Oh, we know, both of us, that it shouldn't matter, that there's more to life than pairing off, that the media is to blame, blah blah blah. But it's hard to see that, sometimes, on a Sunday morning, when you're maybe ten hours from going down to the pub for a drink and the first conversation of the day.

I haven't got the heart for the rejection conversation. There are no hard feelings here, and I'm glad that she ditched me, and not the other way around. I already feel guilty enough as it is. We talk about films, a bit - she loved Dances with Wolves, Dances with Wolves, but she didn't like the sound of but she didn't like the sound of Reservoir Dogs Reservoir Dogs - and work, and a bit more about Tom, and a bit about Laura, although I just tell her that we're going through a rough patch. And she asks me back, but I don't go, and we agree that we've had a nice time, and that we'll do it again soon. There's only Charlie left now. - and work, and a bit more about Tom, and a bit about Laura, although I just tell her that we're going through a rough patch. And she asks me back, but I don't go, and we agree that we've had a nice time, and that we'll do it again soon. There's only Charlie left now.

Twenty

'How's the experimenting going? Are you still stretching your pop sensibilities?'

Barry glowers at me. He hates talking about the band.

'Yeah. Are they really into the same sort of stuff as you, Barry?' asks d.i.c.k innocently.

'We're not 'into stuff,' d.i.c.k. We play songs. Our songs.'

'Right,' says d.i.c.k. 'Sorry.'

'Oh, b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, Barry,' I say. 'What do your songs sound like? The Beatles? Nirvana? Papa Abraham and the Smurfs?'

'You probably wouldn't be familiar with our immediate influences,' Barry says.

'Try me.'

'They're mostly German.'

'What, Kraftwerk and that?'

He looks at me pityingly. 'Er, hardly.'

'Who, then?'

'You wouldn't have heard of them, Rob, so just shut up.'

'Just name one.'

'No.'

'Give us the initial letters, then.'

'No.'

'You haven't got a f.u.c.king clue, have you?'

He stomps out of the shop.

I know this is everybody's answer to everything and I'm sorry, but if ever a chap needed to get laid, it's Barry.

She's still living in London. I get her phone number and address from Directory Enquiries - she lives in Ladbroke Grove, of course. I call, but I hold the receiver about an inch away from the phone, so that I can hang up quick if anyone answers. Someone answers. I hang up. I try again, about five minutes later, although this time I hold the receiver a little nearer to my ear, and I can hear that a machine, not a person, is answering. I still hang up, though. I'm not ready to hear her voice yet. The third time, I listen to her message; the fourth time, I leave one of my own. It's incredible, really, to think that at any time over the last decade I could have done this: she has come to a.s.sume such an importance I feel she should be living on Mars, so that attempts to communicate with her would cost millions of pounds and take light-years to reach her. She's an extraterrestrial, a ghost, a myth, not a person with an answering machine and a rusting wok and a two-zone travel pa.s.s.

She sounds older, I guess, and a little bit posher - London has sucked the life out of her Bristol burr - but it's obviously her. She doesn't say whether she's living with anyone, not that I was expecting a message giving details of her current romantic situation, but she doesn't say, you know, 'Neither Charlie nor Marco can come to the phone right now,' or anything like that. Just, 'There's no one here, please leave a message after the bleep.' I leave my name, including surname, and my phone number, and stuff about long time no see, etc.

I don't hear anything back from her. A couple of days later I try again, and I say the same stuff. Still nothing. Now this is more like it, if you're talking about rejection: someone who won't even return your phone messages a decade after she rejected you.

Marie comes into the shop.

'Hi, guys.'

d.i.c.k and Barry disappear, conspicuously and embarra.s.singly.

' Bye, guys,' she says after they're gone, and shrugs.

She peers at me. 'You avoiding me, boy?' she asks, mock-angry.

'No.'

She frowns and c.o.c.ks her head to one side.

'Honest. How could I, when I don't know where you've been the last few days?'

'Well, are you embarra.s.sed, then?'

'Oh, G.o.d yes.'

She laughs. 'No need.'

This, it seems, is what you get for sleeping with an American, all this up-front goodwill. You wouldn't catch a decent British woman marching in here after a one-night stand. We understand that these things are, on the whole, best forgotten. But I suppose Marie wants to talk about it, explore what went wrong; there's probably some group-counseling workshop she wants us to go to, with lots of other couples who spent a misguided one-off Sat.u.r.day night together. We'll probably have to take our clothes off and reenact what happened, and I'll get my sweater stuck round my head.

'I was wondering if you wanted to come see T-Bone play tonight.'

Of course I don't. We can't speak anymore, don't you understand, woman? We had s.e.x, and that was the end of it. That's the law in this country. If you don't like it, go back to where you came from.

'Yeah. Great.'

'Do you know a place called Stoke Newington? He's playing there. The Weavers Arms?'

'I know it.' I could just not turn up, I suppose, but I know I'll be there.

And we have a nice time. She's right to be American about it: just because we've been to bed together doesn't mean we have to hate each other. We enjoy T-Bone's set, and Marie sings with him for his encore (and when she goes up onstage, people look at the place where she was standing, and then they look at the person next to the place where she was standing, and I quite like that). And then the three of us go back to hers for a drink, and we talk about London and Austin and records, but not about s.e.x in general or the other night in particular, as if it were just something we did, like going to the curry house, which also requires no examination or elaboration. And then I go home, and Marie gives me a nice kiss, and on the way back I feel as though there's one relationship, just one, that is OK really, a little smooth spot I can feel proud of.

Charlie phones, in the end; she's apologetic about not having called sooner, but she's been away, in the States, on business. I try to make out like I know how it is, but I don't, of course - I've been to Brighton on business, and to Redditch, and to Norwich, even, but I've never been to the States.

'So, how are you?' she asks, and for a moment, just a moment but even so, I feel like doing a misery number on her: 'Not very good, thanks, Charlie, but don't let that worry you. You just fly out to the States, on business, never mind me.' To my eternal credit, however, I restrain myself and pretend that in the twelve years since we last spoke I have managed to live life as a fully functioning human being.

'Fine, thanks.'

'Good. I'm glad. You are fine, and you deserve to be fine.'

Something's wrong, somewhere, but I can't put my finger on it.

'How are you?'

'Good. Great. Work's good, nice friends, nice flat, you know. College all seems a long time ago, now. You remember when we used to sit in the bar, wondering how life would turn out for us?'

Nope.

'Well . . . I'm really happy with mine, and I'm glad you're happy with yours.'

I didn't say I was happy with my life. I said that I was fine, as in no colds, no recent traffic accidents, no suspended prison sentences, but never mind.

'Have you got, you know, kids and stuff, like everybody else?'

'No. I could have had them if I'd wanted them, of course, but I didn't want them. I'm too young, and they're too . . . '

'Young?'

'Well, yes, young, obviously,' she laughs nervously, as if I'm an idiot, which maybe I am, but not in the way she thinks - 'but too . . . I don't know, time-consuming, time-consuming, I guess is the expression I'm looking for.' I guess is the expression I'm looking for.'

I'm not making any of this up. This is how she talks, as if n.o.body has ever had a conversation about this in the entire history of the world.

'Oh, right. I see what you mean.'

I just I just took the p.i.s.s out of Charlie. took the p.i.s.s out of Charlie. Charlie! Charlie Nicholson! This is weird. Most days, for the last dozen or so years, I have thought about Charlie and attributed to her, or at least to our breakup, most things that have gone wrong for me. Like: I wouldn't have packed in college; I wouldn't have gone to work in Record and Tape; I wouldn't be saddled with this shop; I wouldn't have had an unsatisfactory personal life. This is the woman who broke my heart, ruined my life, this woman is single-handedly responsible for my poverty and directionlessness and failure, the woman I dreamed about regularly for a good five years, and Charlie! Charlie Nicholson! This is weird. Most days, for the last dozen or so years, I have thought about Charlie and attributed to her, or at least to our breakup, most things that have gone wrong for me. Like: I wouldn't have packed in college; I wouldn't have gone to work in Record and Tape; I wouldn't be saddled with this shop; I wouldn't have had an unsatisfactory personal life. This is the woman who broke my heart, ruined my life, this woman is single-handedly responsible for my poverty and directionlessness and failure, the woman I dreamed about regularly for a good five years, and I'm sending her up. I'm sending her up. I've got to admire myself, really. I've got to take my own hat off and say to myself, 'Rob, you're one cool character.' I've got to admire myself, really. I've got to take my own hat off and say to myself, 'Rob, you're one cool character.'

'Anyway, are you in or out, Rob?'

'I'm sorry?' It is comforting to hear that she still says things that only she can understand. I used to like it, and to envy it; I could never think of anything to say that sounded remotely strange.

'No, I'm sorry. It's just . . . I find these long-lost boyfriend calls rather unnerving. There's been a spate of them, recently. Do you remember that guy Marco I went out with after you?'

'Um . . . Yeah, I think so.' I know what's coming, and I don't believe it. All that painful fantasy, the marriage and the kids, years and years of it, and she probably ended up packing him in six months after I last saw her.

'Well, he called a few months back, and I didn't really know what to say to him. I think he was going through, you know, some kind of what-does-it-all-mean thing, and he wanted to see me, and talk about stuff, and what have you, and I wasn't really up for it. Do all men go through this?'

'I haven't heard of it before.'

'It's just the ones I pick, then. I didn't mean . . . '

'No, no, that's OK. It must seem a bit funny, me ringing up out of the blue. I just thought, you know . . . ' I don't know, so I don't see why she should. 'But what does 'Are you in or out' mean?'

'It means, I don't know, are we pals or aren't we? Because if we are, fine, and if we're not, I don't see the point of messing about on the phone. Do you want to come to dinner Sat.u.r.day? I'm having some friends over and I need a spare man. Are you a spare man?'

'I . . . ' What's the point? 'Yes, at the moment.'

'So are you in or out?'

'I'm in.'

'Good. My friend Clara is coming, and she hasn't got a chap, and she's right up your street. Eight o'clockish?'

And that's it. Now I can put my finger on what's wrong: Charlie is awful. She didn't use to be awful, but something bad has happened to her, and she says terrible, stupid things and has no apparent sense of humor whatsoever. What would Bruce Springsteen make of Charlie?

I tell Liz about Ian phoning me up, and she says it's outrageous, and that Laura will be appalled, which cheers me up no end. And I tell her about Alison and Penny and Sarah and Jackie, and about the stupid little flashlight-pen thing, and about Charlie and how she'd just come back from the States on business, and Liz says that she's she's just about to go to the States on business, and I'm amusingly satirical at her expense, but she doesn't laugh. just about to go to the States on business, and I'm amusingly satirical at her expense, but she doesn't laugh.

'How come you hate women who have better jobs than you, Rob?'

She's like this sometimes, Liz. She's OK, but, you know, she's one of those paranoid paranoid feminists who see evil in everything you say. feminists who see evil in everything you say.

'What are you on about now?'

'You hate this woman who took a little flashlight-pen into the cinema, which seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do if you want to write in the dark. And you hate the fact that . . . Charlie? . . . Charlie went to the States - I mean, maybe she didn't want to go to the States. I know I don't. And you didn't like Laura wearing clothes that she had no choice about wearing when she changed jobs, and now I'm beneath contempt because I've got to fly to Chicago, talk to some men in a hotel conference room for eight hours, and then fly home again . . . '

'Well, I'm s.e.xist, aren't I? Is that the right answer?'

You just have to smile and take it, otherwise it would drive you mad.

Twenty-one