“What job, though? What was I doing?”
“Oh,” he said. “You had a temporary job as a secretary—well, personal assistant, really—at some lawyer’s, I think it was.”
“But why—” I began.
“You needed to work so that we could pay the mortgage,” he said. “It was tough, for a while.”
That wasn’t what I meant, though. What I wanted to say was, You told me I had a PhD. Why had I settled for that?
“But why was I working as a secretary?” I said.
“It was the only job you could get. Times were hard.”
I remembered the feeling I had earlier. “Was I writing?” I said. “Books?”
He shook his head. “No.”
So it was a transitory ambition, then. Or maybe I had tried and failed. As I turned to ask him, the clouds lit up and, a moment later, there was a loud bang. Startled, I looked out; sparks in the distant sky, raining down on the city below.
“What was that?” I said.
“A firework,” said Ben. “It was Guy Fawkes Night this week.”
A moment later, another firework lit the sky, another loud bang.
“It looks like there’ll be a display,” he said. “Shall we watch?”
I nodded. It could do no harm, and though part of me wanted to rush home to my journal, to write down what Ben had told me, another part of me wanted to stay, hoping he might tell me more. “Yes,” I said. “Let’s.”
He grinned and put his arm around my shoulders. The sky was dark for a moment, and then there was a crackle and fizz, and a thin whistle as a tiny spark shot high. It hung for a slow moment before exploding in orange brilliance with an echoing bang. It was beautiful.
“Usually we go to see the fireworks,” said Ben. “One of the big organized displays. But I forgot it was tonight.” He nuzzled my neck with his chin. “Is this okay?”
“Yes,” I said. I looked out over the city, at the explosions of color in the air above it, at the screeching lights. “This is fine. This way we get to see all the shows.”
He sighed. Our breath misted in the air in front of us, each mingled with that of the other, and we sat in silence, watching the sky turn to color and light. The smoke rose from the gardens of the city, lit with violence—with red and orange, blue and purple—and the night air turned smoky, shot through with a flinty smell, dry and metallic. I licked my lips, tasted sulfur, and as I did so, another memory struck.
It was needle-sharp. The sounds were too loud, the colors too bright. I felt not like an observer but instead as though I was still in the middle of it. I had the sensation I was falling backward. I gripped Ben’s hand.
I saw myself with a woman. She has red hair, and we are standing on a rooftop, watching fireworks. I can hear the rhythmic throb of music that plays in the room beneath our feet, and a cold wind blows, sending acrid smoke floating over us. Even though I am wearing only a thin dress, I feel warm, buzzing with alcohol and the joint that I am still holding between my fingers. I feel gravel under my feet and remember I have discarded my shoes and left them in this girl’s bedroom downstairs. I look across at her as she turns to face me and feel alive, dizzily happy.
“Chrissy,” she says, taking the joint. “Fancy a tab?”
I don’t know what she means, and tell her.
She laughs. “You know!” she says. “A tab. A trip. Acid. I’m pretty sure Nige has brought some. He told me he would.”
“I’m not sure,” I say.
“C’mon! It’d be fun!”
I laugh and take the joint back, inhaling a lungful as if to prove that I am not boring. We have promised ourselves that we will never be boring.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “It’s not my scene. I think I just want to stick to this. And beer. Okay?”
“I suppose so,” she says, looking back over the railing. I can tell she is disappointed, though not angry with me, and wonder whether she will do it anyway. Without me.
I doubt it. I have never had a friend like her before. One who knows everything about me, whom I trust, sometimes even more than I trust myself. I look at her now, her red hair wind-whipped, the end of the joint glowing in the dark. Is she happy with the way her life is turning out? Or is it too early to say?
“Look at that!” she says, pointing to where a Roman candle has exploded, throwing the trees into silhouette in front of its red glare. “Fucking beautiful, isn’t it?”
I laugh, agreeing with her, and then we stand in silence for a few more minutes, passing the joint between us. Eventually she offers me what is left of the soggy roach and, when I refuse, grinds it into the asphalt with her booted foot.
“We should go downstairs,” she says, grabbing my arm. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“Not again!” I say, but I go anyway. We step over a couple kissing on the stairs. “It’s not going to be another one of those pricks from your course, is it?”
“Fuck off!” she says, trotting down the stairs. “I thought you’d love Alan!”
“I did!” I said. “Right up until the moment he told me he was in love with a guy called Kristian.”
“Yes, well.” She laughs. “How was I supposed to know that Alan would decide to choose you to come out to? This one’s different. You’ll love him. I know it. Just say hello. There’s no pressure.”
“Okay,” I say. I push the door open and we go into the party.
The room is large, with concrete walls and unshaded lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling. We make our way to the kitchen area and get ourselves a beer, then find a spot over by the window. “So where’s this guy, then?” I say, but she does not hear me. I feel the buzz of the alcohol and the weed and begin to dance. The room is full of people, dressed mostly in black. Fucking art students, I think.
Someone comes over and stands in front of us. I recognize him. Keith. We’ve met before, at a different party, where we ended up kissing in one of the bedrooms. Now, though, he is talking to my friend, pointing to one of her paintings, which hangs on the wall in the living room. I wonder whether he’s decided to ignore me, or cannot remember having met me before. Either way, I think, he’s a jerk. I finish my beer.
“Want another?” I say.
“Yeah,” says my friend. “Want to get them while I deal with Keith? And then I’ll introduce you to that guy I mentioned. Okay?”
I laugh. “Okay. Whatever.” I wander off, into the kitchen.
A voice, then. Loud in my ear. “Christine! Chris! Are you okay?” I felt confused; the voice sounded familiar. I opened my eyes. With a start, I realized I was outside, in the night air, on Parliament Hill, with Ben calling my name and fireworks in front of me turning the sky the color of blood. “You had your eyes closed,” he said. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. My head spun; I could hardly breathe. I turned away from my husband, pretending to watch the rest of the display. “I’m sorry. Nothing. I’m fine. I’m fine.”
“You’re shivering,” he said. “Are you cold? Do you want to go home?”
I realized I was. I did. I wanted to record what I had just seen.
“Yes,” I said. “Do you mind?”
On the way home, I thought back to the vision I had seen as we watched the fireworks. It had shocked me with its clarity, its hard edges. It had caught me, sucked me into it as if I were living it again. I felt everything, tasted everything. The cool air and the fizz of the beer. The burn of the weed at the back of my throat. Keith’s saliva, warm on my tongue. It felt real, almost more real than the life I had opened my eyes to when it vanished.
I didn’t know exactly when it was from. University, I supposed, or just after. The party I had seen myself at was the kind I imagined a student would enjoy. It did not have the feel of responsibility. It was carefree. Light.