Page 3 of What It's Like in Words
Are you calling me a liar?
I couldn’t tell if he was joking. It was such a stupid thing to joke about. But every word he had said so far sounded like it could mean something else.
Well, you’ll have to die slowly, then. There are about seven hundred seasons.
He looked at me like I had said the right thing, and so I smiled. He smiled too. Perhaps he thought my smile was nice?
You have red wine on your teeth, he said.
Oh god.
I rubbed my teeth. He said that he was joking, and I lightly hit his arm—his muscle was hard beneath his jacket. He rolled his eyes to demonstrate that it didn’t hurt and it felt, in that moment, like I knew him. Just then, a crack of thunder. The sky was thick with dark cloud.
He groaned. FuckingEngland.
I felt a stabbing in my breastbone. Rainstorms always made me think about camping with Dad.
He asked which bus I was getting, and when I answered, he said he was getting the same one, quipping: We’re neighbors. I made a joke about borrowing sugar, and he returned one about a quick shag. My eyes drifted to his hands: long fingers, rough palms. I asked whereabouts he lived. He looked amused, like I had asked for his number.
Between Shadwell and Whitechapel. You?
Between Whitechapel and Aldgate.
Nice area, he said, eyebrows raised. What’s the rent like? My stomach dropped the way it always did when I had to answer that question. It was bought when I was twenty-one, so the area wasn’t asnicesix years ago, I said.
He whistled. I got a watch for my twenty-first, but a flat would’ve been fine too.
I laughed to make the moment less awkward, and he asked if I had a cigarette. That was my last, he said, looking to the wet stub on the tarmac. I told him that I didn’t smoke, but, on seeing his disappointment, I wished I did. Then he frowned and said: I feel like a prick, but I cannot remember your name.
There were only four of us at the pub. How could he not remember my name? But there was that look again, as if perhaps he did remember but was trying to achieve something.
It’s Enola.
… as in Gay?
There was a beat while I came to understand the reference, and then he laughed. I wasn’t sure if he was laughing at his joke or my slowness to register it. But it was such an incongruous sound, rising and falling like music, that I laughed along at my own expense. Then he finished with a hum and asked if I fancied a drink. The sentence dropped at the end, as if he was nervous. But he knew what he was doing. His self-deprecation was a performance, for effect—to make me laugh, to unsettle me? But still I answered: Yes, let’s get a drink.
I know a place that’ll be open.
Now? Oh no, I can’t now.
Jeez. Pull the rug out, why don’t you?
I wasn’t wearing the right clothes. I hadn’t shaved. I needed to speak to Ruth. The same way that I needed to call her before I wore my new school shoes with the thick heel for the first time. I explained that I was working in the morning, and he gave me this look that knew me, that sprouted from one side of his face and stripped me.Stumbling over the consonants, I said that we had the bus journey to chat. He muttered something. I asked what he said. He pretended he hadn’t said anything. I thought what he’d said was that a bus journey wouldn’t be sufficient for what he had in mind, but I couldn’t have been sure. Then, with a nod, as if he had summoned it, the bus splashed the curb.
WE SAT AT THEtop of the bus, and condensation covered the windows. His skin was damp with rain; the cigarette smoke faded to leave aftershave, woody, with a hint of citrus. I undid the top two buttons of my shirt.
So… where are you from? he asked in a mock perfunctory style, like he was afraid of sounding sincere. My answer was rehearsed: I was born in the Midlands, where my mum is from, but we moved to Kenya when I was four. We were only there for a few years, though. Mum and I moved back to the Midlands when I was nine, for school. Long story short, I’ve been in London since uni.
So… the Midlands, then.
He was looking at me like I had made a simple thing complicated, so I agreed to be from the Midlands. Not that it was a lie, but it wasn’t the truth either. Kenya felt like home, though I’d never been back. Dad’s sister, Louise, lived there now. She had visited and fallen in love with a man from the coast. But Mum didn’t let me speak to her.
Poor you, he said. Why were you in Africa?
Dad worked for the foreign office.
What does he do now?
