The Gap of Time (7 page)

So when they had walked awhile and stopped for water at a bar selling
l'eau
in fancy blue bottles, Xeno got out the piece of paper and gave it to MiMi. She started laughing. “No, listen,” said Xeno, “he's awkward but he means it. This is his way of being sure.”

MiMi shook her head. “I don't know.”

“Then say yes,” said Xeno.

“Pourquoi?”

They walked on. They talked about life as flow. About nothingness. About illusion. About love as a theory marred by practice. About love as practice marred by theory. They talked about the impossibility of sex. Was sex different for men? With men? What did it feel like to fall in love? To fall out of love?

And why do we
tomber
? To fall?

“There's a theory,” said Xeno, “the Gnostics started it as a rival to Christianity right back at the start: this world of ours was created Fallen, not by God, who is absent, but by a Lucifer-type figure. Some kind of dark angel. We didn't sin, or fall from grace; it wasn't our fault. We were born this way. Everything we do is falling. Even walking is a kind of controlled falling. But that's not the same as failing. And if we know this—gnosis—the pain is easier to bear.”

“The pain of love?”

“What else is there? Love. Lack of love. Loss of love. I never bought into status and power—even fear of death—as independent drivers. The platform we stand on, or fall from, is love.”

“That is romantic for a man who never commits.”

“I like the idea,” said Xeno. “But I like the idea of living on the moon too. Sadly, it's 293,000 miles away and has no water.”

“But you have come here to see me because you want me to marry Leo.”

“I'm just the messenger.”

They walked to a restaurant in a triangle where some boys were playing boules. A man was exercising two Dalmatians, throwing a red tennis ball. Black and white and red. Black and white and red. The evening was cooling.

They ordered artichokes and haddock. Xeno sat beside MiMi while she talked him through the menu.

“What about you?” MiMi asked Xeno.

“I'm moving to America—the gaming work is there.”

“But you'll be around?”

“I'll always be around.”

What would it be like if we didn't have a body? If we communicated as spirits do? Then I wouldn't notice the smile of you, the curve of you,
the hair that falls into your eyes,
your arms on the table, brown with faint hairs,
the way you hook your boots on the bar of the chair
, that my eyes are grey and yours are green,
that your eyes are grey and mine are green,
that you have a crooked mouth, that you are petite but your legs are long like a sentence I can't finish,
that your hands are sensitive, and the way you sit close to me to read the menu so that I can explain what things are in French,
and I love your accent, the way you speak English, and never before has anyone said “ 'addock” the way you say it, and it is no longer a smoked fish but a word that sounds like (the word that comes to mind and is dismissed is love).
Do you always leave your top button undone like that? Just one button? So that I can imagine your chest from the animal paw of hair that I can see?
She's not a blonde. No. I think her hair is naturally dark but I like the way she colours it in sections and the way she slips off her shoes under the table. Disconcerting, the way you look at me when we talk.
What were we talking about?

She ordered a
baba au rhum
and the waiter brought the St. James rum in a bottle and plonked it on the table.

She said, “Sometimes I'm Hemingway: 11 a.m. a Chamberry kir with oysters. Later, for inspiration, a rum St. James. It's a brute.”

Xeno sniffed it. Barbecue fuel. But he poured a shot anyway.

She drank her coffee. A couple walked by fighting about the dry-cleaning. You meet someone and you can't wait to get your clothes off. A year later and you're fighting about the dry-cleaning. The imperfections are built into the design.

But then, thought Xeno, beauty isn't beauty because it's perfect.

MiMi was sitting with her knees up, bare legs, her eyes like fireflies.

Xeno smiled: what was number 13 on Leo's list?
You are beautiful
.

They had finished dinner and were about to walk away from the restaurant, when from a window across the sandy square that was a triangle someone started playing a Jackson Browne number, “Stay.”

Xeno began to dance. MiMi took both his hands. They were holding each other, smiling, dancing. “Stay…just a little bit longer.”

“Would you like a copy of Gérard de Nerval?” said MiMi. “I have one
chez moi
.”

They walked hand in hand back to the apartment on Saint-Julien le Pauvre.

The staircase was dark. Xeno ran his hand up the seventeenth-century iron banister that curved up the building as the narrow staircase rounded the landings like a recurring dream and the doors were closed onto other rooms.

MiMi opened the door into her apartment. The only light came from the street lamps outside. She hadn't closed the long shutters. She went over to the window, standing framed in the window in her blue dress in the yellow light, like a Matisse cut-out of herself.

Xeno came and stood behind her. He didn't shut the front door and he had such a quiet way of moving that she seemed not to hear him. He wondered what she was thinking.

He was directly behind her now. She smelled of limes and mint. She turned. She turned right into Xeno. Up against him. He put his arms round her and she rested her head on his chest.

For a moment they stood like that, then MiMi took his hand and led him to her bed—a big
bateau lit
in the back of the apartment. She lifted her hand and stroked the nape of his neck.

On the landing outside, the electric light, footsteps up the stairs, a woman's heavy French accent complaining about the hot weather. A man grunting in response. The couple climbed slowly on past MiMi's apartment, carrying their groceries, not even glancing in through the open door.

And then Xeno was walking swiftly down the stairs.

It was the night of the concert. The Roundhouse was filling up with guests at the tables.

Leo was wearing a T-shirt that said
I AM THE ONE PER CENT
.

“Take it off,” said Pauline.

Leo took it off. “You want me to be at the dinner stripped to the waist?”

“Grow up.”

Leo didn't come to dinner. He seemed to disappear. In fact he was in the gallery above the tables and the stage, watching what he had paid for. The evening was going well. The silent auction had already raised over £50,000.

“Where the hell is he?” Pauline asked Xeno.

Leo sat in the shadows, waiting for MiMi to sing. She came on stage, with the quick confidence natural to her. When the applause had died down she made a speech, one hand on her eight-month about-to-be baby, about what it felt like to know that your baby is secure. That your child will have a future. That it is safe to be a mother. Safe to be a child. To give birth without fear. And she spoke as a woman, as the mother of a little boy, as the mother of a new life inside her. The miracle of life. And didn't every woman having a baby want that baby to smile, to grow, to know what love is?

And then she sang. Three songs. They were wild for her. The clapping didn't stop. Some guy in the audience shouted, “Five grand gets an encore.”

“Asshole,” said Leo up in the gallery. “You think you can buy my wife for five grand? You can't buy one of her earrings for that.”

Leo looked down. Xeno had his elbows on the table, his face resting in his hands, his eyes on MiMi. She winked at him.

Leo tipped back in his chair. Fell. There was a crash. People looked up. MiMi glanced towards the gallery. She saw Leo. He saw her face, a millisecond register of confusion, anxiety and, what…fear?

But she was singing. She was a pro. She was singing to the end, and taking her applause and smiling. She raised her hand. Touched her belly. She left the stage.

Leo went down from the gallery, backstage, to where the dressing rooms were. He ran down the corridor. “MiMi!”

She came towards him. She was angry. “What are you doing? Everybody was looking for you. Why were you up in the gallery? Where have you been?”

Leo didn't answer. He pulled her to him and kissed her roughly. She pushed him.
“Ça suffit!”

“Stop it?”

“I'm going home. Cameron's at the stage door.”

“I'll come with you.”

“Leo, what's wrong?”

He nearly said, You don't love me anymore. She nearly said, There's someone else, isn't there?

Instead she walked past him down the corridor.

One o'clock in the morning.

The streets fuzzy with light rain. The plastic peel-off shine of the pavements. The shimmer under the sodium street lamps. Cars queuing at the red light, wipers in rhythm, drivers with the windows down against the heat. Big guy in a van, his right arm resting on the rolled-down window, elbow out, letting the rain run in, scrubbing his forearm in relief across his face.

Sudden summer rain.

Leo watched Xeno putting Pauline in a cab. Then Xeno went towards the underground car park. It was closed now but Sicilia had hired the space. They had the codes. Leo followed him. His own car was down there.

Lower level. Neon-lit. Concrete pillars. Painted bays. Same the world over. Hot like a dry-cleaner's down there, the ventilation shafts whirring to clear the heat.

Xeno could never remember where he left his car. Tonight would be no different.

Leo knew where to find his Jeep. It was one of his fun cars. Ex-army. Khaki body, exposed oversized tyres, canvas top, three pedals, two seats, stripped-out dash with a single speedo dial, big chipped steering wheel, heavy rubber handbrake and a tall, skinny gear stick. He used it off duty. The Porsche was for work.

Leo fired up the Jeep with the clunky key and turned it 360 degrees on a screeching skid towards level one, where Xeno was backing MiMi's Fiat 500 (pink) out of the parking space.

Leo jammed his foot on the gas, drove full pelt towards the Fiat and rammed it from the rear. Xeno stalled. What the…? By the time he recognised the Jeep and realised it was Leo, Leo was reversing fast down the arrowed one-way he had just driven up the wrong way. His Jeep disappeared round the corner, revs high, the engine noise bouncing round the concrete.

He's on something, thought Xeno, looking at the caved-in flank, pink flakes of paint floating like fish food in the shallow puddles on the concrete floor.

Xeno got back into the car and drove. The wheel was catching where the wheel arch was dented. Better try to pull it free.

Xeno got out, leaving the engine running, and went round to the rear. He pulled at the dented arch.

There was a scream of rubber like in a bad movie. Xeno looked up as Leo came racing towards him, leaning out of the low door of the Jeep.

HERE'S WHAT YOUR GAME NEEDS

Xeno jumped sideways. Leo smashed into the Fiat.

“You crazy fuck!” shouted Xeno, but Leo was disentangling the bull bar on the front of the Jeep from the rear of the defeated Fiat by a series of thrusts and dives—and seemed not to notice Xeno anymore. Xeno stood back as Leo, once loose from his prey, drove straight into the car again—this time taking out the passenger door.

Something snapped in Xeno. He got back into what was left of the Fiat and turned on the engine. It fired. He headed for the exit signs.

Leo was coming after him.

Xeno ramped the Fiat up to level two, spinning the wheel as he cut crazily towards the exit. Leo was faster and right behind him. He shunted the Fiat, throwing Xeno and the car sideways. Xeno saw a space—too small for the Jeep—and swivelled left, leaving Leo jolting back into reverse.

But the turning Xeno had taken was a mistake. He was driving downwards, not upwards. He was driving deeper into the underground car park.

And Leo was still coming after him.

Head-on.

Somehow Leo had got in front of Xeno. The Jeep took a concrete corner on two wheels and pounded towards the Fiat. Xeno did the only thing he could do and spun the car to avoid the head-on collision Leo wanted.

The impact shattered the windscreen and knocked Xeno halfway out of the open passenger side of the Fiat. He was dazed for a moment, hearing acutely the distressed whine of the car's instrument panel—seeing the yellow and red lights flashing their end-of-the-world warnings across the dials.

He had to get out. Go!

Xeno slid across the seats and pushed open the crippled driver's door. He started to run.

And Leo came after him in the Jeep.

He's trying to kill me.

Xeno was running. He was fast but the Jeep was faster. The neon overheads blurred. Numbered bays—20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25. A metal screen ahead. The Jeep was right behind him, Leo's fist on the horn. Xeno could feel the heat from the engine. Leo was going to crush him against the barrier.

Xeno threw himself forward, hit the top of the barrier and vaulted over. As he dropped heavily and painfully down the other side, Leo rammed it. Xeno heard the clunk of the reverse gear as he lay on the floor, the cold metal against his back. Then Leo hit the barrier again. And again.

Xeno was on his feet. He could feel damp air on his face. He must be nearly out. Yes. There was the yellow barrier. He ran out onto the street. He still had his phone.

“Cameron? I need my bags from the house. Especially I need the briefcase—red leather, on the desk—and the laptop. I'll be at Pauline's.”

Cameron was in his pyjamas. “What's the problem, Xeno?”

“Leo is trying to kill me.”

Cameron dressed quickly and drove from his flat in Ladbroke Grove back to the house in Little Venice. Why had he put the webcam in MiMi's bedroom? Why had he not refused to do it?

He entered his code, drove through the gate and saw the light on in MiMi's bedroom. The rest of the house was dark.

Cameron pulled his car out of view of the road and walked down the side of the house to the little guest annexe where Xeno always stayed. The luggage was already packed. Cameron threw the last of the things into a holdall, took the briefcase and laptop, and went back towards his car. Sound of tyres/streaks of light under the heavy metal entrance gates alerted him to Leo's Jeep pulling up outside.

Cameron took out his iPhone and disabled the entry code.

He switched to screen mode and watched Leo through the camera on the gate. He was jabbing the buttons. If he tried the housekeeper or MiMi they wouldn't be able to open the gates either. But then Cameron's phone rang.

“Leo?”

The fucking fuckers fucked.

It crossed Cameron's mind that this was a perfectly good sentence—adjective, noun, verb. Not Shakespeare certainly, but adequate.

After a moment's negotiation Leo agreed to drive round to Cameron's flat to get the override key. Cameron watched the headlights fade and disappear, then he opened the gates and left, carefully resetting the entry code.

Cameron drove north to Pauline's house in Belsize Park. The lights were on downstairs and Pauline opened the door in her Marks and Spencer dressing gown. She liked Marks and Spencer.

“What the hell is going on?” said Pauline. “I'm having a Scotch and I don't even drink.”

Cameron's phone rang.
Leo
, he mouthed to Pauline.

There was a long, shouting rant at the other end of the phone that ended in Cameron telling Leo he had misunderstood. Cameron had been to the house and reset the codes. Yes, Leo could go home.

The phone went dead.

Xeno came downstairs in another of Pauline's fleecy dressing gowns. He had had a shower. His legs were bruised and he had a cut on his face where the windscreen had shattered. He opened his bags to find clean clothes.

“You should go to the hospital,” said Pauline.

“No hospital, no police,” said Xeno, “but, Cameron, you have to get what's left of MiMi's Fiat out of the car park. She doesn't need this.”

“Why was Leo chasing you round the car park?” asked Cameron, though his heart was heavy because he knew why.

“Murder.”

Pauline shook her head. “That's melodramatic.”

“Do you want to come and see what's left of the melodramatic car?”

“We can tow it out with the Range Rover,” said Cameron.

Leo was back at his house. He liked his house. An 1840s white stucco villa with gardens back and front. Private and secure. He had bought it when he had married MiMi in 2003. He had just finished paying for it when he had lost his job. For a year things had been difficult financially—in fact, they hadn't been difficult because MiMi had paid all their living costs. Leo hated that. It made him feel worse than being in debt. He was proud of his wife. Proud that she earned real money. But in his head it had to be all him. If he thought about it he knew it was unreasonable and so he did what he always did and didn't think about it.

But now Leo was thinking about something he didn't want to think about and he couldn't stop thinking about it.

His wife and his baby weren't his wife and his baby. He knew it with every fibre of his being. What a cliché.

Leo pulled into the drive and parked the Jeep in the garage. He was calm now. He looked normal. He walked straight to the annexe.

He wanted Xeno's briefcase and laptop. He put on the light. Why was the room empty? He had spoken to Xeno in here just before he had left for the charity event. Leo went into the bedroom, opened the cupboards, then the bathroom door. Xeno had checked out as neatly as if it were a hotel.

Pauline was sweeping up the glass round the smashed-up Fiat while Cameron and Xeno hooked it onto the tow bar of the Range Rover.

“He doesn't normally do drugs,” said Xeno. “He must have started at the party and got off his head.”

“But why would he do that?” said Pauline. “He's been clean for years.”

Cameron looked at Xeno. “He thinks you're having an affair with MiMi.”

Xeno and Pauline stood still like animals who've heard the hunter.

“He told me so himself.”

Xeno stood up. His face looked gaunt under the harsh low neon.

“I'm not having an affair with MiMi.”

“MiMi,” said Pauline. “Gevalt, where is she?”

“At home, of course,” said Cameron. “I took her myself. Why? Where are you going?”

Leo threw the table lamp across the room. It broke against the wall. Xeno knew he knew. Knew he knew what he knew. And he had got away. Someone had helped him. That was why MiMi had been in a hurry to be gone.

Leo went towards the house.

MiMi was sleeping.

Leo opened the bedroom door. He had taken off his shoes. Now he took off his jacket.

MiMi always slept with a night-light, a low, soft, child's rectangle of moonlight. And she liked the curtains open. Leo could see her clearly, one arm across the pillow, her body curled on its side in a white kaftan.

Leo stood over the bed. He loved her so much. His feelings were a mixture of tenderness and pleasure and wonderment that she loved him. There was nothing he wouldn't do for her. He kept cuttings of all her press notices. It was him, not her, who had the awards lined up in his study at home.

And she was so tiny, a bird of a woman—no, she wasn't a bird because she had muscle—she was a flower—but she wasn't a flower because she wasn't for display—she was a jewel—but she wasn't a jewel because he couldn't buy her.

He sat on the edge of the bed, watching her sleeping, his mind moving over the past, or perhaps it was the past moving over his mind.

Do you remember when Milo was a little boy and you were singing in Sydney and we went up to Byron Bay for the weekend and we were swimming near the lighthouse and there was a rip tide? I lost sight of you. I thought you had drowned. All that was in my head was that I would never see you again. It was all I could do with all my strength to get back to the beach. I crawled through the surf, my lungs half-full of water, and when I looked up you were there—as miraculous as a mermaid. I would have given my life to see you safe—and you were safe.

Leo sat on the edge of the bed, taking off his socks. He knelt across MiMi's sleeping body. Wake up, wake up, wake up, MiMi, wake up.

MiMi opened her eyes. Leo?

Leo was pulling his shirt over his head. MiMi lifted her hand and touched his chest. He grabbed her hand like he was steadying himself from falling.