Exciting Times(63)

He smiled like I’d just paid a small debt and thanking me would embarrass us both. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I wanted to ask – could you keep checking in with Miles when I’m gone? I know he’s doing better now, but he could use the company.’

‘Sure,’ I said.

My Hong Kong dollars were probably worth thirty euro, but maybe less now. The Hong Kong dollar was pegged to the US dollar, but that was only any use if you knew how the US dollar was doing, and their respective liquidities impacted their value on the forex market. Traders had names for currency pairs: euro, cable, gopher. Some of the coins were grubby and some were new, but they were interchangeable because money was fungible. I’d known that word generally, fungible, but Julian had told me how economists used it. He’d told me lots of things.

I said: ‘Does Miles know you’re leaving?’

‘Yes, I told him a few weeks ago.’

‘Right.’ I said it the same way he always did.

‘And by the way,’ Julian said, ‘we need to work out where you’ll live.’

‘I’ll manage,’ I said.

‘Can you? I know you said your salary wasn’t very high.’

‘It’s good compared to locals’. They all live somewhere.’

‘With their parents, or else in coffin homes.’

‘It’s really got nothing to do with you,’ I said. It wasn’t what I’d planned to say, but my mouth was twitching like someone else controlled it. ‘Thanks for the guest room. That’s all. We’re done. Thanks.’

We mutually agreed, through certain expressions, to pretend I wasn’t about to cry. I thought that was generous of us.

‘You brought me here so I couldn’t react like this in front of everyone,’ I said.

‘Clearly bringing you to Starbucks has been a very successful way of preventing your reacting like this.’

‘I didn’t say it worked. I said that was what you were trying to do.’

‘That’s not helpful, Ava.’

‘Why do I have to help you?’

‘You don’t have to help me. But it’s probably in both our interests if you try to help with the situation.’

‘The situation between us? I don’t think there’s anything I can do to help with that.’

I found it deeply unfair that he’d known what he was going to say before I knew the conversation would even happen. Logically, I knew this was not a valid complaint. You had to arrange things in your head before you said them aloud, and it was a fact of leaving that one person knew before the other did. Really my grievance was that he was in charge and not me. But I couldn’t conscript him into staying with me, and anyway I didn’t like him very much. And I didn’t need him to tell me how much Hong Kong dollars were in euro. There was an app for that.

‘I’m not talking to you,’ I told him.

‘I can see that.’

‘No, but I’m not.’

‘Yes, evidently that’s the case.’

*

Some people wore not caring about money as a trait. I’d seen online that Julian’s ex Charlie lived in Shoreditch and said without elaboration that she ‘created’. If your work was an intransitive verb then that meant your trust fund subsidised it. Good for Charlie. Charming for Charlie to be a free spirit. For me, whatever paid rent was the decision. Sometimes there were multiple ways of paying rent, and then I got to pick between them. And sometimes there was no way.

I stood on Julian’s balcony – while I still could. The clouds were bloated and the roads swelled with cars. My first Airbnb had been down along the other side of the port. I’d go back there, or somewhere similar. I’d felt different away from the cockroaches, but I saw now we had plenty in common – insects, climbers, cold inside. We thrived in hostile settings. There were places we did better, but nowhere could kill us. I hated them not because they were contaminants, but because they weren’t. There were no pathogens they could spread that I didn’t carry myself. Living uphill, away from them, I’d forgotten that. I’d thought my blood was hot.

*

That night in his bed, I told Julian we were now once again on speaking terms. He said he couldn’t see the practical import of this pronouncement, given that I had continued to say words and acknowledge his responses throughout putatively not talking to him, but he appreciated the thought.

‘But I don’t think I was ever obsessed with you in a romantic way,’ I said, ‘or even in a sexual way.’

‘I was never obsessed with you, full stop.’

‘I thought we were past that.’

‘No, I’m serious. The only obsession I’ve got room for is my job.’

‘Right, because you’re so busy and important.’

‘I thought we were past that, too,’ he said.

I wondered if he really wanted me to visit and if I could show up in Frankfurt with my suitcase and winter coat. He often said he didn’t meet many people like me. But I didn’t know if that meant there was necessarily a vacancy for them. He’d managed quite far without me, so it didn’t make sense to assume he’d welcome me back in his life.

‘Thanks for your time,’ I said.

‘You too. I haven’t been this happy in quite a while.’