Better Than Easy Read online

  “I suppose so,” I say, doubtfully.

  “And just because one person supplies money and the other one doesn’t, well that doesn’t mean that there isn’t any love or respect,” Jenny says. “That’s my point. Surely the whole basis of love is the desire to give the person you love whatever they need, whether that be sex, or security, or hard cash?”

  “Or a new-life-in-a-box,” I say.

  Jenny nods. “Exactly!” she says, clapping her hands. “Well, in a gîte. So it’s settled.”

  I grin at her. “You are very wise,” I say. “When you try.”

  Jenny laughs, picks up her mug and peers inside. “Only for other people though,” she says. “Not so good at my own shit. More tea vicar?”

  I hand her my mug. “More tea!” I say.

  Jenny’s right of course, and my anger slips away, and suddenly I’m left wondering quite why I was angry in the first place. But then, as she makes the tea one last thought does cross my mind – that if sixty percent of Tom’s equation is the gîte, then what happens if it doesn’t work out? Then and only then will we find out if the forty percent that remains is enough to keep us together. And that doesn’t strike me as an entirely irrational worry.

  Uh Oh!

  When I get back downstairs to our flat, Tom is being chirpy. He doesn’t really do sorry, not even sorry-lite, the, I’m sorry you’re upset, kind of sorry that placates without accepting any personal responsibility. But he does a great, let’s-change-the-subject-and-pretend-it-never-happened act, and when he makes that effort – for it clearly costs him quite a lot to do so – I do my best to take it as an apology and let whatever is happening go.

  “Hey, if we found the husband, would that mean we could buy the place?” he asks me excitedly as I step back into the flat.

  I shake my head, a little stunned by his energy levels. “Sorry?” I say. “If we found a husband what?”

  “Chantal’s husband, Jean. If we found him, would that mean we could buy the gîte, or would it make it more complicated?”

  I push my lips out and give a Gallic shrug. “No idea. It’s not likely though is it? I mean, if the police haven’t found him. Anyway, he could be dead.”

  “Well,” Tom says. “I was looking on the net for places to promote the place. And I found a hill-walking forum that mentions Chateauneuf d’Entraunes, and there was a post by him. By [email protected].”

  “Yeah?”

  Tom wrinkles his nose. “It’s from 2004, so it’s before he disappeared. I don’t suppose the email works anymore anyway.”

  “If it does, it’ll be Chantal picking it up,” I say.

  “Exactly, but anyway, that got me thinking so I Googled him. There are only three others on the web that I could see – Ancey seems quite rare. There’s a politician, so that won’t be him, and there’s a BMW dealer in Los Angeles and a satellite dish installer in Italy.”

  “The BMW dealer doesn’t sound likely,” I say. “But I suppose he could have run off with some Italian floozy to install satellite dishes.”

  “Well, I emailed them both anyway,” he says. “I sent fake business enquiries, asking them how long they have been established; I joined that hill-walking thing too. Seemed like a good idea.”

  “You? Hill-walking?” I laugh.

  Tom winks at me. “You’d be surprised what I’m capable of,” he says.

  At the exact moment he says this, his computer makes an Uh Oh, sound. It would be cute were it not the you have a message signal from the Recon chat sites. Leathermen.com, bikermen.com, bondagemen.com … I’ve checked them all out at one time or another, sometimes through boredom, sometimes through desperation. I know the little, Uh Oh, sound only too well.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  Tom frowns and peers at the screen. “I’m working on the website,” he says vaguely.

  “The Uh Oh noise,” I say. “It’s Recon.”

  “Oh that,” Tom says, casually. “Yeah, I was just, erm, chatting to someone.”

  I nod. “Yeah?” I say. “Anyone I know?” I’m trying not to sound like a desperate housewife here. I think I’m failing.

  “Nah, I don’t think so,” Tom says, forcing a disinterested tone of voice.

  I frown and swallow, trying to decide whether to pursue the issue. “Who then?” I eventually ask.

  “Someone I know,” Tom replies pedantically.

  “OK,” I say, moving to his side on the sofa. “You had better show me.”

  Tom swallows, glances sideways at me and apparently realising that there’s no escape, sighs and switches to the web browser.

  “Hot butt!” the most recent message says. “When can I fill your hole?”

  I raise an eyebrow and look at Tom. “Nice,” I say. “Sophisticated.”

  “I sent him one of the dirty photos you took,” Tom says, apparently deciding to brazen it out.

  I nod. We spent the previous weekend playing around with the digital camera. I didn’t think the end result was destined to be sent to all and sundry. “Oh good!” I say sarcastically.

  “Huh,” Tom says. “I knew it, and now you’re jealous, and you’re going to be in a huff all evening.”

  I frown at him. I haven’t even started to react yet. I haven’t even the first inkling of how I might feel about this.

  “I was gonna tell him,” Tom says. “I was just about to tell him that I’m married and that no-one fills my hole without my husband’s approval.”

  I nod, perplexed. “And that’s supposed to what? Reassure me?”

  Tom sighs deeply and with a theatrical flick of the wrist, closes the chat window with hungry-tool-brighton, and says, “If you’re determined to make this into a drama, go ahead.”

  I stand. I’m still feeling pretty much nothing. Not anger yet, though I can sense it coming. No real jealousy, though it’s probably not far off either. No, for the moment, I just feel numb. It seems to me that Tom is being provocative, and yet somehow blaming me for reacting. I need to walk away – to be on my own to think out a reasonable attitude to this new data without Tom prodding and poking, manipulating my reactions. I don’t want to react blindly to the provocation. Otherwise, my onboard computer says, it could really be a biggy.

  “My fault,” I say, as I put on my coat. “Sorry. Of course.”

  “Oh don’t go out in a huff,” Tom says. “It’s not what you think. I was just …”

  “I DON’T …” I interrupt him; my voice comes out in a shout, so I pause, calm it, and then continue, “I don’t want to talk about it with you right now.” I manage to close the front door quietly behind me.

  As I walk down to and then along the seafront, still wet from the rain, I turn the problem over in my mind, probing it from different angles.

  Intelligent thoughts don’t come easily, and the best process I find seems to be to think about how other people I know would react to their partners sending naked pictures out over the net and discussing the filling of holes. Most of my straight friends would be outraged, offended, jealous, and more than anything dissapointed in something I reckon most of them would find a bit pathetic – a bit distasteful.

  Most of my gay friends would say, I think, that it was harmless fun – mere text porn with a stranger in a moment of boredom. Unless it was happening to them of course, in which case it would be cause for drama if not actual divorce.

  I slip and slide down to the edge of the Med and start to throw pebbles into the smooth, undulating sea – the lights from the prom’ are reflecting on the waxy surface.

  After what seems like a few minutes but, my rumbling stomach tells me, is more like an hour, I start to walk home. I’m still not quite sure what I’m going to say, but it seems I need to ask Tom if this is fantasy browsing, or something else. And I need to work out whether Tom is still the stable adult with whom I thought I was building a relationship; or whether he has revealed himself to be – God knows … an adolescent sex junky, always trolling the net for something new, something bett
er? A short term affair, only in it for the adventure of opening a gîte? I’m feeling angry too of course, but mainly it’s his attempt at pinning the blame for the “huff” on me that runkles the most. That really seems unfair.

  The Pot and The Kettle

  By the time I get up on Wednesday, Tom has long gone. Wednesday is his morning at the swimming pool, but today he has headed out more efficiently than usual. I can’t blame him – nothing was resolved yesterday. I don’t think either of us had the energy to face round two, or three, or whichever round it would have been, so we both respected the tacit desire to make it to bed without a fist fight by saying not one word that wasn’t essential to each other.

  This morning, when I open up the laptop, mug of coffee in hand, Tom’s Recon page is still onscreen, and I think for a moment that he’s rubbing my nose in it – until, that is, I read the text in the middle of the screen: Your recon profile has been deleted. We’re sorry to see you go. That’s clear enough for me and close enough to an apology and as I shower, I start to feel that if the Recon thing isn’t of any consequence – as Tom is clearly trying to demonstrate – then the bad vibes are probably at least partly my fault. Maybe I overreacted a bit – it has been known!

  It’s a sunny day – icy cold in the shade, but with a clear blue sky – and as I wander through the old town towards the Nice Etoile shopping centre I rack my brain for something I can buy for Tom’s coming birthday. It’s hard to think about shopping for gifts; though my anger has faded, I’m still not feeling particularly loving. But it has to be done; failure to get a birthday gift, would, as the advert says, turn a drama into a crisis, or a crisis into a drama, or whichever is supposed to be worse.

  Workmen are out pulling down the barriers around the road works for the new tramway and the town is starting to look human again. On top of this it must be one of the rare weekends in the Nice tourist calendar when there are no carnivals, no bank holidays over the border, and no conferences: the streets are deserted, and it feels unusual and almost luxurious to be able to wander so easily though the streets.

  After an hour or so of browsing, I find a very cool parka affair for Tom. I think that it’s the perfect thing for him to wear as he walks his dog along the ridges around the gîte, and the symbolism of saying, “Yes, we’re still going to do this,” and “Yes, you can have your dog,” strikes me as perfect.

  I head back with the huge carrier bag, through the Cours Saleya flower-stands and on to where they are hosing down the closing vegetable market. The sun is so wonderfully warm that I hesitate in front of a big pavement café, the most gay-friendly of them all – La Civette – hoping for a table to come free, but it’s lunchtime and everyone is eating leisurely, so I give up and decide to have my coffee at home. Just as I turn to leave, I notice a flashy Italian looking guy in sunglasses waving my way. I check right, left and behind, but, no; he’s definitely waving at me.

  As I reach his table he takes off his shades. I swallow hard. “Hello!” I say with a grin. “I didn’t recognise you, what with the suit and the sunglasses.”

  He grins at me. “Can’t wear the uniform all the time,” he says. “Shame huh? It would be so much easier. Please, have a seat.”

  I look around the terrace and then shrug. “You sure you don’t mind?” I say. “It is very full today.”

  Ricardo grins and gives me an open handed gesture. “Please,” he says. “I have to go soon anyway.”

  I grab a spare chair from a nearby table and join him, stuffing the bag under my seat.

  He’s finishing off an omelette and salad. “Sorry,” he says, wiping bread around the plate. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. I cast around for a waiter, but they are all studiously avoiding eye contact in the way that only French waiters know how. As I scan from left to right, I steal a glance at Ricardo – the sequel.

  His suit is dark brown with a turquoise pin stripe – it hangs beautifully, settling in silky folds. He’s wearing a deep pink shirt also with turquoise stripes – open necked – and shiny pointy city-shoes. The overall effect is elegant and fashionable and maybe just a bit over the top. He looks like he should be hosting a chat show or something.

  I feel a pang of jealousy at his ability to dress like that and pull it off. You need exotic looks to get away with something like that, I decide. He smiles at me broadly. It’s that incredible face-cracking grin again, a smile so deep that I can feel it in the back of my head.

  I bare my teeth and make a mock-scratching gesture. “Lettuce,” I say with a wink, unable to quite believe how different he looks out of uniform.

  Ricardo pulls a funny face and scratches the green from his front tooth. “Thanks,” he says. “You look different too,” he adds, as if he can hear my thoughts.

  I feel myself blushing, I’m not quite sure why. “That sun’s hot!” I say, vaguely, looking away, pretending to look for a waiter again. Then I add, brazenly, surprising myself, “Yeah, well, I can’t wear bike gear all the time either. Shame huh?”

  Ricardo shrugs one shoulder and smirks at me. “You look fine,” he says, half closing his eyes.

  I restrain a frown, and then turn and wave to a waiter as a welcome distraction. “Oh!” I say. “S’il vous plaît?” But the waiter ignores me with studied expertise. “They’re incredible here,” I say, turning back to Ricardo. But he’s standing, pulling a banknote from his wallet and pushing it under the ashtray.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, shrugging. “I really do have to go.” He glances at his watch. “I have a …” he cocks his head, “rendezvous?”

  I nod. “A meeting.”

  He winks at me and nods and smiles again. “Yes, a meeting. At two.”

  “Oh, I …” I say, looking up at him and taking his outstretched hand.

  He shakes my hand solidly and then keeps hold as he says, “Maybe another time. I’m usually here on Wednesdays. As long as it’s sunny.”

  I nod and say, “Sure,” and I start to wonder about the overly long handshake. I notice my heart speeding up again. “I’ll keep watch … I mean, a look out … an eye open for you,” I say in a confused manner.

  Ricardo smiles and releases me, then says with another wink, “I’ll keep a look out for you too.” And with this he spins and walks away.

  I shake my head and finger the ashtray and Ricardo’s banknote. I move round to take his seat – it’s facing the sun. It’s still warm from his arse. I swallow hard and blow a little air between my lips and think, “What the hell was that?”

  “Autres choses?” the waiter asks, apparently unaware of the change of occupant at Ricardo’s table.

  “Oui, un café,” I tell him, “s’il vous plait.” And he grabs the plate, dumps the knife, fork and napkin on it and sweeps away leaving me to sit and think about Ricardo’s body language.

  The problem, I realise, is that I don’t know what his gestures, the long handshake, the eye contact, the face-cracking smile, might mean to a straight guy, to a straight Colombian guy – I’m trying to interpret them through my own built-in dictionary, but it doesn’t work, because my own vocabulary of male-to-male contact is all about sex and attraction. But straight men presumably do actually meet people they like sometimes, and occasionally they must decide to make an effort to befriend them, and so maybe Ricardo’s winks and smiles are just innocent signals within a language – a foreign language – of heterosexual male bonding?

  I realise, I think for the first time in my life, just how vague my grasp of that language, those rites, actually is.

  “Maybe I can learn with Ricardo,” I think. “Maybe he can be my new, straight friend. I could catch him here, next Wednesday, and we could talk about motorbikes … Maybe we can go on bike rides together. He said his girlfriend isn’t keen.”

  But my dick is stirring at the image in my mind – of Ricardo on the back of my bike – and it forces me to take in the truth of the situation. “Who am I kidding?” I think. The answer clearly is �
�� not even myself.

  And with the realisation that my heart is pounding and that, beneath the table, my dick is distinctly heavier than normal; that I’m blushing and fantasising about a guy I don’t know at all, a fireman from God-knows where, I start to feel guilty, and so I think of Tom and his gift beneath the chair, and realise that it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black; that his cyber-crimes, put into perspective by my own thought-crimes, really aren’t so bad after all.

  By the time I get home the Parka strikes me as an insignificant gift. It’s probably something to do with my guilt.

  Tom is still out, so I check my email and as I sit and stare at the screen, a loving feeling comes over me, and I want, urgently, desperately, to forget it all, to find a gesture magnificent enough to wipe out the recent grumpiness: the arguments about why Tom is living here, his internet chatting, my own unclear thoughts about Ricardo and fidelity.

  I want everything back to normal, and I want it that way in time for Tom’s birthday. “That’s what you have to do,” I tell myself. “When things get rough and irritable, when the desire to stray comes on, there are only two choices: walk away and give up, or fight to put the flame back in. And I’m damned if I’m walking away this time.”

  A flashing advert for weekend breaks on the screen gives me an idea. If Tom needs more fun than he has been getting, then what could be better for his coming birthday than a weekend away? What could be better than for us to forget our stupid arguments and rekindle that loving feeling? Wonderful, wonderful Internet: it takes me less than twenty minutes to find two cheap flights and a dodgy hotel, and by the time Tom walks in the door, the surprise is all fixed.

  A Perfect Day

  It’s the day of the trip, and Tom is proving more difficult to wake up than expected. I smile at his sleeping form and shake my head and place the breakfast tray on the blue metal cabinet beside the bed.

  I slither onto the bed beside him and nuzzle his warm neck. “Tom,” I say quietly. “I’ve got a birthday surprise for you, but it involves getting up! You really have to get up.” As I say this Tom pulls a pillow over his head and groans, so I shout, “NOW!” and pummel the bed either side of him until he bounces.