I’d like a Ferrari and a holiday home on the Med, but I don’t want my sexual moves to be plastered all over the papers for my mother to read. We can only stop our insane jealousy dressed up as outrage when we decide that we are happy with what we are, that we are where we want to be, and doing all the things we want to do. But who is? Just those famous elusive souls. And maybe they aren’t so happy after all, because whenever they slip up, everybody gets to hear about it.
The sun burns down on me as I walk along Charlie’s road, swinging my bag full of vegetables and Martini. Maybe, if the sun goes down, I will talk to him about it. It’s time to end it.
I turn the key in the door, holding my purse in my mouth, and juggling bags. I shove the door with my shoulder, and kick it closed behind me. But I am stopped in my tracks by the sight in front of me. I drop everything, and the Martini bottle clinks on the floorboards, mercifully not breaking, when I see Charlie sitting on the sofa, staring off into space. As the light from the window catches his face, I can see tear stains on his cheeks, damp red eyes, glazed. I see his hands and feet, twitching slightly, and hear the almost imperceptible noise of teeth chattering, as Charlie shakes, slightly, without control. My mind does immediate grotesque calculations. It can only be drugs. The only time I have ever seen Charlie in this state was after a really bad pill a couple of years ago in Brighton. He had moaned and shook and plummeted from deliriousness to despair in seconds and back again. I don’t remember him crying though, even then. He doesn’t acknowledge my entrance, or the bags crashing to the floor. He doesn’t even realize I am here. A splinter of me entertains an impulse, for whatever reason, to grab the Martini and run back out of the room as quickly as I entered it. But my feet are stuck to the spot. It is one of those few occasions when fatigue instantly takes you, and your body is already aware that the emotional effort needed for the next half an hour at least is going to leave you spent.
The good me, the moral me, rushes to the surface before the real me grabs the chance to leg it, and I whisper, ‘Charlie, what have you taken?’ This room does not need noise – it might crack something vital and the whole building will collapse. I don’t want to disturb anything that isn’t already quite clearly disturbed.
I see a flicker in Charlie’s eyes, fear, I think, behind the tears. I don’t know what to think, or do. I feel suddenly helpless, faced with a stranger in a bad way, equipped only with my alcoholic beverage of choice to handle the situation. But it would be rude of me to swig straight from the bottle lying on the floor, and I certainly don’t think I should offer anything to Charlie. I have never seen him actually afraid, but there is no doubt that he is scared. I am too. I can’t move towards him, I have no idea how he will react. My veins feel taut, about to snap.
‘Charlie, is it coke? A trip? How much have you done? Should I call a doctor?’ I say, still whispering.
‘Charlie? Charlie!’ I raise my voice slightly. ‘Charlie, can you hear me?’
I take a step towards him, and then stop in my tracks as I see his lips moving, mouthing words neither of us can hear.
‘What?’ I ask quietly.
‘It’s not … drugs … but … I can’t … move.’
The tears are flowing now, down his face, and his eyes shift to focus on me, imploring me through the blue and the brown, to do something, to grab him, or hit him, or something. But this is an alien situation for me, I don’t know whether to grab his tongue, or guide his limbs, or bandage splints to the sides of his legs. Or should I just keep him completely stationary? Maybe his neck is broken – you aren’t supposed to move the injured, I remember that from some ancient first aid lesson years ago. I should cover him with a blanket, and call an ambulance. First I need to be sure what he has taken, otherwise I am effectively shopping him to the police.
‘Charlie, can you move your toes, can you move at all? Your hands are shaking, I mean, they’re moving. Did you fall? Have you banged your head, or your back, or ..’
‘No.’
Twisting his head down, moving for the first time, he looks at his hands, brings them up to his head, and rests his face in them. He can move – he is not paralysed. I don’t need to call an ambulance or make the splints. I hear him start to sob. Blond strands of hair, mixed with a white powder, hang stiff with sweat round his eyes. I am still standing ten feet away, staring at him, blankly. He is crying slowly, gently. This boy who became a man with me, who does nothing softly these days – not lovemaking, not talking, not breathing – is crying, gently. My impulse is to hold him, but I don’t know how any more – we haven’t held each other for a long time, like we cared. I take a tentative step forwards, and when he doesn’t react with some kind of animal instinct karate lunge, I step over the bags and move swiftly to the couch, sitting awkwardly on the end. I reach out for one of his hands and he takes it, and for a while we sit quite still. I get a little bored as I realize there is probably nothing wrong with Charlie that is not self- or stupidity-induced, and I feel my lack of patience rise up my throat. I stare out of the window for something to do, as he cries onto my now soggy hand. It is still so hot outside, as the sun makes its way down but seems desperate not to leave. I look directly at it until it hurts my eyes, and I have to close them.
My mind wanders and I picture myself saying what I was going to say to Charlie tonight as he clutches my hand tightly, and I look back at him. He says something, but I can’t hear.
‘What?’ This time I say it with a little less patience. He has ruined my day with his silliness. He’s got pissed at work or something similarly stupid and is now feeling sorry for himself, and I don’t get to say what all of a sudden seems the most important thing in the world to say. After weeks, months of delaying it, I feel I am ready, mostly because there is no possible way I can do it. It’s some false bravado on my part.
‘Something’s happened,’ he says gravely. I can see that. I just don’t want to know what it is yet I suppose, what folly has brought this little pantomime on.
‘It’s fine. We’ll talk about it later.’ I hear myself, speaking in clichés, but this whole situation dictates them. I don’t know how to react to this other than through somebody else’s words. If they were good enough for somebody else, before me, in a difficult place, and a strange time, they are fine for now. I have nothing to say to him now.
Here’s what I was going to say.
‘Charlie, I think it’s time we stopped seeing each other. I think it’s time we stopped mucking about. Neither of us is getting any younger, and you don’t like me any more, and you’ve changed from the person I liked. It’s not enough. We have nothing in common other than America, history, sex. I don’t think we should be together any more.’
That is what I had planned to say, later that night if the sun had gone down and left a chill, and I had mustered up the courage, and not been bothered about ruining my sunny day. I had worked it all out in my head. For something that was supposed to mean so little, I had been surprisingly nervous. I had rehearsed it enough to have it almost word-perfect. I’d pictured the various outcomes as well. The first was Charlie completely nonchalant, shrugging his shoulders and brightly asking for one last shag, for the road. The second was Charlie mildly unsettled that I am ending it before him, and getting a bit arsey, telling me he was going to do the same thing but he was too bored to care, which is a possibility, and one that I have convinced myself I could live with. The final version was a devastated Charlie, telling me he has loved me all along, and he doesn’t
