50 Reasons to Say Goodbye (18 page)

By five p.m. as the sun disappears from the last corner of my bed-chair, as the iced air suddenly starts to assert itself, I have calmed down.

I switch my phone back on; it rings almost immediately. “Oh thank God!” I say, “I was looking for you over on the other side. My phone didn't seem to pick up over there. Sorry.”

“Have a good time?” he asks.

I can tell from the contrite tone of his voice that he knew exactly where he was sending me.

I say enthusiastically, “Fabulous actually.”

We drive down in tired silence. We unload my skis outside my house.

I say, “I'm really busy tomorrow,” and “I've got a really heavy week at work.” He seemingly accepts this as the truth.

I open my eyes. The banging from my neighbours is deafening.

I glance at the alarm clock. 9:02 a.m. I frown.
“Nine a.m. Sunday morning is not the time to put up more shelves,”
I think.

The banging continues. It's very loud. I stare blearily at the light filtering through the shutters. A voice says, “Come on! Wake up! It's a lovely day out here!”

I groan and swing my legs to the side of the bed. They ache from yesterday's falls.

The banging continues in little, short, staccato bursts.

I push my weight unsteadily onto my legs, pull a towel from the back of the sofa and wrap it around my waist.

I wander through to the kitchen, tripping on the end of the towel. “Yeah, yeah,” I shout, reaching for the bolt and pulling open the heavy door.

Robert grins at me. “He lives!” he shouts theatrically. The loudness of his voice makes me half close my eyes.

He pushes past me. I stare wistfully at the empty space on the doormat where he had stood, and slowly turn back into the house, pushing the door closed behind me.

“You are sleeping your life away!” says Robert. My mother always used to say the same thing.

“Sleep is an essential part of life,” I say. “Without sleep we
die.”
It's the defence my father used.

Robert is unpacking shopping on the kitchen table: oranges, bananas, high protein milk. “Sorry?” he asks. His voice indicates that he's not particularly interested.

“You have to sleep, that's all. Look what are you
doing
here?”

Robert looks up at me and shrugs. “Fixing you breakfast, what does it look like?”

I yawn; I sigh.

“Can we get some light in here?” he asks. “I take it the shutters do actually open?”

I nod. I wander to the window and push them open. They
clack
back against the wall. The sky is deep Mediterranean blue; the air is cold. Light rushes into the kitchen.

“Not a lot of point though,” says Robert.

I look at him questioningly.

“Staying alive, if you're just going to sleep all the time.”

I sigh heavily.

He lines up the six oranges on the table and glances at me. “So when you say that you're busy, that would be busy, like,
sleeping?”
he asks.

I nod. “Well I try,” I say rubbing sleep from the corner of my eye.

“Very sexy,” he says.

I force a grin at him. “Yeah well I haven't done my face yet,” I say. “I wasn't expecting company.”

Robert nods. “Nice towel too,” he says.

I look down at my towel. It's yellow; it's a towel. I frown at him. “Call next time. I'll put on a suit,” I say.

As he whisks past me towards the sink, he touches my chin. “I'd love to see you in a suit. I bet you'd look great. Huh! Imagine!” he laughs.

I sit at the table. I push a space between the books and magazines and Robert's breakfast articles for my elbows. I don't tell him that I wear a suit every day from Monday to Friday, that I have ten of them in the wardrobe. I just watch him in silence, one eyebrow raised.

“Well,
I've
already been to the gym
and
I've done my weekly shopping at the market,” he says.

“Umh,” I say. “Martha Stewart
would
be proud.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. What are you doing?” I ask him. He's opening and closing the doors to all of my cupboards. It makes exactly the same noise as when he knocked on the door.

“Is there actually
any
logic to your cupboards?” he asks, slamming another door.

I half smile at him. “Not really. What are you looking for?”

“The juicer,” he says.

I frown.

“Orange squeezer,” he says.

“There isn't one.”

He turns towards me and places one hand on his hip. “This is a man who doesn't have an orange squeezer,” he says.

I open my eyes as wide as I can. I nod. “This is,” I say.

Robert sighs. “You can tell so much about people from their cupboards,” he says. “Yours are a disorganised mess. Jees, I can't even find any plates!” He lifts up a roll of scotch tape. “I mean, what's this doing here?” he asks.

I shrug.

“And the plates?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Sorry. All in the dishwasher.”

Robert bends down, opens the dishwasher.

“It's dirty,” I say.

“Then why don't you switch it
on?”
he asks.

The rapid-fire rhythm of his voice is winding me up. I imitate it. “Because it's
not full!”
I say.

Robert leans against the counter. “But you don't have any clean plates!” he says.

I feel slightly feverish, slightly dizzy. I realise I'm getting angry and sigh. “I didn't
need
any plates,” I say, “I was
sleeping.”

Robert smiles at me. “So cute, yet so dumb!” he says. “So, tell me, dearest Mark. You eat breakfast off the floor do you?”

I roll my lips into an ‘o'. I stare at him. The patronising use of my name really bugs me; I chew the inside of my mouth. “When I
do
get up, well, I don't really
do
breakfast Robert,” I say.

“You
don't?”

I shrug. “Actually, most mornings I just eat a yoghourt.”

Robert nods at me as though this is the strangest information he ever heard. “Yoghourt,” he repeats.

I smile; I nod. “Yoghourt,” I say.

He says, “Yoghourt,” once again and turns to the refrigerator.

I roll my eyes at his back. “Robert look,” I say. I raise a hand to my forehead.

He bends down, peers into the fridge.

“No-one asked you to come here,” I say.

He pulls the bin to his side. He picks up an aubergine and drops it into the bin. “How can you live like this?” he asks.

“Robert, for God's sake!”

He drops some onions into the bin.

“They're fine, stop it!” I stand. “Will you just mellow out for Christ's sake?”

I walk over to him. “Get out of my fridge!” I say pushing him aside. I reach in, pull the yoghurt pack from the fridge and stuff it into his hands. I point to the dining table. “Sit!”

He sits with the yoghurts in front of him. He stares at them.

I sit opposite in silence. “What?” I ask eventually.

“Jesus!” he says.

I shrug.
“What?”
I wipe little beads of sweat from the side of my forehead.

“They're still in the cardboard,” he says.

I nod. I scrunch up my eyebrows. “They
come
that way,” I say.

He shrugs.
“Whatever,”
he says.

I shake my head. “No hang on,” I say. “I don't get it
…
What's the problem with the cardboard?”

“Well you're
supposed
to unpack them
before
you put them in the fridge.”

I shrug. “Who says?”

“Well it's like just dumping your shopping still in the
carrier bag straight in the fridge.”

I shrug again. “Sometimes I do that too. If I'm in a hurry.”

Robert looks at me and slowly shakes his head.

“I couldn't be bothered, I was in a rush. That's all. So what?”

Robert nods knowingly. “Hum,” he says.

“What?” I say.

He shrugs. “Your house is a mess.” He gestures around him. “Your fridge is
…
disgusting.” He nods at me. “But this, Mark.” He taps the pack of yoghourts with a finger. “This is about as lazy as it gets.”

I suck air through my teeth. I stand and walk over to him.

I pick up the oranges, the bananas, the Sports-Plus High-Protein Milk™. I put it all back in the bag. Robert looks up at me, he looks sad.

I grab his arm, lift him to his feet and lead him gently to the door, he doesn't resist. When I push the bag into his chest, his arms move up to hold it.

His eyes are deep dark pits; something tells me that this has happened to him before. A lot.

I shake my head and open the door, and silently he walks out.

As he opens his car door he glances back at me – he looks about twelve years old.

It's February, nearly the end of another winter in this damned house. I've been looking at the small ads, toying with the idea of giving away the chickens and moving back somewhere where people just
drop-in
for coffee.

It seems that it hasn't stopped raining once since last September, only an impression, I know. I spend my time driving into Nice, invited to friends dinner parties, or going out for a drink, on my own, always searching, always hoping.

I'm battling through this with a forced smile on my face because I only have to think of my mother to know just how fast a social life can dwindle if you walk around with a face like a smacked arse. But the truth is, I hate it, I was never designed to spend evenings alone, staring at the rain, poking the coal fire, eating pasta in front of the TV.

I don't function properly alone, and though it's unbearable being in the wrong relationship, tonight it seems to me that nothing could be worse, truly
nothing
could be worse than this dreadful, droning emptiness.

I'm drinking too much: the pile of empty bottles to be recycled is proof enough. I am sinking into depression, which is of course why the mountain of empty bottles is still sitting there. I've called Claire twice this week; my drunken tears will end up terrifying her. Tonight I spare her.

Tomorrow I have a dinner with the gay motorcycle club, and tonight, as I go wearily to bed, that rare desire comes over me, the desire to pray. This only really happens in moments of desperation because I don't really believe in God, or certainly not God as we were taught at school, but I guess I believe in some vague kind of benign force. I don't tend to say it too loudly though; it sounds a bit Star-Warsy after all.

Lately, in this winter, this depression, this loneliness, I have been having trouble believing in anything at all. Even my friendships seem to have become complicated now that I am alone. People who have invited me to dinner for years, simply because they wanted to see me, now sound as though they are inviting me because they feel sorry for me.

When I ask them to dinner and they refuse, I am left wondering if I have not become so depressing that no one can bear my company. Maybe it's just paranoia, then again, maybe it's true – maybe I have become my mother. Maybe it
is
genetic after all and I will end up alone and on Prozac. Hell I
am
alone, and the only reason I'm
not
on the Prozac that the doctor gave me is that I'm too stubborn to take it.

So perhaps it's because I have reached the bottom of my pit, that I have ground my face down in this misery until I just can't bear it any more, or maybe it's something to do with Paolo Coelho's metaphysical story I read this morning, but whatever the reason, as I lie down, after I turn out the lights, just before I settle into a surprisingly restful slumber, I pray.

“Please help me. Please send someone to save me. I hate this. I don't deserve this. I can't stand it much longer.”
My breath shudders with the angst I am feeling, the edge of a sob. As I drift off, strangely, I have a feeling that I have been heard; I imagine the wheels of the universe already grinding, squeaky and slow, into a new, better configuration.

The next day the winter sun is out; the sky is a deep shade of blue. I feel refreshed and optimistic. I ride my motorbike to Antibes to charge up the battery. The motorbike too has been abandoned these last few weeks.

I sit in a café and for a while I enjoy it all: the bike, the cool air, the sunshine. And then I think of the wheels of the universe and I start trying to give it a helping hand.

I wander around town drinking coffee after coffee, hyping out on caffeine and watching every man who passes by. I wouldn't want to miss the one that the universe has sent, but of course there is no one and I start to feel sad, so I return home. I am fighting to keep my edge, fighting not to sink into another pit.

By eight p.m. when I have to leave, the outside temperature has plummeted to five degrees, so I take the car. As I drive I remember the prayer and add to it.

“Look, if you need an opportunity then here it is,” I say. “If I need to act for this to happen then I'm acting. There will be fifty people there tonight and I only need one. I'm not asking for Tom Cruise, or Albert Einstein. Someone nice, someone I don't find physically revolting, someone who makes me laugh, someone I can be friends with, have fun with, talk to late at night as I drift off to sleep.” As I say this I imagine a man. He has brown hair, a warm smiling face and he's winking at me. “If you can send him tonight,” I add desperately, “then that would be perfect.”

This strikes me as a little presumptuous. I wonder momentarily if it is possible to ask too much of an infinite force, it being infinite and all. Just in case I add, “Oh and if for some reason that's not possible, just a nice evening will do.”

I know I don't mean it. I expect that The Force realises too.