The Gap of Time (6 page)

Leo walked unsteadily back to the restaurant. No one seemed to notice he'd been away. They were talking about the Château d'Yquem that to him tasted like golden syrup mixed with mould.

His head was spinning. He wanted to go home.

But the boys were piling into the waiting limo and heading for a jazz club. Leo didn't like jazz. He sat in the small, dark room drinking Mexican beer and playing games on his phone, all through some pretentious, out-of-tune sax solo, refusing to fake it that he understood or liked it.

The wine and oysters at the restaurant followed by the kebab and Coke and beer were making him feel sick. He was miserable and alone, so he talked louder, pushing his chair back, necking the Corona when all he wanted was water and sleep.

Then everybody in the club started clapping and whistling and a small, slight, boyish woman with a face like a pretty sailor in red lipstick, wearing a black dress, holding the microphone like it had something to say to her, started to sing. The piano picked up the tune. The snare drum came in off the beat.

MiMi singing. Her strong, passionate voice—he didn't understand the words, but he was sitting forward as though receiving instruction for a mission he mustn't fail. Leo felt his heart change.

He felt, not thought, Where is this place that I was happy? I must go back there, even if I die.

And he remembered that day on the cliff path before Xeno had fallen.

But you can't reverse time, can you?

Xeno had fallen. Would always have fallen. No matter how close they were, tried to be, had been, from now on fifty feet separated them.

The hospital and Xeno holding his hand. Xeno never blamed him. He never spoke about it to Leo or to anyone. It was Leo who couldn't bear it. Leo who put the distance between them.

No, thought Leo, the distance was there. I didn't know how to close the gap so I made it wider.

MiMi was singing—“
Is that man falling? Or is that man falling in love?”

And he remembered from school assembly that the Fall is an exile from paradise and that an angel with a flaming sword bars the way.

This is the place I remember, felt Leo. Delight. Certainty. Recognition. Excitement. Protection. Yes.

No sleep on it think about it give me a day or two we'll see maybe I hope so not sure.

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes.

The fall was when the leaves are shed and Leo felt like he was losing his cover. He felt bare and naked. He felt the wind blowing through him. He felt lighter. She blew through him like a salt wind off the sea. “
I wish you a wave of the sea, that you might ever do nothing but that, move still, still so
.”

“I've met someone,” he said to Xeno. “I'd like you to meet her.”

Xeno was best man at the wedding. The night before the wedding they went out together, just the two of them, and Leo wanted Xeno to give him away—to be the one handing him over to MiMi. Instead he gave Xeno the ring—because that is what the best man carries for the bridegroom.

Xeno opened the box and took out the diamond. Leo had spent a lot of money. Xeno held the ring to the light. Then he put it on his little finger. Leo was laughing, happy. “I don't deserve her,” he said.

“Make sure you do,” said Xeno. “And don't push her too close to the edge.”

Leo wanted to speak. He swallowed, wet his lips. Xeno watched him with the concentration of a cat. Xeno took off the ring, polished it on his shirt and put it back in the box, putting the box in his pocket. He poured them both another drink and kissed Leo, as swiftly as if it had never happened, on the mouth.

Fucking stupid, incompetent bastard!

Cameron had installed the webcam but it had no sound! Leo threw his Himalayan white cushion at the screen. What was he supposed to do? Lip-read?

MiMi was there. Xeno was there. In the bedroom. Together.

Xeno was actually lying on the actual bed. MiMi was not actually lying on the actual bed with him but they had probably had sex already in the oversized bathtub. He needed a camera in the bathroom.

MiMi opened the doors to her dressing room. She said something to Xeno. Leo threw a sweet wrapper at the screen.
He was mainlining Cadbury Mini Eggs.

WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY, BITCH?

Xeno got up and went into the dressing room.

SHIT FUCK!

Leo needed a fucking camera in the dressing fucking room. They were probably doing it on the fucking faux-fur coats like Liberace. Leo needed to webcam the whole house. He needed to webcam her cunt. Then he'd sit inside her and see it coming, that little ramrod dick, circumcised, precise. Leo in her cervix, waiting with his mouth open for Xeno to worm his way in.

Leo pressed ZOOM but the image went fuzzy. What kind of cheap kit had Cameron bought? Then he saw Xeno's arm round Hermione. No! He was unzipping her dress! Leo froze the image and pressed SAVE. Hard evidence. Ha ha. Xeno was hard for sure. Unzipping his wife.

Leo watched. The dress came off. MiMi walked into the bedroom in her underwear. God, she was lovely. Big tits, slender arms, the bulge of her baby. Bum tight as a wrestler's—Pilates three times a week. Great legs. She wore hold-ups for him. No, she wore hold-ups for Xeno. Leo undid his tie.

Xeno came out holding a dress, his head on one side.

FUCKING FAGGOT, WHY DON'T YOU MOUNT HER FROM BEHIND WHERE I CAN SEE YOU?

MiMi was laughing. She used Xeno to steady herself while she climbed into the dress. She's easy with him. You can only be easy like that with someone you've fucked. MiMi got into the dress, wriggled around getting it over her baby, then turned for Xeno to zip it up. He zipped, adjusting her ass line.

GET YOUR LONG SENSITIVE FINGERS OFF MY WIFE'S ASS!

(He remembered those long, sensitive fingers on his ass.)

MiMi looked in the mirror (DO THEY DO IT IN THE MIRROR?) then looked back at Xeno, who pulled a face and shook his head, making a Marilyn Monroe hourglass shape with his hands and actually wiggling his own faggoty ass like a Thai ladyboy.

WHAT ARE YOU SAYING, YOU LITTLE PERVERT?

Hermione nodded and turned her perfect back towards him. Xeno unzipped her. He kissed her neck—it was just a peck but it was a kiss. Then Xeno disappeared into the dressing room and came out with another two dresses, holding them up, one in each hand like a pair of dead rabbits.

MiMi pointed at one of them and the whole pantomime started again. Zips, wiggles, pouts, smiles, laughter, mirror, hair-flicking, head-tossing.

YOU SICK FUCKS, YOU CAN'T EVEN FUCK. JUST DO IT.

Then the bedroom door opened and Pauline came in.

Leo thought he was going to throw up. Pauline! She was in on it. She was protecting them. They were fucking under his nose and Pauline knew it.

DO THEY LET YOU WATCH, YOU UGLY BITCH?

Pauline was giving some kind of a printout to Xeno. Again Leo pressed ZOOM. All he got was something that looked like it was written in Arabic.

Here was Leo at work in his office, making money for everyone, and they were in his house having an orgy.

Xeno had his own set of rooms in Leo's house because everyone liked having him around.

YOU BET YOU LIKE HAVING HIM AROUND, YOU COCK-SUCKING WHORES.

Leo had forgotten that Pauline was a partner at Sicilia.

SLAG IN A MARKS AND SPENCER'S TWO-PIECE EVEN THOUGH I GIVE YOU VOUCHERS FOR ANN TAYLOR EVERY CHRISTMAS.

He had forgotten that Xeno made enough money to stay in a hotel.

CAN'T AFFORD TO RENT A BED TO FUCK HER IN—HAVE TO USE MINE.

Leo had forgotten that MiMi earned her own money and owned her own house.

I'LL THROW YOU OUT ON THE STREETS, SLUT.

They were all pimps and panderers and whores and thieves.

He would kill them.

NOW WHAT?

MiMi was naked. Underwear off. Naked. Pauline sat on the bed chatting to Xeno. What was this?
The Killing of Sister George
? Pauline was a lesbian! That explained it! She couldn't get a man, so she had to pimp women. She was a drunk, ugly lesbian. Well, OK, Pauline doesn't drink. Call me a liar over a bottle of whisky. She is a sober, ugly lesbian.

IT'S A THREESOME!

Pauline was about to take off her Marks and Spencer day dress and matching jacket. Underneath would be her Marks and Spencer Big Knickers and wide-strap flowery bra like a hanging basket and maybe a Spanx midriff hold-all whatever. Leo knew about Spanx. He had invested in them. Pauline was going to pull off her thick tights and rub her hundred and fifty tons—OK, pounds—of untoned middle-aged flab over his wife's pussy. Her saggy tits on top of MiMi—was Pauline a Top? All Leo knew about lesbian sex came from porn sites but he was pretty sure there had to be a Top and a Bottom. But MiMi was eight months pregnant—she couldn't have sex on her back. If she couldn't be a Bottom—and she couldn't be a Top because, damn it, she was still his wife—then she must be a Side. Do lesbians have Sides as well as Tops and Bottoms? They must do. He would look it up. His naked wife was about to lie on her side and…

Pauline took off her shoes, put her feet up on the bed and started rootling around in her vast handbag—what did women keep in those things?—and then Leo realised: it must be her dildo.

Pauline was getting out an eight-inch purple silicone dildo with a harness. The Big Knickers were coming off. The strap-on was being buckled round her hips, her belly spilling over the top of her moth-eaten German teddy-bear pubic hair, poking out in grey wires underneath.

Pauline was, in fact, still searching through the inscrutable contents of her handbag. She took out her glasses, her iPhone and…a long, red leather object appeared in Pauline's hands.

VIBRATOR THE SIZE OF A SUBMARINE, YOU SEX-SHOP SLAG!

It was a pencil case. Pauline settled down to do the
Guardian
crossword.

JEWISH MARXIST!

The bedroom door opened. A pretty woman Leo had never seen in his life before came in holding a zip-up plastic suit-carrier.

GET OUT OF MY FUCKING BEDROOM, RENT-GIRL!

Xeno took the suit-carrier from her.

SEX PARTY WITH NURSE UNIFORMS!

Inside the suit-carrier was a sharp-cut blue linen man's suit with a tight white rhinestone V-neck T-shirt. Xeno put the clothes on the bed and started unbuttoning his shirt. Leo had a dry mouth. His friend's boyish, slender chest and back. The scar on the shoulder still visible from where he had fallen. Pauline was looking at Xeno's torso. The tiny gold ring through one nipple. The tiny gold ring in his ear.
Pauline's pelvis was lifting. Her hand was on her crotch, up her skirt. Xeno went towards her and straddled her on the bed. Then MiMi came out of the dressing room and went over to the bed and pressed her body up against Xeno. He turned round and put his tongue down her throat.

But MiMi was still in the dressing room—and when she reappeared she was fully clothed in a black sleeveless micro-outfit that made her bump look like she was going to give birth to the world.

Xeno put his hand on the bump.

MiMi put her hand over his hand and sat down suddenly on the dressing-table chair. Xeno brought her water.

Pauline got up, said something. MiMi nodded and went to the bed. She lay down. Pauline propped her head up with a pillow.

Xeno came and stood by the bed, his tight crotch on a line with MiMi's head.

SUCK HIS BIG DICK!

MiMi's hand cupped Xeno's bulge. She unzipped Xeno's jeans and let out his cock. He wasn't wearing boxers. She lay on her side, pregnant, towards him, kissing the head of his cock while he stroked her hair. Then she took him in her mouth.

Leo realised he was hard. He stood in front of the screen and unzipped his fly, working in quick, brutal strokes. He sprayed himself over the image of his wife resting on the bed, his best friend standing gently beside her, offering her a glass of water.

MiMi, Xeno and Pauline were on their way to the Roundhouse.

The building had been a tram shed and now it was a theatre and music venue.

Xeno had been persuaded to stay.

“What's got into Leo?” he said as the car moved past London Zoo. “He's like a bear with a sore ass.”

“He's meshugener,” said Pauline.

“What's meshugener?”

“He's crazy! He's got his own way all his life so he can't control his emotions, desires, rages, affects. He's a typical Alpha Male. They don't grow up, they just get meaner.”

“It's the baby,” said MiMi. “He didn't want another child.”

“He'll be fine,” said Pauline. “Leo's got a good heart.”

“He doesn't love me anymore.”

Xeno and Pauline looked at MiMi. Then they both started to talk at once.

Ofcoursehelovesyouheworshipsyouhecan'tgetenoughofyouyouhavebeenthemakingofhimheknowsthathislifewouldbeemptywithoutyouareyoufeelingdepressedthat'snormalbeforebirthIknowheisn'tthatattentivebuthewatchesyoureverymove.

“I think he's having an affair.”

Xeno and Pauline were silent.

“When I met Leo,” said MiMi, “he was all swagger and poise. He wanted to impress me with his car, his restaurants, his black American Express after-hours entry to museums and art galleries. He thought I'd like that. We went to the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay when they were closed. He hired us a private guide. Leo wanted to get up close to the
Mona Lisa
and
L'Origine du monde
.”

“A supermodel and a porn star,” said Xeno. “That's Leo.”

“He bought postcards of them both and sat looking at them in the car on the way back to his hotel. ‘The most famous woman in the world,' he said, ‘after the Madonna, but nobody knows what she looks like.' Then he sat with
L'Origine du monde
.

“I said, ‘It's just porn. She has no head. No identity.' He became intense. He said, ‘It was painted as porn but it explains porn. These two images put together explain why men find women so threatening. The world comes out of your body and…' (he was waving the
Mona Lisa
at me) ‘we have no idea what's in your head. Do you know how frightening that is?' ”

“Leo said that?”

“Yes. And he told me how when his mother left his father, she came to say goodbye and he didn't know why she was leaving, and she said he was too young to understand, and he said, ‘I'm a grown man now and I still don't understand.' ”

“And then?”

“And then he tore the postcards in two and threw them out of the car window.”

“Why did you never tell me this?”

“But why do you think he's having an affair?” said Pauline.

“Leo is possessive but he is afraid of being close to anyone. He would push me away by seeing someone else.”

Or he would just push you
…thought Xeno, but he didn't say it.

MiMi was onstage with the sound guy.

“Xeno!” said Pauline. “Get over here; I need to talk to you.”

“What's the matter, Pauline?”

“I'm uneasy. There's an old saying—where there's trouble there's more trouble. MiMi's right. Leo's been acting crazy for weeks. Has he said anything to you? About the baby? About MiMi?”

“No. He's just more annoying than usual, but he's my friend so I forget about it. You know me—if there's trouble I go sideways.”

“You think he's seeing someone?”

Xeno shook his head. “The opposite. I don't think he's seeing anyone; that's the problem. He's blind in his own world—I thought it was about work. He disconnects—right?”

“Yes, he's great at the disconnect. But there's more to this. Xeno—why are you leaving?”

“I have things to do. My son needs me. But, if I am honest, yeah, I feel like I've outstayed my welcome.”

“You're family.”

“You're Jewish.”

“So indulge me and be one big, happy family. It's a fantasy but it's a good one.”

“I have to go Monday latest.”

“MiMi needs a friend. And Leo is pretty unstable.”

“We're all unstable. Leo is like a cartoon of somebody who's unstable, that's all.”

“Leo is like a cartoon of somebody who's unstable who turns out to be himself.”

Leo was lying on the white sofa in his white office watching the planes take off. He was thinking of that Superman movie where Lois Lane is dead in her car and Superman reverses time by flying round the earth so fast that he shifts the axis and time goes backwards. The dam doesn't burst. Lois Lane doesn't die.

How can I make MiMi not die?

MiMi's not dead—she's about to give birth.

In my mind she's dead.

Who gives a fuck about your mind?

Me. I need peace of mind.

And Leo was thinking back and back. His bank had relocated him back to England. He had asked MiMi to come with him, to marry him, and she had said no. He left. He didn't call her. She didn't call him.

And then…

And then he had asked Xeno to go and find her.

Xeno got off the Eurostar at Paris Nord and took the Metro, line 4, as far as Cité. Then he walked past the Préfecture de Police and crossed the Seine. Notre Dame was on his left. The bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, was just ahead. He had worked there one summer—sleeping among the stacks of books on one of the flea-bitten beds.

As he crossed the road he could see the irascible owner, George Whitman, sitting on an ancient red moped, and talking to MiMi.

George liked pretty girls. He was in his eighties now and his daughter was twenty-something, which told you a lot about George. And he loved books and writers. Men who weren't writers usually had a bad time with George. Xeno had been no exception.

Xeno went over. George scowled. “Who are you?”

Xeno held out his hand. “Hello, Mr. Whitman—it's Xeno. I used to work here…I…”

“Xeno? What kind of a name is that?” said George. “Never heard of you.”

“This is a friend of mine,” said MiMi.

George nodded and started the moped. The exhaust blasted fumes and smoke round the tourists.

“Tell your friend to help you mind the store while I go out for an hour,” said George. “Don't lose too much money.”

“Hello, Xeno,” said MiMi. “Welcome to Paris.”

MiMi went into the store to sit behind the till that faced the front door. “I often mind the store for him.”

“Don't people recognise you?”

“They think it's somebody who looks like me. And I do look like me.”

Xeno wandered among the books while MiMi charmed the American tourists into buying two of everything.

“I want to invent a game that's like a bookshop,” said Xeno. “Layers, levels, poetry as well as plot. A chance to get lost and to find yourself again. Would you work with me on that? I need a woman.”

“Why?”

“You see things differently.”

“I'm not interested in gaming.”

“That's why I need your help. I'll make time circular—like the Mayan calendar; each level of the game will be a time frame—specific but porous, so you may be observed from another level—and you may be aware of another level. It may be that you can operate simultaneously on different levels—I don't know yet. I know it's about what's missing.”

“What's that?”

“You tell me. What's missing?”

MiMi looked sad. She didn't answer. Then she said, “Is Leo backing you?”

“Yes…MiMi, you know why I'm here. Leo loves you.”

“So much so that he didn't call me for a year?”

“Did you call him?”

MiMi was silent.

George returned in a bad temper, carrying a new cat. Then he told everybody to get out of his store while the cat settled in. Americans and book-lovers alike were bundled onto the streets while George noisily locked the door.

“Isn't this bad for business?” asked Xeno.

“Only time I don't lose money is when we are closed. Then nobody can steal the books.”

SLAM.

MiMi and Xeno were outside the shop. She was laughing. She took his hand.

“All we need now is a lobster,” she said.

“To eat?”

“To walk with us. You know about Gérard de Nerval?”

Xeno didn't.

“You would love him. He is one of my favourite French poets. He had a lobster he kept as a pet and took for walks along the Seine on a leash.”

“What happened to him?”

“The lobster?”

“The poet.”

And Xeno put his arm around her shoulders for a second.

MiMi said, “It was the nineteenth century. Before Haussmann knocked down the slums and alleys and corners of old Paris. It was a medieval city. Gérard de Nerval lived in a building like mine—a seventeenth-century building of small rooms and small windows round a tiny rear courtyard. The square of sky like a lid.

“He had fallen in love with a woman of the lower classes and he was ashamed of himself. One night he had a dream that an angel, vast and
majestique
, had fallen into the courtyard. Folding his wings as he fell, the angel was trapped. Feathers drifted through the windows into the dark apartments. An old woman began to stuff a pillow.

“If the angel tried to escape by opening his wings, then the buildings would collapse. But if the angel didn't open his wings he would die.

“Some days later Gérard de Nerval hanged himself in the basement from a street grating. A man on the street, walking by, looked down and saw him swinging there, in darkness and alone.”

“That's a terrible story,” said Xeno.

“But what do you do,” said MiMi, “if to be free you demolish everything around you?”

“But if you don't, you die?” said Xeno.

“Yes. If you don't, you die.”

It was August. The banks of the Seine had been transformed into a seaside fantasy, part
plage
, part stalls of street food and pop-up bars. The weather was hot. People were easy.

Xeno said, “About Leo…” MiMi nodded and squeezed his hand, part reassurance, part understanding.

For a while they walked in silence.

Xeno liked holding hands with women he liked. He liked women. As long as they didn't get too close. And they always did—or thought they did, or tried to. It was easier with men. The sex was simple, often anonymous. A dark stranger whose name (for the night) was love.

Xeno couldn't manage too much nearness. He was solitary and introverted, with an enthusiasm that people mistook for sociability. He was interested in everything, attentive to people, genuinely kind, and entirely present when he was present. But he was never sorry to close the door at night or to be alone.

Leo had sent Xeno to ask MiMi to give him another chance.

“I'll mess it up if I see her. You explain.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don't know! The long form of ‘I love you.' ”

Leo gave Xeno a piece of paper in his bad handwriting. “This is the long form.”

Xeno looked at it. He nearly laughed, but his friend was so hangdog and anxious that he just nodded while he was reading.

“I've been working on it,” said Leo.