A good place to start
‘Hello.’
‘I have a boyfriend.’
He knew both instructions, whether it was true or not. But it was late.
The idea of having a conversation about, say, The Idiot, or The Gambler (Polina!…), would have sincerely pleased him no less than having a sheer bodily encounter with not a single word exchanged in between. He was not hostile to the playful etiquette imposed by the ladies either, but these mischievous games, he thought, may only be fun among people who are not just meeting but already know each other. Contriving makes sense the moment the natural has already been settled and made conventional.
To settle, ah!…
That was an unbearable island, for a few different and unjust reasons. The combination of heat and humidity forms uninhabitable places like that, where one is led to wonder what sort of settlers would settle there, or how much the climate has changed since the time of those first settlers (as in the case of the once-frozen Thames), and which of the two thoughts is the most optimistic.
‘What do you think? Which one?’, he let her know and asked her.
Boyfriend arrived. His face revealed the weariness of having played the role too often, and a certain mercy towards the man. He may once have been the man himself. That would explain why he looked like the weary Mars painted by Velázquez, almost with the moustache and all, and nearly the helmet too.
Girlfriend showed no opinion on the matter of optimism put on the table by the man.
The man explained to boyfriend that he was alone and was just trying to meet people, which was true. It was obviously true, for the rest, and so were the other explanations, untold.
It was all about obviousness, and its art. Some sort of mastery at sheer evidence. At sheerness.
Flirting from scratch, however, cannot but feel like facing blank paper. Thoughts overflow, plots don’t come easily. The good stories, unlike thoughts, are not on our hands. They have to happen out there.
He observed boyfriend, whose elbow was still grasped by girlfriend, and fantasised, with a pleasure of revenge but repulsed by the naked masculine flesh, some kind of re-enactment of the Domino Dancing music video. Those two boys joining and playing far from the girl — Miss Bottman — in the final scene... The memory of its music delighted him, though. To the extent of emboldening him to introduce himself.
‘I am Tennant.’
‘What sort of a name is that?’, she said.
(They were young.)
‘She’s Donna.’
‘This is my boyfriend.’
‘John Neil’, he said, smiling and nodding with a sigh.
‘My pleasure.’
Would he also like Dostoevsky? And wordless flesh? Too bad he was not the lass.
‘It’s Pet Shop Boys!’, she celebrated, turning towards the inside of the pub as she started moving to the rhythm of West End Girls. Tennant folded his arms in awe, like Herod gazing upon Salome right before she asked for the head of the Baptist.
‘I have always wondered’, interrupted John Neil, ‘who they dance for when they dance in that way’.
Tennant offered him a cigarette.
‘Oh, no, thanks. I only smoke this’, he explained, while taking a blue pack with an elephant under an orange label. ‘It has the perfect point of humidity.’
Donna was now trying to say el silencio loco, while moving to the impossible melancholy of a string section.
‘This version by Loona has a more intense string arrangement’, remarked Tennant, likewise impossibly, while wondering if the DJ (a certain Lowe) would like Dostoevsky.
‘Chris’, announced Donna. John Neil saw the missed call on her phone screen.
‘Just a minute...’, he said.
‘No way. I’m going with you.’
Tennant turned his back on them as he set off towards the stream, where the sleeping white of the yachts shone between the two lines of bars and clubs.
Donna finally let John Neil leave in privacy.
She sat on the ledge by the stream beside a street lamp and a group of girls she did not appear to know. Unnecessarily, she parted her straight brown hair down the middle, with the spasmodic movement of someone stubbing out a cigarette as the waiter arrives with the freshly baked sea bass.
A grim, flattened glance was cast at the oddly named guest as he looked at the fish by the yachts, stubbing out an ember in plain sight, though that place was unlit.
‘Thank you.’
He gave her phone back.
‘Is everything fine with Chris?’
‘The usual. You know him.’
‘Neil… Do you think the first people to live here liked the weather, or has it changed since then?
‘I find it hard to believe that someone could like this weather.’
‘So the weather has changed.’
‘Not necessarily. Could be the people what changed.’
‘And would that be more heartening than the other options? More… optimistic.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sorry…’, Tennant intervened. ‘Can I borrow your lighter? I left mine on the ledge by the stream; it must have got wet.’
‘Here you are. You can keep it; I always carry another one in my packet of filters.’
Tennant thanked Neil with a smile, put the lighter away, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his forearm.
‘What a swelter.’
‘Yes! That’s exactly what I was talking about with her. Do you think the first people to live…?’
‘Time!’, Donna exclaimed with a little jump, quite plainly more frightened than excited. She took Neil by the hand to dance a few metres away.
Tennant liked Culture Club’s strings as much as Loona’s. He sat down again in the same place as before.
The couple’s dancing did not last. They became embroiled in a sober, rigid quarrel, the only cold point about that night, which ended with Neil leaving for the other shore of bars and clubs. He crossed the concrete esplanade where the stream came to an end, or started. The open sea was just a few minutes’ walk away.
She came towards Tennant.
‘Your second lighter wouldn’t get wet as well, would it?’
‘But you smoke?’
‘When I’m nervous.’
Like after an argument or a disappointment, he concluded, dispirited by the untimely recollection of White Nights.
‘Is his name really John Neil?’
‘I’ve always addressed him as Neil.’
‘You dance very well. I like Pet Shop Boys too.’
‘Are you gay?’
He folded his arms, this time with his mouth slightly open.
‘Given the circumstances, that wouldn’t make any sense.’
‘Why not? And what circumstances? Look at the video for Domino Dancing.’
Tennant then sighed like Neil the Baptist.
‘I just like their music.’
A message came through on her phone. She typed that Neil was no longer there with her and sent the reply to Chris.
‘In the extended version, not the shorter one from the video, there is a bridge with a little trumpet solo. It’s like the night becomes more night. It makes me want to cry, partly from sadness and partly from happiness. You know what I mean?’
‘To be honest—’, Tennant prepared himself.
‘You don’t. Let’s forget it. Are you really alone on the island?’
‘What does that matter?’
‘You mentioned it.’
‘Because I wanted to get to know you.’
‘And now that doesn’t matter?’
‘Say the night has become more night.’
‘Maybe ‘cause we’re in a spot without a street lamp,’ she suggested, noticing the fish illuminated by the white of the yacht. ‘I need to go to the loo.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
She parted, unnecessarily, her nightier hair down the middle, with the spasmodic movement and the cigarette in the other hand, plainly visible. Inhibition then rose to such a pitch that it ceased to be an obstacle.