Better Than Easy (38 page)
Authors: Nick Alexander
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 â 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 â 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.
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 â two handwritten sheets on photocopy paper â 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 â 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 â 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 â 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 â 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.
And I know too that you think that running away with me is an easy option and that staying with Tom and making that work is somehow “better”, but I have to tell you, I think you have it the wrong way around. There's nothing “easy” about turning your life upside down, and nothing courageous about staying in a doomed relationship with someone who can't or won't commit.
Come to Paris. Or come to Bogotá. Of course it won't be easy, but nothing worth having ever was. It will be better though â much better. And if it isn't, we will change whatever needs changing until it is as good as it can be, I promise. Did anyone else ever make you such a promise?
Madness is hard as we get older â we think that change is impossible, but these things still happen: people do transform their lives in an instant. They do walk out for a packet of cigarettes and never come back. A friend of mine left his wife at sixty-nine and moved in with a mistress. The only hard bit is the first step. The only hard bit is the
saying âyes' â the believing. And in the end we crazy people know that even if it's hard, it's better than not believing.
We all make mistakes - don't let this be another one. Let the mistakes stop here. Choose the guy who is crazy enough to still make the promises. Choose me.
Your Ricardo.
I realise that I have stopped breathing and force myself to inhale deeply. I re-read the letter again and then put it gently down on the passenger seat. I feel a little sick. My head feels swollen and puffy. But still there are no tears. I wonder if I haven't become hard, emotionally dead. For it's the letter I dreamt my whole life of getting but never had. And yet I can't put a finger on any discernible emotion. I think,
“Poor Ricardo. He chose such a useless piece of ⦠silt.”
Silt â
It's not the right metaphor somehow, but I can't think of another one.
And then I start the engine, pull the seatbelt on, and squeal my way out of the parking space.
As I lurch off towards the exit ramp, the Holcombe Waller CD bursts back into life, a beautiful acoustic guitar riff at the beginning of my favourite track of the album. But my mind is elsewhere, and I don't think about the words until his beautifully understated voice starts to drift from the speakers.
I'm all mixed up. I'm free I'm stuck,
I'm free, I'm stuck, I'm a coffee cup.
My eyes start to tear.
I'm yours, I'm not, I'm yours, I'm not,
I'm yours, I'm not.
“Finally!”
I think, reaching out and turning the music up. A huge lump forms in my throat, and my vision
starts to blur. I can't see to drive. I pull sharply into a different parking space just before the beginning of the twisting turning exit ramp. I don't think I can negotiate it until the flood has abated.
Crash in the air, beyond repair;
no stars, no stairs, no cars, no cares;
take me with you.
I pull on the handbrake and turn the sound up full blast and gasp at the fact that such beauty can exist in the world, that a single man can make such a sound, and then stunned by the poignancy of the words, tears start to trickle, then roll, then stream down my face.
I may be mad, I may be sad;
I may have doubts, I may pull out;
I may see through, the things you do;
take me with you, take me with you â¦
And I sit and bawl as what feels like a lifetime of stress gushes out through my tear ducts.
When the song ends, I turn the sound back down, then off completely, and open the glove compartment in the hope of finding tissues. I pull out a pile of sweet wrappers and paperwork, but find none. I fish in the door-pocket and find a single used tissue, and use it to wipe my face and blow my nose. Then I exhale sharply and pick up the papers on the seat and stuff them back into the glove compartment.
A handwritten letter â for a second I think it is the one from Ricardo â catches my eye, and I pick it up and wipe my eyes and sniff and stare at it.
Dear Tom.
As promised, please find enclosed the cheque. If you have any problems cashing it let me know â it should be
fine. As I said on the phone, don't worry about the deeds â if you can't trust family then they shouldn't be family. Do what you want with the flat, rent it, keep it, use it as a holiday home, whatever. If I need the money one day then we'll talk about what to do with the place then. And good luck with the crazy hilltop project â I hope it works out for you despite everything. Call me next time you're home in Brighton.
Yours, Claude.
I frown at the letter and at that second my phone starts to ring. I pull it from my pocket; see that it is Tom, and answer.
“Hi Tom,” I say flatly.
“Mark, I tried to phone you, you didn't answer. The sale is off,” he says, his voice brittle with anguish.
I sigh.
“Can you hear me?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“The sale is off. The notary phoned. She pulled out. I can't believe it.”
“No,” I say.
“You sound weird,” Tom says.
“Yes,” I say. “I ⦠I think I'm in shock.”
“Me too,” Tom says. “Why would she do that? We were supposed to sign tomorrow. Why would she do that the day before?”
“I don't know,” I say.
“Are you still at the airport?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Ricardo ⦠he's gone. I'm on my way home.”
“Good,” Tom says. “God, I'm so ⦠I can't get my head around this.”
“No,” I say.
“No,” Tom repeats.
“Tom, I have a letter here ⦠I found it. From your uncle.”
