Chapter 35 Armand Phones a Friend
Armand Phones a Friend
“Everybody takes a little tumble now and then,” Karim reminded me, using the butt of his last cigarette to light another and then puffing in the hollow of his hands.
The smoke mingled with the steam of his breath, and the red glow between his fingers made him seem like an ancient god, staring down at the concept of fire, weighing the pros and cons of sharing it with humanity.
Mortal that I was, I used my lighter. “Doesn’t help that I live atop an oil slick,” I grumbled.
He rolled his eyes. “Yani, none have suffered as you have suffered?”
“No, they bloody well haven’t.”
We hugged. “Make sure you ring someone.” He squeezed the life out of me for emphasis.
“I can’t be badgering you at all hours of the day, Sidi.”
“It doesn’t have to be me. Just someone. And you don’t have to tell them why, say you love them. Ask what’s on telly. Tell them to fuck off. But reach out to someone, habibi. All we got to hold on to in this world is one another.”
Oh, what bollocks.
I made it home in the rain and ice, paced the flat, left again, and circled the block. I went back upstairs—careful not to make any noise in the hall that might wake Winnie—then returned to the cold, smoking on the fire escape.
It was a quarter after one, and I wasn’t ringing Lucas.
Or Karim, or Lakshmi, or Belle, or Sam, or Craig, or anyone who had work in the morning. Some of them were still awake, surely, but we were all at an age where the discouragement of such behavior was the mark of true friendship.
I wasn’t ringing Lucas.
But there was someone else I knew who would definitely be up at this hour.
“Armaaand! Oh my god, I can’t believe you called.
Skyler, look who it is!” I briefly saw a ruddy-faced Finch, then he turned me on a tableful of strangers, and it took everything I had not to ring off.
I spotted Skyler flanked by an enormous middle-aged ginger and small auburn-haired fairy who must’ve been the Finches senior, as well as a pair of young people, likely Skyler’s brother Matt and the fabled Delia.
They all looked happy, sleepy, and well-fed.
God help me, I’d rung during bloody Finchgiving.
“Everybody, say ‘Hi, Armand!’”
“Hi, Armand,” the table chorused, not a note of awkwardness among them.
“Er. Hi.”
Finch turned the camera back on himself and squinted at me. “Where are you? Why is it so dark?”
“I’m, er . . . I’ve stepped out for a smoke.” Better than admitting I was lingering on a freezing fire escape in the early hours of the morning.
“Lucas asleep?”
Don’t lie. Don’t lie. Don’t lie. “No idea. He’s at his mum’s.”
Finch’s gaze darted past me at, one assumes, the table of friends and family watching him play mental health coach to a man nearly ten years his senior. “Um, guys? I’ll be right back, just gonna give Armand a tour of the garden.”
I sat down and leaned back against the railing, hunched around my phone, waiting for Finch to take me somewhere quiet. When he had—I could see a beautiful starry evening sky and several dogs sweetly nosing his shoulders—Finch set me down on something and focused in. “Hey there, Big Guy.”
“Hullo, Titch.”
“You good, bro?”
I grimaced. “No, I am not ‘good, bro.’ Sorry, I didn’t mean to take you away from everything—”
“Dude, it’s great. I needed a minute.” He smiled. “It’s going weirdly well.”
“Oh, aye?”
“Yeah, unfortunately the hype is real.” He sighed. “Delia’s awesome. I really, really wanted her to suck. Now I hate myself for how much I like her.” He watched me for a few moments, then: “Ready to talk about it?”
I shook my head. “So, you like her. Does she like you?”
Finch avoided answering by having a brief but intense cuddle session with a gray-muzzled mutt introduced as “Bluto,” who stared at me through the phone with alarmingly human eyes.
“I think so,” Finch said finally. “We talked about art for like three hours. Her paintings are really good. And she says she wants to read my screenplay.”
“Well, that’s something, innit?” I rubbed a hand over my face.
“Do you want to read my screenplay?”
“Nah, Titch.” I lit another cigarette and closed my eyes. “But I will, if you ask me.”
“Okay. You need to talk about it now. Ready?” I could vividly imagine the look he was giving me, all pinched brow and big eyes.
“We had a row,” I said. “At the exhibition opening. It . . . I was in the wrong.”
“Did you apologize?”
Fuck. Fuck. “No.”
We sat in silence while I watched Finch pet dogs, and he watched me quite possibly slowly freeze to death.
“I’ve also had a bit to drink,” my body said without input from the rest of me, “some time ago now.”
“How long?”
I squinted at the time on my phone. “Nearly twenty-four hours.”
“And you’re not gonna have any more?”
“Not if I can help it.” I clenched a hand in my hair and scrubbed at my scalp. “No, I’m not. Sorry for putting you out.”
“Yeah.” He grinned. “I really prefer it when you thumbs-up everything.”
I laughed; it sounded helpless and high-pitched. “You should get back to your family, er, and friends. Give my love to Skyler—”
“Don’t you hang up.” Finch jabbed a finger at the screen, and I felt the ghost of it against my sternum. “Now, what’s the plan, Stan?”
“Pardon?”
“How are you going to get Lucas back?”
“I . . .” I swallowed. “I rather suspect I won’t.”
“Bullshit. You guys have one fight and you’re calling it quits? See, this is the problem with your generation, no resilience.”
This was my due for befriending people whose frontal lobes were still cooking.
“That’s not how it works, Titch. I can’t simply apologize.
” Though it would, undoubtedly, be a good start.
“I can only hope he looks past—” And it was at that moment I realized all the myriad horrible deaths I’d rather experience than explain to Robin Finch, twenty-year-old bright-eyed American dreamer, about Jean.
And that was telling, wasn’t it?
“Looks past what?” he asked, giving me the perfect opening. Fuck.
I started slowly, kept the details very sparing, and to his credit, Finch didn’t react with any of the scandalized delight I’d expected.
I’d thought there’d at least be some jokes at my expense, some reaction to the revelation of my past as a sex worker, but Finch merely followed along, petting his dogs, frowning.
When I was done, he asked a few clarifying questions, mostly about how long I’d let Lucas build a relationship with my ex without saying anything, and whether I’d talked to the police about any of this.
“Being a creepy git isn’t a crime,” I reminded him.
“Stalking is a crime, Armand.” He smiled sadly. “Guess I can’t pull the ‘mandatory reporter’ card on you, can I? The turns are super-duper table-ing right now.”
We sat in silence for a while longer, then he said, “I think you need to go inside. I can see you shivering.”
That likely meant he wanted to get back to the holiday dinner I’d interrupted.
“Aye. Er. I’ll talk to you later—”
“Actually, could you stay on the line?” My view whirled as he picked up the phone and carried me inside. “We’re about to do pies and watch Smoke Signals, you down?”
“What, sit there as the Ghost of Thanksgiving Past?”
“More like the Livestream of Finchgiving Present, but sure, you can be as Dickensian as you want, Big Guy.” Then he stepped into the bright interior and once again turned me to face the gathering. “Armand’s gonna stick around, cool?”
There was an utterly unforced and deeply humbling cheer that went up, and Mrs. Finch clasped her hands to her freckled cheeks. “See? This is why we need that Willy Wonka thing where you can send food through the screen—”
“Okay, but then why not send him through the screen?” Finch settled me against something on the table, so I had the turkey’s eye-view of this strange Norman Rockwell pastiche.
“We’ve talked about this, Robin, entropy. Losing a molecule or two in a pecan isn’t the same as losing a synapse or two.” She turned to me suddenly, and it was like being hit with a floodlight. “What was your name again, kiddo?”
“Er. Armand.” I hadn’t been so casually “kiddo”ed in months.
“Armand might come out a completely different person.”
“And tiny,” Delia added.
“And, he’d mostly be a head,” Matt pointed out as he helped Mr. Finch clear dinner dishes. “Which could work, I guess, if we got him some kind of mini Krang set-up.”
“Armand, go inside.” Skyler leaned toward the screen, trying not to look worried. “We really don’t want to watch you freeze to death. Please?”
So, I did, and I set my phone on the kitchen counter while I put the kettle on. They kept arguing about fictional physics, distributed pies and ice cream, and Mrs. Finch set up a film projector.
I spent the next few hours with them, silent on my little screen, puttering around my horrible little kitchen, slowly clambering out of my horrible little hole.
It was perfect; Finch and Skyler were my friends, or friend-like entities, which kept me perceived and present, but the four other strangers gave me enough anonymity that I wasn’t overcome with shame and insecurity.
It helped that they didn’t call much attention to my presence, just let me hover and feed off their warmth like the undead specter I was.
I tried to keep my hands busy and avoid meeting anyone’s eyes for too long.
Finch was setting his phone in a charging port on the kitchen counter so I could passively join in the washing up, when a knock came at the door. My door.
Finch and I locked eyes. It was nearly four in the morning, there was only one person it could be.
“Answer it!” Finch squeaked, as his family, Skyler, and his family all crowded around the phone, staring in at me like a fish in a bowl.
“Is that Lucas?” Matt asked. “It’s gotta be, right?”
“Go answer the door!” Skyler hissed. “Robin, hang up!”
The screen went blank as the knock came again. I very nearly injured myself getting to the door.