“If you’d ever listened to anything I’d ever said about my ex-wife, you could have saved yourself a trip. You thought she’d take me back? You thought I’d go back?”
Jess shrugged. “It was worth a try.”
“You,” said Martin. “Maureen. There’s nothing on the floor. Look at me. You went with her?”
“It was her idea,” said Jess.
“So you’re an even bigger fool than she is.”
“We all need help,” said Maureen. “We don’t all know what we want. You’ve all helped me. I wanted to help you. And I thought that was the best way.”
“How would it work now when it didn’t work before?”
Maureen didn’t say anything, so I did.
“So which of us wouldn’t try to make something work now that didn’t work before? Now that we’ve seen what the alternative is. A big fat fucking nothing.”
“So what would you want back, JJ?” Jess asked.
“Everything, man. The band. Lizzie.”
“That’s stupid. The band was rubbish. Well,” she said quickly when she saw my face. “Not rubbish. But not… you know.”
I nodded. I knew.
“And Lizzie packed you in.”
I knew that, too. What I didn’t say, because it sounded too fucking lame, was that if it were possible to rewind, I’d rewind back to the last few weeks of the band, and the last few weeks of Lizzie, even though everything was fucked up. I was still playing music, I was still seeing her—there wasn’t anything to complain about, right? OK, everything was dying. But it wasn’t dead.
I don’t know why, but it was kind of liberating, saying what you really wanted, even if you couldn’t have it. When I’d invented that Cosmic Tony guy for Maureen, I’d put limits on his superpowers because I thought we might see what kind of practical assistance Maureen needed. And as it turned out, she needed a vacation, and we could help, so Cosmic Tony turned out to be a guy worth knowing. But if there’s no superpower limit, then you get to find out all kinds of other shit, like, I don’t know, the thing that’s wrong with you in the first place. We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can’t have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we’re so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they’re not looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want. Maybe not out loud, if it’s going to get you into trouble. “I wish I’d never married him.” “I wish she was still alive.” “I wish I’d never had kids with her.” “I wish I had a whole shitload of money.” “I wish all the Albanians would go back to fucking Albania.” Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it’ll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you’re living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies just for one minute.
“I want my band back,” I said. “And my girl. I want my band back and my girl back.”
Jess looked at me. “You just said that.”
“I haven’t said it often enough. I want my band back and my girl back. I WANT MY BAND BACK AND MY GIRL BACK. What do you want, Martin?”
He stood up. “I want another cappuccino,” he said. “Anyone else?”
“Don’t be such a pussy. What do you want?”
“And what good will it do me if I tell you?”
“I don’t know. Say it, and well see what we see.”
He shrugged and sat down.
“You got three wishes,” I said.
“OK. I wish I’d been able to make my marriage work.”
“Yeah, well that was never going to happen,” said Jess. “Because you couldn’t keep your prick in your trousers. Sorry, Maureen.”
Martin ignored her.
“And of course I wish I’d never slept with that girl.”
“Yeah, well…” said Jess.
“Shut up,” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Martin. “Maybe I just wish that I wasn’t such an arsehole.”
“There, now. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
I was joking, kind of, but no one laughed.
“Why don’t you just wish that you’d slept with the girl and got away with it?” said Jess. “That’s what I’d wish, if I were you. I think you’re still lying. You’re wishing for stuff that makes you look good.”
“That wish wouldn’t really solve the problem, though, would it? I’d still be an arsehole. I’d still get caught for something else.”
“Well, why not just wish that you never got caught for anything ever? Why not wish that you… What’s that one with the cake?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Something about eating a cake?”
“Having it and eating it?”
Jess looked kind of doubtful. “Are you sure that’s it? How can you eat a cake without having it in the first place?”
“The idea,” said Martin, “is that you get it both ways. You eat the cake, but it somehow remains untouched. So «have» here means «keep».”
“That’s mental.”
“Indeed.”
“How could you do that?”
“You can’t. Hence the expression.”
“And what’s the point of the fucking cake? If you’re not going to eat it?”
“We’re kind of getting off the subject here,” I said. “The point is to wish for something that would make us happier. And I can see why Martin wants to be, you know, a different person.”
“I wish Jen would come back,” said Jess.
“Yeah, well. I can see that. What else?”
“Nothing. That’s it.”
Martin snorted. “You don’t wish you were less of an arsehole?”
“If Jen came back, I wouldn’t be.”
“Or less mad?”
“I’m not mad. Just, you know. Confused.”
There was a thoughtful silence. You could tell that not everyone around the table was convinced.
“So you’re just gonna waste two wishes?” I said.
“No. I can use them up. Ummm… An everlasting supply of blow, maybe? And, I dunno… Oooh. I wouldn’t mind being able to play the piano, I suppose.”
Martin sighed. “Jesus Christ. That’s the only problem you’ve got? You can’t play the piano?”
“If I was less confused, I’d have the time to play the piano.”
We left it there.
“How “bout you, Maureen?”
“I told you before. When you said Cosmic Tony could only arrange things.”
“Tell everyone else.”
“I wish they could find a way to help Matty.”
“You can do better than that, can’t you?” said Jess.
We winced.
“How?”
“No, well, see, I was wondering what you’d say. “Cos you could have wished that he’d been born normal. And then you could have saved yourself all those years of clearing up shit.”
Maureen was quiet for a minute.
“Who would I be then?”
“Eh?”
“I don’t know who I’d be.”
“You’d still be Maureen, you stupid old trout.”
“That’s not what she means,” I said. “She means, like, we are what’s happened to us. So if you take away what’s happened to us, then, you know…”
“No, I don’t fucking know,” said Jess.
“If Jen hadn’t happened to you, and, and all the other things…”
“Like Chas and that?”
“Exactly. Events of that magnitude. Well, who would you be?”
“I’d be someone different.”
“Exactly.”
“That’d be fucking excellent.”
We stopped playing the wishing game then.
Martin
It was intended to be this enormous gesture, I think, a way of wrapping the whole thing up, as if the whole thing could or would ever be wrapped up. That’s the thing with the young these days, isn’t it? They watch too many happy endings. Everything has to be wrapped up, with a smile and a tear and a wave. Everyone has learned, found love, seen the error of their ways, discovered the joys of monogamy, or fatherhood, or filial duty, or life itself. In my day, people got shot at the end of films, after learning only that life is hollow, dismal, brutish and short.