seems a strange question. I repeat it, silently, to myself a few times, rolling it around. Sometimes I wonder if I think the same way as a cow eats? Perhaps I have the brain of a bovine gastronome. I taste again.
“I mean, in general, how are you coping?”
When Alan asks, “how are you coping?” he generally means, “tell me how you are not?” I decide to answer his overt question and leave him clawing, with urgent fingers, at the tightening failure of his subtext.
“I’m fine.” I pull the lever, expertly. Alan looks mildly annoyed on his short, sharp descent. He clambers back before the snap.
“Last week, you spoke about feeling isolated? Do you still feel this way?”
Alan’s recollection of my previous weakness stings me, perhaps too late for my resolution not to betray the accuracy of his strike. It is like fencing with cucumbers before an audience who just don’t care.
“Less so than last week. Sitting here, by myself, I have come to that realisation.” I sound how a depressed zoo ape would sound, flicking compacted faeces at a reflection of itself.
“Less so?” Alan senses an opening. I ready a counter to whatever the soft green gunge that might be. “Less so, in what way? What has changed?”
“I went out to the shops today.”
Alan licks the end of his pencil, though not virulently enough for the short term on-set of lead poisoning. He writes ‘shops’ and underlines it. Hardly difficult to remember, I only said it a moment ago.
“The shops. I see. And how was that? How did you feel?”
“Fine.” Alan lets my word hang in the chasm. It circles uneasily. I can almost see it buzzing away. With disappointment, I feel compelled to follow it up. Tally-ho.
“I saw someone, actually.”
Alan shuffles forward, towards the edge of the threadbare sofa. I push back in my easy chair. I wonder if I can coerce him into toppling and immediately think of a musical.
“Who did you meet?”
“An old friend. A friend of my sister’s, as it goes.”
“That’s good, good. Did you chat together?”
“Yes. Yes, we did. In fact, we agreed to meet for a date.”
“A date?”
Alan sounds too incredulous, even for him. He tries to pull it back.
“A date,” he repeats, with the inflection of surprise. I say surprise, perhaps I mean stone cold disbelief. “Wow, Peter, that’s quite something. This is amazing progress.”
“No more than I knew I would make,” I reply nonchalantly. “Besides, it’s more just a meeting in town for a coffee, so nothing exactly earthshattering. And I bought a shirt, look.”
I point to the garment hoisted serenely on a hanger, ironed carefully, as I have been shown. Alan looks, each new piece of information cascading onto the previous in a delicious, rippling rally.
“Well, it’s a beauty, isn’t it, Peter? Quite the departure from your usual garb.” I shrug, and my hand rubs over a hole in my jogging bottoms. “This really is amazing. Quite excellent news. How does it make you feel?”
Alan expects to be tempered with terms like ‘nervous,’ ‘scared,’ ‘overwhelmed,’ and ‘bejiggered.’
“Fine.” This is all I say.
My sister visits with fleeting regularity, though always on the way to somewhere else. Her life is a series of journeys to another location, most of which she cannot recall.
“I cannot stay, I have to collect Tobias from violin and deliver Hermione to expressionist dance.
“How is Hermione doing with post-modernist pottery for infants?” I enquire genuinely.
“What? How long with that coffee? I told you I cannot stay.”
I pass her coffee. Her eyes scan the room. “I see you’re keeping the place to its usual high standards. Then, she fixes her attention on something, and a smile crosses her face. I have noticed that smile a hundred times as a boy, and it was always bad news. She begins to circle like a buzzard, cutting through arid air. Somewhere below a tiny mouse stirs.
“What the hell is that?” She swoops.
I follow her eye line. “I would have thought that was obvious. It’s a shirt.”
“A shirt? A shirt? Peter, darling, it’s an atrocity! What on earth possessed you to choose that? Where would you even go to buy something that hideous?” She walks to it and begins to flick at the fabric. “I mean, did it come in a lead-lined crate?”
“I think it is quite stylish.”
“Stylish? Stylish for what?”
“Well, if you must know, I am planning to wear it on a date?”
“A date?” She sniggers. “Who with?”
I consider for a moment and recall the reactions of Alan.
“No-one you’d know.”
“Right, and where did you meet this mystery woman? I mean, you’re hardly Mister Social, are you?”
I say nothing. I use the silence as an opportunity to look down.
I hear her place her drink down on the side, barely touched, as she does every time.
“Look, I’m sorry, I can’t stay.”
She needs to drop Hieronymous off at Nuclear Thermodynamics for Juniors.
“I need to, well, I forget which now. You will be alright, won’t you, brother?” I nod. I am, by now, more interested in the algorithm of the carpet. “Look, I’ll stay properly next time. We’ll go for a decent coffee,” she adds hopefully, though with a barb. “You can tell me all about your date?”
Redemption sought through the promise of a future event. Delayed gratification for the procrastinating, orbiting, docking station for children.
“That will be good,” I say.
“Excellent, well…” She rotates her coffee cup, handle away to signal uncoupling. “I can’t stay…”
“I know, Crispian to non-graded karate.”
She smiles the smile of the absent. “If you want.” She kisses me as one would a dead relative. “Call me if you need anything.”
I think I smile. It is hard to tell. She spins off into space and is gone. I will not see anyone for days now. Not until.
I arrive early for our date. She said that she would be here around half two. It is one o’clock. The shirt is beginning to make me feel uneasy, so I draw my anorak around me. I perch on a bench, between the relief map guano, my eyes fixed on the tube station from where she will emerge. Thousands spew forth from or descend into the heat, like ants living in the belly of a blasted, undefinable carcass. Their stares are collectively ahead, though I can look into the hearts of them all.
I build them stories as they spring out of the birth hole. I am passed by lovers, an assassin, and a future Prime Minister. They scurry about, directionless but by my merciful design.
Time drags under the harrow of my mind, but eventually, I see her. She simultaneously emerges into a sunburst of choir-filled reverie, not unlike a movie cliche. Backlit, beret clad, and scarf entwined, she is a vision of renaissance beauty. She waves, I wave too. Our date begins.
Luciana drags me around the art gallery. She spends some time within the arms Maryam Alakbarli. I watch as she swims through the emerald azure, saline enveloping, clinging to thin rafts of gold. I gurgle in her wake. For a moment, she plunges beneath the ocean line, and then emerges, scorched dry by the tangerine heat of “Matriarchy.” But she is blooming, rejoicing in the resonance of the artworks. She is like a prism, refracting, hues bursting in all directions. I am happy. I am glad we came.
I step aside and stare into the eyes of a girl, who clutches a heart as a tuna shoal swirls silently past. Mine? Luciana shifts. My explorations break. She signals that she is ready to move on. This much I can understand. Up until now, I haven’t got any of it.
The film is even worse. I feel sure I have paid for colour, but it is the lady’s choice. I watch the images flicker, but the written words race past. Luciana must feel me stupid. Quel dommage. I remark, in low tones, at the absence of car chases, but am shushed by some half-moon spectacles. In the darkness, Luciana stifles a giggle.
At last, after steering through the clomping twilight, we finish in the cafe. It has been an afternoon where I have fought thought, so now I am quiet and happy to watch froth dissipate in the hum.
A machine sprays a serpiginous hiss, and I clink spoon against my cup. Luciana sips with grace, occasionally nibbling on biscotti. We sit at points diagonally opposite, and I gaze at her along the hypotenuse. She chats amiably, and I listen, allowing her words to seep through like light, summer rain.
Then, without warning, she stands, gathering her things. I jolt, grasping my saucer between white knuckles. “Is she going?” I think. “Just like that, what do I do?”
Then our eyes meet, and she speaks.
“Oh, hello there, it’s Peter, isn’t it? You might not remember me? I’m Luciana, I’m a friend of your sister?” Her voice is bright and effervescent.
“Of course, yes, it’s lovely to see you.” I feign remembrance. “Liliana?” Nice. “Fancy bumping into you here!”
She doesn’t correct me, but rather continues speaking.
“Oh, I feel so rude now! I would stay and chat, really I would, but I am meeting friends, so I must dash, sorry! Enjoy your coffee!”
With a nod-smile, I let her go ahead. In bell-tinkle, I reach into my pocket and re-read the slip of paper. That address isn’t too far.
My latest novel, “Thryke: The Man That Nobody Knew” is available here. I’d love for you to give it a go!