After the Party (8 page)

Ralph nodded and smiled, rubbing his chin skeptically.

Smith smiled. “Anyway,” he said, “it's five o'clock, what do you want to do? Take a shower?”

“
Have
a shower.”

“What?”

“
Have
a shower, not
take
a shower.”

Smith rolled his eyes. “Have a shower? Have a sleep? Hit the town?”

Ralph considered the weight of his eyelids against the dryness of his eyeballs. He thought about the grimy film that covered his entire body and the stickiness of his scalp. But then he thought about trying to locate his toiletry bag inside his badly packed rucksack, finding a whole clean outfit to change into afterward and the fact that by the time he took his clothes off he'd probably just want to collapse in bed and that this was his first night in LA. Away from his family. That he only had six more nights before he had to go home again. That he wasn't here to shower and sleep, but to live and breathe.

“The town sounds good.” He smiled.

“Cool,” said Smith, “let's go.”

S
mith drove.

He had a swanky little Chevrolet, in forest green. It was very clean. Ralph thought about his car at home. He thought about the empty potato chip packets stuffed into the storage panels in the door, the lumps of rock-hard chocolate brownie in the footwell, the sticky orange juice cartons wedged between the backseats and the cluster of tiny plastic toys that seemed to reside nowhere in particular. He thought of the backseat, once a spacious bench for the ferrying around of friends or paintings or trays of pansies from the garden center, now home to two large and ugly child seats. It wasn't his car, it was his
family's
car. How luxurious, he felt, to have a car of your own.

He stared out of the window at the scenery. Low-level shopping arcades, wide pavements, thirty-foot palm trees, men and women in beachwear, unfeasibly small dogs, Rollerblades, baseball caps, frozen yogurt, parking lots, beach umbrellas, beach clubs, whitewashed walls overhung with golden angel's trumpets, tessellated paving, potted cacti, a spangle-fronted cinema, Mexican food, Spanish food, French food, food from the Pacific Islands and acre after acre of soft white sand.

For a moment it struck him as bizarre that he willingly lived in a damp corner of Herne Hill in a house the color of cigarette butts. Why would he do such a thing when this place existed?
Had he chosen to live where he lived? Was it a decision he'd ever consciously made? And if so, what was he thinking? London had its charms, it had pubs (which he rarely visited), it had a magnificent river (which he rarely saw), it had cultural diversity and tradition and elegance and beauty. It had trees and parks and a trillion restaurants. But of what use were any of these things to Ralph when all he experienced of it was a dank loft room, a treadmill at the gym, the occasional half-decent takeout and even more occasional beer and meal out with Jem? They had gyms here. They had children's playgrounds. They had good restaurants and places to drink beer and people to talk to and things to do.

And they had a beach.

And they had the sun.

And they had palm trees thirty feet high.

Ralph folded his arms and looked once more out of the window. He considered the sky, so clear, so expansive, so distinct from the landscape. He let the blueness and simplicity of it wash over him for a while and then he watched a small white-tipped wave hit the soft caramel sand.

Smith glanced at him and then smiled. “Ha!” he said, “you're wondering what the fuck you're doing in London, aren't you?”

“Just a bit.”

“Yeah, I know. Why d'you think I never come back?”

Smith took them to an Asian fusion restaurant called Pacifique. It had a wide terrace at the front where they took a table looking out toward the sea. A very cute girl with a name tag on that declared her to be called Avril took their orders for tequila-based cocktails and mixed hors d'oeuvres, the latter of which arrived on rough-hewn crockery the same color as the sky, with numerous dipping sauces in various shades of red and brown.

Ralph watched Smith take a sip from his cocktail. “I thought they were really tight on drink-driving out here?” he asked.

“Yeah, they are. I'm leaving my car here; Rosey's borrowing it.”

“Rosey?”

“Yeah, the other half.”

“You have an other half?” Ralph asked in flattened surprise.

“Yes. A girlfriend, you know.”

“Yeah, I know what an other half is. I'm just surprised, that's all.”

“What,” snorted Smith, “surprised that anyone would want to go out with me?”

“No. Not that. Just that you've never mentioned anyone.”

“No, well, there's not much to say.”

“Well, God, I don't know, how long have you been seeing her? How old is she? Where did you meet? Et cetera.”

Smith threw him a puzzled look. “Do you really want to know?” he said.

“Yeah, of course I do, you're my mate. I mean, were you even going to mention her to me?”

“Of course I was. You'll meet her tomorrow when she brings the car back. It's not a secret or anything.”

“So, tell me.”

Smith rolled his eyes. “Well,” he sighed, “she's thirty-three, she's from Melbourne—”

“Australian?” interrupted Ralph.

“Ye-es. She's a dental hygienist. She's got blond hair, like this—” he made the shape of a blunt bob with the side of his hand against his jaw—“and she lives over there.” He pointed at a small block of flats above a mall, painted deep coral with sky-blue balconies. “Oh, and we met here—” he tapped the tabletop with the heel of his hand—“eight months ago.”

“Ha, so this is your special place then?”

“No,” Smith sighed impatiently, “this was already my favorite
place. I come here all the time. Here, have one of these.” He passed Ralph a plate of tiny tempura soft-shell crabs, sprinkled with slivers of chili and burned garlic. “They're amazing.”

Ralph popped one of the crabs into his mouth and instantly decided that it was his favorite dish in Santa Monica. It was, he mused, the sort of thing that would cost twenty quid in Nobu, and that in order to eat it you'd have to book a table three months in advance and then pay a taxi driver twenty-five pounds to take you there, yet here this was, just a relatively inexpensive snack in a local neighborhood restaurant. “That's fantastic,” he said, licking the oil from his fingertips.

“Good, isn't it? Everything here is good.”

“So, this Rosey, is it serious?”

Smith shrugged and finished his cocktail. “Yeah,” he said, “I guess.”

“Wow, so this could be it, then? This could be the one?”

Smith shrugged again. “Depends what you mean by The One?”

“I mean, the one you marry, the one you have a family with.”

Smith laughed, scoffing at him. “A family?” he repeated.

“Yeah, you know, kids, children, genetic offspring.”

“No way.”

Ralph frowned. “Why not? You're forty-one, mate.”

“Yeah. I'm forty-one and I've got a fucking amazing life. What the fuck would I want to go and have kids for?”

Ralph paused. He picked up another little crab and ate it. What could he say to that? That was exactly how he'd felt seven years ago when Jem had first started talking about having kids. Life was good. It didn't need improving, it didn't need changing, it didn't, in fact, need anything, let alone helpless, needy, extremely short human beings who depended on you for everything and woke you up when you were sleeping and didn't sleep
late and didn't want to do anything that wasn't their idea and didn't know how to use a toilet and didn't understand anything whatsoever about the world or how it worked. He knew exactly why Smith would balk at the suggestion.

But then . . . it would be odd to get to the end of your days without having done something as fundamental and basic and utterly human as procreating. It would be like dying without having read a book or gone for a swim or eaten an orange or trimmed your toenails or had an argument or fallen in love. It would be like having not lived at all.

Ralph gulped. He found the thought alarming and he certainly wouldn't share it with Smith. It would mean nothing to him, it would sound smug and trite and it would make Smith even more determined never to cross to the other side. It was exactly the sort of sentiment that had put Ralph off the idea of kids for so long. And it was exactly the reason why he had had no desire to have another baby after the arrival of the precious and remarkable Scarlett.

One child was enough for him. He was a dad. He was a parent. He'd crossed over, and he'd loved it. And it wasn't that he didn't love Blake, it was just that he couldn't quite see the point of him, beyond taking his life back to the same stage it was at four years ago, without any of the thrill of new beginnings.

He shrugged. “Fair enough, I suppose. I can't say I was that wild about the idea myself, but now, you know. What I do think is this: depending on your outlook, having kids is either much better than it looks, or much worse.”

“And your outlook was?”

“Let's just say, I've been pleasantly surprised.”

“Family man, eh?”

“Through and through.” Ralph laughed, knowing that this was far from the truth, unless the definition of a family man was
a man who spent his whole life smoking in a garret, who had changed only two of his new son's nappies since his birth, hadn't taken his daughter to the playground for over a month and was currently eating soft-shell crab five and a half thousand miles away from his partner, daughter and four-month-old baby.

“So, you've got two now?”

Ralph could tell Smith was just being polite. He had no interest in Ralph's kids, not in a belligerent way, just in the same way you might have no interest in a friend's rare stamp collection. “Yup,” he said, “Scarlett and little Blake.”

“Great names.”

“Thanks.”

“Any more?”

Ralph snorted. “No. Way. No no no no no. I am done.”

Smith smiled knowingly. “Anyway, cheers.” He raised his empty glass to Ralph's and clinked it lightly. “Great to see you.”

“Great to see you too.”

“And how is . . .” Ralph could sense Smith forcing out the words, “little Jem?”

“Oh, she's fine, you know. Jem is always fine.”

“Good. What's she up to?”

“You know, breastfeeding, shouting a lot, being exhausted—all that usual new mum stuff.”

Smith, who had clearly never had a close encounter with a new mum, nodded vaguely. “Is she still, you know, agenting?”

Ralph nodded. “Yeah, she's on a cushy number there. They gave her her own division after Scarlett was born—the ‘Celebrity' division. Which consists of two clients. One of whom is Karl Kasparov.”

“What, Karl Kasparov who used to live upstairs at Almanac Road? The DJ?”

“Yeah, except he's not a DJ any more. He's a ‘TV personality.' ”

“What! No way!”

“Yeah, he crops up on panel shows and those
Five Hundred Greatest Bollocks
shows. And he even read out a bedtime story on CBeebies the other night, which freaked us all out.”

“Christ, so he made the most of his fifteen minutes.”

“Well, that was Jem's job, to capitalize on it. I mean, he gets around, but he can't be earning that much money because he's still in the same flat.”

“What, Almanac Road?”

“Yeah. Weird thought, huh, to still be there, all these years later?”

“It feels like a lifetime ago. You, me and Jem.”

Ralph thought back briefly to those days and experienced one of those rare moments when a memory leaps out of itself and grows a third dimension and suddenly he could feel the carpet beneath his bare feet, smell the under-rim toilet block in the freshly flushed lavatory just opposite his room, hear Jem cooking in the kitchen, see the fat blooms of a peony in a vase on the dining table. He was wearing long johns and a thermal top. He had all his hair. He was young. He was there. In the moment. And then it was gone.

“We had a laugh, didn't we?”

“Yeah,” said Smith, “on occasion. I can't say I was in the same place as you back then. You were, you know, on the brink of stuff. I was just shuffling along, trying to find my way.”

That's right, thought Ralph, that's exactly right. At the time it had seemed as if Smith was the sorted one. He had the City career, the flat, the Thomas Pink shirts, while Ralph just slouched about the house in old underwear, earning enough money to pay for his rent and his Marlboro Lights. But under the
surface there had been a different story: Smith struggling with his career, hopelessly in love with a woman who didn't know he existed, going out with a girl he didn't care about, no idea where he was headed. Ralph, on the other hand, had been just a whisper away from his destiny: it was there, in front of him, on a plate; all he had to do was reach out and grab it.

“And look at us now,” he said, “bloody fortysomething, and you, the Reiki, I mean, I still cannot
believe
that you touch people for a living.”

“Ha, well, I don't, that's the whole point. It's all about
energy
. Not flesh. Not bones. I don't actually touch anyone.”

Ralph laughed. “Yeah,” he said, “except for their hard-earned dollars.”

“Well, yes, there is that.” Smith smiled. “But it works, you know. Believe it or not, I am actually really good at what I do.”

Ralph smiled and shook his head. “Christ,” he said, “who'd have thought it?”

“Yes, indeed. You a dad. Me a hippie. Heh.”

They both sat for a moment in contemplative silence, until Ralph realized that the silence had passed through contemplation and into awkwardness and then it struck him that he and Smith had never had so little in common.