I Am (Not) the Walrus (9 page)

14

Saturday

My heart is still pounding by the time I reach the park. The big statue of the World War II pilot looms through the mist, which makes me feel a little better. It's foggy enough that Pork-pie will have a hard time finding me.

On the other hand, there's nobody standing underneath the statue. In fact, there's nobody in the entire park apart from some die-hard soccer players.

I'm just about to turn and jog home when I catch sight of a lone figure under a big pink umbrella. She's heading away from the statue and toward Portland Road.

It has to be her. Nobody else would have any reason whatsoever to be in the park on an afternoon like this. I shift direction, and sprint toward the umbrella.

“Michelle!” I wave my arms up and down a couple of times just in case she can't see me in the fog, but then I stop. I'm not sure how low an opinion she has of me just at the moment, but I don't think it's going to be improved by seeing me charging down a hill flapping my arms at her.

She pivots toward me, like a pink mushroom, and I can just about make out her face in the dark shadows under the umbrella.

“I'm so sorry.” I stop running to catch my breath, and walk the last twenty yards toward her.

“Toby,” she says. “You might want to think about arranging to meet people somewhere warm and dry in future.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I really am sorry. We should have met in the café.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of the South of France,” she says.

“Yeah, the South of France would be nice.” Now I wish I'd brought my own rain slicker with the hood. My hair is soaked, and little icy rivulets are running down my forehead. “Did you see the falcon yet?”

“Thank you for asking. Yes, I am wet and I have been waiting for about ten minutes.” She tilts the umbrella upward, giving me a better look at her face. Why do scary and beautiful always go together? “And no, I didn't see any falcon.”

“There really is a cafeteria,” I say. A tendril of wet hair tumbles into my eye, so I brush it back. “It's a couple of minutes walk, but we could have a warm drink and dry off.”

“You're a sly one.” She twirls the umbrella.

“I don't understand,” I say.

“The deal was,” she says, pushing her hair behind her ears, “you show me the falcon, and then I'll consent to letting you buy me a cup of tea.”

“I was just thinking you might want to dry off,” I say. “That's all.”

“Don't sweat it. It's only water,” she says. “Mostly.”

“So is sweat,” I say. “Mostly.”

She peers up at the sky from under the umbrella. “Do you want to join me under here? If you get any wetter I may have to fight the urge to start feeding you sardines out of a bucket.”

“As a matter of fact,” I say, “I quite like sardines out of a bucket.”

She shifts over to one side of the metal rod to make room for me.

“Thanks.” I duck my head down under the rim of the umbrella and slide in next to her, making sure that no part of my shoulder or arm touches her. The last girl I was this close to was Katrina, and I can't help noticing how different Michelle smells. Katrina smelled of soap, but Michelle smells more like chai tea. Is this going to spoil my future enjoyment of chai? To be fair, my experience with Katrina hasn't really affected my appreciation of soap either way.

“You know, I was seriously considering not showing up,” she says as she pulls her wind-blown hair away from her face.

“Do you want to hear something funny?” I say.

“As long as it's funny-peculiar,” she says.

“I wasn't going to show up either.”

“Now that would be funny,” she says. “It would be like the old tree-falling-in-the-forest thingy.”

“I'm not sure I follow you,” I say.

“You know the saying,” she says. “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody sees it, then does it really fall?”

“Okay,” I say.

“So if two people arrange to go out,” she says, “and neither of them show up, then would anybody ever know?”

“Next time you might want to go out with someone smarter than me,” I say. “Maybe Sir Isaac Newton, or Pythagoras.” I shove my hands into my pockets and listen to the rain rattling on the top of the umbrella. “I didn't think we were ‘going out.'”

“We're not going out.” She twirls the umbrella. “I was just theorizing about a hypothetical going out. Why weren't you going to show up?”

“Put it this way,” I say. “If it had been warm and sunny, I wouldn't have come.”

“Really?” she says. “You mean you would have felt guilty about leaving me standing in the rain?”

“Why weren't you going to show up?” I say.

“I'll tell you another time,” she says.

“Really?” I say. “There's going to be another time?” I point to the hill just beyond the soccer field. “I think we should go to the Overlook. I think we'll get a better view. We'll be more likely to see the falcon. That is if you're up for a walk.”

“Okay.” She holds the umbrella pole in front of my nose. “Would you mind doing the honors?” she says. “It's difficult for me to hold it so high up. I have a mild shoulder injury from where some lunatic tried to rugby tackle me.”

“Sure.” I haul my hand out of my pocket and take hold of the handle. “The guy sounds like a real creep.”

“I think he meant well,” she says. “But then I suppose they said that about Atilla the Hun. So, you're a Londoner, right?”

“Right.” I take a few steps across the grass, making a straight line to the Overlook, but the damp floods into my sneakers, so I guide us back to the path. “The short version is that my parents got divorced.” We walk around the edge of the soccer field. “Then my mom's mom, who lived here, got sick.” There's a corner kick and a lot of action and shouting around the blue goal. Things do not look good for the blue team, and my heart goes out to them. “So my mom moved here with me and my brother, and we all lived in my grandmother's house, which is where we still are.”

“Sounds crowded,” she says.

“No,” I say. A gray shape flashes overhead. I glance out from under the umbrella, but it's only a pair of pigeons. “It's just me and my mom now. My grandmother died, and my brother joined the Navy.”

“Sorry about your grandma,” she says.

“It was a couple of years ago,” I say. “I mean she was pretty old. She was eighty-five, and she smoked forty cigarettes a day for about seventy of her eighty-five years.”

“Eighty-five?” says Michelle. “My grandma's only forty-nine.”

“Wow. That's pretty young,” I say. “My mom is forty-eight. That's amazing that my mom is as old as your grandma.”

Michelle makes no comment, and when I look at her, she seems to be very focused on the soccer game. Then, as we pass the end of the field and reach the bottom of the hill, something pulls my arm away from my side. At first, I can't quite believe this is happening, but then I look down, and it's true. The girl who wasn't interested in me, didn't have anything in common with me, and didn't even like me has wrapped her hand around the inside of my elbow.

Once we're in among the trees, they muffle the whoops and shouts of the soccer game. Walking close to Michelle, with her holding onto my arm, I get a mix of feelings. A few minutes ago I would have almost been relieved if she hadn't shown up. Now I really hope the falcon shows itself, because I would quite like to get to know her a little better.

“How often do you see your dad?” Michelle's voice is startling in the quietness. Her words echo off the tree trunks.

“Hardly ever,” I say. “Actually, I haven't seen him since we left London.”

“Wow.” She shakes her head. “I have this other friend who's never seen her dad since the divorce. She wouldn't talk about what happened, but I think the dad did something really bad. I mean really bad.”

“Oh, no,” I say. “No way. My dad didn't do anything really bad. At least not to any of us.”

“You're exposing me to the elements.” She takes her hand away from my elbow to adjust the umbrella, but then puts it back again. “I wasn't implying your dad was evil or something. I have this special talent. If there's a wrong thing to say, I'll go right ahead and say it.”

“Don't take this the wrong way,” I say, “but I think I noticed that about you.” A dark shape glides through the trees ahead of us, at about eye level. I freeze, mid-stride, and wait. The bird comes nearer, then turns. It's not a falcon.

I turn to Michelle, and she's looking at me.

“Rook,” she says. She must have recognized it in a fraction of a second.

“My opinion exactly,” I say. “Well spotted.”

She squints at me through one eye as if she can read my mind.

“By the way,” I say, “don't go thinking you're the only one who has a special talent for saying the wrong thing. I think I have that too.”

“I bet you don't have it as bad as I do.” Now she takes her hand out of her armpit and shoves it deep into her pocket.

“I bet I do,” I tell her.

It goes quiet again, and I realize that there's no more rattling on the top of the umbrella. I say, “I think it's stopped raining,” and the moment the words are out of my mouth I regret it. The umbrella was the one thing keeping us close together.

Michelle lowers the umbrella. “Oh yeah,” she says. “It's even brightening up a little. Look.” She shakes the water off the umbrella, folds it up, and points it at the brow of the hill where the trees end. “Shadows. The sun must be coming out.”

I follow the umbrella and it's true; they're kind of pale, but there are shadows under the trees at the edge of the woods.

There's a good arm's length between us now as we walk the rest of the way to the Overlook, but the feeling of closeness I have is still there. It's still there when we reach the top and the trees end, and a yell drifts up to us from the soccer game. Probably a goal. I lead her over to the parapet. It's still misty down below, but we can just about see the yellow soccer players sprinting back to the center spot. The blue players, who are more difficult to see in the mist, all seem to have a foot-dragging kind of jog. Standing over all of them is the pilot statue, the top of which is just about at our eye level now. The pilot's heroically furrowed brow, which is now beginning to have a little shadow underneath it as the sun brightens, makes him seem deeply concerned with the outcome of the game.

I shuffle toward the wall so I'm leaning alongside her. She reaches up and tucks her hair behind her ear without looking at me. I gaze at her ear, and the tip of her nose, and her mouth. I say, “Even the team that's winning looks fed up.” That's what I say, but what I think is that she might even be prettier than Katrina, and with that thought, the feeling of closeness begins to fade. I want it to start raining again so she'll hold on to my arm. I want to find a higher vantage point in the park, but there isn't one.

Finally, I want her to turn toward me, and if she does, I will kiss her.

But she doesn't turn toward me. I wish I knew what she really thought of me. Without a doubt, she's one of the rudest people I've ever met, and yet she came here to meet me. She came here in the pouring rain. She offered to share her umbrella with me. She wrapped her hand around my arm and, in spite of about a dozen opportunities, she hasn't gone home.

On the other hand, maybe she's just sticking with me to see the falcon.

“Who's winning?” she says, looking at the game.

“Yellow,” I say. “I think.”

“You're right,” she says. “They look pretty crestfallen for a winning side.” Her feet scrape on the gravel as she swivels toward me.

Is this my opportunity? Her mouth is open, and her already huge eyes get even wider.

“Whoa! Look! Toby!”

No, this is not my opportunity to kiss her.

“Above the blue goal!” She jumps about a foot off the ground, grabs me by the shoulders, and rotates me away from her so I can see. “I knew it,” she says. “I knew we'd see that bloody bird. I just knew it.”

I don't need to follow her pointed finger; my eyes lock onto the cross-shaped bird gliding above the soccer game. It flaps its wings a couple of times as it heads in our direction. It climbs and accelerates like no other living thing I have ever seen.

“Oh, Toby,” she whispers.

Moments later its black-and-white striped underside flashes right over our heads, then it spreads its wings to land right back on top of the statue. I don't know whether to be grateful to the falcon for appearing and proving me right, or to be pissed off at it for ruining my romantic moment. Either way, I can't stop staring. It is so like being in church, I even take my hands out of my pockets and clasp them in front of my crotch.

“It's a female,” hisses Michelle.

“Can you tell by the anal fins?” I say.

Michelle squints at me again. “Females are brownish in color,” she says, “and bigger. “Males are grey.”

I think she's about to explain that birds don't have anal fins, but now it's my turn to point over her shoulder. “Like that?”

She spins around, and we both stare in silence at the approaching male falcon.

It hurtles toward the statue, then, at the last second, it spreads its wings, settles on the shoulder of the statue, andturns to face in the same direction as the female, who is a few feet above him on the pilot's cap.

“Bloody heck!” Michelle props the umbrella against the wall, places her hands on the top of it, then leaps up so she's standing on it. “Why do I always forget to bring the camera?” She wipes her palms on her jeans, the back pockets of which are at my eye level, then wobbles unsteadily.