13 Little Blue Envelopes(21)

She turned off the television and looked around the living room.

She would clean, that’s what she would do. Cleaning often relaxed her. She did the dishes, brushed the crumbs off the table and chairs, folded the clothes . . . anything she could think of.

She spent a good half hour examining the strange machine with the small glass window and the alphabetical dial that was under the counter in the kitchen. At first, it looked like a very odd oven. It took her a while to realize it was a washing machine.

By five o’clock, the feeling wouldn’t leave her. That was when 94

Richard called to say he would be home late. She couldn’t sit anymore.

She would just walk. She would walk just to prove to herself that she had learned the way there. It wasn’t far. She would walk there, look at the house, and then walk back. Then at least she could tell herself she had gone. It was pathetic, but it was better than nothing.

She wrote a quick note to Richard and headed out. She

carefully retraced the route as best she could. Newsagents . . .

yellow cones in the middle of the road . . . the zigzagging lines in the street . . . it was all there, somewhere in her head. But soon, the houses all looked the same. They all looked like Keith’s house.

She turned a corner and got the sign she needed—namely,

David. He was on the sidewalk, clutching his cell phone against his head. He was pacing back and forth in front of the gate and he didn’t sound very happy. He just kept saying “no” and “fine”

over and over in a way that seemed very ominous.

Ginny was close to the house by the time she realized it was him. She thought about backing away and waiting until he’d gone back inside, but he’d seen her approach. She couldn’t just run. That would be weird. She could only keep walking, slowly, cautiously, toward him. As Ginny reached the gate, he went silent. Then he hung up with an angry, snapping gesture and sat down on the low front garden wall and put his head in his hands.

“Hi?” she said.

“That’s it.” He shook his head. “I’m not going. I told her. I told her I don’t want to go to Spain.”

“Oh,” Ginny said. “Well. Good. For you.”

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“Yeah,” he said, nodding heavily. “It is good. I mean, I’ve got to start my life here, don’t I?”

“Right.”

David nodded once more, then broke down into heaving sobs.

There was a rustling noise above, and Ginny saw the crooked black blinds on Keith’s window rocking back and forth. A moment later, he was down on the sidewalk with them. Keith glanced over at Ginny. She could see his confusion at the two things in front of him—the fact that she was there and that his roommate was dissolving in tears in front of his own house. For a second, she actually felt guilty, until she remembered that this wasn’t her fault.

“Right,” Keith said, striding over to his car and opening the passenger door. “Get in. Come on.”

Ginny wasn’t sure who he was talking to. Neither was David.

They looked at each other.

“Both of you,” Keith said. “Brick Lane time.”

A few minutes later, she was part of this little group,

speeding deeper into East London, where the houses got a little grayer and the signs were written in curvy, totally unknown languages. Indian restaurants lined both sides of the street, and even the air was permeated with the odors of heavy spices, and they all seemed to be open, even at midnight. Colorful lights were strung from building to building, and hawkers stood in doorways, offering free beer or snacks to whoever would come inside. Keith, however, knew exactly where he was going and guided them to a small, very neat little restaurant where there seemed to be four waiters for every customer.

Ginny wasn’t hungry, but she felt the need to participate. She had no idea what to order, though.

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“I guess I’ll have what you’re having,” she said to Keith.

“If you had what we’re having, you’d die,” Keith said. “Try the mild curry.”

She decided not to challenge him on that one.

Keith ordered a whole list of foods, and soon their table was covered in bread baskets full of big flat things that they called papadams. There was a selection of vividly colored chutneys with large pieces of hot pepper floating in them, and beers. As soon as she saw the spread, Ginny understood. Keith was giving David a tragedy meal. She did the same thing with Miriam when she broke up with Paul last summer, except that her

version involved a half gallon of Breyers, a box of Little Debbie snack cakes, and a six-pack of blue raspberry soda. Guys would never be satisfied with that kind of comfort. If they were going to have a tragedy meal, they had to make sure there was a painful, masculine component to it.

Keith was talking a mile a minute. He started by telling a story about how he and his “mate Iggy” liked to show up at girls’ houses with their trousers on fire. (A trick, he explained in detail, that involved spraying the pants with an aerosol, like Lysol, then lighting the fumes, which then created fiery clouds just on the surface of the pants, which could be put out, provided you dropped to the ground at the right moment, which they usually did.)

The curries came out, and the steam coming off Keith and

David’s plates caused Ginny’s eyes to water and sting. David poked at his and listened to Keith talk with a dull, unchanging expression. His phone rang. He looked at the number and his eyes widened.