My Biggest Lie (7 page)

‘That's not normal, is it?' I asked the guy next to me, as a game erupted into a full-pitch brawl and a referee was knocked out by a flying kick from a Mexican right-back.

‘From what I've seen over the last two days, it's not
ab
normal,' he said. He had the polite, efficient English of a North European.

‘If you were prone to stereotyping you might make conclusions about the Latin temperament from watching this.'

He smiled and pinged my lager bottle. ‘Or about the English temperament from watching you.'

This was Hans. He was German. We embarked on a conversation about Bayern Munich and their powerful midfielder, Bastian Schweinsteiger, which some Geordie lads began to take interest in too. I asked Hans if it was true that ‘Schweinsteiger' translated literally into ‘Pig Fucker'.

‘Yes,' he said, ‘you are absolutely right in this matter. It is a rural name.'

The tragedy of life was not only tragic, or it wasn't yet; to smoke and drink and discuss football in all its exhaustive, erudite pointlessness was a convincing simulacrum of content.

I got smashed and somehow ended the evening on the roof terrace with Hans, talking to gregarious tattooed Danish teenagers, three girls and two boys, who asked me where they might be able to score some cocaine. The thought of it made me woozy, disgusted that it was so exciting. ‘Sorry, I don't do coke,' I said. Hans made the mistake of accepting large pulls on the joint they were passing round and wobbled away looking green. Then I made the same mistake. I stood up and tried to walk casually to the side of the building where I leaned over to look at the street below, thick with traffic and people on the pavement. It was not a place to be sick honourably, if such a thing is possible. My room was just across, so I let myself in, mumbling something at the Danes, and collapsed on the bed where, too late, I remembered there was no toilet or sink in my room. The girl I had been
talking to, the single one, knocked on my door and called through to ask if I was all right. I lay on the floor next to the duty-free carrier bag I had vomited into and kept quiet until she went away. On Sunday morning, as I walked through the lounge with the same knotted carrier bag in my hand, I kept my head down. This kind of company was not good for me.

I spent the day in a corner of the roof terrace, dark glasses on, reading
Bleak House
. The digressions and never-ending parade of unlikely new characters were unsuited to my restless mind, but thank God the book was so long, nine hundred pages typeset in tiny print. I was dreading finishing it and having to resort to the least worst thing remaining on the hostel's bookshelves. It was genuinely possible that I was going to read a whole novel by Paulo Coelho. I might even have to read two. Of the same novel. There were eight. At one point the nice Danish girl I had been chatting up came up to sunbathe, waved at me, but sat at the other end of the terrace. I lay there looking at her, pretending to read, and when I had just about worked up the courage to go over and apologise for my sudden disappearance, two French boys appeared and bookended her. One of them was carrying a copy of
The Alchemist
, perhaps now making that nine copies in the building. I watched them all laugh for ten minutes and dreamed of Sarah before I decided to go for a walk.

The sun shone through the jacaranda trees and onto the fruit stands and café terraces, reflecting off the window displays of bespoke T-shirts. On nearly every street was an independent bookshop adjacent to a lingerie store. Whenever I saw a woman reading I felt a stab in my heart at the thought of the baroque quality of the underwear
she must be wearing. It was Paradise, but I was locked out of it by language or, as it felt at the time, by sin. I stopped for a coffee and a cheese and ham toastie. I was beginning to get the hang of ordering my coffee at least. ‘
Café con leche, por favor
,' uttered in an English accent, would receive an incredulous, ‘
Que?
' The trick was to utter it with the cadence of Bob Dylan berating a journalist backstage in his amphetamine-fuelled mid-Sixties heyday. Either that, or in the accent of an enraged Mafioso extorting protection money at gunpoint. This was how everyone spoke out here. It was taking some getting used to.

After I had threatened to smash the waiter's skull in with my tone of voice, and he had called my mother a whore with his, I settled down to pretend to read
Bleak House
while the beautiful creatures from another world walked past.

When the loneliness became too great, I bought a phone card and called my mum, my sisters. It was lovely to hear their voices, but they weren't the people I needed to talk to. I was still too cowardly to tell them about Sarah, that I was a cheat, an idiot, that I was suffering. I still believed I might be able to sort things out without disturbing them. It was Sarah's voice I was missing. Even on her long trips away, I had spoken or written to her every day, kept a running account of all the interesting events and dialogue that became significant only in the telling of them to her. She was the shape in which sensation made sense. Now I was dispersing.

The last man I expected to need in a crisis was my father, but I was thinking about him more and more. He knew what it was to run away, to have done something shameful. I had not gone to him for advice since I was a
teenager. I thought he might be grateful to be asked, might be grateful even to be listened to. But whenever I tried him, I got his answering machine.

‘Dad, it's Liam. I've run away to Buenos Aires. Honestly. Send me an email. Tell me when I can call you. Answer the phone.'

I tried a few more times but had no answer. I was alone.

I was cheered up when I stopped at an internet café on the way back to the hostel and found that Amy Casares had replied to my email.

Dear Liam

How are you, my darling? But I know how you are:

Craig's dead, poor Craig! And you blame yourself. Well, don't do too much of that, Liam, no more than's necessary. Craig was always perfectly capable of killing himself without assistance; but he did like to have people around to talk to when he was doing it.

You wrote about him beautifully to me, about the bit of him he showed people. His generosity, his childishness, his charm. He was a noble soul, a gentleman, but he was a mess too.

If it helps you for me to answer the questions about him and how he lived in Buenos Aires when I knew him there, then I'm happy to help.

But – and this is going to sound blunt and dismissive, but I'm risking it – you barely knew him and there's no reason why it shouldn't stay that way.

So I won't answer unless you ask me again.

Enjoy the city. It's a beautiful place.

Dangerous too. Don't get lost.

And don't let your guilt about Sarah get put onto Craig. It's Sarah you should think about. You were so happy when I last saw you both, just before you moved to London to
be with her and start your new job. Don't you belong back there? Are you sure there's nothing left to fight for? Can't you go to her and sing your song?

I'm very angry at you for fucking things up with her. That is your fault. Craig is not.

Now, listen, you'll be just fine.

Love from Amy

So, that was me, off the hook and free to get on with my life. Good old Amy. If I could have believed her. But I couldn't. Bennett died because I was too weak to challenge him. Sarah dumped me because I was too vain to resist being tempted by a beautiful woman, because I was both too cowardly to go through with it and too cowardly to come clean about it.

I wrote back to ask Amy to tell me more about how she had lived here with Bennett. I was no use on my own. He had walked these same streets when he was my age. I would try to invoke him and carry him with me.

Chapter 8

I
t was the day of Arturo's gig. Lizzy had flown to Brazil that morning and Arturo had emailed a few days earlier:
Liam, Black Kittens play on Wednesday – will you come?
I didn't need reminding or persuading: it was to be my first proper night out for weeks. I had a strong thirst, and not only for liquids. I was lonely and every day became worse at speaking Spanish and I was bored of pretending there weren't pills and powders that might solve these problems. That they'd created these problems didn't mean they couldn't also alleviate them.

The Black Kittens were a three-piece. Arturo, the tallest and most desirable member, was on bass and backing vocals, sharing the front of the stage with Hernán, short, stocky with a cropped haircut, playing a Les Paul copy and singing lead in a high falsetto. Behind them, on the drums, was Aleman, the German, who was very Argentine and legendary, Arturo told me, for his habit of bribing bouncers at swingers' clubs to let him in as a single man. He ran a bar and sold a bit of weed and coke, a useful man to know.

In a fit of restlessness, I had arrived at the venue two hours early, just in time to see Aleman's van pull up. I received three different man-kisses in welcome, and helped carry in the amps and equipment. We did a lot of smiling at each other, Aleman, Hernán and I, more articulate and less stressful than our attempts to use each other's languages. And Arturo translated when he could be bothered (and perhaps changed much to wind me up). He played the role of a pretty bimbo very much to his own advantage; I was beginning to see there was a sharp humour and cunning behind his ingenuousness.

Having to translate for me was ruining their dynamic so I told them to carry on with things while I tried to write my novel in the corner – but not before I'd placed an order with him for a hundred pesos' worth of cocaine, a small amount of sterling that made a shockingly large amount of cocaine five times the strength of what we had back home.

I found this out just before the gig started. It was ten, the venue was half full, and some very attractive women were embracing members of the band. Arturo had pulled me into the toilets and handed me a small white pebble wrapped in a snipped-off corner from a carrier bag. He swiftly unwrapped a separate pebble of his own and delivered two key scoops to each of his nostrils. That was how he always did it, without any of the careful ceremony and portioning favoured by the English. He loaded it up again and held it out to my own nose. I sniffed it up.

And then he was on stage, pogoing with a big grin as Las Gatitas Negres began their English-sounding indie-rock. Arturo hit thumping bass lines over Aleman's crashing symbals and Hernán sang Kurt Cobain-style vocals over them in a mixture of English and Spargentine.
The coke arrived and immediately made me bilingual. ‘
¿Que tal?
' I said to the girl next to me. She smiled and said lots of things very quickly. ‘
Lo siento, no hablo Castellano. ¿Hablas Inglés?
' I said. ‘Oh, yes, you speak lovely English,' I said. ‘No, I can't hear you either,' I said, and then we stopped speaking, not before, I thought, a certain rapport had been established.

Between songs I shouted fluent Spanish at the girl next to me, which made her giggle and answer in English. Her name was Ana-Maria. She was a fashion student and worked in a clothes shop on the Avenida del Libertador. She spoke good English, enough to understand me when I spoke clearly and slowly, and so chatting her up proceeded with much less pace than it might in England when I had a package of cocaine in my wallet. But that was nice. I was too frantic at the best of times. At one point, I swear I am telling the truth, she said to me, ‘I like your style.'

I wonder if I have sufficiently emphasised what a vain man I am, like any sensible man should be who isn't blessed with the good looks of a Brad Pitt or the absence of a libido. Women have eyes too, even if they're not as foolishly, sensually imbalanced as us. There's no sense in squandering our slight advantage by not being able to dress ourselves. Knowing how to dress themselves is one of the reasons why women are indubitably, objectively, more attractive than men, whatever one's sexual preference. It's easy for me to say this, I know: my taste being mostly for the straightforward. The guys I liked, like Arturo, I liked because they were as pretty as girls. I liked that they weren't girls too, but if they hadn't been girlish I wouldn't have noticed the opportunity for transgression, wouldn't have lusted for it. Pretty boys were the exception that proved the rule. And I would accept any kind of
attention. I was susceptible to flattery. I tried hard for it. I was still slim and fit from cycling and playing football. I spent money on suits, shirts, shoes. I aspired to be a tart and I was pleased she had noticed. I liked women who cared about these things, who thought surfaces were deep. You could run your fingers over a surface.

‘Thank you,' I said. I was having a great time. Later, I asked her if she knew Arturo.

‘Oh, yes, I know Arturo,' she said, smiling as if she had suddenly remembered something pleasant.

‘A man could get jealous seeing you pull that face for Arturo,' I said, and I don't think she quite understood or heard; but she looked past me to Arturo, who held his bass on stage in the position a discus-thrower holds himself before letting fly, frozen in the moment of taut energy before unravelling, staring at a point beyond his shoulder as though he had plans for someone waiting there.

‘Arturo, he is fun,' she said. ‘Only fun.'

Then what contrast could I offer her? I tried to imagine the opposite of fun. Pain? Work? Love?

‘I'm only fun too,' I admitted. ‘Just not as much fun.'

And then I leaned over and kissed her and she kissed back. Can you believe that women continue to do this? And it was an enjoyable kiss too, soft, nicely shaped, like a sip of the red wine she'd been drinking. When I looked back up at the stage Arturo was looking at me with an expression of theatrical surprise. It was only then I remembered I had a girlfriend.

He caught up with me at the bar and wrapped me in a damp hug. He was very happy. Now he stood back, raised
his eyebrows and laughed. ‘You
are
enjoying your holiday.' There was a new affection in his smile; he was less guarded. Perhaps it was only the elation of being on stage.

‘Oh, it's not like that,' I said.

‘How is it like?'

Now would have been the time to confess the truth. I'm good at spotting these moments in retrospect.

‘We have a sort of . . . open relationship,' is what I managed to say.

He looked at me doubtfully. ‘You do not
mind
if other men
fuck
your girlfriend?'

‘Um . . .'

‘You do not mind if Sarah is being fucked by another man, by his big cock? It is hard for a
macho Argentino
to understand. But, OK, I believe you, you
Englishmen
, you like this, it is normal. Here we would not like that. Over there, you do. Where you are, it is fun,
tradicional
?'

‘Fuck off,' I said, laughing.

He patted me on the back and looked at Ana-Maria. ‘Don't worry. I don't tell Lizzie.' Then he winked. ‘And you don't tell Lizzie.' With that he turned and walked in the direction of a woman in a mini-skirt.

Events progressed quickly from then on. Ana-Maria and I kissed some more, I talked a lot between kisses and at some point she said, ‘I think you are on cocaine.' I apologised and offered her some. She was polite enough to say yes and then the conversation became less one-sided. I learned she was from Cordoba, moved to Buenos Aires to study, got work occasionally pattern-cutting, which was well paid and good experience, but she had to work as an assistant in a shop as it was sporadic. She had learned
English at school, and had worked as an intern for Stella McCartney for three months in New York, an experience that had nearly bankrupted her. She had split up with a boyfriend six months ago but was enjoying being single now. She said that with the fierce expression of people enjoying being single now. Me? I had that to look forward to. I hated being single and told her so. She thought I was funny, I apologised too much, I was nervous, I was sad, I was very English, I was sweet.

Soon we were in a taxi to a club. Arturo sat in the front and I was sandwiched between Ana-Maria and Arturo's new friend Lucila on the backseat. I learned almost nothing about Lucila; she was talking quickly across me to Ana-Maria while Arturo delivered a rapid pep talk to the driver. I was happy not to scratch the surface, to sit in the epicentre of two beautiful portenoritas, contained like a quote between feminine legs. “Lucky.” “Amazed.” “Very high.” Since I had stepped from the plane, I had thought all these people belonged to a completely different world to mine. I kept quiet, hoping not to scare them off.

Hernán and others from the gig followed us in Aleman's van, and we met in the queue for the club. Inside it was booming, loud house music; the club just beginning to fill up at one in the morning.

I went to the bar with Ana-Maria. ‘Who's the girl Arturo's with?' I asked, looking round to see him lean down and whisper something to her. She grabbed his arm and stood on her tiptoes to whisper back into his ears, pushing her high heels another two inches off the ground.

‘Just one of those girls, you know, you bump into, in the clubs, in the bars.'

‘She's a friend of Arturo's?'

She raised her eyebrows. ‘They are friendly now.' Arturo was leaning on his forearm against the wall they were standing by, the back of her head brushing his arm. Their faces were only inches apart, kissing distance.

As the barman brought us our drinks I noticed something strange. Hernán, standing away from us, where he had been talking with Aleman, was now staring directly at Arturo and Lucila. He had a very intense look on his face, and I watched it change from incredulous disgust to a quiet, determined rage.

It could have been my imagination.

‘Hernán, does he know Lucila?'

‘I don't think so. Why are you so interested in Lucila?'

‘It's Arturo I'm interested in.'

‘I think I will find someone who is interested in talking to me.'

‘Oh, God, not like that. Come here. Come
here
.'

It could have been a more excessive night. The cocaine was strong but we only mixed it with alcohol. At least I was in my own –
oh
. . .

At four in the morning, Ana-Maria announced I was leaving with her. We'd been dancing for the last hour with Arturo and Lucila. We were all really drunk and I knew the feel of everybody's body pressed against mine in an embrace. Lucila looked from Arturo to me with a grin of immense confidence. When she left us for a moment she would spin around with a flourish and stride away. Arturo, acting his part, would pretend not to notice, but
I caught him following her with his eyes on a couple of occasions.

Before we left I took Arturo to one side. ‘Arturo. Remember Lizzie? Lovely Lizzie? Be careful.'

‘I am careful. And Sarah's lovely too, right? I've seen photos on Facebook.'

‘You don't understand – it's not the same situation.'

‘Pah – why not? Don't you worry about me. Worry about yourself.'

He hugged me again then. I felt his heart going under his T-shirt. I didn't know him well enough to know if he was going to do something stupid with Lucila. It was arrogant of me to warn him against something he may have been too good a person to consider. That's what I decided. ‘Before you go,' he said, ‘take this,' and he pulled out a large green bud of skunk and pressed it into my hand. I tried to give it him back but he wouldn't take it. So I thanked him, kissed him goodbye and left with Ana-Maria.

The sex itself was great. Just the idea of an Argentine fashion student was mind-blowingly exotic to a man who had never stopped being amazed by underwear from Topshop. And we were high. Drugs don't only improve our linguistic skills. People who don't take drugs don't realise how good at sex they make us too. It's one thing us addicts can console ourselves with: we are genuinely better lovers. Fuckers, anyway. We go on for ages. We have
no
inhibitions. We'll say
anything
.

It's the aftersex and the afterdrugs that drugs don't help with, when the revisionist history writes itself. Waking up with not one but two strangers. The words you hastily sketched your identity with last night exhausted and without them you feel . . . nothing. There is no you.
Politeness remains, a diminished vocabulary, the lack of a subject, the urge to make a promise you won't keep. The transactional I won't tell if you won't tell. Last night you had said
everything
and now you have to find something extra before the small talk gets smaller and smaller and disappears altogether and you begin again or run away. And sooner or later, you
have to
run away. Or they do.

This all came afterwards. We were excited as we found our way to her room in a shared apartment. It was a wonderful room, like one of Palermo's boutiques: a desk with a turntable on it next to a two-metre slant of records on the floor. One wardrobe, one chest of drawers. A saucer used for an ashtray. Two dressmaker's dummies, covered with cascading fabric, dresses in progress. Nothing on the walls but white paint. I was just part of the installation.

She was naked in seconds, completely unembarrassed. When I went down on her she held my head in a firm grip against her with her hands, rubbing against my face with wonderful selfishness until she came. Well, that was fun. Was that an Argentine thing? An English woman might think it bad manners. Not that I had any recent experience of English women besides Sarah. I thought sex was anyway too varied and personal a deviance to ascribe national characteristics; that was for TV sexperts and that awful American who wrote
Sex and the City
and had a grudge against English penises.