Anjali Joseph - The Living

Sometimes the shoes I check don’t fit as well with each other as they would with another left, another right. The same model, but something doesn’t match. I rearrange them and find another one where the rosette’s slightly off-centre, or the shape of the vamp mirrors the other one. It’s a small thing. Who’d notice? But it’s satisfying, finding the right partner.

After work on Friday I went home and got ready, then I met John at the cinema. We hadn’t been out for a couple of weeks, and I’d started to miss him. He hadn’t been unfriendly. He still smiled and said hi. He just didn’t suggest doing anything after work, didn’t come to talk to me. In the end I found myself walking up to him and asking what he was doing that evening. It felt natural. We were friends. Obviously.

After the film we went for a drink, and another drink. He was wearing a jumper I liked, dark grey. I think he might have shaved again. He looked smooth, and in the day I thought I’d seen little points of beard on his cheeks. They’re white or blond and they catch the light like sand.

I noticed something. At first when we met he was talking, all natural, but he was holding his arms against his chest, tight. They say that’s a sign of wanting to protect yourself, don’t they? I found myself doing it back. Two nervous people in a noisy pub, hugging themselves. After a few minutes I told myself to stop doing it, and he did too. I almost felt sorry for him. Then we just talked — about work, about Helen and her husband, and how he always comes to meet her. I said it was sweet, but who’d be like that now? John just smiled.

He told me about the painting he did, and how he’d set up a shed in his garden for it and for playing the guitar, or making music on the computer. I can do what I like out there, he said. It’s my own private space. It wouldn’t disturb anyone. And he looked at me as though I’d be the person being disturbed.

Who’s there to be disturbed? I said. I didn’t mean it rudely, but it didn’t come out nice. Suddenly I noticed all around us the signs and offers — coffee and a croissant on a weekday morning, Sunday brunch, happy hour, and everyone’s clothes, the little logos on them, their trainers, the sides of their spectacles. I felt myself blur into the general Saturday nightness of it all. That way when you’re in a pub on a busy night you feel like part of something bigger, which has its own brain, or no brain, a general pissedness, a batteredness the shouting the laughter the mood a swell of it a soap bubble everyone’s inside. Someone’s elbow her big shiny bracelet someone else’s shirt his watch his bald head John opposite me my pint his pint the table the beermat someone’s shoes the pub carpet and closing time.

Before I thought about it John and I were walking up the road to my house. I didn’t ask him to come home with me, but I didn’t tell him not to. What are you going to do about this, now, I asked myself, but most of all I’d had enough to drink, more than, and I was tired and I wanted to go home. The rest would sort itself out. I didn’t want to have to explain anything ever again.

Two hours and two spliffs later, John and I were in my bed. We hadn’t done anything — every time he inched towards me on the sofa, I’d inched away, but without saying anything. He hadn’t asked. It was a miracle. I rolled myself up in my half of the duvet. Goodnight then, I said.

Claire?

Not now, I thought. I pulled myself out of the edges of sleep. Yeah, I said. I heard myself sounding like the mother of a three-year-old.

Are you asleep?

Half, I said. I turned around, almost on my side. All right? I said.

John, still in his t-shirt and jeans, smiled. Yeah, he said. How are you?

I’m all right, I said. I didn’t move towards him. I kind of wanted him to kiss me, or want to. And I didn’t want to do anything. Damian, I thought.

We spent a while looking at each other. I hadn’t noticed, but there were orange bits in his eyes. Hazel eyes with orange bits. Is that a sign of insanity? Suddenly everything meant something, and all of it was probably something I should take into account.

Can I come a bit closer? John said.

I sighed. All right, I said. The truth was, I did sort of want a hug. I didn’t want to do anything I couldn’t take back later. I didn’t want him either to go or to get too close. This was about right.

He got closer, moved some hair out of my face, and kissed me quite gently. I kissed his top lip. It tasted fine. I put my bottom lip between his, and he bit it. He put his hand on my breast and squeezed it, felt my back, stroked my stomach. I kind of liked it. I felt I could get turned on, if I stopped stopping myself. Damian’s face floated before me. If I let myself get turned on now, would it be because of Damian? Did it matter?

John rolled on top of me. Am I crushing you? he asked.

No, I said. I lay still. Don’t ask, I prayed. Don’t ask what’s going on. I stroked his arm, and felt the muscles in it. He sighed. He rolled to the side and tried putting his hand down my pants. I seemed to be in my underwear, and pyjamas. It was morning. At some point Jason would come back from Chloe’s, maybe with Chloe. On the other hand it was a nice day, so maybe they’d go out. Anyway, that wasn’t the point … I twisted to the side and John moved his hand. We stopped looking at each other.

After a while he said, Are you hungry?

I dunno, I said. How about a cup of tea? A bit later I got up and made tea. Then I made breakfast, and we sat and talked about work, and laughed about people there, for a long time, till late in the afternoon. After he’d left, with a hug, I thought about John. It seemed easier to let myself feel close to him when he’d gone.

I tried to remember how it had been with Pete, and it seemed so far away. We were so young. I thought things would always be that simple. You liked someone and they liked you and it just happened. But it hadn’t been like that later. Was it even possible for anything to be new any more? I thought about it that evening when I went to bed early. I’d changed the sheets and they were soft. I stretched out and felt good about the fact that someone had been there, nearby, so I didn’t have to feel alone, but wasn’t there now, so I could be at peace. Every experience reminded me of something else, in a good way, this is better than before, or a less good way, this isn’t as good. Like a form I had to fill in stating defects. Faults other people might not notice. Even the perfect product, the perfect shoe, whatever that meant, it might not be something you fancied. You just wouldn’t be able to argue it wasn’t right. It depended on what you were looking for, and that depended on what you were used to, so the same things kept repeating. I fell asleep and dreamed of shoes, and signs in pubs, and parts of people: shirts, the backs of heads, bags, skirts, but all separate, all floating. I woke in the evening for a bit and heard voices. Jason and Chloe. My throat hurt. I was in the middle of making a noise. I put my face back in the duvet.

In the morning before I knew it was morning or that I was me or where I was or who was being there, it was the light I felt. It must have come through the curtains and on to my face and through my eyelids. I didn’t know any of that. I was just aware of the light, forcing its way through, and once it was there, that there had been darkness, which had to give way.

With half an ear I listened to the radio. She was out; dusk was falling. I sat on the edge of the bed, feeling tired.