Late August
A new old story
I’ve written my usual five posts this month. However, given this voluminous January has given us the need for a sixth, I’ve dipped into my archives to pick out and rejig a story from my London days. Enjoy, and see you for all-new material next week.
All day he had felt certain she was going to do it.
Her pauses had grown too long, her laughter too deliberate, as if occurring in spite of a concealed and growing disdain. It didn’t matter how much the tickets had cost, although he had actually got them for free, or that he had hyped them up, saying that the President was a great live act, essential really, that you had to put aside your disappointment as to his policies and just enjoy his stand-up, that in many ways he had filled the void in American cultural life vacated by Bill Cosby, now disgraced. But she was from Latvia – why would she care? They barely had comedy over there and until recently they hadn’t even had elections. Well, there was that weird guy who’d gone on Britain’s Got Talent. Or was he Estonian?
He tried to explain but his enthusiasms seemed to occur in a void, like he was busking in a train station, alone and at night and cold.
He had known it was coming for a while.
In conversations he found himself looking at her more. Looking at her as if checking for something, often prompting her shrill, smiling ‘What?’, to which he said nothing, just smiled back. It was like he was being tortured and his only happiness was in the brief cessations of pain. Though it had happened before. As a younger man he would have tried to do something, make a gesture, write a card, make a compilation CD. And indeed he did that again now, leaving a loving note beside her as he departed for work each morning, which would still be in the same place every night when he returned.
He had even been dreading it playing cricket that morning. Freddy had come over, sanguine in his white V-neck jumper and broad red shoes.
‘Alright Marv?’
‘Alright,’ Marvin said.
‘Doing alright isn’t he?’ The bowler.
‘He is.’
‘How’s your lady by the way?’
‘Oh’s she’s alright. We’re going to see Obama tonight.’
‘Really? That’s brilliant. He’s a comedian now isn’t he. Where is it again?’
‘It’s at the Camden Roundhouse.’
‘I love the Camden Roundhouse. I’d like to direct my own show there, you know.’
This was exhausting. ‘Would you? Well, you better get back to long-on.’
‘Hadn’t I just! Pint afterwards?’
‘Great.’
Freddy grinned and then trundled back across the pitch, clapping his hands as he did and offering a few motivational shouts. In truth they didn’t have much to do, so he for his part slipped back into anxiety, wondering what his tactics should be. Why had this happened? It had happened to him before.
Marvin had arrived, this being his habit, having been single so long, ridiculously early. So he had elected to sit at a pub round the corner from the actual pub where they would be meeting and sat there reading; he had bought interesting things, challenging things, to read, but ended up just going through The Times’ sport section.
Karen had been there with a group of friends, all beautiful, she the most. When she absented herself to go to the bathroom one of those friends, Lea, a short little Danish girl with black hipster glasses, asked him about his book. The unopened book on the table that was. It was just something his friend had recommended, he said, a novel about a messed-up American family, but to be honest, he couldn’t get into it. Tell me though he asked – is it true girls liked guys who read? Because, he didn’t tell them, he’d been reading all his life but his last four girlfriends had left him after periods ranging from five months to two years.
‘You’d have to ask Karen that,’ said Lea.
‘You’d have to ask Karen what?’ asked Karen returning.
‘Whether guys who read are attractive.’
‘Yes, they are.’
Lea looked at Marvin with a nod, smile and a slight raise of the shoulders. ‘There you are then.’
‘He wants to know why,’ said Lea.
‘Because you can talk about what you’re reading with him.’
‘But surely you can talk about that with your girlfriends.’
‘Women don’t talk about books. Well, that’s not true actually,’ said Karen. ‘But most women don’t. They just talk about feelings.’
Karen smiled.
‘I can’t believe you’re saying that,’ Marvin said. ‘If I said something like that I’d be shot.’
‘Well, best not to say it then,’ said Karen. She was sat down now, facing her girlfriends and their extensive empties. ‘Alright, are we getting another pitcher? Or shall we move on?’
He leant back, reading the cover of his book a thousandth time, when they spoke to him once more.
‘What’s your name nice man?’
‘Me?’ Marvin looked up. ‘Marvin.’
‘Nice to meet you Marvin. We like you Marvin!’
The girls were raising their drinks, led by Lea. ‘Cheers Marvin!’
‘Thanks,’ Marvin blushed. ‘I like you too. All of you.’
‘What are you doing here Marvin?’
‘Um, just having a drink. But actually I’ve got a date.’
‘A date!’ Lea practically shrieked. ‘First – second? Do you like her? Are you in love?’
‘I don’t really know anything about her, except that she works in IT.’
‘Well I’m sure she’s going to love you. I’m sure she’s going to think you’re just bloody smashing. Where are you meeting her?’
‘Lea, would you stop shrieking?’ Karen said. ‘You’re literally shrieking in my ear.’
‘Round the corner actually.’ He checked his watch; it was still just about too early. ‘In fact I’d better go.’
‘Ohhh that’s a shame!’ Lea said. ‘But you have a good date yeah! We’ll drink to you!’
He was gathering his things together, filling his tote bag. He offered them a big, he was sure nervous-looking, smile.
‘Er – it was great to meet you.’
‘Nice to meet you Marvin!’
‘Thanks.’
‘Good luck.’
‘We love you Marvin.’
‘Shhhhhh.’
He walked to the table and then, paused at the crossing to the front bar. He could still hear the girls, principally Lea, hooting with laughter behind him, and suddenly he felt – yes, he could do it. He turned and walked slowly back to the table.
‘So uh – ladies. Here’s my card.’
He dropped it on the table, just a little closer to Karen than the others.
‘You’re a web designer?’
‘Yeah, I mainly make websites for, uh, magicians. Musicians! I mean musicians, I make websites for musicians. Not that I’d have anything against making websites for magicians. Do you have one?’ he said, a bit quieter and much more definitely addressed to Karen.
‘A website?’
‘A card.’
‘I do.’ She rummaged in her large gold-buckled bag, rooting out a small silver card. Karen Astaju, MA, Senior Recruitment Consultant.
‘Oh, thanks.’
‘No problem. Good luck with your date, then.’
‘Thanks. I need some.’
And walking backwards a few steps before turning, he moved across the carpet and onto the next pub, noting of course before he did the laughter returning, all of it aimed at Karen.
When he came back she was on the bed watching a stand-up special on Netflix. He called to her, she acknowledged his coming in and, before he did so, he waited in the living room a moment. Right now, she really felt she could strike any moment, that their status-changing conversation was imminent.
He came into the room; she was in a T-shirt and jogging bottoms.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ she seemed to imitate his pitch – mockingly?
‘How was your day?’
‘Fine. Yours?’
‘It was alright. I’m really hungry actually. Do you want to eat something there or –’
‘Actually I already ate. There’s some left, actually, in the fridge, if you want.’
‘What is it?’
‘Rice.’
‘Thanks, I will. I thought we’d go in about an hour.’
‘What?’ she looked over. ‘Oh, an hour.’
‘What are you watching?’
‘Ali Wong. She’s really funny.’
He sat on the bed, watching the flickering screen a moment.
‘I love you,’ he said.
‘Mmm?’ she looked over. ‘You too.’
Whenever she said it he felt the noose loosen a little. But there was no doubting it was there, the tightness in his throat, the words weighing the tongue and the heaviness of actions which had once come naturally. The fear.
It had been two years already now. They had moved in together after six months – ‘Why wait?’ she had said, so warm to him in those days, at least as warm as the others had been – and they had been so lucky to find this small flat in Battersea. Admittedly, it was a bit end-of-the-liney, but they were ahead of the curve of the city’s gentrifying wave and, basically, they got to live together.
When you thought about it, it was a terrible optimism, to live together, like a child’s belief in Santa Claus. Back then they had barely analyzed it. Sometimes things feel very simple in love, and everyone knows what to do for a while.
In the mornings, he cycled over to Brixton to his major employer, a record label, which had a red sofa and a selection of board games. He drank coffee and WhatsApped her through the day and she Instagrammed back pictures of herself at the office and yes, one time there had been pictures of the kind he would, he feared, shortly have to delete from his phone forever.
So why were they here? Why had they arrived at the end place? The last times? The fin de partie? They had none of the usual issues. He wanted a kid, she wanted kids. He wanted to live in London, she wanted to live in London, although maybe move back to Latvia for a bit, because her parents were getting old and she would want to be near them, particularly with a new baby. The sex was good – fine, she was more keen on the old S & M than he was, but he did his best, had a really decent crack at being tied up and whipped. What he was trying to say was: compared to the incompatibilities which had seen Trudy, Michelle, Sonya and Miko leave him, the difficulties she and him had experienced seemed negligible.
They headed out together, bussing to Waterloo first and then picking up the Northern Line to Chalk Farm. They – they were still they, he clung to it, how bad it could be when she was prepared to accompany him to a concert, looking so splendid in red, skirt black – didn’t speak much on the way.
Karen had Slate Star Codex open on her phone which she dipped into throughout the journey; she read a lot these days. Sometimes she’d be on Zoom calls with Effective Altruist communities.
When they got out the tube station the approach was already thronged with people. The gig had of course sold out within minutes of tickets being released. It was fortunate, actually, how he had arrived at tickets – face value £150 – for the show, having designed a site for an aspiring musician named Kenneth who it turned out had been one of the President’s former publicists. ‘What’s he like then?’ ‘Well,’ Kenneth had replied, ‘He’s just really normal. Just an ordinary guy you know? I think he finds it all as ridiculous as anyone.’
They moved down the hill, past the calling scalps, to where one of the polite bouncers frisked them; security was tight, although not as tight as it would have been a few years earlier.
‘Enjoy the show,’ said the bouncer, but he said it with more conviction than was usual, in a way which made it clear that for this event he really did wish he was joining them.
‘Exciting,’ said Karen they moved up the stairs.
‘It is exciting. I mean, it’s actually amazing that we got tickets.’
‘It’s a coup.’
‘A what?’
‘A coup.’
‘Like the army?’
‘More like… A stroke of fortune.’
He felt the fact that they had tickets, and their presence at the event, was temporarily drowning out all other problems. Or perhaps this was the beginning of a more general recovery. Perhaps the clouds were clearing; she was continuing to smile.
‘Do you want a drink?’
‘Yeah, beer.’
‘What do you want?’ he said.
‘Just beer. Anything is fine.’
‘OK.’ He bent over and kissed her. She didn’t react much to it; it was like she couldn’t deal with official statements of togetherness, even if she accidentally fell into them the rest of the time, like she had to remind herself to be cold to him now. He was sure that, if they broke up, they would still have sex for a period after.
He went to the bar and bought two expensive drinks. As he queued he felt that time had become very limited; he couldn’t imagine, now, further than Thursday, Friday, the weekend. He always wondered about this during these times, the end times, if he might say or do something which would conceivably lead to a changed outcome. If he say bought her the right drink – Red Stripe, that’d do, she’d drunk that before – or said the right phrase or the evoked the right memory. If that would be the difference between staying together, happy for years, or their hopeless parting.
They did live together though. That was one argument in his favour, inertia.
‘Alus.’ Latvian for beer. He handed it over.
‘Thanks,’ she said. Then she said, ‘You look nice tonight.’
‘Me?’ He was wearing a black bowling shirt. ‘Well, thanks.’
She smiled. ‘Honestly, you do. How are you?’
‘I’m fine.’ Marvin supped. He steeled himself, and said the words.
‘I mean, to be honest, I’m a bit upset about us.’
‘About us? Why are you upset about us?’
‘Yeah, well, I feel that we haven’t been getting on very well recently, you know.’
She thought about it.
‘No. We haven’t. Why do you think that is?’
‘I don’t know. I’d do anything I could to change it.’
Karen tilted her head. ‘I don’t think we’re communicating very well.’
‘No,’ Marvin said. ‘What do you think we should do about that?’
She said, ‘I don’t know if we can do anything. We’ve both changed, you know.’
‘How have I changed?’
At that moment the latest audience call came, advising all members to take their seats, the show would be starting shortly.
‘Let’s talk about this later, alright?’ said Karen.
‘Alright,’ said Marvin, and they walked into the auditorium.
The Camden Roundhouse was heaving, with a heavy Old Millennial slant to the crowd, veterans of Hope and Change; they were sat in the stands, looking down on the crowds, on the auditorium. It was a black, spacious hangar, with a huge tangle of girders hung from the roof above.
The President wouldn’t be long now. Funny, how you still kept the title, President, even years after you had left office. Like you had attained a singularity, a distinction from other men, even from other plural titled people such as Members of Congress and Governors.
Smoke came out across the stage now, and a deep voice boomed, like it was a hip-hop show: ‘Ladies and gentleman, the former President of the United States, Barack Obama!’
The crowd went wild. They were on the seats, looking down upon the bulk of the spectators, thousands upon thousands backing up to the stage as claxons sounded and, from within gusts of smoke, a middle-aged man in a blue suit walked into view. He raised his hand as he did, a sample of wild-record scratching peaked and then faded as he brought his lips to the microphone saying, in an understated but evocatively cheery voice, ‘Hello London.’
The response was extraordinary – all those keyboard warriors, Guardian comment-leavers, dinner-party locutors, who just minutes before had been in the venue bar sharing their disappointment in Obama who had in their view missed his chance to become a contemporary FDR, rising as one to acclaim the presence of superstardom. Even Karen, never the biggest Obama fan, was whooping shrilly and as she did she turned back to smile at him with a grin straight out of olden times, their golden days.
‘Hey folks here’s a good one. What’s the difference between George W. Bush and God? See, God knows that’s he’s not George W. Bush.’
A first big laugh.
Even at this milder end, there was a giddy freedom in hearing Obama say something he would never have been allowed to before. And he was soon into his stride. He had a relaxed style, less professorial than you might expect – perhaps he had taken comedy classes after his Presidency had finished, after all he had contacts galore. His central joke, it seemed, was to present himself as low-status in positions of great power, such as losing his cufflinks before a summit with Putin – ‘and Putin’s a guy who sweats the small stuff -' or trying to get a one-to-one with Merkel and getting the French President instead. ‘And I say, this is Hollande? I want Germany!’
Obama worked clean, fast, then slow, with the bigger jokes greeted with rippling ovations, and then when people didn’t laugh, which was rarely, meaning literally, when individual people didn’t laugh, he noticed them with charm and self-deprecation. ‘You know, just saying, but the NSA does send me a record of everyone who doesn’t laugh,’ he said. ‘That’s what I call executive privilege.’
But the main thrust of the routine was, funnily enough, not politics but family and relationships. Obama still had that deadpan attitude, that ability to play his own domestic marginalization in a way which confirmed his own essential decency. Now Obama, freed from the constraints of office but still rolling back to reasonableness like water heading down a plug, talked about love.
‘At some point,’ said Obama, less Midwestern, more transatlantic now, ‘You’ve got to decide whether you prefer the idea of women or actual women. Know what I mean? Because men, when we fall in love, we fall in love with the idea. The idea of women.’ Singing now: ‘Drea-mmmm. Dream dream dream.’ Well that’s fine, that’s just fine when you’re 22 years old but one day you’re forty-two and shit gets real. Shit gets really real.
‘Because women you know – and ladies back me up on this – women are very much the pragmatists amongst us. I would suggest women are the least romantic creatures, in the universe. The least romantic. Look at the bare facts of a woman’s life. You gotta have your monthlies, you gotta maybe go through childbirth, if you do have kids you gotta put up with all these asshole men who kill he kids you’ve sacrificed every darned thing to raise. Not nice hey ladies? I feel you. And all the guys are like -’ Obama pulled here a quite simply incredible face, raising his hands and tilting his shoulders:
‘I – I’m so in love with you…’
‘So you can’t go on being a puppy dog forever. And at some point you gotta decide – Am I going to love the reality or the dream? Am I going to see my girl for who she really is?’
Marvin looked at Karen.
Could he see her as she really was? He looked over, seeing her mouth make little happy gapes as it followed the set-ups between laughs, trying to get every word. Look harder. Yes, he could begin to see her, beneath the yellowy make-up; crows’ feet, red-tinged black hair, blusher; she was, he felt suddenly sure, pregnant. Oh he could see her alright.
‘Michelle man, she ain’t romantic but she keeps me steady. If I ever said “Well, they made me President!” she’d say “You need to clean your shoes, Barack.” And she’d be right too.’
It was a real pleasure to watch Barack Obama’s first stand-up comedy special, ‘Live and Unbriefed.’
He was a real man.
Ninety minutes passed with no encore. Still, well-satisfied, giddy even, the crowd made their way home. Above them was a satisfied hum, but also the melancholy of a treat being over, with most of them having early starts the next day. Adult weeknights always had this, this end of the school holidays feeling, and even if you had long left school, late August remained haunted with the thought of going back.
They didn’t talk much on the train home. For a start, the carriages were too full, and it was only when they began to empty that he proposed they went for a drink, but she was tired, had work tomorrow. By the time they disembarked from Waterloo to change to the bus the night had grown a little chillier, almost autumnal.
‘You know, this time of year always feels really sad. Because you start to feel the autumn. It’s like sadness on the horizon.’
‘Can I borrow your jumper?’ she said.
When they arrived home she was tired so she went straight to shower then bed. He stayed up watching comedy clips on his laptop, George Carlin, his favourite. He felt sure when she reentered the room she was going to say something; for now he just listened to the rushing of the water in the space between the clips.
When she came back in she said nothing. She just got straight back into the bed, naked – he snuck a look, he couldn’t help it, but her movements were far from inviting him to. She turned on her side, saying promptly ‘Goodnight’ as she did.
He watched another clip in the light, a hum in his chest. But now he couldn’t concentrate, he was too absorbed by her nakedness. He turned off the bedside light and lay on his back.
In the dark, he felt sure she would say something soon. But for now he was in limbo. Limbo – at the word he remembered that, hilariously enough, the previous Pope, the weird German one nobody had liked, had officially closed Limbo. Had shut it down. It had been one of the first things he had done.
To close nothingness, what a concept.
He looked across to her in the dark, moving only slightly. She was sleeping or pretending to. It wouldn’t be long now, that feeling was clear.
But who knew until it was done.
Who knew?
All he knew was that they had survived another day.