Rupert Thomson - Soft

‘Just water,’ Glade said. ‘Thank you.’

Kwench!? She must have seen the name on TV. Or in a magazine. Her water arrived. It tasted faintly of chemicals, but at least it was cold. She drank half of it and sat back in her seat. There were things in her mind she knew nothing about, things she didn’t even realise were there. She looked out of the window. The Atlantic Ocean lay below, bright-blue in the spring sunlight. Something disturbed her about seeing water from so high up, something about the way the surface wrinkled. Like watching lice. Or maggots. It happened every time she flew. She leaned back, closed her eyes.

She thought of Tom, who she hadn’t seen for months, who she had hardly spoken to, not recently, and wondered how it would be this time, in New Orleans. He would sound so enthusiastic on the phone, while they were planning things, but when the moment came, when they actually met, she always had the feeling that she wasn’t quite what he’d imagined, that she was somehow less than he’d expected, and she would catch him looking at her, his eyes puzzled but amused, as if he’d fallen for some kind of trick, or even, sometimes, resentful, as if she’d deliberately deceived him. Once, she had arrived at his apartment in Miami to find a group of people sitting round a low black coffee table. They were sitting close to each other, as if trading secrets, or taking part in some complicated game. She remembered their shoulders, which were raised against her, like barriers, and she remembered the angle of their necks, haughty and forbidding. When she first entered the room, they peered at her, but only their heads moved, somehow their shoulders and necks stayed in the same place, and there was nothing in their eyes, their eyes were like the eyes of dead fish, hard and shiny, blind. And Tom looked no different to any of the others, who she had never seen before and did not know. Tom’s eyes were as dead as theirs. She backed out of the room, away from that black table, those dead eyes, and, closing the apartment door behind her, walked quickly down the stairs. Tom found her sitting on a cane chair in the lobby, among the potted palms.

‘Glade?’

She smiled up at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t see you.’

‘You didn’t see me?’

‘I walked into the room and it was dark suddenly. There were so many people.’ She nodded to herself, remembering. ‘I didn’t see you. I thought you weren’t there.’

‘ It’s my apartment, Glade .’

She was still smiling at him. ‘I thought you weren’t there.’

Confused, he glanced down at his shoes, which were like moccasins, only made of straw. He shook his head. When he looked up again, though, he was smiling too. ‘Jesus, Glade,’ he said. ‘You scared the hell out of me back there.’

It was all right after that.

He had this idea about her, though, which he kept attempting to fit her into, and since he spent far longer with the idea than he did with her, it had become more familiar, more real than she was. She didn’t know what the idea was exactly, but every time she saw him she felt her corners bump against the smooth, round shape of it; she felt the awkwardness, the gaps. It was strange because, when she was in London, she forgot what he was like as well — only she didn’t try and make him up. Seeing him again, after months, she often found it too much for her, literally too much, to see everything so completely realised, to see all of him at once, when she had only been able to remember his teeth, or the blond hairs on his wrists, or the way he said her name. It was this sudden avalanche of detail — a surfeit, really — that made her hesitate in doorways.

Tom.

She wondered how it would be this time. She wondered how often in her life she would fly to him like this. She wondered what he would think of the picture she was going to give him.

Jesus, Glade .

She walked out of the air-conditioned building into the heat of early afternoon. A highway lay in front of her, its surface pale-brown, four lanes of traffic travelling in each direction. Airport Boulevard. It had been a fifteen-hour flight, with a connection in New York, but she didn’t feel tired yet. She stood on a strip of grass at the edge of a car-park, the sun bright and fierce against the right side of her face. She liked the way American air always seemed to glitter.

Tom had told her to take a cab to the Hotel Excelsior, which was in the French Quarter. He would be waiting there for her. They could spend the afternoon on the roof, he said. They could order Mint Juleps and watch the sun go down over the Mississippi. But somehow she found herself out by the road, beyond the line of taxis, wanting to delay things. She thought she’d have a drink first. Perhaps, if she had a drink, she wouldn’t hesitate in front of him. Perhaps, if she had a drink, her voice wouldn’t be so small. She was proud of herself for having the idea. For thinking like him.

She looked around for somewhere. Silver-bellied planes drifted over every few seconds, no more than two or three hundred feet above the ground, bringing everything into a strange, unnatural proximity. A van painted a metallic dark-blue coasted past, bass notes shaking its smoked-glass windows. She couldn’t see anything resembling a café or a bar. Maybe there wouldn’t be, out near the airport.

Then, almost opposite her, she noticed an Italian place. Café Roma, it was called, the letters alternating red and green on a white background. She crossed the road between rows of hot, slow-moving cars. Once on the other side, she peered through the plate-glass window. There was no one to be seen. She tried the door. It was locked. She was about to walk away, disheartened, when she heard a loud click. A man was standing behind the door, unlocking it. There must have been three different sets of bolts, but finally he managed it.

‘We’re not closed.’ The man stammered slightly. ‘We’re open.’

‘No,’ Glade said, ‘it’s all right.’

‘No, really. We’re open.’

He was about thirty, with smooth, light-brown hair that fitted the shape of his head so closely that she thought it might be a wig. Though he wore a long white apron, he didn’t look like somebody who ran a restaurant. Perhaps she should just get in a taxi, like Tom had told her to.

‘This city,’ the man said, and his eyes moved past her, shifting constantly from one part of the highway to another, ‘I don’t know. In the last six months it’s gone crazy. I have to keep the door locked all the time. You never know what’s going to come in off the street.’ His eyes veered back to her, deep in his head and bleached of all colour, and then he smiled. It was too sudden to be entirely reassuring, which was what she thought he intended it to be. She found that she was no longer wary of him, though.

‘I don’t want to eat,’ she warned him. ‘I just want a glass of wine.’

‘We have wine. Please,’ and he held the door for her, ‘come on in.’ He looked into the empty restaurant. ‘Sit anywhere you want.’

Stepping past him, into the room, she was reminded of her own life: the quietness of it, a green neon sign that said, simply, SPACES. She sat at a table in the corner, her suitcase on the floor behind her chair. The plain brick walls had been decorated with posters of the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. Bottles snugly cupped in faded raffia hung from the ceiling. Every table had a red-and-white check cloth on it. You would never have imagined there was an airport right outside the door.

‘Would you like white wine,’ the man said, ‘or red?’

She decided that she wanted red.

‘Would you like some music? I have records.’ He brought out a selection — Mozart, Verdi, Bach.