Canarino. Katherine Bucknell

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      ‘Do you need this, for your drink, sir?’

      David looked at Francine silently and took the tray, placing it behind him on the empty bookcase. He took another sip of his beer, shifting his feet on the carpet, broadening his stance.

      Francine was definitely pretty, David thought. Her brown eyes had a soft look at the edges, gentle, lively. And actually, the uniform was appealing; it gave her that aura of sweetness and willingness that nurses sometimes have. Not an aura he felt inclined to disturb, just one he enjoyed. Women go for soldiers, why can’t men go for nurses? David mused. He could see that Francine had on some sort of thick slip underneath her uniform, displaying more modesty than most of the young English nurses he’d seen in their uniforms which were generally notably transparent.

      David liked to size people up precisely; now that he’d noticed Francine, he was curious as to exactly who she was. He concluded that the slip was a mark of her conservative background and her status as a mother; it commanded his respect. Maybe that was just what Francine had intended it to do, he thought.

      ‘How does Puck get to Virginia, Francine?’

      ‘Mrs Judd has made arrangements, sir. For the end of the summer.’ Francine glanced behind her, as if she wanted to leave. Then she smiled at David.

      ‘I think Mrs Judd wants to settle the children first. Excuse me, sir, but the water is maybe boiling now. I’ll lay your place in the dining-room?’

      David grunted, and she was gone. It made sense, settling the children, he decided. But if the damned dog could stay, why the hell couldn’t he have his desk and his files? Was there a TV in the house? Had she taken the bed?

      He took off his jacket and laid it over the computer screen, then picked up his beer again and collapsed into the little pink-and-green chair. It was a snug fit. He slopped beer over his lap as both elbows struck hard against the arms of the chair.

      ‘Well this sucks!’

      He craned forward, laughing, fishing about with his tie to see if it was wet. He could feel the beer running between his thighs. Francine, he thought, you’re going back to Peter Jones tomorrow to buy me a real chair. He pictured a huge leather recliner on sale; Elizabeth would be horrified, but he couldn’t stop the thought. She’d never know anyway. Maybe Francine would like to take the chair home in August when he left. She deserved some booty if she was going to be unemployed.

      As he stood up to shake the wet off his trouser legs, the telephone rang. He ignored it. It went on ringing and he patted his hips and his chest, where his jacket pockets might have been, thinking about his cell phone. Anybody who seriously wanted to reach him called him on his cell phone. He looked at his jacket hanging over the computer screen and thought, I left the phone downstairs in my bag. Still, he picked the jacket up, felt the weight of it, shook it a little, batted at the pockets. Then suddenly he reached for the phone on the floor, thinking, Maybe it’s Elizabeth. They must have arrived.

      His voice was just a flat bark. ‘Yup?’

      ‘Is that David?’ It was a man.

      Nailed by the office; guess I’m a sucker. ‘Yup, it’s David. What is it?’

      ‘Do you mean who is it?’

      ‘Oh, Christ.’ But David’s blood was already rising; he was always ready to spar. He knew the voice, a big, deep American voice. Teasing, basically friendly. Who the hell was it?

      ‘David! It’s Leon!’

      ‘Jesus! Leon? How’d you find me here?’

      ‘It’s just your house, isn’t it? This number?’

      ‘Yeah—barely! I’m about to sell the house and move home!’

      ‘Home?’

      ‘Well—Virginia.’

      ‘Virginia?’

      ‘Jesus, Leon, where the hell are you? Are you in London?’

      ‘Of course I’m in London. I live here. I’ve lived here for nearly a year!’

      ‘You’re joking! What are you doing?’

      ‘Calling you.’

      ‘Asshole! Come over and have a beer with me. I’m all alone in Belgravia. Ditched by Elizabeth and the kids till the end of the summer. A quivering wreck!’

      ‘I’m there. I’m staring at your address. Give me twenty minutes.’

      How could Leon spend a whole year in London and not call until tonight? It was unbelievable.

      In college, David had seen Leon every day, twice a day, all day long and half the night. And afterwards, those strident, crazy years starting out in New York. Twenty-five-hour days at the office, it had seemed like. The towering, gut-boiling canyons of steel and glass. The sweaty shock of competing full-out with everyone in the whole world all the time; bosses and colleagues who didn’t necessarily want you to win and who didn’t necessarily even look upon you as a team-mate; results that made the real newspapers. We went into that life full-bore, David thought, busting for action action action. Everything so fast-forward that pretty soon nothing else would do. Speed-addicting days, with the occasional split second of wrung-out leisure in that airless walk-up on East 12th Street, drifts of dirty clothes on the floor, tin-foil-and-white-paper packaging from the Chinese carry-out erupting from the kitchen trash can. David could just about smell sesame noodles, pizza, stale beer. He thought of their slapstick antics trying to clean the place up and make it seem like a real apartment when one of them wanted to bring a girl back.

      Time was nothing. Gone.

      Are we that old already? That duty-ridden? What are we doing with our lives, that we move further and further forward without holding on to anything from the past? How did I lose touch with Leon of all people? My best friend, among a lot of good friends.

      He pictured Leon’s huge, bounding limbs that could look so ungainly at first, his scraggly blondish hair, long, thin, never really combed. His colossal, uncontrollable grin that peeled his lips back like an apple, or something bigger, a melon, being sliced open. Leon seemed like an enormous dog, a yellow Lab, but he was so much more collected than that. In sport, his timing was perfect, incredible. And when David pictured Leon, he saw the dirty-blond hair lift slightly over the ears, as if Leon were in motion.

      Climbing the stairs to his bedroom, David saw Leon, as he’d seen him for years in his mind’s eye, skating fast, his ice hockey helmet clamped onto his head like a flying ace’s, hair blowing out through the ear pieces, and the pads which made their team-mates into blimps and clowns hanging loose on his giant’s physique, his stick swinging like a pendulum backwards and forwards over the bladescored ice, the puck cradled, babied, protected, then slapped silly into the goal.

      His timing was perfect, tonight, too, David realized. When did I ever need Leon’s company more?

      He opened his closet door half-expecting his clothes to be gone. But there hung the sober row of dark, handmade suits on heavy wooden hangers, neatly spaced, the elbows ever so slightly bent so that the jackets seemed to be politely offering him their arms. He tugged a pair of khakis off the СКАЧАТЬ