‘You’re always nagging me about the duvet.’
‘You’re always nagging me about leaving drawers and cupboards open.’
‘I nag you about the cupboards and drawers because I’m always hitting my head or knees on them.’
‘I nag you about the duvet because it’s always leaving me in the cold.’
‘Well that just goes to show doesn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘We both like nagging. It’s fun to nag.’
‘You’re right. What’s wrong with nagging?’ said Alex and they both settled back to sleep.
It may have been fun to nag but to be able to do so in several languages seemed, to Alex, an awesome achievement. Any pretensions to sophistication — a comprehensive knowledge of opera, say, or the capacity to discriminate between various recordings of Beethoven’s quartets — were nothing compared with the ability to chat with grocers and taxi- drivers in four or five languages. Sahra didn’t know the first thing about classical music — nor did Alex for that matter, nor Luke (Nicole did) — but her linguistic resourcefulness meant that she had even improved Alex’s hitherto strained relationship with his concierge. A Portuguese whose duties consisted, in the mornings, of looking miserable and, in the afternoons, of hanging out at a miserable bar with other miserable men, he had several times complained to Alex about petty infringements of the building’s non-existent rules. Since Sahra had begun chatting to him in Portuguese (which she did not even count as one of her languages) his behaviour had changed entirely; on one occasion he had even signed for a registered letter and brought it up to Alex later that day.
Alex admired and loved Sahra’s languages but what he loved more than anything were her habits: the way she folded her clothes away, the way she still used a pen that her father had given her ten years ago and still wore a hat (fluffy with coloured hoops that looked tartan from a distance) that she had been given for her seventh birthday. He liked to think of her when she was fifty, still wearing the same hat, using the same pen.
Alex was used to drawing up litanies of quirks like this. He was aware, likewise, that he and Sahra had grown close, that their relationship had evolved a pattern and rhythm of its own but the most important, the defining part of its development, was the invisible, unremarkable fact of their friendship.
Sahra was equally unaware of this — for precisely the opposite reason: she could not conceive of her lover not being a friend. To Sahra her lover was, above all else, a friend, her best friend. Alex came to realize this only negatively: he found himself thinking of Sahra as a friend rather than lover. They had known each other only a short time, they were in love, but something was missing. The first time they had gone to bed together they had said it would take time to get used to each other. Now they had got used to each other, but getting used to each other also meant getting used to there being something missing between them — and what was missing was so subtle that it was almost impossible to isolate or talk about. It wasn’t Sahra’s fault, it wasn’t Alex’s, but even in their moments of greatest arousal they were still there, still themselves. Sahra had had many lovers: was it always like this for her? Alex knew that it had not always been like this for him. Alex could talk to no one about this: to have talked to Luke would have been to have betrayed Sahra; the only person he could talk to was Sahra and he couldn’t talk to her. How did she feel? Was she feeling the same? He didn’t know. He didn’t know because she did not know how to ask him if he too felt as she did: namely that there wasn’t that perpetual flow of longing between them — that flow which anyone could sense passing between Luke and Nicole.
Who existed in a trance of longing, inhabited a state of constant wanting. Everything had been perfect from the first night they spent together. Neither of them knew why. It had just happened like that. And it continued happening like that.
‘There’s a bun for every burger,’ was the best explanation Nicole could come up with.
‘Where on earth did you pick up that expression?’
‘I heard it somewhere. I forget.’ She went on crunching her salad. Luke — who had finished his salad and loved reminiscing about their first date, their first night together — tried another tack.
‘Don’t you think it’s strange that we didn’t have safe sex that first night?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t you normally?’
‘I don’t normally sleep with people.’
‘How many men have you slept with?’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just a question that is there, waiting to be asked or not asked.’
‘But it’s not not being asked is it? You are asking.’
‘So. . How many?’
‘Three,’ she said, finishing her salad.
‘Three!’ Luke laughed. ‘You’re kidding. Is that including me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wow!’
‘Why you laugh?’
‘Because,’ he tittered, ‘it’s so few.’
‘And how many women have you slept with?’
‘More than three.’ Her face went blank with hurt. He put his arm around her, laughing still. He kissed her cheek, her ear.
‘Why you laugh?’
‘Because. . Well, I mean. How did you learn so much about sex?’
‘I didn’t learn anything. You think it’s like exams? You think you passed lots of exams?’
‘No. It’s lovely. You’re lovely.’
‘So how many?’
‘How many what?’
‘How many exams you have passed?’ Her English deteriorated quickly when she became angry.
‘Oh I don’t know.’
‘Many?’
‘Not that many,’ said Luke. ‘But more than three!’
Her eyes blazed with anger. She pushed him away, walked to the bathroom and shut the door quietly: a tacit slam. Luke tried the door: it was unlocked.
‘Get out!’ She raised her fist and, for a moment, Luke was sure she was going to hit him. Instead she focused her rage on the toilet seat. She gripped it with both hands and — whether accidentally or deliberately was impossible to tell — tore it free of the bowl and threw it out of the door.
‘That was the most bizarre display of temper I have ever seen,’ said Luke. He went out to retrieve the toilet seat. When he came back she was sitting on the cold porcelain, knickers around her ankles, crying.
‘Interesting. You’re one of those women who can cry and piss at the same time.’
‘I’m not pissing. And I’m not crying. I’m sort of cry-laughing.’
‘I brought you a present,’ he said, handing her the toilet seat. She stood up and he slid it beneath her.
‘Let me feel you piss,’ he said, putting his hand between her legs.
‘No!’
‘Listen, the reason I find it funny that you’ve only slept with three people is, well, because I’ve never met anyone sexier than you.’
‘So it’s not just about passing exams. You get grades as well.’
‘Nine out of ten.’
‘Only nine?’
‘You only get ten if I can feel you piss.’ He touched her.
‘I’m still angry.’
‘Piss through my fingers.’
‘I can’t.’
He kissed her cheek. Then pressed his mouth against her ear, shaping once again the words they had never said aloud to each other. Aloud, he said, ‘You really do have a temper.’
‘I hit my brother over the head with my uncle’s trumpet once.’
‘Why?’
‘It was the only thing within reach.’
‘I meant why’d you hit him?’
‘He stole my sweets and wouldn’t give them back.’
‘Not like me. I didn’t have a brother to steal my sweets. Or a sister. So I gorged myself on sweets all day long.’