Glover’s Mistake. Nick Laird

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       Buddha’s bogus smile

      David decided not to tell James about dinner, but it made no difference. Maybe she emailed him and mentioned it, or maybe Fortuna, in the earthly guise of the Bell and Crown rota, decided to give him the night off. David didn’t know and never asked. By the time he’d dragged the shopping home on the Thursday evening, he was sweating and tired and dejected. The shower was running and a few minutes later Glover appeared in the kitchen doorway. Relaxed, barefoot in jeans and a T-shirt, he seemed fresh and new, the hair glossy and spiky, and he watched as David unpacked the groceries. On hearing that Ruth was coming for dinner, he acted neither surprised nor especially pleased, rubbing a palm up and down the door frame as if sanding it. He offered to help with the cooking but David said no, he was fine, and the TV went on. When the intercom gave its buzz of static David ignored it and Glover took the stairs down one by one, in no particular hurry.

      He was listening hard as they ascended but heard nothing until they entered the flat. The dynamic felt immediately different. When he came out from the kitchen Glover had already taken her coat. Her perfume seemed stronger, a pleasant, singed citrus, her hair was newly cut and dyed, and he was sure her make-up was more pronounced. Black form-fitting satin trousers showed off her trim behind. Leather stack-heeled boots added an inch or two of height. A large tiger-stone pendant drew the eyes to the V of her grey cashmere V-neck, and its deep cut of tanned cleavage. Time had been taken. Money had been spent. It was premeditated, David thought, like the worst kind of crime, but she did look good, and she did smell good, and when he kissed her hello and gave her a hug, platonically quick, she felt wonderful too.

      As he finally slotted the casserole dish in the hot yawn of the oven, David thought that this was easily the nadir of his year so far. He had another month for it to get worse, of course, but tonight he was on a date, as the chaperon, in his own living room. He was about to watch the only woman he’d been even vaguely interested in for years make a play for his flatmate. And he was cooking for them. He downed a glass of Something Blanc and reluctantly went in. The conversation was about Suffolk. Ruth tended to talk, David knew, to one person. When you were chosen you became her solace, her intimate confrère in some subtle plot against the whole thick-witted world. She watched you and read you, responded only to you. Such was the exclusive nature of her consciousness, operating in daily life through a series of mini-love affairs. David knew the intense joy of being concentrated on like that! Together they would sit and worry at a subject until something, however small, was clarified, but if you weren’t elected, if you were secondary, then it meant you had to sit and wait, woebegone, and watch, and throw remarks like popcorn at the principals.

      He flopped down by the stereo and scanned his eyes up and down the stacked CDs. They were so taken with their conversation they hadn’t even turned the music on.

      ‘But when you were growing up, did you think the town was dying?’

      Glover noticed David looking at the CDs and said, ‘My Blood on the Tracks is there somewhere.’

      ‘Oh yes, play that,’ Ruth said. ‘It’s his best.’ A male thing to say, so definitive and presumptuous. David saw she was taking charge with Glover. Whatever would happen would happen tonight. As she plucked at the stitching of the red cushion on her lap, she was scrutinizing Glover’s profile from beneath her calculated lashes. David found the CD and set it in the stereo’s extruded tray, intruded it, pressed play. The opening chords of ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ came through the speakers.

      The evening went slowly. David found himself irritated when Glover cracked some joke that made her laugh, and laugh excessively, or when she asked him yet another question. He was too familiar with the sense of being overlooked not to feel it keenly. When he went to check on dinner, he unzipped his hooded top and took it off, and wished emotions were like clothes, that he could remove them, fold them, set them somewhere. He laid the table and stood at the sink, then pressed his hand on the steam of the windowpane, where it left a perfect print. He went back in and downed a lot of wine and smiled.

      It was true enough: Glover was handsome. His physique was nothing but tendon and muscle, and he fitted it entirely. He couldn’t imagine the ugly-duckling version, fat and acned, though there was no doubt he was a swan now. David had been an ugly duckling too, and had then grown into a penguin. Or a dodo. A booby. He had never seen Glover drop or fumble or break anything, and that capability could be seen in his hands: they were large, graceful, lightly veined. His movements had an easiness, and because he was not physically false, he also seemed not personally