Alice Adams - Invincible Summer

She reached up and kissed Lucien slowly on the mouth, then pulled away. ‘I can’t. I want to, but I’ve ditched Benedict and I don’t even know whether he’s okay.’ She kissed him again. ‘You could call me. Next week.’

Even as she said the words she sensed a barely perceptible shift in his features, the strained quality of lust dissipating and being replaced by his usual easy confidence, the affect of a man who knows that what he wants is there for the taking. The world jolted into focus, and in that moment she knew that he wouldn’t call her next week, or the one after. They weren’t Eva and Lucien, kindred spirits floating on a bed of clouds through a celestial skyscape. They were two drugged-up idiots lying on the cold ground in a public park at six o’clock in the morning. She was the biggest idiot, of course. Lucien was a complete bastard, but there was almost no point in even thinking about that because Lucien was just doing what Lucien did, taking his chances and hoping to get laid. It would be like criticizing a scorpion for stinging you. Yes, it wasn’t pleasant, but its sting was on display, so if you picked it up and got stung then you were the idiot. She looked at him. Do I look like that? she wondered, staring at his bloodshot eyes with their wildly dilated pupils. There was a crust of greyish scum gathering at the corners of his mouth and his teeth and gums were stained dark from the red wine they’d drunk at the party, or maybe from the lollipops he’d been handing out at the club all evening.

Lucien sat up and brushed the grass from his clothes and Eva followed suit, grimly picking a piece of chewing gum off her sleeve. The new distance between them, in reality only a few inches, might as well have been a mile for the gulf that had opened up in the wake of the evaporated intimacy. What was she doing here when she could have gone home with Benedict and sat on the sofa with a duvet and a bottle of wine and finally caught up? They’d barely had a chance to chat this weekend and he was leaving in a few hours. It wasn’t that there was anything specific they needed to talk about; it was just that there were so many things she’d made mental notes to tell him, nothing of consequence, just anecdotes she’d been saving up because she knew they’d make him laugh. She didn’t really have that in her life anymore, and she missed it, really missed it. Eva looked at Lucien and tried to imagine talking to him about her job, or the book she’d just read, or her hopes and dreams. He looked back at her, grinning and dead-eyed.

‘Right then,’ he said. ‘Time for the walk of shame.’

‘Okay, here’s one,’ said Sylvie. ‘If you were offered the gift of immortality, would you take it and why?’

The four friends were trudging through a forest seventeen miles west of Baladas in Galicia, where they’d spent the previous night in a hostel dormitory. It was the penultimate day of a week spent hiking the last ninety miles of the ancient pilgrimage route of the Camino Frances to reach the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. They made an unlikely band of pilgrims, with Sylvie’s fluorescent orange hair and Lucien’s aviator sunglasses and velvet trousers setting them apart from the other walkers in their sensible hiking gear, but having spent months arguing over where to go on a joint holiday they’d all finally agreed when Benedict had suggested this trip. It suited Sylvie because walking and staying in hostels was an option she could actually afford, and Eva had figured it would be useful for losing a bit of the extra weight she’d put on over a few too many boozy broker dinners and takeaway lunches. Lucien had agreed because he was up for anything that promised an adventure, and also because he’d reached the point where he would have said yes to a caving holiday in Timbuktu if it meant they didn’t have to have any more tedious debates on the subject.

‘Wow. I think this might be the hardest question yet,’ said Benedict, taking a swig of his rapidly dwindling water supply. He’d started the trip the best prepared of the group, with a tiny rucksack weighing less than the recommended ten per cent of his body weight, but had ended up carrying most of Eva and Sylvie’s possessions. Both of them had overpacked: Eva with sensible things like suncream and raincoats and perhaps one or two more books than strictly necessary, and Sylvie with an extensive supply of paper and pencils, paints and pastels. ‘What a choice. You’d get to see every bit of incredible technology we develop and learn about every scientific discovery, and whether we ever find aliens and manage to colonize other planets, then eventually watch the sun go supernova.’

‘Yeah, but picture this,’ said Lucien, going into doomy voiceover mode. ‘The sun is dead, the human race has drawn its last breath, the aliens never arrived. . it’s just you. . alone. . in a vast, cold tract of dark, empty space.’

‘Well, yes, there is that,’ said Benedict. ‘Plus you’d get to watch everyone you love die. But on the other hand you’d get to see to the end of the universe and beyond. I can’t decide. What about you, Sylvie?’

In truth, Sylvie hadn’t been particularly enjoying adult life so far and the prospect of an eternity of it wasn’t remotely attractive. Job opportunities had been thin on the ground since she and Lucien had returned from travelling, and accommodation expensive. She’d been reduced to signing up for office temping, and even debasing herself in this way hadn’t exactly resulted in a flood of offers. What’s your typing speed? Do you have any experience with spreadsheets? Those were the sorts of things they wanted to know, not whether the candidate was passionate and creative and fun to work with.

For the first time in her life, she was starting to feel like she was at the bottom of the pile. At school and university she’d always been in demand; she was good-looking and confident and naturally subversive, and that had always been enough to keep her high in the social hierarchy. The academic side of things wasn’t her forte, but Mr Nolan, the art teacher at one of her secondary schools, had said she had a rare talent, confirming her sense that her destiny lay in being an artist. But a lot had changed since the days when her star had been so firmly in the ascendant, even within her immediate group of friends. These days Eva was glowing with a new confidence, and more, an overarching sense of purpose, which only compounded Sylvie’s growing feeling of being adrift. Lucien, too, was raking it in on his club nights and Benedict at least had a direction in life, even if it wasn’t one that she much envied. But she wasn’t about to admit any of this out loud.

‘Never mind immortality, I’m going to top myself if I have to listen to Lucien moaning about his feet for much longer,’ she said.

Her brother glared back at her. ‘Have I mentioned in the last five minutes that they’re agony? And that this whole trip was a shit idea? I was promised sunshine and naughty Catholic girls, not blisters and hostels full of stinking Germans. And that’s if we’re lucky. I’m telling you, if we don’t find somewhere with vacancies soon we’re going to have to sleep under a tree.’ He waved a hand at the darkening air around them; the last three hostels they’d passed had no free beds, forcing them to keep walking. ‘Look at these shoes, they’re completely ruined. And what about these trousers, eh? Three hundred quid they cost me, and now they’re covered in mud.’

‘I did tell you that you wouldn’t be able to walk a hundred miles in suede shoes,’ snapped Sylvie. ‘Why on earth didn’t you bring proper hiking boots?’

‘Because I’m not fucking forty?’

Eva, who was walking a little way in front of the rest of the group, suddenly drew to an abrupt halt in the road. ‘Halle-bloody-lujah!’ she called back to them. ‘A hostel with a sign saying they’ve got beds.’