"Here on My Vast Veranda..."
Jun. 15th, 2006 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psalm_onethirtyoneOriginal fic. :D Completely bizarre, as per the usual.
We'll Think One Up Later
England wasn't what Alex had hoped. For one thing, it was too bright. For another thing, it didn't rain enough. Everyone always said the English weather was the wettest, nastiest in the world, but to tell the truth it only rained five days a week.
Alex liked the rain more than that.
England had a kind of wonderful poetry to it, especially London, where everything swished and men sold postcards and apples on the corners, and you had to tear across the streets before the taxi drivers tried to run you down. Postboxes were shiny and red, and there was a hideous new statue in Trafalgar Square. But it wasn't what he wanted, and he quietly wished he were back home.
He'd left expectantly. Home was dark, and he could lie in the sand at three in the afternoon in the darkness, feeling the soft graininess of it up against his cheek, but it was dry. But they'd told him in London it rained all the time, so that it was dark anyway because of the clouds, and so wet that there was a puddle on every square of the sidewalk (the whole sidewalk was just one big puddle, somebody insisted), and Alex thought, That's where I want to live. Instead, it was sunny his entire first week, bright and shining and hot. Home was dry, but it at least was dark. He missed the dark too much.
Occasionally he missed people he didn't quite remember. He hadn't lived by himself. There were two women, one of whom might have been his sister, and three men, one of whom might have been his father. He remembered someone saying something before he left.
"Alex. Alex, I want you to promise you'll write to us."
"Of course I will," he'd said.
"Bring something back for me."
"Of course I will," he'd said.
He didn't remember anything else.
When he came to England, he needed work, although he didn't know why. First he worked in a drugstore, and then in a Woolworth's, and then in a Pret a Manger. There was one on every street, it seemed like, and he worked there for a while, but he got tired of it. Finally he went down in the Underground where it was safer and cooler, and sold discount tickets for the theatre district. He smiled people into tickets they weren't sure they were going to buy, and teased parents into letting their children go to shows they wanted to see.
He lived by himself in a little apartment at the very middle of a twelve-storey building, and kept the curtains pulled. What it was, what it really was, was that he was lonely and tired and hot, and homesick, and for a while he wanted to tell that to people, the people who bought tickets. He wanted people to hear and know, and someone to show him how to find a place he'd be happy. He wanted someone to tell him he was all right, and it was going to rain to-morrow anyway.
It was around that time he met Lila. She had short red hair and a laugh that reminded him of rain.
"Hi, there. Um, look, can I borrow your mobile? I forgot something at home, and I want to see if my husband can meet me and bring it to me. I know, I'm a total scatterbrain. I'm always forgetting stuff."
Alex wasn't sure whether he had a mobile, but when he checked his coat pockets, it turned out that he did, so he handed it to her, and she smiled at him the whole time she was on, speaking in another language entirely. When she snapped it shut and handed it back, her smile was even wider, and he noticed it was lipsticked a bright orangey-red colour.
"Thanks," she said, sticking out a hand. "I'm Lila. Thanks a lot."
"I'm Paul," Alex said. He paused. "Alex. Sorry. I'm Alex."
"Hi, Alex." That was when she laughed, reminding him of rain. "Glad to meet you. I'll see you around." And then she tossed her head, so that her short red hair ruffled, and walked off. She was wearing heels that clicked on the stone floor.
Alex opened his mobile again and looked at it slowly. She'd made a long-distance call to Anglesey Island, in Wales.
Lila came back sometimes. She changed the colour of her hair often--the next time he saw her it was a beautiful deep brown--but apart from that she looked the same, and she always asked if she could call her husband. She forgot to tell him to pick something up at the grocery, sometimes, and sometimes she needed him to meet her so she could get a ride home. Alex gave her the mobile. The company didn't charge him extra for long-distance, and he didn't use the mobile anyway. He still didn't know why he had it.
One day, Lila sat down on his countertop in her short skirt, dangling her legs over the edge.
"So, you just sell tickets all the time?"
He nodded.
"What do you do for fun?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know? When you're not working, do you go to Internet Cafes? Discos? Wales?"
"I don't do anything." He sounded a little surprised, even to himself.
"Do you even think about doing anything?"
"I--no. I don't."
"You ought to. I bet you get depressed here."
"I don't know." Alex smiled at her, the first time he had. It was a small smile, but soft. Lila glowed.
"Wanna take me out some time?"
"No, thanks."
She laughed again. "Okay. See you later!" and she hopped off the counter, clicking her way up into the light.
Alex sold fourteen discount tickets to Once Bowed, and went to sleep behind the counter, curled up against the wall of his tiny space back there, an apple in his lap and his coat rolled up behind his head. He woke up because a lady was murmuring,--
"Excuse me. I'm so sorry, excuse me."
He shook his head and blinked his eyes at her several times. "H-hello. I'm sorry. Just a minute," he said quickly, getting to his feet.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you up. I was just wondering if I could buy--"
"Yeah. Yeah, sorry, it's my fault. What do you want a ticket for?"
"Empire in the Closet, for my nephew and me."
Alex sold her the tickets.
The next day he met a man in the Underground who talked with him about the weather and old books. The man worked in an English bookstore in Paris, for the last two years, and was on vacation to see his mother. Alex never minded listening to people, so he sat and the man told him about conspiracies based around old texts. The man had a smooth old book full of stories by Maupassant.
"The really remarkable thing about Maupassant," he said, "is that he puts in anecdotes in his stories. He tells you all about things that happen to the characters that don't have to do with the plot. I've spent whole stories wondering when a little detail is going to tie back in to the story. But it doesn't. It'll be something that seems tense, and pertinent. They'll meet someone who'll look at them funny, and you'll think oh, he looked at them funny. Something's going to come up with him. But it doesn't."
"Why not?"
"I don't know why not. I can't explain Maupassant at all. All I know is, it's astounding. Completely irrelevant anecdotes. Have you ever read Maupassant?"
"I guess not," Alex said.
The man's stop was next, so they said good-bye.
At the counter, he played with his computer, looking up stories by Maupassant, but he didn't know whether he had any money, so he didn't try to buy any. In between customers, during the long down periods, he thought about money. He had to have some money, because he rented his apartment.
And he bought groceries. Some of the time. He bought things to eat, and little boxes of plant food for the tired peony in the corner of his room. He bought Underground tickets, too. So he had money.
He just didn't know how much, or where it was, or how he got it.
Maybe it wasn't important.
He didn't know.
~~~
She was crying. She was sitting across from him in the Underground, looking out the window behind him, and wiping the backs of her hands across her face every now and then.
He sat quietly, thinking of what to say. He would have offered her a handkerchief or a Kleenex, if he'd had one. Maybe something else would do, but he wasn't sure whether he had anything else. For the moment he was sitting with his hands folded on his stomach, leaning sideways against the back of his seat, looking at the ceiling. She probably didn't even know he'd noticed her.
You really had to do something. Didn't you? If someone was crying? Or was it right to ignore it?
Alex straightened himself up. "Are you okay?"
"Oh. I'm sorry. I'm fine." She wiped her face again.
"You don't have to be sorry. Are you sure you're okay?"
"Uh-huh. I'm just--I miss my son."
"Where is he?"
"Over there. He's in the RAF. He's in the war."
"Oh. Yeah. I guess that's scary."
She nodded. "He doesn't write to me much. He can't."
"What's his name?"
"Harry," laughing. "It's Harry. After his father."
"I wish he was here," Alex said. There wasn't really anything else he could say.
"Me, too."
"Does he say he's okay, when he does write?"
"He says he's fine."
"You get on okay without him? I mean, not missing him, but do you still get around and stuff okay?"
"Uh-huh. I take myself places. I don't know what I'm going to do this week, though. I'm so lonely. I'd give anything to have him back, just for a day. I don't know where he is or what's happening, and it's so frightening, especially when I think about how he's only twenty. When I was only twenty, all I was worrying about was things like dancing and my hair and buying new shoes. I used to dance when I was younger, before I married. But poor Harry. He's twenty, and he's over there, off the ground and moving about and getting shot at, and we don't even know why, do we? I know about patriotic feeling, but I don't really know why my boy's there. He's so brave. Of course he's so brave. But I used to have him at home before, all the time. He never went to University after school. I knew where he was at night. Well, not always, of course, because he was out with his friends sometimes. But I knew. I knew he was here. I could look in on him in the mornings. And now I just don't know what to do. I wish it were just empty-nest syndrome. If he had gone to University, I'd be lonely, but I wouldn't be afraid. He's so brave, but I'm so frightened."
By the time she finished, she was crying again, and Alex hesitated for a moment. Then he crossed over to her side. She was soft and heavyish and not very pretty, but she went all right in his arms, and he rocked her and put his nose in her hair, mumbling something. She didn't seem to mind at all. A small part of Alex said that she ought to mind, that this wasn't home where any action was permissible, that he didn't know how to behave around strangers because he'd never met them before, that--but he was too busy wiping off her face with his shirtsleeve to pay attention.
"Do you have anywhere to go?" he asked, after a while.
"No. Not to-day."
"Wanna come with me? I just sell tickets, but you can sit back with me. I'll buy us coffee or something. Do you like coffee?"
"I like coffee," she whispered.
That whole week, she sat with him behind the counter. They met on the Underground in the morning, and Alex bought coffee (he did have money. He had an idea now that they paid him for selling tickets). She bought lunch for them, and they ate together behind the counter, unless it was raining. If it was raining, she minded the ticket counter for him, and he went up and sat in the rain, letting it pour down around his ears. It was the only time he wasn't homesick.
At the end of the week, on Sunday night, she came back to his little apartment with him. They slept together, and because it wasn't raining very hard, the moonlight was almost clear, just a little rippled sometimes by the water on the windowpanes.
"I don't remember stuff very well," Alex said.
"I write things down. That helps."
They moved close together before they slept, so that his body fit against her very softly. She was still soft and overweight and not very pretty, but Alex slept close against her all night.
In the morning, he combed out her hair with his fingers. It was very long and reddish-brown, and a tiny bit curly at the ends.
"Am I pretty?" she asked.
"I think so."
"Do you like to look at me? Am I pretty enough that somebody could want me?"
Alex sat up, still running his fingers through her hair. "Uh-huh."
"I always feel like people who are fat--I mean like me--aren't allowed to do things. I always feel so embarrassed when I go places. Like only people who are slim and pretty should be allowed to go there. I try not to be really noticeable. I don't want people to get upset because I'm there when I shouldn't be." She laughed, softly, not happily, self-conscious. "I really don't know. I know people are beautiful--I mean all people. But sometimes I feel like I'm the exception to the rule. I really feel like I shouldn't be here because I'm not good-looking enough to deserve to be in the world. Isn't that awful? When I have Harry, and people are perfectly good to me. But I just can't help thinking it. I went to Kew Gardens two weeks ago, when the roses were blooming, and I cried and cried. It was so wonderful. Everything was wonderful. The roses were all these beautiful colours, and the sky was perfect, and the grass was soft, and you couldn't see anything but pinks and reds and sunset colours, and there I was in the middle of it. It was so beautiful it could have been a painting, or maybe a scene from a really romantic movie, and right in the middle of it, there was a middle-aged, fat lady who wasn't half as beautiful. I just felt like I ruined it."
"I don't know," Alex said. "I guess I didn't really think about how you look. I like the way you talk."
She started crying again, and since he really didn't have any idea what to do, he put his arms around her the way he had on the Underground and breathed in her hair until the crying stopped. After that they just lay still. Alex could feel her breathing.
~~~
On Tuesday, when they went back to his counter to sell tickets for Wednesday matinees, Lila was waiting for him.
"You won't believe what I did to-day, honey," she said. "My poor husband must be going crazy. I accidentally forgot to pick my son up from daycare. Can I borrow your mobile and call him to let him know?"
Alex handed it to her, and went back to unlocking his little space and turning on the computer. Ten minutes later she handed it back with a smile.
"There! We fixed that problem." To-day her hair was blonde and her black leather trousers made a soft swishing noise when she walked. "So who's your lady friend?"
Alex realised he had never asked her name, and she had never asked his. "I don't know," he said.
"Susan."
"Hi! I'm Lila. I sponge off poor Alex all the time. I'm always forgetting stuff, but he's a love and lets me use his mobile."
Susan smiled back. It wasn't anything like Lila's bright, lipstick-coloured one, but it made Alex smile, too, at his hands, as he hung the specials sign from a hook over the counter.
"Is your name Alex?" she asked.
"Uh-huh. Susan."
"Uh-huh."
"You can't seriously be telling me you people didn't know each other's names before?" Lila asked. "Oh, come on. You're acting like old friends. How long have you known each other?"
"A week, I guess," Alex said.
"That's right."
"That's crazy! You're so cute, and totally mad. Well, thanks for the call. I'll see you maybe next week, okay?"
"'Bye."
Lila clicked off, swishing too from her leather trousers. Alex waved.
But next week she didn't come back. He looked for her every day, but she didn't come. He and Susan bought two of his discount tickets and went to see This War is Over. When the boy was shot, she cried, crying that didn't make any noise, while he stroked her hand. Tuesday two weeks later, Lila was still missing. Two months later, she came by, dressed in a tight red dress, her hair dead black.
"Hi! You two still doing the job together? How're you doing?"
"We're all right," Alex said.
"I don't suppose I could borrow your mobile? I forgot to feed the dog before I left."
"Here."
While she was phoning, he sold six tickets for This War is Over to an Asian family.
"Done. Thanks a bunch. You're really the greatest, honey."
"How are you?" Susan asked shyly. Before she had hardly spoken to Lila, nothing but an introduction.
"I'm just fine."
"We missed you."
"I got picked up." Lila laughed. "Nothing serious, though. I got out all right. It's just the silly court stuff takes a bit of time."
"What on earth did you get--picked up for?"
"Borrowing mobiles," she said, smiling a bit enigmatically. "It's not worth telling about. It just turned out to be a problem. I'm afraid I don't have one of my own."
"Can't you afford a mobile?"
"Hell, no," she said, laughing again.
Alex hadn't said anything. He stood quietly, watching her. Lila was different from Susan; she was beautiful. When she laughed, it did something even more beautiful to her face, and her eyes were warm and laughing and lovely.
"I don't use mine," he said. "I guess I don't ever use it. You can have it."
"I can't pay for a service provider, though. It's okay. It's always good to have one of those things around, so you keep yours."
"Okay."
"See you guys later. Have a nice time."
They both stood by the counter and watched her go.
"She's beautiful," Susan said.
~~~
Some time in December, the war ended. Alex hadn't even known there was a war. He thought maybe he did know, at some point, but by December he had no idea. Susan told him, laughing and crying.
"Harry's going to come home! Oh, Harry's going to come home. I've been so scared. I'm so glad. I didn't know what to do without him. Alex--"
Alex smiled at her. "I think I have to go home."
"Oh." She was quiet. "Are you sure?"
"I think so. It's not right here. I was looking for the right place to live, but this isn't it. It's not damp enough and it's too bright."
"Most people would disagree with you," and her laugh was real. "But--I guess if you have to go--"
"Uh-huh. I know I do. I promised I would. I think. I just have to buy a present, first."
"Thank you so much."
"Sure," Alex said. "Sure."
"Do you still think I'm--pretty?"
"I think so."
So Susan went home on the Underground, after Alex gave her the tired peony. She said she'd try to make it happier, and that was the end. He had a half-idea that there should have been more, and something inside him said that people shouldn't forgive him so easily, that there was something a bit wrong with him that people liked him, talked to him, and then went away without any trouble. When Susan left, she acted like he was an old friend she'd been visiting for a short time. Alex thought there'd been more to it. He thought he remembered touching her, and even kissing her soft, heavy, not very pretty body. But he didn't remember things right at all, so he wasn't sure.
He paid the last rent for his small apartment, and left with his carpet-bag, swinging it happily. He didn't have many clothes or many other things, but they were all stuffed inside. He went down to the Underground station to his ticket booth, and cleaned up the ticket stubs and made sure the computer was unplugged and put away right, and then he locked everything up. Just as he was putting the key in his pocket, Lila breezed by, dressed up in a tiny blue skirt.
"Hey, honey. Can I use your mobile?"
"Sure."
"I forgot to order a pizza in for the friends my kids are having over for lunch," she said, while she dialed the number. When the call was over, she hung up and handed the mobile back. "So I guess you're leaving, huh?"
"Yeah. I'm going home."
"Okay. You know what, I'll take you up on the mobile, if you want. I can use up your extra minutes for you."
"Sure." He gave it to her again.
"Right, then. Have a safe trip." She paused. "Wow, I just forgot your name. Um--"
"Alex," he said. "'Bye."
"'Bye."
Click, click, click, went her heels, as she headed off towards the gates for the Piccadilly line. Alex wondered whether he knew her.
He returned the keys.
The train that took him back home was cool and dark, and he put his carpet-bag behind his head and slept for a while. A few hours later, he realised someone was watching him, and he looked up.
"Hello."
"Hi."
The young man spread out his newspaper and went back to it.
At the changing station, where he got on a different train, he bumped into a woman with an umbrella. He apologised. So did she. In the new train, a little boy with peanuts crawled under his feet after a shell. Alex curled up with his carpet-bag again, and waited for the end of the line.
~~~
"Did you bring back a present?" she asked, when she met him at the platform where the train let him off. It was still completely dark at three o'clock in the afternoon, so they had to find one another by calling names. It worked, though, after he got her to move off his foot. He knew who she was now.
"I brought you a book. It's stories by a guy named Maupassant. There's something important about them. About things that happen that don't actually matter to the story, but they're important anyway. Or something like that."
His niece laughed. "I like stories. I learned how to swim while you were gone."
"There's water here?" Alex asked, surprised.
"Uh-huh. There's a big ocean. It's right next to the sand."
"I guess 'cause it's so dark all the time that we didn't find it before. Well, that makes it perfect here, doesn't it? It's dark and it's wet and it's cool. It's perfect. But it sure took us a long time to find it, didn't it?"
"Well, we found it now. And Ma taught me how to sew in the dark, too, so I can fix your shirts now, if you want."
"You'll tear them," he said happily. He wasn't sure why he'd left to begin with. He'd been looking for something--he'd thought there was something wrong with home, but he couldn't think what it might have been. Home was perfect.
"I wouldn't! I'm good! You're mean." But, after a pause, eagerly, "While we're walking back, tell me where you went."
So he took her hand and they started off through the sand that was cool under their feet. "When I first got there, I got a job," he said, "working in a drugstore, but I didn't like it much..."
We'll Think One Up Later
England wasn't what Alex had hoped. For one thing, it was too bright. For another thing, it didn't rain enough. Everyone always said the English weather was the wettest, nastiest in the world, but to tell the truth it only rained five days a week.
Alex liked the rain more than that.
England had a kind of wonderful poetry to it, especially London, where everything swished and men sold postcards and apples on the corners, and you had to tear across the streets before the taxi drivers tried to run you down. Postboxes were shiny and red, and there was a hideous new statue in Trafalgar Square. But it wasn't what he wanted, and he quietly wished he were back home.
He'd left expectantly. Home was dark, and he could lie in the sand at three in the afternoon in the darkness, feeling the soft graininess of it up against his cheek, but it was dry. But they'd told him in London it rained all the time, so that it was dark anyway because of the clouds, and so wet that there was a puddle on every square of the sidewalk (the whole sidewalk was just one big puddle, somebody insisted), and Alex thought, That's where I want to live. Instead, it was sunny his entire first week, bright and shining and hot. Home was dry, but it at least was dark. He missed the dark too much.
Occasionally he missed people he didn't quite remember. He hadn't lived by himself. There were two women, one of whom might have been his sister, and three men, one of whom might have been his father. He remembered someone saying something before he left.
"Alex. Alex, I want you to promise you'll write to us."
"Of course I will," he'd said.
"Bring something back for me."
"Of course I will," he'd said.
He didn't remember anything else.
When he came to England, he needed work, although he didn't know why. First he worked in a drugstore, and then in a Woolworth's, and then in a Pret a Manger. There was one on every street, it seemed like, and he worked there for a while, but he got tired of it. Finally he went down in the Underground where it was safer and cooler, and sold discount tickets for the theatre district. He smiled people into tickets they weren't sure they were going to buy, and teased parents into letting their children go to shows they wanted to see.
He lived by himself in a little apartment at the very middle of a twelve-storey building, and kept the curtains pulled. What it was, what it really was, was that he was lonely and tired and hot, and homesick, and for a while he wanted to tell that to people, the people who bought tickets. He wanted people to hear and know, and someone to show him how to find a place he'd be happy. He wanted someone to tell him he was all right, and it was going to rain to-morrow anyway.
It was around that time he met Lila. She had short red hair and a laugh that reminded him of rain.
"Hi, there. Um, look, can I borrow your mobile? I forgot something at home, and I want to see if my husband can meet me and bring it to me. I know, I'm a total scatterbrain. I'm always forgetting stuff."
Alex wasn't sure whether he had a mobile, but when he checked his coat pockets, it turned out that he did, so he handed it to her, and she smiled at him the whole time she was on, speaking in another language entirely. When she snapped it shut and handed it back, her smile was even wider, and he noticed it was lipsticked a bright orangey-red colour.
"Thanks," she said, sticking out a hand. "I'm Lila. Thanks a lot."
"I'm Paul," Alex said. He paused. "Alex. Sorry. I'm Alex."
"Hi, Alex." That was when she laughed, reminding him of rain. "Glad to meet you. I'll see you around." And then she tossed her head, so that her short red hair ruffled, and walked off. She was wearing heels that clicked on the stone floor.
Alex opened his mobile again and looked at it slowly. She'd made a long-distance call to Anglesey Island, in Wales.
Lila came back sometimes. She changed the colour of her hair often--the next time he saw her it was a beautiful deep brown--but apart from that she looked the same, and she always asked if she could call her husband. She forgot to tell him to pick something up at the grocery, sometimes, and sometimes she needed him to meet her so she could get a ride home. Alex gave her the mobile. The company didn't charge him extra for long-distance, and he didn't use the mobile anyway. He still didn't know why he had it.
One day, Lila sat down on his countertop in her short skirt, dangling her legs over the edge.
"So, you just sell tickets all the time?"
He nodded.
"What do you do for fun?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know? When you're not working, do you go to Internet Cafes? Discos? Wales?"
"I don't do anything." He sounded a little surprised, even to himself.
"Do you even think about doing anything?"
"I--no. I don't."
"You ought to. I bet you get depressed here."
"I don't know." Alex smiled at her, the first time he had. It was a small smile, but soft. Lila glowed.
"Wanna take me out some time?"
"No, thanks."
She laughed again. "Okay. See you later!" and she hopped off the counter, clicking her way up into the light.
Alex sold fourteen discount tickets to Once Bowed, and went to sleep behind the counter, curled up against the wall of his tiny space back there, an apple in his lap and his coat rolled up behind his head. He woke up because a lady was murmuring,--
"Excuse me. I'm so sorry, excuse me."
He shook his head and blinked his eyes at her several times. "H-hello. I'm sorry. Just a minute," he said quickly, getting to his feet.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you up. I was just wondering if I could buy--"
"Yeah. Yeah, sorry, it's my fault. What do you want a ticket for?"
"Empire in the Closet, for my nephew and me."
Alex sold her the tickets.
The next day he met a man in the Underground who talked with him about the weather and old books. The man worked in an English bookstore in Paris, for the last two years, and was on vacation to see his mother. Alex never minded listening to people, so he sat and the man told him about conspiracies based around old texts. The man had a smooth old book full of stories by Maupassant.
"The really remarkable thing about Maupassant," he said, "is that he puts in anecdotes in his stories. He tells you all about things that happen to the characters that don't have to do with the plot. I've spent whole stories wondering when a little detail is going to tie back in to the story. But it doesn't. It'll be something that seems tense, and pertinent. They'll meet someone who'll look at them funny, and you'll think oh, he looked at them funny. Something's going to come up with him. But it doesn't."
"Why not?"
"I don't know why not. I can't explain Maupassant at all. All I know is, it's astounding. Completely irrelevant anecdotes. Have you ever read Maupassant?"
"I guess not," Alex said.
The man's stop was next, so they said good-bye.
At the counter, he played with his computer, looking up stories by Maupassant, but he didn't know whether he had any money, so he didn't try to buy any. In between customers, during the long down periods, he thought about money. He had to have some money, because he rented his apartment.
And he bought groceries. Some of the time. He bought things to eat, and little boxes of plant food for the tired peony in the corner of his room. He bought Underground tickets, too. So he had money.
He just didn't know how much, or where it was, or how he got it.
Maybe it wasn't important.
He didn't know.
She was crying. She was sitting across from him in the Underground, looking out the window behind him, and wiping the backs of her hands across her face every now and then.
He sat quietly, thinking of what to say. He would have offered her a handkerchief or a Kleenex, if he'd had one. Maybe something else would do, but he wasn't sure whether he had anything else. For the moment he was sitting with his hands folded on his stomach, leaning sideways against the back of his seat, looking at the ceiling. She probably didn't even know he'd noticed her.
You really had to do something. Didn't you? If someone was crying? Or was it right to ignore it?
Alex straightened himself up. "Are you okay?"
"Oh. I'm sorry. I'm fine." She wiped her face again.
"You don't have to be sorry. Are you sure you're okay?"
"Uh-huh. I'm just--I miss my son."
"Where is he?"
"Over there. He's in the RAF. He's in the war."
"Oh. Yeah. I guess that's scary."
She nodded. "He doesn't write to me much. He can't."
"What's his name?"
"Harry," laughing. "It's Harry. After his father."
"I wish he was here," Alex said. There wasn't really anything else he could say.
"Me, too."
"Does he say he's okay, when he does write?"
"He says he's fine."
"You get on okay without him? I mean, not missing him, but do you still get around and stuff okay?"
"Uh-huh. I take myself places. I don't know what I'm going to do this week, though. I'm so lonely. I'd give anything to have him back, just for a day. I don't know where he is or what's happening, and it's so frightening, especially when I think about how he's only twenty. When I was only twenty, all I was worrying about was things like dancing and my hair and buying new shoes. I used to dance when I was younger, before I married. But poor Harry. He's twenty, and he's over there, off the ground and moving about and getting shot at, and we don't even know why, do we? I know about patriotic feeling, but I don't really know why my boy's there. He's so brave. Of course he's so brave. But I used to have him at home before, all the time. He never went to University after school. I knew where he was at night. Well, not always, of course, because he was out with his friends sometimes. But I knew. I knew he was here. I could look in on him in the mornings. And now I just don't know what to do. I wish it were just empty-nest syndrome. If he had gone to University, I'd be lonely, but I wouldn't be afraid. He's so brave, but I'm so frightened."
By the time she finished, she was crying again, and Alex hesitated for a moment. Then he crossed over to her side. She was soft and heavyish and not very pretty, but she went all right in his arms, and he rocked her and put his nose in her hair, mumbling something. She didn't seem to mind at all. A small part of Alex said that she ought to mind, that this wasn't home where any action was permissible, that he didn't know how to behave around strangers because he'd never met them before, that--but he was too busy wiping off her face with his shirtsleeve to pay attention.
"Do you have anywhere to go?" he asked, after a while.
"No. Not to-day."
"Wanna come with me? I just sell tickets, but you can sit back with me. I'll buy us coffee or something. Do you like coffee?"
"I like coffee," she whispered.
That whole week, she sat with him behind the counter. They met on the Underground in the morning, and Alex bought coffee (he did have money. He had an idea now that they paid him for selling tickets). She bought lunch for them, and they ate together behind the counter, unless it was raining. If it was raining, she minded the ticket counter for him, and he went up and sat in the rain, letting it pour down around his ears. It was the only time he wasn't homesick.
At the end of the week, on Sunday night, she came back to his little apartment with him. They slept together, and because it wasn't raining very hard, the moonlight was almost clear, just a little rippled sometimes by the water on the windowpanes.
"I don't remember stuff very well," Alex said.
"I write things down. That helps."
They moved close together before they slept, so that his body fit against her very softly. She was still soft and overweight and not very pretty, but Alex slept close against her all night.
In the morning, he combed out her hair with his fingers. It was very long and reddish-brown, and a tiny bit curly at the ends.
"Am I pretty?" she asked.
"I think so."
"Do you like to look at me? Am I pretty enough that somebody could want me?"
Alex sat up, still running his fingers through her hair. "Uh-huh."
"I always feel like people who are fat--I mean like me--aren't allowed to do things. I always feel so embarrassed when I go places. Like only people who are slim and pretty should be allowed to go there. I try not to be really noticeable. I don't want people to get upset because I'm there when I shouldn't be." She laughed, softly, not happily, self-conscious. "I really don't know. I know people are beautiful--I mean all people. But sometimes I feel like I'm the exception to the rule. I really feel like I shouldn't be here because I'm not good-looking enough to deserve to be in the world. Isn't that awful? When I have Harry, and people are perfectly good to me. But I just can't help thinking it. I went to Kew Gardens two weeks ago, when the roses were blooming, and I cried and cried. It was so wonderful. Everything was wonderful. The roses were all these beautiful colours, and the sky was perfect, and the grass was soft, and you couldn't see anything but pinks and reds and sunset colours, and there I was in the middle of it. It was so beautiful it could have been a painting, or maybe a scene from a really romantic movie, and right in the middle of it, there was a middle-aged, fat lady who wasn't half as beautiful. I just felt like I ruined it."
"I don't know," Alex said. "I guess I didn't really think about how you look. I like the way you talk."
She started crying again, and since he really didn't have any idea what to do, he put his arms around her the way he had on the Underground and breathed in her hair until the crying stopped. After that they just lay still. Alex could feel her breathing.
On Tuesday, when they went back to his counter to sell tickets for Wednesday matinees, Lila was waiting for him.
"You won't believe what I did to-day, honey," she said. "My poor husband must be going crazy. I accidentally forgot to pick my son up from daycare. Can I borrow your mobile and call him to let him know?"
Alex handed it to her, and went back to unlocking his little space and turning on the computer. Ten minutes later she handed it back with a smile.
"There! We fixed that problem." To-day her hair was blonde and her black leather trousers made a soft swishing noise when she walked. "So who's your lady friend?"
Alex realised he had never asked her name, and she had never asked his. "I don't know," he said.
"Susan."
"Hi! I'm Lila. I sponge off poor Alex all the time. I'm always forgetting stuff, but he's a love and lets me use his mobile."
Susan smiled back. It wasn't anything like Lila's bright, lipstick-coloured one, but it made Alex smile, too, at his hands, as he hung the specials sign from a hook over the counter.
"Is your name Alex?" she asked.
"Uh-huh. Susan."
"Uh-huh."
"You can't seriously be telling me you people didn't know each other's names before?" Lila asked. "Oh, come on. You're acting like old friends. How long have you known each other?"
"A week, I guess," Alex said.
"That's right."
"That's crazy! You're so cute, and totally mad. Well, thanks for the call. I'll see you maybe next week, okay?"
"'Bye."
Lila clicked off, swishing too from her leather trousers. Alex waved.
But next week she didn't come back. He looked for her every day, but she didn't come. He and Susan bought two of his discount tickets and went to see This War is Over. When the boy was shot, she cried, crying that didn't make any noise, while he stroked her hand. Tuesday two weeks later, Lila was still missing. Two months later, she came by, dressed in a tight red dress, her hair dead black.
"Hi! You two still doing the job together? How're you doing?"
"We're all right," Alex said.
"I don't suppose I could borrow your mobile? I forgot to feed the dog before I left."
"Here."
While she was phoning, he sold six tickets for This War is Over to an Asian family.
"Done. Thanks a bunch. You're really the greatest, honey."
"How are you?" Susan asked shyly. Before she had hardly spoken to Lila, nothing but an introduction.
"I'm just fine."
"We missed you."
"I got picked up." Lila laughed. "Nothing serious, though. I got out all right. It's just the silly court stuff takes a bit of time."
"What on earth did you get--picked up for?"
"Borrowing mobiles," she said, smiling a bit enigmatically. "It's not worth telling about. It just turned out to be a problem. I'm afraid I don't have one of my own."
"Can't you afford a mobile?"
"Hell, no," she said, laughing again.
Alex hadn't said anything. He stood quietly, watching her. Lila was different from Susan; she was beautiful. When she laughed, it did something even more beautiful to her face, and her eyes were warm and laughing and lovely.
"I don't use mine," he said. "I guess I don't ever use it. You can have it."
"I can't pay for a service provider, though. It's okay. It's always good to have one of those things around, so you keep yours."
"Okay."
"See you guys later. Have a nice time."
They both stood by the counter and watched her go.
"She's beautiful," Susan said.
Some time in December, the war ended. Alex hadn't even known there was a war. He thought maybe he did know, at some point, but by December he had no idea. Susan told him, laughing and crying.
"Harry's going to come home! Oh, Harry's going to come home. I've been so scared. I'm so glad. I didn't know what to do without him. Alex--"
Alex smiled at her. "I think I have to go home."
"Oh." She was quiet. "Are you sure?"
"I think so. It's not right here. I was looking for the right place to live, but this isn't it. It's not damp enough and it's too bright."
"Most people would disagree with you," and her laugh was real. "But--I guess if you have to go--"
"Uh-huh. I know I do. I promised I would. I think. I just have to buy a present, first."
"Thank you so much."
"Sure," Alex said. "Sure."
"Do you still think I'm--pretty?"
"I think so."
So Susan went home on the Underground, after Alex gave her the tired peony. She said she'd try to make it happier, and that was the end. He had a half-idea that there should have been more, and something inside him said that people shouldn't forgive him so easily, that there was something a bit wrong with him that people liked him, talked to him, and then went away without any trouble. When Susan left, she acted like he was an old friend she'd been visiting for a short time. Alex thought there'd been more to it. He thought he remembered touching her, and even kissing her soft, heavy, not very pretty body. But he didn't remember things right at all, so he wasn't sure.
He paid the last rent for his small apartment, and left with his carpet-bag, swinging it happily. He didn't have many clothes or many other things, but they were all stuffed inside. He went down to the Underground station to his ticket booth, and cleaned up the ticket stubs and made sure the computer was unplugged and put away right, and then he locked everything up. Just as he was putting the key in his pocket, Lila breezed by, dressed up in a tiny blue skirt.
"Hey, honey. Can I use your mobile?"
"Sure."
"I forgot to order a pizza in for the friends my kids are having over for lunch," she said, while she dialed the number. When the call was over, she hung up and handed the mobile back. "So I guess you're leaving, huh?"
"Yeah. I'm going home."
"Okay. You know what, I'll take you up on the mobile, if you want. I can use up your extra minutes for you."
"Sure." He gave it to her again.
"Right, then. Have a safe trip." She paused. "Wow, I just forgot your name. Um--"
"Alex," he said. "'Bye."
"'Bye."
Click, click, click, went her heels, as she headed off towards the gates for the Piccadilly line. Alex wondered whether he knew her.
He returned the keys.
The train that took him back home was cool and dark, and he put his carpet-bag behind his head and slept for a while. A few hours later, he realised someone was watching him, and he looked up.
"Hello."
"Hi."
The young man spread out his newspaper and went back to it.
At the changing station, where he got on a different train, he bumped into a woman with an umbrella. He apologised. So did she. In the new train, a little boy with peanuts crawled under his feet after a shell. Alex curled up with his carpet-bag again, and waited for the end of the line.
"Did you bring back a present?" she asked, when she met him at the platform where the train let him off. It was still completely dark at three o'clock in the afternoon, so they had to find one another by calling names. It worked, though, after he got her to move off his foot. He knew who she was now.
"I brought you a book. It's stories by a guy named Maupassant. There's something important about them. About things that happen that don't actually matter to the story, but they're important anyway. Or something like that."
His niece laughed. "I like stories. I learned how to swim while you were gone."
"There's water here?" Alex asked, surprised.
"Uh-huh. There's a big ocean. It's right next to the sand."
"I guess 'cause it's so dark all the time that we didn't find it before. Well, that makes it perfect here, doesn't it? It's dark and it's wet and it's cool. It's perfect. But it sure took us a long time to find it, didn't it?"
"Well, we found it now. And Ma taught me how to sew in the dark, too, so I can fix your shirts now, if you want."
"You'll tear them," he said happily. He wasn't sure why he'd left to begin with. He'd been looking for something--he'd thought there was something wrong with home, but he couldn't think what it might have been. Home was perfect.
"I wouldn't! I'm good! You're mean." But, after a pause, eagerly, "While we're walking back, tell me where you went."
So he took her hand and they started off through the sand that was cool under their feet. "When I first got there, I got a job," he said, "working in a drugstore, but I didn't like it much..."
