Canarino

Time was nothing. Gone.

Are we that old already? That duty-ridden? What are we doing with our lives, that we move further and further forward without holding on to anything from the past? How did I lose touch with Leon of all people? My best friend, among a lot of good friends.

He pictured Leon’s huge, bounding limbs that could look so ungainly at first, his scraggly blondish hair, long, thin, never really combed. His colossal, uncontrollable grin that peeled his lips back like an apple, or something bigger, a melon, being sliced open. Leon seemed like an enormous dog, a yellow Lab, but he was so much more collected than that. In sport, his timing was perfect, incredible. And when David pictured Leon, he saw the dirty-blond hair lift slightly over the ears, as if Leon were in motion.

Climbing the stairs to his bedroom, David saw Leon, as he’d seen him for years in his mind’s eye, skating fast, his ice hockey helmet clamped onto his head like a flying ace’s, hair blowing out through the ear pieces, and the pads which made their team-mates into blimps and clowns hanging loose on his giant’s physique, his stick swinging like a pendulum backwards and forwards over the bladescored ice, the puck cradled, babied, protected, then slapped silly into the goal.

His timing was perfect, tonight, too, David realized. When did I ever need Leon’s company more?

He opened his closet door half-expecting his clothes to be gone. But there hung the sober row of dark, handmade suits on heavy wooden hangers, neatly spaced, the elbows ever so slightly bent so that the jackets seemed to be politely offering him their arms. He tugged a pair of khakis off the last hanger and felt around on the shelf above for a pullover. The bedroom, David thought, looked relatively undisturbed by the movers. Some things were missing—the mirror above his chest of drawers, for instance, and his bedside table. Had she left every telephone like that on the floor?

He bent down and pressed the intercom then stood up to buckle his belt.

‘Hey, Francine.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I’m expecting a friend. Bring up a couple more of those beers when he gets here.’

‘Yes, sir.’

When he had changed his clothes and splashed water on his face and hands, David went back down to the drawing-room and turned on the lights. It was an absurd choice, the blue silk sofa or the pink and green flowered chair in his study. None of it suits Leon any better than it suits me, he thought. It might as well be made of matchsticks.

He went out onto the balcony in the tawny semi-darkness of the lamp-lit street. His mind was streaming with images from the past, easily, unexpectedly. He felt amazed at all the time that had gone by. He had reached a watershed without meaning to; he might have missed it altogether.

I’m always about the next thing that’s going to happen, David thought to himself. I’ve been poised on the balls of my feet, on the edge of my chair, convinced that there will be nothing more and that I’ll be bored out of my mind.

What if I were not so afraid of being bored? Would life pass more slowly? Could I choose what to do on purpose, shape my destiny a little? Instead of lying like a feeding fish on the current, putting myself in the way of an endless stream of events and just reacting?

He began to wonder whether what had happened so far in his life might be all he should expect. And he thought: A lot of it’s lost, dammit. But if I could go backwards to those lost events, have them all again, it might be enough to carry me for a long time. For ever? Maybe. Nothing was connected up; it had just gone on endlessly happening, with no time for reflection. His experiences seemed disparate, tumultuous, unrelated. Some things, he thought, he might have paid too little attention to, so that he wouldn’t be able to recover them now if he wanted to. But the human mind is deep, he thought to himself. It’s all in there somewhere.

A motorcycle roared at the end of the square, then rocketed around it, blasting the sedate doorways and windows one by one. It stopped practically at David’s feet, on the single yellow line beneath the streetlamp.

Once the engine died and the noise stopped, David paid no attention, but then as the black leather rider made for his own front door, David suddenly called out brazenly on the velvet air.

‘I thought you were a fucking courier! When did you start riding a motorbike?’

Leon took off his helmet and tilted back his head, smiling broadly. Then he put a finger to his lips and whispered loudly and hoarsely, ‘You’ll wake the neighbors!’

David laughed. ‘Fuck ’em! They won’t be my neighbors much longer. Wait, I’ll let you in.’

As he hurried down the stairs, he realized he was thinking about his legs. How quick was he now, really? As if Leon could see him, judge him, from the other side of the front door.

When David opened the door, Leon was standing back from it on the sidewalk. He had one foot on the portico step, one hand on his thigh, slouching. He seemed huge, black, his face in shadow, his hair glinting yellow, lit from behind. David heard the creaking of his biker’s leathers as Leon stood up to his full six feet four inches, and he felt a coolness between them, a sudden sense of uncertainty, then Leon closed the space between them in a stride and wrapped David in his arms.

David slapped Leon on the back, punched him in the biceps.

‘Christ, it’s good to see you!’

‘Look at you, Dave, still a fucking preppy, in your little navyblue sweater and your khakis. You’ll never change!’

Leon seemed to fill the hallway. His hair was cropped now, and as he smoothed it, David saw how sleek, how sharp he looked. The massive square jaw shaved clean, shining, and underneath the husky black leather jacket was a tight-fitting dark green turtleneck made of something stretchy, a Mr Spock job without the insignia of the Starship Enterprise on the chest. The padded leather trousers fit snugly up to the rib cage.

‘Aren’t you hot in that gear?’

‘England’s never hot. Come on!’

They looked at each other, smiling. David crossed his arms, nodding at the floor, then gripped his elbows hard, kneading them.

‘You look just a little older, Dave, and a little wiser maybe where the flesh has worn away. You are definitely thinner, man. Not a lot of gray, though. How are you?’ Leon put a hand on either side of David’s chest and shoved him backwards ever so slightly.

David went on smiling. ‘Well, I don’t know. Fine, I guess. Or maybe you’re going to tell me how I am. You never looked better, Leon, that’s for sure.’

Leon danced his hips from side to side and laughed. ‘You should try wearing leather, man; what are you waiting for?’

As he closed the door, David saw Francine hanging around in the back of the hall with her loaded tray.

‘Beer?’ he said to Leon. ‘I have nothing else to offer, at least I don’t think I do. I don’t even have chairs.’

Francine’s hands trembled ever so slightly as Leon lifted his mug from the tray.

‘Cheers, David! It’s been too long.’ He swallowed half the mug on the spot. ‘So let’s go out. Let’s go somewhere and eat, or drink anyway. We can take the bike.’

David felt a little surge of adrenalin. He studied his beer, waiting for Francine to start down the stairs. ‘I haven’t been on a motorcycle in twenty years,’ he said, smiling, ‘and hardly ever then.’

‘Nothing to it if you’re the passenger. I won’t dump you in the road, Dave. It’s a gorgeous night. If we get wasted, you can take a cab home.’

‘Let me shut the doors upstairs.’ His heart was leaping at it. ‘It’ll just take a second.’

Leon followed him up to the drawing-room. When the French doors were bolted, Leon said, ‘Would you look at that fucking picture of Lizzie. When did you have that done for her?’

‘She had it done for me. She and the kids. For our last wedding anniversary.’ David felt embarrassed explaining, and, sure enough, Leon threw back his head and roared.

Then he raised an eyebrow at David. ‘Elizabeth Ruel had that done for you? No way, man! Elizabeth Ruel had that done for Elizabeth Ruel!’

David felt even more embarrassed. Not so much about the picture, and all it seemed to represent, but at the fact that, even after so many years, Leon knew everything about him. There was no escaping it. You couldn’t bullshit Leon. He could look like a thug, act like a fool if he felt like it, but Leon was a chameleon and he knew all the moves—his own, and everybody else’s, too. That was why David loved him. It came over him now in a wave, that he had always trusted Leon completely because there was no alternative. You couldn’t hide from him and you couldn’t run from him either. And for all his strength—of mind and body—Leon had never done David any harm.

There and then, as if reading David’s mood and his thoughts, Leon pulled a classic stunt. He put his arm around David and hugged him warmly to his side.

‘It’s an amazing picture, Dave, seriously. Beats the hell out of all her magazine covers.’ He raised his free hand toward the picture. ‘This takes her right out of time; shows her as the beauty of the ages. Forget Helen of Troy. Lizzie knows exactly what she’s up to with visual effects, doesn’t she?’ He dropped both arms. ‘So how old are your kids now?’

‘Gordon is seven; Hope is four.’

‘They look pretty happy. A little stir-crazy, maybe. You think they belong in America?’

David shrugged. ‘Elizabeth thinks so.’

‘How can she? If she’s having them painted like that? That’s nothing to do with America, that painting!’