You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [82]
Watching him that afternoon, with people pushing past, I felt again as if I were on the precipice of something. It was as if my life had slowed and accelerated all at once. I thought I’d leave him alone to smoke his cigarettes. But I couldn’t stop watching him work, tapping his fingers on the table as he wrote and wrote.
He was a kid writing a paper. He was my friend. The only person who’d never disappointed me. I walked to the café and knocked on the glass. He looked up, raised his chin, and waved me in.
By the time I got through the door and to his table at the window, he’d cleared a space for me. We shook hands—this time traditional, solid, and strong. The waiter came over and I asked for a coffee but Colin said no and ordered us two beers. I shrugged and the waiter left.
“What’s this?” I asked glancing at his notebook.
“English.”
“Already?”
“I’ve got things to say, mate. And I want to make sure he fucking reads the thing.”
“What do you mean?”
The waiter put our beers in front of us. When he’d gone Colin looked at me. “He won’t be around much longer, Gilad.”
“Why not?”
“You really don’t talk to anyone.”
“What?”
He picked up his beer and went to take a sip but then stopped. Instead he held his glass up, “Cheers,” he said.
“Cheers.”
We touched glasses. The low sun was shining through the window onto our table.
“Gilad, man, look, O.K., you know who Marie de Cléry is?”
“I know her. So what?”
“We were together for a long time. I dumped her last year.”
“O.K. So?”
“She’s insane and she talks, man. She talks to everyone. She’s fucking him. She’s fucking Silver, O.K.?”
“Bullshit, Colin,” I laughed.
“How do you not know this? You’ve never heard this story? She hasn’t shut up about it.”
“You believe it? You’re serious?”
“Not at first. At first, I thought it was bullshit but now, mate, I’m pretty sure it’s true.”
“There’s no way it’s true.”
“I didn’t think so either. I mean, fuck, you see the way the girls here follow him around, that guy could have anyone he wants, so why does he choose her? There’s no way, right? And I keep shaking my head, thinking there’s no way. But now I hear people’s parents are talking about it. It’s out there, mate.”
He took a sip of beer. I looked outside. We sat in silence for a while, watching people funneling from the street into the métro. From time to time kids from school would walk past the café and down the stairs, their backpacks slung over their shoulders.
“Look, man, why do you think Ariel hates him so much?”
I shook my head.
“She was the first to find out. She was the first one Marie told, mate. She says she’s morally outraged. She’s so full of shit. All she could talk about last year was how she wanted to get with him. She’s just jealous he didn’t choose her. We got into a big fucking thing a few months ago. She told me she was going to tell her parents. I told her she was jealous and she lost her shit. When I said that, I didn’t even believe it was happening, but now, man, I’m sure it is. Or it was. I even heard she got pregnant.”
I watched the street. The sun had fallen behind the trees and the streetlights had come on.
“You think they’ll fire him?”
“That’s what I hear. I mean, of course they will.”
We were quiet for a while. We drank our beers.
“It doesn’t matter,” Colin said.
I glanced at him, “Why not?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about the whole thing. Not just the Marie thing, but what he did at the protest. The way he bitched out like that? Let that dickhead spit on him? I don’t know. I was mad. I was so fucking mad. Just walked away like that. I expected, I don’t know, something more. More . . . more . . .” he trailed off.
“Heroics,” I said.