Part 9 (2/2)

'I suppose I've got time for a quick one.'

'Don't worry about it, d.i.c.k. It's not your fault that Barry's a jerk. You have a nice evening.'

He flashes me a look of real grat.i.tude, and it breaks your heart.

I feel as though I have been having conversations like this all my life. None of us is young anymore, but what has just taken place could have happened when I was sixteen, or twenty, or twenty-five. We got to adolescence and just stopped dead; we drew up the map then and left the boundaries exactly as they were. And why does it bother Barry so much that d.i.c.k is seeing someone? Because he doesn't want a smile from a man with buckteeth and an anorak in the cinema queue, that's why; he's worried about how his life is turning out, and he's lonely, and lonely people are the bitterest of them all.

Fourteen

Ever since I've had the shop, we've been trying to flog a record by a group called the Sid James Experience. Usually we get rid of stuff we can't s.h.i.+ft - reduce it to 10p, or throw it away - but Barry loves this alb.u.m (he's got two copies of his own, just in case somebody borrows one and fails to return it), and he says it's rare, and that someday we'll make somebody very happy. It's become a bit of a joke, really. Regular customers ask after its health, and give it a friendly pat when they're browsing, and sometimes they bring the sleeve up to the counter as if they're going to buy it, and then say 'Just kidding!' and put it back where they found it.

Anyway, on Friday morning, this guy I've never seen before starts flicking through the 'British Pop S-Z section,' lets out a gasp of amazement and rushes up to the counter, clutching the sleeve to his chest as if he's afraid someone will s.n.a.t.c.h it from him. And then he gets out his wallet and pays for it, seven quid, just like that, no attempt to haggle, no recognition of the significance of what he is doing. I let Barry serve him - it's his moment - and d.i.c.k and I watch every move, holding our breath; it's like someone has walked in, tipped petrol over himself, and produced a box of matches from his pocket. We don't exhale until he's struck the match and set himself alight, and when he's gone we laugh and laugh and laugh. It gives us all strength: if someone can just walk in and buy the Sid James Experience alb.u.m, then surely anything good can happen at any time.

Laura's changed even since I last saw her. Partly it's the makeup: she's wearing it for work, and it makes her look less stressed-out, less tired, in control. But it's more than that, too. Something else has happened, maybe something real, or maybe something in her head. Whatever it is, you can see that she thinks she's started out on some new stage in her life. She hasn't. I'm not going to let her.

We go to a bar near her work - not a pub, a bar, with pictures of baseball players on the wall, and a food menu chalked up on a noticeboard, and a conspicuous lack of hand-pumps, and people in suits drinking American beer from the bottle. It's not crowded, and we sit in a booth near the back on our own.

And then she's straight in with the 'So, how are you?' as if I'm n.o.body very much. I mumble something, and I know that I'm not going to be able to control it, I'm going to come too quickly, then it's, bang, 'Have you slept with him yet?' and it's all over.

'Is that why you wanted to see me?'

'I guess.'

'Oh, Rob.'

I just want to ask the question again, straightaway; I want an answer, I don't want 'Oh, Rob,' and a pitying stare.

'What do you want me to say?'

'I want you to say that you haven't, and for your answer to be the truth.'

'I can't do that.' She can't look at me when she's saying it, either.

She starts to say something else, but I don't hear it; I'm out in the street, pus.h.i.+ng through all those suits and raincoats, angry and sick and on my way home to some more loud, angry records that will make me feel better.

The next morning the guy who bought the Sid James Experience alb.u.m comes in to exchange it. He says it's not what he thought it was.

'What did you think it was?' I ask him.

'I don't know,' he says. 'Something else.' He shrugs, and looks at the three of us in turn. We are all staring at him, crushed, aghast; he looks embarra.s.sed.

'Have you listened to all of it?' Barry asks.

'I took it off halfway through the second side. Didn't like it.'

'Go home and try it again,' Barry says desperately. 'It'll grow on you. It's a grower.'

The guy shakes his head helplessly. He's made up his mind. He chooses a secondhand Madness CD, and I put the Sid James Experience back in the rack.

Laura calls in the afternoon.

'You must have known it would happen,' she says. 'You couldn't have been entirely unprepared. Like you said, I've been living with the guy. We were bound to get around to it sometime.' She gives a nervous and, to my way of thinking, highly inappropriate laugh.

'And, anyway, I keep trying to tell you, that's not really the point, is it? The point is, we got ourselves into an awful mess.'

I want to hang up, but people only hang up to get called back again, and why should Laura call me back? No reason at all.

'Are you still there? What are you thinking?'

I'm thinking: I've had a bath with this person (just one, years ago, but, you know, a bath's a bath), and I'm already beginning to find it hard to remember what she looks like. I'm thinking: I wish this stage were over, and we could go on to the next stage, the stage where you look in the paper and see that Scent of a Woman Scent of a Woman is on TV, and you say to yourself, Oh, I saw that with Laura. I'm thinking: am I supposed to fight, and what do I fight with, and whom am I fighting? is on TV, and you say to yourself, Oh, I saw that with Laura. I'm thinking: am I supposed to fight, and what do I fight with, and whom am I fighting?

'Nothing.'

'We can meet for another drink if you like. So I can explain better. I owe you that much.'

That much.

'How much would be too much?'

'Sorry?'

'Nothing. Look, I've got to go. I work too, you know.' got to go. I work too, you know.'

'Will you call me?'

'I haven't got your number.'

'You know you can call me at work. And we'll arrange to meet and talk properly.'

'OK.'

'Promise?'

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