Still

Such a perfect day for a wedding.
And when it is mostly finished, when it is nearly done and children heatstruck and sleeping on chairs, and adults boozefaced and sentimental and storytelling, and friends of friends fucking in a child’s bedroom they’ve found amongst teddy bears and maps of the world and Lego spaceships, Niko sits on a tree stump in the woods, away from the party, holding his pint of bitter with two hands, afraid he might drop it and spill beer all through the moss.
Between dark trunks he spies the last remaining dancers, illuminated blue and pink and purple against the crawling ivy of the rented country house, impossibly young and good looking and dressed in tight pastel clothes; he watches a couple walk to the small bridge that crosses the brook, hold hands and look at the sky; sees the stragglers by the firepit, tossing beer-bottle labels into the flames, surrounded by paper plates and wine glasses and plastic chairs at wonky angles.
The night crackles on, in bass and laughter and screaming women.

It is twenty nine years ago, and Niko is entering his room, Sandun’s room, his cupboard with a bed. His friend is sat, topless, drinking lager at eleven fifteen in the morning, clothes everywhere, cuban-collared shirts fluttering on nails by the open window, crumpled gingham trousers wedged between the spines of the radiator. A tobacco-tone suit jacket, cigarette burns on the sleeve, half beneath the duvet, passed out.
Stuck to the wall, Scrabble pieces read:
THESE ARE THE GOOD OLD DAYS.

But on days like today, life tastes of Plymouth gin, and Pimms, and a golden Spanish beer that cuts through the heat. You must mention the food. All home-made, every smear of humous, and locally sourced and completely vegan except for the cheese and all in nice earthenware bowls of different colours. It sits in the sun too long because they want it out for right after the ceremony and Niko thinks it tastes bland and rubbery and over-lemoned and altogether not as good as hog-roast.

Of all the parts of the human body, he likes the upper back the most. He likes watching people reach for things and seeing the muscles come into definition. He follows swimmers at the pool stretch forward and pull at the water, watches the elongated balls of strength gather and disperse across their shoulders as they swim. Sandun reaches for another beer. Niko feels a rush of blood to his cheeks.
There’s more on the windowsill if you want one, Sandun says. Thought they’d be cooler out there overnight but never mind. The sun’s fucked me over once again.

The turmeric-stain light that billows beyond the gazebo, spraying pretty floating patterns on the grass beneath trees and turning Polaroids all sun-bleached and purple-orange. The thick heat that people spend all year longing for and then sit in the shade when it comes, feeling ill, dabbing their armpits with toilet paper in the bathroom and looking closely in the mirror at their damp foreheads. The afternoon breeze that finally arrives from a dirty ocean fourteen miles away, welcomed like the pizza man. They play rounders and tug-of-war and a Scandinavian game with numbered blocks of wood, and people keep touching Niko’s shoulder and saying, Got so lucky with the weather.

The university steps, over the quadrant, passing a joint. Sandun wears a shirt now; it has corduroy squares, it has tassels. The clouds press the sky against the ground, leaking grey, one of those London days you feel hungover and exhausted even when you’re not.
I don’t understand, Sandun says, why people choose to study subjects they hate to get jobs that they hate. You know, impress people they hate.
He gestures, vaguely.
Was there some part of you, some minuscule element of your being, that thought you might come here and be inspired? Tell the truth. Meet people and learn things and talk about books? I haven’t fallen in love. Not once. Not for a single second.

The bride reads her vows from a flappy piece of paper and doesn’t speak loudly enough for those at the back. Niko sees her as a schoolgirl, made to do a reading at assembly, face down in the text, mumbling sentences, getting stuck on words and rendering them unintentionally absurd with her cadence, shaking and going red, wondering what lesson or skill could possibly be worth learning so badly that she has to endure such humiliation, thinking she will never cease to be embarrassed of herself in public, quickly walking from stage the moment the last word is uttered, as the last word is uttered.
Today, she vows to tolerate his Tarantino fandom if he promises to accept that Harry Potter is literally her life.

They lean against a railing on the rooftop of their halls, drinking strong sangria they made, tipping some off the edge and watching it splay and scatter in the afternoon wind. Across the street poke the doughy, business-bruised arms of women smoking from the open window of a brothel.
My old man lost his virginity to a prostitute, says Sandun.
Niko laughs, but not because he thinks it’s funny.
More than that, says Sandun. He offered to get me one.
What did you say? says Niko. Sandun turns and looks out over London, at pigeons congealing on a ledge, extractor pipes emerging like shiny robot worms from concrete apples.
What’s your budget?

Niko’s brother Ferenc brings his young girlfriend Sophia to the wedding. He is sheepish around her, quick to mention the small fashion label she designs for and apparent interest in photography, glaring at anyone whose eyes drift to the silver crucifix that bounces on her exposed chest or whose lips curl into a false smile when she brings up her strong feelings about Virgos.
Niko and Ferenc stand by the keg and chat as they refill their beers. Ferenc is always ready with a tip, and tells Niko about a mine in Yorkshire he has bought shares in. Fertiliser demand is growing at tremendous speed, virtually an untapped global market, he says, millions of tonnes of this, whatsitcalled, potash just lying beneath the— Niko interrupts him, pointing.
Who’s that? Do you recognise that boy there?
The mulatto-looking one? he whispers, looking around to make sure Sophia is out of earshot. Niko doesn’t hear his brother, however, because the familiarity is shocking.

Do you want to take loads of cocaine and go bowling? says Sandun, and they do.
Niko comes up whilst he’s standing at the bar and even though the lights pulse and he is beginning to sweat he feels enormously grounded and calm and pleasant and as though he might want to dance. In the plastic chair by the alley his pint tastes like water. He watches a vein in Sandun’s bicep as he winds up a shot and feels the thrill of being far from home, of not being who people thought you would be.

A cricket match of great interest to some of the uncles on the bride’s side is being played at Lord’s, and they keep looking at their phones and shaking their heads and muttering to each other about the ball not swinging. The speeches are universally fantastic and mostly short, with shots in hand for toasting and microphone static that makes the old women jump and touch their ears. The best man tells a complicated story about a night out, a trampoline in someone’s front garden, then clears his throat and launches abruptly into a description of his depression, of unending weeks in bed, the sense of drowning on land, and turns and looks at the groom and raises his glass of Unicum and says thank you and everyone is crying and Niko feels a warm anxiety in his throat he cannot explain.

What’s your idea of human nature? he asks Sandun. They sit in Russell Square with bottles of beer they opened on the side of the bench. You hate people telling you what to do, yeah. You get annoyed by any kind of authority. But at the same time you get wound up by people who are, what’s the term, expressing their freedom. I mean, do you see the contradiction there? He feels nervous and does not look at his friend when he talks, as if delivering bad news on behalf of someone else.

There are lots of young people at the wedding. Niko has known some since they were small children with scruffy hair, picking Babybels out of padded lunch boxes on school trips to Hastings and Fishbourne Palace. He talks with them, trying to remember courses studied and careers embarked upon, bored by society’s latest contortion, the throwback fashion and endless conversations about gender. He thinks of how he appears, walking quietly along the horizons of other people’s lives. Good Old Nick, harmless, under-the-thumb Nick.
In this way he rotates through the groups dotted about the lawn, making small talk, careful to avoid the boy he noticed before. Still, he glances frequently in his direction, watching him speak or drink or laugh at a joke, and tries to convince himself that the resemblance isn’t total, that he is taller and his eyebrows are thinner, that there is something in his gestures that is less expansive and dramatic. But no amount of rationalisation can release him from the cold sweat of longing, the pulse that pounds in his temple, the twitch of his dick through his suit trousers.

The central concern of liberalism, says Sandun, looking up at the silent fountain, turned off for the day and somehow bigger in the dark, is presented to us as question of personal freedom. In fact it’s not. It’s other people’s personal freedom. Other people have no taste.
He sits not on the bench itself but on top of it, with his feet on the seat.
Look, you want to hear my idea of human nature? My idea of human nature is fifteen-year-old girls doing despicable things with married men in swimming pools. And being utterly thrilled by it. Human nature is skinheads spitting at my old man on Quay Street, calling him a Paki – I’m sorry, a dirty stinky Paki – and it’s him coming home and raving about how he’s from Sri Lanka and he’s never even been to Pakistan and how could they possibly mix him up with those dreadful people?
My dad is Hungarian, says Niko. I used to get bullied and stuff.
Let me tell you something, says Sandun. Napoleon tried to invade Russia and failed, fucked it and his troops retreat across Eastern Europe getting chased by fucking… Cossacks. They have all this loot, right, that they’ve stolen. Anyway, at some point a horse-cart falls in a ditch. Gold goes all over the shop. Everyone stops fighting and dives for the treasure. Actual war breaks down and it’s this mad free-for-all. Soldiers turn up in Lithuanian villages, near dead from starvation, bent double with all the jewellery they’re trying to carry. Uh-huh. Men dying in fields, eating grass and dirt with a solid gold ring on each finger. That’s my idea of human nature.

As soon as the wedding is chaotic enough he won’t be missed, Niko leaves the crowd like ice slipping silently from the wing of a plane. He walks through the cluttered rooms of the house, cool and dark in pleasing shades of red mahogany and green leather, quiet in that unsettling way country houses seem to city people, until he finds a study with Chesterfields and crystal decanters and a door that locks. From his inside pocket he untangles some headphones, plugs them into his phone and sinks into an armchair. He puts on Music for 18 Musicians and lets the hypnotic cycles wash over him until his heartbeat slows down, closing his eyes and tapping his fingers on the armrest.
Why not fucking kill yourself? he says, gently.

It rains as the two friends walk back to their halls. When they get to Sandun’s room he says, Do you want some more? and tips the remaining cocaine onto his desk. They take two lines each and go through Sandun’s records. Artists Niko knew nothing of a few months previously but now deployed as weapons in conversation: Jacques Brel, Serge Gainsbourg, Scott Walker, Steve Reich. Sandun pulls Snowflakes Are Dancing from its sleeve and puts it on. This is the good shit, he says, and lies back on the bed. Shirt off, hair still wet from the rain. Niko thinks that he looks like an Italian in a black-and-white movie.
The little details of the room become interesting to Niko, the way the wood of the window has worn smooth from being slammed on the sill, the badly painted skirting board, the grey carpet releasing frayed curls of wool by the doorway and around the edge of the room. The desk, too: who sat there? Who would sit there?
Sandun pulls Niko back onto the bed and says, What are you staring at you retard? and as he does Niko’s hand gets stuck between them.
He doesn’t move it and suddenly neither of them are talking.

Niko steps back into the heat and Ferenc calls him over to the bar. Pity mum isn’t here, he says. She’d love this. Niko nods, takes a sip of his beer. Listen, says Ferenc, leaning closer, I know this won’t have been you, but Anna pulled me aside earlier and said, well she kinda implied that Sophia wouldn’t be in any of the pictures, because she’s not family. Obviously it’s bullshit. You couldn’t have a word, could you? Only she was so nervous about coming and making a good impression and this will just set her off.
I’ll see what I can do mate, says Niko.

Kissing a man is different from kissing a woman. Niko notices this straight away in the friction of Sandun’s stubble and the firmness of his body, his thick arms and strong thighs. He smells like rain; a hand around Niko’s neck pushes him onto the pillow, furls into fingernails dragging down his chest and through his hair; his trousers are off and he feels Sandun weight, his wet breath between his thighs, his warm mouth.
Then Sandun is kissing him again and guiding his hand and Niko tastes his own semen in Sandun’s saliva and begins to worry that he won’t be able to stay hard because of the cocaine; Sandun whispers, Slower, relax, it’s alright and Niko realises his whole body has tensed up; he concentrates on breathing and pulls the duvet over them and lies back, looking at the stained and spotted ceiling tiles, the red blinking light of the fire alarm; the record still plays; from outside the room comes the distant slamming of doors, the loud laughter of drunk women; he smells incense, and realises Sandun must have lit some before; the thought comes that this was planned, that he has been seduced, and the conceit of being worth seducing wells up inside him; the bed is warm, sticky, the pillow wet with rain and sweat; Niko gulps and tastes cocaine and nuzzles into Sandun’s neck, breathing him in and finally melting into the moment.
Every part of him has a pulse.

They bring out gingerbread hearts as the drink is taking hold. Niko sits with milky eyes, marvelling at his own cowardice. After all these years, this is who he is. Quietly he rises and makes his way to the edge of the party, skirts the field and enters the woods to look for a place where he can be by himself and watch and wait for it to be over so he can go to his bed.

You know what I think? says Sandun, after it is done and they are come-tired and Niko lies on his chest, listening to his heartbeat, leg hairs sticky with semen. Fuck London. I hate this place. I want to live in Tokyo and make synth-classical masterpieces. I want to live in Warsaw and open a bar in a tower block and sleep with sad communists who are, you know, despite it all, nonetheless heartbreakingly romantic people. I want to live in Colombia and run guns for the mafia. Isn’t it a shame you can only live one life at a time? I’ve always thought that was the greatest shame.
The morning arrives soft and clear and the room is briefly amber; they fall asleep again, arm in arm like children dozing on a hot afternoon.

From his spying place, Niko watches her walk from group to group as the sun goes down, grabbing people’s wrists, standing too close when she talks. Watches her subconsciously gather litter, tidying the plates, emptying bottles onto the grass. He thinks of all the guff he will hear about the wedding photos, about that stuck-up bitch with the tits who just had to get her own way, and then he thinks about work on Monday, an email he needs to send, how he is always doing things that aren’t his job.

Niko wakes to an empty room and hollow head. The next few weeks are strange. He sees little of Sandun, and when they talk he is distant and distracted, talking with his mind full, until one day his room is empty and all that is left are glue-marks on the wall where the Scrabble pieces were. He leaves no address. That night, Niko drinks brandy and meets a girl and takes her to Sandun’s room, where they have sex so oddly passionate and gentle and grasping for another world Niko is sure she will assimilate it forever into her vanity. In the morning she asks him about the empty room and he says he used to know the guy who stayed here but he doesn’t stay here any more.
He receives a letter from Sandun two years after he disappeared, sent to his parents’ house. In it, he says he is living in Lisbon, writing a little, drawing a little, getting by. Says that his flat has high ceilings and his neighbour screams and whips himself, that the salted fish is something else. Writes he felt trapped in London, cloud-locked. That he has been feeling tired and spends most days listening to Leonard Cohen records with the window open, eating cornbread and cheese. Says he’s sorry the way things worked out.

She gets closer to his bit of the forest and throws her hands up in the air. Oh there you are, she says. Where have you, I’ve been looking all over. Today, did it have to be today? Danny is looking for you and Ferenc wanted to say goodbye but I expect he’s left now. Nick? Today of all days. Don’t you ever think about anyone but yourself?
Niko says nothing, and continues to say nothing, and eventually she leaves, because it’s one thing for the father of the groom to go missing on the day of his only child’s wedding but both parents is gossip for fishwives and if she goes back to the party now she can just tell everyone he’s had one of his turns and gone to lie down for a bit and wouldn’t they please help themselves to the rest of the buffet because it’s only getting thrown out otherwise.