The café turned, the door opened, the door closed, cold air drifting in from outside. A woman laughed at the counter, the checkout till pinged shut, we sat in silence.
Then I said, fast and flat, surprised to hear myself speak, “In the short term, these deeds are yours, as well as mine.” His eyebrows flickered, fingers tight, but he said nothing. “You met me. Spoke to me. Formed an impression. Your short-term memory can hold me long enough. You made a judgement. Would you like me if you knew who I was? Probably not, you have long-term impressions that a short-term experience cannot trump. But for a second, forget that. Meet me now, for the very first time. In this moment, who do you see? Create a picture of me second by second, no past, no future, no care, no responsibility. You do that; I do not do it for you. I can position myself in a certain way, say certain things, but in the end, the choice is yours. You chose this. In Hong Kong—”
“We went up in the elevator together,” he interrupted, stopping words he didn’t want to hear.
I shrugged, let him finish.
“And six hours and twenty-eight minutes later, you got into the elevator on my floor, and took it to yours.”
Silence.
“Would it make a difference if I told you?” I asked, chin resting on the netted top of my hands. “Everything I can tell you is just words, and you’d have no way of knowing if it was true. Only trust, or rejection, or something doubtful in between. Your choice.”
Silence a while. Then: “I am a good man.” He said it so softly, I wondered if he knew he had spoken at all. Then he looked up, and a little louder, “I am a good man. I don’t forget the people I’ve slept with; that’s not who I am.”
“And here we are. Is that why you wanted to meet? To ask all of this?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you think I’d come?”
“Because of Hong Kong. Because I think you’re obsessive and lonely.”
I shrugged.
“Do you want pity? A thief is a thief.”
“How would you live, in my shoes?” I replied. “It’s tough drawing housing benefit when no one down the Jobcentre remembers you. You’d think that stuff would be automated, but hell no, government can’t have slackers, slackers have to be assessed, interviewed, catalogued. Tough getting catalogued, when people forget to file the report. Try getting flatmates, doing an interview, getting treated by a doctor, finding friends — what would you have done?”
“Isn’t it your fault, that you’re forgotten? Isn’t it something you choose?”
My turn to consider hitting him. I contemplated the idea with cool detachment, and found it surprisingly easy to let it go. “No. I never chose any of this.”
“You chose to steal Perfection.”
“Yes.”
“You chose to manipulate me. To… to…”
His voice trailed off. He rolled his teaspoon between his fingers, one way, then the other; reached a decision, and turned the Dictaphone off. Put it in his jacket pocket.
“We slept together in Hong Kong,” he said at last.
“Yes.”
“And in Brazil?”
“No.”
“What about here?”
“No.”
“Do you want to?” Not an invitation; a simple question.
“Are you sure you don’t want to keep recording?” I replied.
A shaking of his head. “I don’t want to remember this.”
“If you don’t remember it, it doesn’t mean anything.”
“It’ll mean something to you.”
“Is that enough?”
“I don’t know. I am what you could call a coward. You say that you are a thief, you say it like it’s… it’s something of what you are. I say that I was a policeman, a career man. They knew my name at the local deli, I was in the community choir, a would-be family man. I was many things that made me who I thought I was, and now I am not. All of that was taken away, and I followed you. You pulled on my strings and I followed, and I lost my job and I would have done it again to catch you, you became… finding you became a part of who I am, just like the rest of it. You were… my obsession. Does that excite you? Are you aroused by that, to know that I needed you, needed to catch you, just as you needed someone to fuck?”
Anger, rising, though his voice hid it, his face tightening, compressing with the effort of keeping it in.
“No,” I replied quietly. “It doesn’t excite me anymore.”
“I think I am a coward. If you walked away now, I would forget you, and then I could enjoy being seduced. It would be a pleasant short-term interruption to a long-term malaise. I might hate myself afterwards, finding that the reality of my actions does not conform to who it is I like to believe myself to be; and then I would forget, and wouldn’t hate myself after all. An easy option, yes? The coward’s way out. The man you stalked was an illusion. You created him from your own loneliness, fabricated someone you needed in your life. It’s all pathetically obvious, really. As Matisse says, you are infinitely more interesting to a scientist than to a shrink. Does this horrify you? I wanted to turn the recorder off so I couldn’t hear myself say this, I would hate myself for these words too, you see, not good, not courteous, not who it is I think I would like to be, but of course, with you, I can say whatever I want now and forget, I won’t remember myself calling you bitch, whore, fucked-up little infant, child, slut, thief. It feels incredible to have those words out, it’s like — I am ashamed and frightened and excited and this must be how you feel, how it feels to be a criminal! Christ it’s like… cunt! Fucking bitch, I hope you tear your fucking eyes out. Eat razors, piss fire, remember and shed your tears alone in the night, die alone, this is wonderful! Saying this is… fuck you, fuck my fucking life!” His hands, locked on the edge of the table, knuckle-white, eyes red, tears pooling in the bottom, blinking them away, hands not moving to wipe the salt as it rolled down his cheeks. “I am a failure, so fuck you, whoever you are, fuck the truth!” He lunged across the table, one hand wrapping around my throat. I grabbed a fork instinctively, ready to drive into his eye, his neck, any easy target — but his hand didn’t squeeze, just pressed there, ready to dig, his body arched up and forward in an awkward L, leaning on the elbow of his left arm for support, the tears flowing free.
Faces turned in the shop; someone screamed, someone else said, call the police.
He was frozen there, and I held the fork in my hand and wondered if I needed to hurt him, and the tears rolled and his lips moved and he said nothing and did nothing and finally, slowly, let go. He let go, and sank back into his chair, and held himself, wrapping his arms around his chest, and wept in silence.
A while, we stayed there.
The café watched us, and when we did not move, they turned away.
Quiet, a while, save for Luca’s tears.
Quiet.
I put the fork back down on the table. Said, “You are a good man.”
Only the sound of tears, of little ragged breaths from a rag-doll man.
“Funny, the things we do when we think no one will remember,” I mused. “Tempting, sometimes, just to punch a stranger in the street, just to see what it feels like. Is it like the movies? Or to sleep with the guy you really, really shouldn’t, but hell, go on, today, just today. Or to steal something from a shop. A packet of crisps, a chocolate bar, nothing big, nothing that anyone will mind, really, but just… go on. Break the rules. Just a little bit. Just today. Most of the time, people stop themselves. They stop because they think they’ll be caught, or because they’re afraid. Or because their conscience kicks in and whispers, if you break this rule, you’ll be breaking the trust on which society runs. You’re not scared of going to prison — I mean, maybe you are, but more likely you’re scared of a world in which anyone could just attack you as you walked by. Or in which your property wasn’t your own, and the only thing that mattered was might and power and the will to act. Goodness is a concept as loose as any value imposed by man throughout the ages. Good: correct or proper. Of high quality. Agreeable. Pleasant. Virtuous, commendable. He’s a good’un, that’un. Fighting a good war. Good: good wives, good daughters, good housekeepers, good women in their place. Good: burning witches. Good: catching thieves, putting that druggie away behind bars, blowing yourself up in the name of… whatever. Allah or Jesus, Vishnu or Jehovah, everyone’s got their thing. And everyone, no matter who, at some point, hears the call, go on, go on, go on, say it, do it, hit it, smash it, go on! And usually they stop themselves, or if they do not, they remember their actions later, and are ashamed.”