Two days after I returned from Europe we had to go meet the Monsignor. His office was in one of the red brick late nineteenth-century neo-gothic buildings that so characterised campus. On the way there Lucy rather discombobulated me by, aggrievedly, assuming I was stoned. I was (a weency bit). If there was one thing I prided myself on, it was that no one could tell when I was cained, either from my behaviour or from how I appeared. Lucy was different, of course, because she knew me so well. However, I told her I wasn’t, and her apparent distrust of my denial annoyed me.
The Monsignor’s room was very grand. It was lined with floor to ceiling height bookcases and tall, numerous windows that allowed in great ironing board shards of light.
He sat behind a big uncluttered desk and looked up absently as I quietly closed the door behind us. He then switched to (ostentatiously?) hunting for the cap of the gold trimmed black fountain pen he held in his hand. Lucy and I waded our way through the deep red, blue and green Persian-style rugs over to him. He indicated the two chairs in front of his desk. Without having located its cap, he put down his pen with a temporarily frustrated look and stood up. We shook hands with differing grasps and sat down again. He remained standing though. Shit. I wondered whether we shouldn’t stand up again. We had both been in the room before of course, but it had always seemed a lot less sombre.
“I hope you don’t mind my request to see you together. Do you object to this modus operandi?” he asked.
I looked to Lucy as she shook her head. I tried not to think of quite how much I wanted to fuck her. We hadn’t hardly since I’d come back. I nodded my head too to indicate my assent.
“Last week Celice Schwartz’s parents came up to see us.” My expression and what lay behind changed the instant he began her name. “I frankly didn’t know what to say to them. I let her into this university, you know. Now she’s gone,” he said, almost matter of factly. “Well, I’m a priest but they weren’t looking for spiritual guidance from me.” He paused and, still standing, looked down upon us intently. I sat up a little straighter in my chair and met his gaze. I was in the headmaster’s study trying to persuade him it wasn’t me he’d seen throw that snowball. “How much of your fifty-thousand-dollar scholarship did you spend on illegal drugs? I only ask because the alumnus who donated that money is, sooner or later, bound to ask us.”
In the corner of my eye I saw Lucy look down. I was taken aback by the way our relationship had so suddenly changed. Last time we’d met was in class the day before the crash. Knowing of Lucy’s involvement through her internship with the proposed biosphere reserve in Chiapas the Monsignor had mentioned an old colleague of his who lived in Chiapas was coming to DC; he’d said we’d all have dinner together. But although this made me sad later on, at the time I just felt defensive. I mean, we hadn’t done anything really.
“We’ve both worked really hard,” I replied. I now could feel one of Lucy’s special glacial stares on me.
“It’s not your work we’re here to talk about, is it?” he asked superciliously. It was my turn to shake my head. “I couldn’t be happier with you as students. My disappointment in how you conduct your private life, however, is in exact proportion to the pleasure I had in teaching you.” I noted that ‘had’ and hoped to God it didn’t mean what it sounded like it meant. The Monsignor’s language was normally so precise. Thankfully, at this point, he stopped staring at us like laboratory animals and sat back down. “Every day, since your night out, we have spent more time than we can afford to speaking to alumni who ask, ‘what’s all this, Monsignor, we hear about drugs at Georgetown?’ Every day we have to speak to parents worried about the tens of thousands of dollars they spend educating their children going up in smoke…”
I was irritated. It wasn’t our fault Celice hung out with a crack-head. “If the university wants a scapegoat, why not Alejo de Tolejdes?” I challenged, perhaps unwisely.
Lucy suddenly said, “Dr. Ferguson, I would prefer to speak to you alone.” I looked to her furiously. She ignored me.
“I appreciate that,” he responded, looking at her patiently. “But, there isn’t much more to be said. The university Regents have asked that I remind you both that whether or not your scholarships for next year are renewed is within their absolute discretion. Normally, given your respective academic performances, this would simply be a formality. In the circumstances, however, I think you ought to make an alternative arrangement or arrangements for next year…”
“We didn’t do anything…” I started, but was interrupted by Lucy saying “shut-up Jamie” in a high-pressure whisper.
“… On a personal level, for you, I’m very sorry about this. But the whole community pays a price when something like this occurs and you must bear your portion of it,” he went on, looking at Lucy more than me and making it clear he didn’t mean for me to feel so compensated. “Your transcripts will mitigate somewhat the damage this might do to your careers; they shall reflect what you would have achieved had your time here not been so precipitately cut short,” he concluded before picking up a stack of papers from one side of his desk and adding. “All right. Good luck.”
Right.
Once outside in the Spring I made a stupid quip to alleviate the tension. “No more homework, then.”
“I think we should give each other a wide berth, for the time being” was Lucy’s response.
“Don’t blame me,” I said. I’d just noticed some kids were looking at us from across the lawn. Since our pictures had appeared in The Hoya, the daily campus newspaper, as part of a big spread about the crash, we’d become campus notables. Alongside a sensationalist piece on Celice’s death they’d written-up profiles of me, Lucy, Alejo and Sylvie under the headline Eurotrash Crash. On the basis of an abstract of my Revenge Now article I’d distributed at one of my class presentations I was ‘The Irish Commie’ (Lucy was ‘The English Fall’, which took us some time to work out). The day before, on my way into campus for the first time since I’d gotten back from Ireland, I’d been asked if I was Jamie Dwyer (No (in an American accent)) and pointed at a couple of times. One jock from the safety of a group of friends had even suggested that if I hated America so much I should just piss off (in his rubbish impression of an English accent).
“Jamie, this is one thing which actually isn’t only about you. We’re both going to say things we’ll regret if we speak any further right now. I’m going to work,” she announced.
‘At a time like this?’ I thought. “What am I supposed to do?” I asked.
“Don’t, Jamie.”
“Lou?”
“No. Look it’s happening already. I’ll call you later.”
“We have to talk strategy, Lou. About what we’re going to do. Let’s fight this. We didn’t do anything…”
“It’s over, Jamie. I h a t e t h i s b l o o d y p l a c e . I thought maybe when you got back it’d be okay again, but it’s not. I wouldn’t stay if they paid me; which, if you weren’t too stoned to understand, they’re not going to do.” She must have seen how her words had affected me because she relented. “We’ll have supper. I’ll call you later. Okay?”
“’K,” I said reluctantly. And then she left me standing.
I decided to go for a hot chocolate at a non-student café on M street. Campus was beginning to freak me out. It was fine with Lucy, but on my own… The very first person I bumped into was Alejo.
“How’s it going?” I greeted him with absurd normality.
“Jaime. Wonderful. Welcome back.” We were just like two old friends meeting after long apart. We hadn’t seen each other since he’d been whisked away after the crash. Whenever I had thought about him, it was usually with anger. I hadn’t been prepared for seeing him in person. He wore a perfectly fitting dark suit, white shirt, thin black tie and seemed so genuinely pleased to see me I was, I was touched. “Do you have t-t-time for a bite, Jaime.” Only when he pronounced my name the way he did, did I remember: ‘Of course he’s Mexican’. Otherwise, to me at any rate, he was completely indistinguishable from the posh prep-school educated Americans ubiquitous at Georgetown. “I think we should t-t-talk.”
“I’m just…” I was just going to make up an excuse. Instinctively I thought Alejo would be the very last person in the world I wanted to see just then. Weirdly, though, I felt immediately better for being in his presence. It wasn’t just a case of ‘any port in a storm’. It was more than that. I was actually happy (distracted?) now I’d bumped into him. He said he knew a quiet Italian place down a side street near the canal where no one from school’d be. I realised I didn’t have any money on me. When I told him he looked momentarily confused.
“I invited you so you are my guest,” he said simply.
While we strolled to the quiet Italian place I asked when he’d arrived back to DC.
“I just flew in on a commercial flight for a wholly unwelcome appointment with my tutor – our plane is still being fixed. I don’t know why it is taking so long. Do you understand aeroplanes, Jaime…”
“Lucy and I just saw the Monsignor.”
“Is that why you appear as you do? Yes. That must be it.”
“I look that bad?”
“Tired Jamie. You look tired. As soon as we order you’re going to tell me exactly what transpired.”
Once we were settled, I described precisely what had been said in the meeting with the Monsignor, though of course I left out the bit where I tried to land him in it. Sitting face-to-face with him, I now felt pretty badly about that.
“But that’s terrible Jamie. Whatever are you going to do?”
The food arrived.
“My first instinct is to fight. Lucy thinks she wants to leave. I’m going to persuade her to fight with me.”
“What does it take for any of us to unravel? This is a question I have been asking myself Jamie. Jamie there are three other questions which have been troubling me lately. I particularly want to ask them of you. There is no necessity for you to provide answers to me. It would be better for you to listen very carefully. We Mexicans are like you Irish. We have a great gift for friendship.”
“The Northern Irish call southern Irish people who come over the border to work or live ‘Mexicans’,” I said to try and lighten things up a little bit. I thought Alejo would be interested to know that. But his expression did not change; did not relax one jot.
“When I left New York after the crash, Jaime, my parents had me locked up. For one week I was given so many drugs. I was asked so many questions. And do you know what the doctors concluded? I am saner than they are.” The waitress came over just at this very moment. “We’re absolutely oakey. Thank you. Aren’t we Jamie?” She started to go. Somehow he made her stop and turn without really saying anything. “I am being very rude,” he said to her. “Ask my guest would he like anything further?” There was something menacing in the way he said it.
“I’m grand thank you,” I said when she looked at me strangely. She didn’t get what I meant by ‘grand’. And she stood there.
“He said ‘No. No thank you. I am fine for now too. Just like my friend Alejo.‘” She went away immediately. And I took a sip of water.
“Jamie, the question I really need to ask of you is… Well it’s about you and Lucy? You told Lucy, didn’t you, that you and Celice kissed, didn’t you? Why did you do it Jamie? I would never have said a word to Lucy. It doesn’t matter. My doctor said I had to speak to you about this. Now I have. I don’t blame you. No I don’t Jamie. It’s important you know that. It is that little minx of a dancer I blame. You see I never minded Celice being with girls. En fait, I encouraged it. It’s only boys I mind. But I don’t mind you Jamie. You’re fine. I won’t tell Lucy. You’re wondering what Celice and I were arguing about before the crash? It was you Jamie. There. I’ve said it. It’s important you say nothing about any of this. They have put me on these anti-depressants. Do you know how they affect me?”
“No,” I managed. I felt sick. I wasn’t clear about what had just been said. Not absolutely. What Alejo said and how he seemed while saying it seemed completely inconsistent. His body language genuinely suggested he was completely at peace with himself, and me. The menace was gone. Utterly. Yet the things he was thinking about. What I had done to him, surely was unforgivable? But here we were sitting in this little Italian restaurant, like two normal friends. A completely mad thought occurred to me, which to this day I am happy I suppressed. I was weighing up whether or not to tell Alejo that Celice also kissed Lucy.
“While you were in Ireland Jamie I saw a lot of Lucy. I’m sure she told you this. We looked you up on the internet. Your family is just as interesting as mine, isn’t it? Well, you don’t know my family. But I feel I know yours. Your poor father Jamie. Did you see him when you were in Ireland? What was it like? Prison? He simply did not deserve it. What I can’t understand is that you never told Lucy any of it? She was so surprised when we read the articles about your family. So surprised. I can’t understand why she never researched you. I am talking too much? I research everyone. Forgive me, Jamie. I am tired. So tired. Do you know what my parents have been trying to do to me?… I am no Holden Caulfield, I said to them. Mother corrected my grammar. I want you to come to Mexico to meet my mother. You would like my mother. But I do worry about you, Jamie. Things have been very difficult for you,” he seemed to recover quickly enough. “And about Lucy. Poor lost Lucy…”
“We’re fine Alejo. Look. I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I don’t…” I faltered.
“Jamie, I haven’t spoken like this to make you feel worse than I know you already do. No that was not it at all. We all feel it. I have said what I must. That is all. What we have been through together all of us is something we will always have together. We are bound together. Forever. This is a tense time for all of us. I just want it to stop, but every day some new, some new consequence. Your parents Jamie, do they know?”
“About the crash, yes.”
“If we can all get through this, we’ll get through everything. We must stick together.”
I found this reach for solidarity curiously consoling. “Alejo I’m so sorry about Celice…”
“We must get on. We must all go on…” He pushed away his plate. “We must just stick together.”
I said something non-committally. He paid the bill. That made me feel so bad – him paying the bill, after what had just gone on. As if my paying a bill would change anything. Once we stepped outside the beauty of the day, that glorious sharpness in the air, the blue sky, it all seemed perverse.
“I want you to consider something very carefully, Jamie,” Alejo said just as we were about to go off in our different directions. “I want you to come away with me. I want us all – Lucy, Sylvie, you and me – to go away from here to think about what has happened. Together. I have a house in a very, very interesting part of North Carolina. It’s a wonderful place. Only one or two hours away. You’ll come?”
“I-I don’t really know what I want to do…”
“Then come. You must come. For one day or two? You can persuade Lucy. Won’t you Jamie?”
“I’m not sure I should… Alejo.”
“Jamie,” he said intensely. “You must come. Say you will? It would mean the world to me. The world. Jamie?” I was cracking. “You and Lucy will have plenty of time alone to walk and I, well, Sylvie and I can prepare the house while we await your return. Jamie? It’ll be wonderful. Wonderful.”
Just to stop him going on, I agreed. He immediately beamed back. “I knew I could convince you. In a couple of days?”
“Fine, fine,” I replied. I totally didn’t want to go there. I had this crazy thought that he wanted to lure me there to get some sort of revenge.
And he left me to go see his tutor. I went home to get ultra-stoned. That really helped the whole paranoia thing. I needed to distract myself with work. But I just kept on thinking of Lucy. I needed to see Lucy. I ended up spending the afternoon listening to Placebo. I hardly managed to read one page.
Before six, I decided to get dressed. I thought when Lucy called, as she had promised she would, we’d go out to a bar downtown and then go eat in the Ethiopian restau she liked in Adams Morgan. I put on an outfit she had once said made me very handsome. When she hadn’t called by eight I began to worry: Distancing manoeuvre? And when she eventually did call should I hide my distress? Aggressively express it? I would show her I wouldn’t put up with being lied to? With being let down? I must be gently discreet. She will get it. I enjoyed running over the possibilities in my mind. Meanwhile the phone refused to ring. I checked my email. Tried Sylvie’s cell: no answer. I would not call Lucy’s phone. I would not seem impatient.
Around eight Lucy was waiting for Sylvie inside the Eighteenth Street Lounge. It was probably the most fashionable bar in DC at that time. New York style. Four leather sofa strewn floors, waitress service. Dark finishes.
“Hello there,” Lucy said when Sylv approached the third-floor window sofa where she was sitting.
“Hi. You look cool.” Sylvie admired Lucy’s tightly fitted, smart pinstripe trouser-suit.
“Too cool. I need a sweater.”
Sylvie unwrapped hers from around her waist and handed it over.
“Thanks dal.”
“Vodka-cran?” asked Sylvie. Lucy nodded and Sylvie ordered another one for herself as well.
Outside, the street artist Lucy had been watching while she waited still stood on the sidewalk surrounded by a crowd of people as he stood on a platform. The waitress left them with menus and disappeared. Another one came, almost immediately.
“What do you feel like?”
“Quarter-pounder and fries,” Sylvie replied. “In this weather I should be having a salad, but I’m starving.”
“Two quarter-pounders and two fries,” Lucy ordered when the waitress returned. “I’m sick of playing vegetarian,” she explained when Sylvie made a face. “I don’t think he even notices.”
“He would if you didn’t,” Sylvie put in.
They handed over their menus and Lucy leaned back.
“How was your meeting?” Sylvie asked.
“Great. Properly great,” Lucy beamed.
“I thought something was up. You asked?”
“He said as soon as they get funding for next year. Mexico here I come.”
“When? How soon?”
“Couple of months. August, maybe.”
“You can wait till then?”
“Not if I can help it. The whole point of going for this was to get away from here. There’s a thin chance of a few weeks’ assignment at the UN.”
“New York time?” Sylvie asked, smiling. Lucy nodded. “What did you tell him about school?”
“The truth. No funding for next year and after the crash I don’t feel the same about DC.”
“How do you do it?” Sylvie asked with a curious expression on her face.
“Charm,” Lucy smiled. “I suppose.”
“He fancies you.”
“He’s great to work for,” Lucy replied. “But that’s it. I saved his ass with that conference paper I wrote for him. That’s why, I suppose.”
“I still say he fancies you.”
“Stop saying that Sylv. I’ve worked properly hard all year. I won ‘intern of the year’. Remember?”
Sylvie blushed. “Sorry, I was only joking.”
The waitress returned with their drinks. When she had left, Lucy looked silently at Sylvie. She didn’t return it. “You say you are, but you’ve said as much before. Why be nasty?” Sylvie looked out the window at the street artist who was now throwing flaming torches and catching them in his mouth. She was fighting with herself, not knowing exactly what she wanted to say. “Seriously Sylvie. Why?”
Sylvie looked away from the window and picked at her nails. “I think Alejo and I are going through a bit of a difficult patch,” she said finally.
Lucy didn’t say anything. She took a sip of her drink and regarded Sylvie thoughtfully. Sylv took hold of a carnation from the vase on the table.
“That’s hardly surprising,” Lucy said at last. “This’s difficult for all of us. Now you know they’ll let you graduate that must be a weight off your minds. How are things with Tom?”
Sylvie absent-mindedly plucked the leaves from the flower.
Their burgers arrived. Lucy loaded mayonnaise on to the side of her plate and poured ketchup liberally onto the chips. “Comfort food,” she attempted to make Sylvie smile. “Hope it works,” she said as she took her first bite. Then she was silent, waiting for Sylvie to speak.
Sylvie coughed a couple of times. “I’m being awful. I’m taking it all out on Tom,” she said eventually. “And it’s getting to him. I can see it is. He’s never ever lost his temper with me. He almost did yesterday.”
Lucy popped a chip into her mouth. “It’s hot,” she gasped, her eyes watering. “What’s the problem?”
“I don’t even know if I love Alejo,” she said. Then it all came flooding out. Even before the crash, he’d been spending very little time with her. All his free time he was spending with Celice. Then whenever he didn’t call her she would lose it with mild mannered Tom. Throughout the whole post-crash period in New York Tom was her brick; whenever, because of nightmares or the Crystal Meth, she couldn’t sleep he was there for her.
“Why do you think this has happened?” asked Lucy.
She wiped her eye. “He thinks I’m fat.”
“Alejo? Don’t be ridiculous, Sylvie,” Lucy laughed. “If you think he’s that shallow drop him. It’s not as if Tom doesn’t love you.”
“Even you think I’m fat. God…”
“I didn’t say that. I meant, I meant even if you were then he’d have to be…”
“Tom’s stressing me out too,” Sylvie continued. “I met him straight after today. He was so unsympathetic. I need a Xanax…”
“Or a change of subject? Let’s talk about something else?” Lucy suggested as she arranged her knife and fork ‘I’m finished’ on her plate.
“You told Jamie about Mexico?”
“It’s only a possibility, Sylvie… No. Since he came back from Ireland, I don’t know…”
“What?” They ordered more drinks.
“It feels like we’ve been married a hundred years,” Lucy said.
“Look on the bright side. At least you’re not.”
“Yes, but I don’t think he’s even aware of it. I don’t think he’s been in a relationship like this before.”
“I wouldn’t go become Jungle Jane just ‘cos you want to give him the can. Tell him.”
Lucy chewed the inside of her lip. “You’re one to talk.” They both giggled. “I don’t know if that’s what I do want. We were both so happy a month ago…”
“It’s all Alejo’s fault.”
Lucy looked up at her sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Easy tiger. I meant the crash. All this. What’ll you do if Mexico doesn’t work out? Home?”
“No way. I hate England.”
“You have to come to New York. I just wish you had met my parents at a normal time. Normally they would have loved you. You could have stayed forever. But come to New York anyway. I’ll find you somewhere to stay.”
Lucy stirred the dregs of her drink around and around. “Well, it’s one jungle or another…”
“Speaking of which… Will you come away with me and Alejo next weekend?”
“Don’t think so. Where?”
“Please Lou. I can’t tell Tom I’m going away with Alejo alone and you said you wanted to get out of DC. It’s this crazy house on the edge of a primeval swamp in the Carolinas.”
“Sounds interesting. Maybe… Might be good to get away from Jamie too…”
When Lucy hadn’t called by nine I was sure she wouldn’t. I went downstairs and sat in Lucy’s crimson room. Checked my email. Checked Lucy’s diary. Nothing new. Waited for the phone to ring. Doorbell rang. That’s her. She’s lost her key. She’s decided to come back. Needless to say it wasn’t any of those things, or even her - it was Tom.
“Let’s drink,” he said when I explained what had happened. He went out to grab some beers while I waited on the sofa for one last hour for the phone to ring. When he returned we sat on the barely lit deck and talked quietly so we wouldn’t disturb the neighbours.
“As soon as I got back,” I started, “I noticed the spark was gone. Even after the crash there was, there was always this feeling between us.” I began to skin up as it all poured out of me. “But now it’s gone. Kissing, she suddenly stops. ‘What?’ I ask. ‘Oh, nothing.’ Then I, I try to undress her and she blows me out.”
“You’ve just got to find the right level again,” Tom advised. After the last two weeks it’s not surprising things shake.”
“Sorry,” I said. I was always trying to hand him spliffs. “I just want her to know I love her.”
“Then act like you don’t give. If she’s being cool with you, be cool back.”
“Our relationship doesn’t work like that, Tom. We’re really very open about our feelings.”
“Jamie, I really admire your relationship. You don’t always know your own feelings. I think you’re going through a transition period…”
“How are you guys coping?” I cut him off.
“Good. It’s all good. I’m just trying to be there for Sylv when she needs me and far away when she needs space.”
“How do you know though?”
“You don’t. That’s why it’s good she blows you out once in a while.”
“It was a lot easier when we were going to be here for two years. Now I don’t know.”
“I still don’t think it’s fair Alejo and Sylvie get to graduate.”
“I’ll go back to Ireland. What’s the point if Lucy and me are over?”
“Don’t play dead, Jamie. Fight for her. She’s properly worth it.” His impersonation of Lucy’s mannerisms always made me laugh.
We left the house at one-fifteen. He’d told me ages ago about this strip bar up at Glover Park, a blue-collar area just north of Georgetown. Since Lucy hadn’t bothered to call, thinking it was bound to annoy her and it might be my last chance to go I decided now was the time to pay it a visit.
From the outside it looked like a boarded-up shop and after you paid the five bucks’ cover you entered what was a normal looking bar except that all along one side of the room was a narrow stage with poles. A girl was dancing. She wasn’t as fit as Lucy, but the same idea. There weren’t too many others there and we made our way through to the bar and ordered shorts. Beside us a couple Hispanic guys were paying the girl to dance right in front of them. It only cost a couple bucks. After watching for a time we wandered over to a seating area, but you could only drink drinks there you’d ordered from the pretty waitress who was hovering around the tables covetously. So we ordered more drinks and let ourselves be Maître d’d into a small table with an obstructed view of the stage.
“I bet she called soon as we left.”
“Fuck it.”
“Hope she did. If we’re going to get married I’ve got to teach her she can’t treat me like this,” I said.
“Woo, dude. You do not want to get married. We’re all too young…”
“If you meet the right person, it doesn’t matter how young you happen to be,” I replied.
“It’s not meeting the right person’s the problem. It’s knowing yourself well enough to know who’d be right for you. Jamie I think this crash has affected us all in ways we cannot imagine at the moment. Just take it easy, dude.”
Now, I’d known Tom since that first class back in August. I couldn’t say I knew him that well. This was the first time we’d ever been out together without the women. We’d talked a lot about esoteric subjects like politics, US foreign policy, or about stuff to do with class assignments. We’d talked enough to know we shared the same views about a lot of things. Or at least the same values. A couple of times Lucy had gossiped about his and Sylvie’s relationship.
The secret of their relationship, Tom told me that evening, was that they had been close friends for months before anything romantic had happened and they were quite disciplined about how much of each other they saw. It was due to this, Tom explained, that they’d successfully negotiated the rapids that lie between being in love and actually loving one another.
“Why does someone fall out of love?” I asked as we left the bar. We were totally smashed, and it was four.
“Be positive Jamie. Make her love you again. Keep it cool.”
“I don’t want her to think I don’t care,” I said as we got into his car.
“That’s what’ll make her see you do love her. Just give her space,” he reasoned wisely and started the engine.
Alejo lived in a portered red-brick on P street. Sylvie’s plan was to go there after dinner with Lucy. But when it came to it she didn’t want to go alone. Lucy reluctantly agreed to accompany her, but she’d only stay, she said, for one more drink. He lived on the top floor. When the elevator opened they slipped through the double doors into a large sitting room. Alejo had been on a sofa hunched over a table legs splayed playing out a complicated-looking game of patience. He came towards them.
“You can’t imagine how happy I am to see you.” He kissed Sylvie perfunctorily on the cheek and went to kiss Lucy, but with a deft, possibly ambiguous movement she avoided him by going over to the wall of windows and looking out at Virginia beyond the Potomac. Sylvie went to the bathroom. “Lucy, it has been so long,” he said joining her there. “I’ve been wanting to apologise for how I was in New York…”
“There’s nothing to apologise for,” Lucy answered. “That’s Alexandria, isn’t it?” Lucy asked looking down out across the river.
“Yes. It must have been horrible for you. I was so much trouble?”
“It was only a couple afternoons.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Alejo said walking over to her.
“What didn’t you mean?” Sylvie asked walking back into the room. They both turned around and Lucy walked back away from the window. “I was just saying that it was only a couple afternoons I sat with him in New York,” Lucy replied sitting down on one of the long sofas. “The way he’s going on you’d think I was with him twenty-four-seven.”
“That was me Alejo. I was the one who sat with you every hour I could bear,” Sylvie corrected the record, sitting down opposite Lucy.
“I know you did,” he said irritably. Lucy hadn’t heard that note before in his voice.
“Lucy says she’ll come away with us to the country,” Sylvie announced, suddenly wanting to please.
“That’s wonderful. Absolutely wonderful,” he replied, perfectly altered. “I met Jamie today and he said he’d come too.”
“What? Tom’ll know now we’re going away.”
“Don’t stress Sylv. It’s better Jamie comes. That way you can tell Tom, it’s a crash party?”
“Seriously though. Why are you such a fuck?” Sylvie confronted Alejo viciously. “Ever think Lucy mightn’t want Jamie there?”
“Is this true, Lucy?” he asked.
“Course it’s not. I’m glad you asked him.” Lucy was looking at the upside down cards laid out before her on the table. “This’ll work,” she said taking up a card and turning over the one behind it. “And this.” She continued for about a minute.
“It’ll be fine Sylvie. I promise.” He placed his hands on her shoulders from behind. “You’re amazing Lucy,” he continued, noticing how she was finishing the game. “I was having t-t-terrible trouble with the next move.”
“Let’s play a proper game,” Lucy suggested.
His smile returned and he got up to fix them drinks while Lucy picked up the cards and shuffled them expertly. Sylvie looked like she was sulking.
Noticing this, Lucy said, “Actually I think I’m too tired to play.”
Sylvie sat up and said, “No, Lucy stay. What game? Blackjack?”
“Poker?” suggested Alejo.
“I don’t want to,” Sylvie replied petulantly.
“Pontoon,” Lucy said authoritatively.
“Great. You gamble don’t you Lucy? Whoever has the most matches at the end wins.” He fetched a glass vase crammed with match-books.
Looking up every now and again Lucy could see the lights of Virginia shine beyond the river in the distance. And for a tiredless hour they all forgot themselves and played the game. Sylvie was first to fade.
“I’d drive you home Lou. I’m so tired,” she explained. “I’m going to crash here.”
“That is a very good idea Sylvie. You stay here while I take Lucy home. I can do that. Lucy, would you like to go to bed?” asked Alejo.
“That’s okay. I’ll grab a cab.”
“I’ll take you, Lucy. It’s nothing.”
“You don’t mind if I don’t come?” asked Sylvie.
“Course not. I’ll see you…”
“Tomorrow?”
“Today. Later?”
“I’ll call,” said Lucy. “As soon as I leave work. I can’t believe I stayed up so late and I have work tomorrow. Today.”
Once in the car, Alejo pounced. “That talk we had in New York, Lucy…”
“Forget it.”
“No really. What you said. I’ve thought a lot about it. It really helped.”
“I’m very glad.”
“I don’t think I would have survived those first few days without you…”
“And Sylvie, and Tom…”
“No it was you, particularly. How you managed your grief when your mother died…”
“Forget it, Alejo. I only talked because it helped me too.” He looked hurt. “I mean I’m glad it helped you. It helped me too. So don’t thank me.”
As they pulled up outside our house they saw me lying down in a foetal position on the steps.
“Something’s happened,” Lucy exclaimed. She jumped out of the car. Alejo followed and calmly concluded as she gently tried to rouse me I was only asleep. They could smell my boozy breath.
“What you doing?” I slurred when slightly awake.
“Why’re you not inside?”
“Pissed-no key-I’ll show you,” I responded, cogently enough for her to get the picture. I then collapsed again and fell asleep. Alejo helped her carry me to her bed. On her bed was her laptop with her diary open, just where I’d left it when Tom had called by earlier. It was the first time Alejo had seen her crimson bedroom. After he’d gone, Lucy started slapping my face to wake me. I just remembered the word ‘diary’. I was unwakeable. She went upstairs and slept in mine.
Lucy was supposed to be at the office at ten for a meeting. She tried to dress quietly so as not to wake me up. She didn’t succeed. I’d waited up all evening for her call, I told her before I’d even opened my eyes.
“We better not speak right now Jamie. I fucking did call you a hundred times but you were on the internet. Or were you just reading my fucking diary?”
“I opened it by accident Lou. I’m so sorry. I didn’t read any of it. Tom arrived. I got distracted.”
“Have you been reading it all year? I actually cannot speak to you right now or think about any of this. Got to get to work. I’ll be back at one. To sleep.”
And with that she left me and the house.