Nostalgia (Part 4)

“I live about 15 minutes walk from here,” I said. “It is a modest apartment, rented, on the second floor, no lift. I work for the University of London but I only have a contract; I don’t have a proper job and scarcely any prospects of one. Sometimes, I work in London, sometimes in Geneva.”  At the mention of Geneva, her eyes widened, if such a thing were possible.

“Switzerland,” she said. “Quite the little globetrotter, are we?”

“I do most of the theoretical work in London, the practical, the experimental, in Geneva; at CERN. You know, the LHC, the Large Hadron Collider. I am a sort of physicist.”

“You mean like Brian Cox?” She exclaimed. “He can smash my atoms any day; he’s so ridiculously cute! Oh, sorry, please go on; I did not mean to interrupt.”

“No,” I replied. “Not like Brian Cox at all; he’s a Professor with tenure and I am just a lowly contract worker with a PhD. Besides, he’s a lot brighter then I am and he used to play in a pop band; that’s why he’s so cute!”

Diary, I think I should avoid women.  Why do they always want to change the subject and why is everybody so much cuter than I? I continued with my half of this decidedly one-sided conversation in between sips of my Chai.

“Married? Sort of, used to be. No ring, no church, no legally binding contract but when you decide that banking is not what you want to do and smashing atoms is, then it is sometimes hard for other people to accommodate themselves to your plans. Children, no; sort of. She died a few minutes after she was born; massive brain damage, or malformed brain, the doctors said. There was just enough time to hold her in our arms before....”

It was about that time, diary, when I started blubbing. It’s been 9 years, diary; why? Why did she bloody well have to ask?

“Oh, I am so sorry,” she said. “I did not know! Please believe me that I wouldn’t have asked if I had known. I am so, so very sorry.” She appeared to be genuinely close to tears
.

“Now comes the part when I tell you that I have just made that up; to get you back for teasing me,” I replied.  Her eyes, like the dog in Andersen’s ‘Fyrtøiet’, the Tinder Box, became as big as mill wheels! “Only that wouldn’t be true. They say, ‘when you fall off a horse, you should get straight back on’; we never did. So there you have it; my sad tale. Are you satisfied? My apologies for the deception that never was; it was uncalled for. You got kids?”

She was rubbing her eyes, as if she had just woken up and was trying to rub the encrusted salt from her lids. One hand slid down to the pocket of her jeans while the other moved now to enclose both eyes. Taking the tissue from her pocket, she blew her nose vigorously; the tissue covering not only her nose but her eyes and her mouth. She blew again. Finally, she folded the tissue one more time and threw it into the waste-paper basket behind me. I automatically turned round; it was a ‘basket’.

“I cannot believe that you just did that. Are you always so cruel? I don’t know what is the worst; to lie, to seek to lie or to pretend to lie.” She wiped the back of her hand over her nostrils.

“I am sorry,” I replied. “I should be going; I fear that I have outstayed my welcome once again.”

I rose from my chair and drained the last of the Chai from my mug.

“Thank you for the tea,” I said. “I can let myself out; I know how to use a door.”

As I strode out of the dining area and into the kitchen, I heard her laugh. It faltered for a moment before suddenly erupting into laughter such as I have never heard before. She laughed as though her sides were about to split. She laughed in her belly, she laughed in her lungs, she laughed in her throat; for all I knew perhaps her vagina too was laughing. As I turned around, I could see her shaking, banging her hand on the table, tears were starting to stream down her cheeks; all the while, the sound of this incessant, maniacal laughter was ringing through the house.

“Oh Dominic, my dear Dominic, my saviour, my knight in shining armour,” she managed to blurt out before the laughter took a hold once more. “‘I can let myself out; I know how to use a door.’” She could barely get the words out amidst the mirth that was making her almost uncontrollable. “Do you know how silly that sounds? How positively ridiculous that is! That is on a par with......oh I don’t know but it’s certainly on a par with something! Come back here, silly! You have positively not outstayed your welcome and I am not angry; how could I be angry? I haven’t laughed so much in ages! Do you do this all of the time?” She collapsed into more paroxysms of laughter.