Sat now, alone at the party, my can empty in my hand, dented in several places where I had absently crushed my thumb and fingers into it, I considered getting another one, scanning the crowd for either an opening I could push through, or someone worth talking to, and was just about to stand when an unfamiliar girl threw herself down onto the sofa next to me.

“Hi,” she said.

Her face was thin and sharp, with a narrow nose and green eyes that looked away as I met them; cheeks rose-tinted, vasodilated; hair the colour of dry leaves, or of beer held to the sun, sticking out like straw, jagged and uneven because she cut it herself. In her hands, which rested on the patchwork fabric lap of her dress, she held two slim bottles. I did not think she was pretty.

“Hey,” I said, smiling, pressing the lager can between my fingers until it clicked and crinkled.

“I’m Remi,” she said, laughing nervously. Her laugh was not musical. “My name’s kind of a joke.” She looked down at her hands, tapped her fingers on the glass of one of the bottles.

“Is it?”

She nodded and asked my name. After I told her there was a silence and we both looked down at the open bottles she held, I taking sideways glances at her, noticing that her body was thin, thinner than mine, slight, boyish, until she looked up at me, saw me looking and held out the nearest bottle.

“You want another beer?” she asked, “it’s better than a can.”

I took the bottle, finding the lightly-coloured liquid inside sweeter and less chemical than the lager. We began to talk, the people surrounding us, the party and the music, the bright light, dying away as she told me how she went to the same university as me, studied art, liked painting and bright colours, action and movement, mentioned Futurism, piquing my interest. In exchange, I told her about my writing, about Virginia Woolf and James Joyce and Marcel Proust, worried I would sound pretentious, even as I took self-satisfied pride in reeling off their names, but she had not heard of them so could not judge me. She did not read much, or “enough”, she said, but would like to read something of mine some time, if I would show her. Of course I would, I said. She smiled against the rim of her bottle and looked over at two girls a few metres away, who giggled when they saw me looking and turned away. I felt embarrassed suddenly, back in the party, among all the other people, but separate, on the outskirts, with a stranger, an unknown girl who had brought me a beer and started a conversation. I caught a glimpse of Simon through a gap between two people, looking serious as he discussed something, a game probably, judging by who he spoke with, and I felt annoyed, annoyed that Remi should have watched me and spoken to her friends and come over here and sat by me with two beers in her hands and started talking to me. It annoyed me even as I appreciated the gesture, hypocrite that I am, because obviously, drunkenly, she had decided she had a crush on me, on the person sat alone on the sofa across the room of a party, she had said as much, when I made a joke, said that she “liked” me, though she did not, could not, know me, know where I had come from or who my past lovers had been, whether I was single or my girlfriend was absent, what I liked or disliked, whether I drank coffee or preferred cinnamon tea, whether I would rather have come to a party or stayed in tonight, whether I thought verisimilitude was more important in fiction than plot and dramatic event.

There was a break in our conversation, Remi reddened again, I silent, conflicted, looking blankly out across the crowd until I saw a face that was familiar but through several months’ absence had drifted beyond the bounds of immediate recollection, creating a brief pause before a name emerged: Nick. He called to me and came over, asked how I was, looked over at Remi. His hair was longer than when I had last seen it, and dyed black, though he still dressed in the same tight black band t-shirts and skinny-fit black jeans, broken only at his waist by a silver-shining belt buckle shaped like an audio cassette. I asked if he was here with Mike but, no, he said, Mike wasn’t there, they were no longer together but, seeing my face contort into condolence and regret, they were still friends, still hung around together, and it was weeks since they had broken up; they were both over it. I felt Remi’s awkwardness next to me, her sense of alienation, imagined empathetically her desire that I would turn to her and say truthfully, with conviction, “Nick, this is my girlfriend, Remi; Remi, this is Nick,” felt simultaneously still annoyed with her, or with myself, promising myself, as Nick continued to talk, that I would not fall in love with her, not right now, not straight away, not because she had shown some interest in me, whoever she was, adamant because of the beer, for which I had no tolerance, drinking it as rarely as I did, already tipsy and distrustful of my own perceptions, even after only one can and one bottle.

That I might already be falling for her, reciprocating her obvious feelings for the simple act of her coming over and bringing me a beer, disgusted me, but after Nick left, taking with him his great enthusiasm for everything and his overbearing laugh, I continued to talk with her and, as the party began to die down around two, as the hosts began to usher people towards the doors, Simon being lost in the crowd or outside already, Remi’s friends being abandoned or having abandoned her, we collected our coats and walked out together. Perhaps from the shock of the cold night air, or from moving after sitting and talking for so long, Remi suddenly went pale and darted out across the concrete forecourt of the house towards the kerb where she immediately bent over and vomited into a drain. Several people who still lingered in groups, some smoking, others waiting for stragglers still inside, watched the girl with mild interest and surprise, but did not move to help her, perhaps assuming that, because I had been stood with her, I would be the one to go over. When I did she stood and her face flushed, though the bright red of her cheeks was harder to discern in the street-light than the glistening of the watery sick across the bars of the drain cover. I asked if she was alright.

“I am now.” She wiped her mouth with a tissue pulled from her coat pocket, then held out and squinted at strands of her hair to see if they had been caught in the sudden cascade. They shone in the light but appeared to be dry.

“It’s cold,” she said, letting the hair fall back into place and pulling from her pockets some fleece mittens with cats-paw designs on their underside.

“I didn’t think you’d drunken that much,” I said.

She shrugged, “I didn’t eat before I came out,” then she added, quickly, for she had seen her friends come out through the front door, “will you walk me home? It’s not far, just a couple of streets away.” She gestured vaguely in the direction opposite to my house and my mind flashed to the walk home alone, to Simon walking alone also, unless anyone else went that way, then to Don Quixote, to the chivalric knights-errant he idolised, briefly to the characters of my novel, meeting for the first time in a café, spontaneously striking up conversation, embarking so easily, with so little provocation, implausibly even, at the behest of the author, for the convenience of the narrative on the same ‘quest’ together. It must happen, I thought, that people meet at cafés and strike up conversation, just as they do at parties, and that Remi came over and talked to me was proof of that, for which I should thank her.

“Sure,” I said, feeling for my mp3 player and headphones in the inside pocket of my coat. Music, the music of Dashboard Confessional perhaps, who I enjoyed, I told myself, ironically, would be my companion home, while chivalry, ‘being a gentleman’, served as an excuse to walk her home. Remi smiled and introduced me to her friends when they reached us, a blond-haired girl named Alice and the other with dark hair called Helen, who said they were going to a club, did Remi, or both of us, want to come? No, said Remi, she was going home and I would walk her. There was a note of pride in her voice, and the look she shared with Alice was meaningful and private, as if she had said something further telepathically. I watched the two girls leave and looked for Simon but did not see him because, as I discovered later, he had already left.

“Shall we go?” Remi asked.

I turned away from the people outside the house, abandoning my search for Simon and nodded at the girl in the red coat who stood with arms folded against the cold, breath coming in small bursts from between her colourless lips. My hands in my pocket clutching, but not wearing, my leather gloves, we began our walk, in silence, along the monochrome pavement, legs lit up, casting dancing shadows in occasionally passing headlights. I wondered if she understood the thrill of walking down nocturnal streets where the only sound was the distant whoosh of night-time traffic and leaves skittering and stepped-on on the pavement, the thrill of being here rather than anywhere else, at night, moving between amber pools in the darkness, thinking about the people warm and asleep in the passing houses, about the students and workers rowdy in the city centre, drinking, revelling, Helen and Alice gone too, dissatisfied with the party, insatiable, to join them, while Remi and I were neither asleep nor dancing, but here, frosty air on our skin, bodies warm beneath our coats, sharing a silent walk. I could not know what she was thinking, whether she longed only for her bed, in a room I had never seen, if she was too nervous to speak, her confidence and conversation having evaporated with the end of the party, no longer having the people around, her two friends, to support her. Perhaps she still felt sick, I thought as I looked at her nose and saw in her profile a kind of sharp prettiness. I asked her, but she said she felt fine, had “got it all out,” now felt sober and cold. The final word, spoken as she looked at me, as we passed beneath the full glare of a street-light, sounded like an invitation to pull her close and put my arm around her, but I did not.

We passed only two other people on our walk: a man in his twenties with shoulders hunched beneath a black hoodie, who caused me to draw close enough to Remi to brush against her shoulder so he could go by, and an older man, on the other side of a different street, who had a pipe in his mouth and held, at the end of a lead, a darkly-coloured Labrador. To my observation that it seemed late to be walking a dog, Remi smiled and said “this city is full of strange people.” I replied that anywhere you go has strange people. Remi nodded and was silent, ending our brief, meaningless conversation, though with no regret on my part because no longer, now that we had passed who we were, what we did, what we liked, was our conversation forced, instead could come and go as it pleased, comfortably, and was free to be entirely pointless, even if as banal as pointing out that it was late to walk a dog. I supposed we would be friends.

“Here’s my road,” Remi said regretfully as we came onto an even quieter terraced street further away from the main road than the house-party house had been. “I’d invite you in, but my parents will be asleep.”

“Don’t you live with those girls from earlier?” I asked.

“No, I liked my room here too much to leave,” Remi said, leading me now up the path towards a front door overhung with ivy, lowering her voice as if it would rise up through the windows and wake everyone inside. “And I’d rather save on rent and spend the money on art supplies.” She unlocked the door and pushed it open. “Wait here a moment,” she said, disappearing into the dark hallway, fumbling around at a desk for a moment and then returning with a pen in her hand. “I couldn’t find any paper,” she said, “so give me your arm.”

I asked why and she said that she wanted to give me her phone number. When I suggested why not just type it into my phone she giggled, covered her mouth to stifle the sound and said that perhaps she was not as sober as she had thought. I handed her my phone and the keys lit up beneath her jabbing thumb.

“Text me sometime when you’re bored,” she said, handing the phone back to me.

When I had typed in her name and put it back in my pocket, she stepped back out onto her front step, in her socks because she had already kicked her shoes off, and hugged me, tightly, but genuinely, without desperation, so I could feel her arms through my coat, and thanked me for walking her home. I left, mind blank, filled only with the echoing hollow music from my headphones, feeling nothing as I walked, barely thinking about Remi or the night or anything. Back at my own house, through the black metal gate that creaked and the wooden back door that had swollen with the cold, filling the frame so that it caught and protested when pushed open, I found Leo and Simon in the kitchen, both in night-clothes; one in shorts, the other in baggy tartan trousers, both wearing faded t-shirts and flushed with the heat from the radiators. Simon, who leant against the worktop waiting for the kettle to boil, shivered in the blast of cold air from the open door, while I recoiled against the wall of heat.

“It’s hot in here,” I said, squeezing through the doorway into the adjacent living room, past Leo who stood against the frame, noticing, as I pulled off my scarf, let my long coat fall onto the sofa, the wry smile the two of them directed at me, realising that they had been talking. I looked at them quizzically, waiting for an answer.

Leo broke the silence: “I hear you’ve been chatting up girls,” he said.

I pushed past him again, pulled a mug from the shelf and placed it next to Simon’s, dropping, a moment later, a single round teabag into it. Then I leant against the draining-board, opposite and diagonal to Simon, and shrugged. Simon stared attentively at me while Leo pressed the matter, asking who she was, but I said I did not know her. The kettle shook, then clicked, and Simon turned to fill the two mugs.

“You were talking to her for a long time,” he said, looking sideways at me as he swirled the bags around in the darkening liquid, “you must have learned something about her.”

“If you were curious, why didn’t you come over?” I said peevishly. Simon did not answer, instead scooped the limp teabag from his mug and dropped it into the bin, returning the spoon to the counter to allow me to do the same while he reached down to retrieve a bottle of milk from the fridge. I moved over to pick up the spoon and asked him in a less defensive way why he had left so early without telling me. He replied, straightening up and pouring the white liquid into his tea, that it was firstly because he had had the opportunity to walk most of the way home with his friend, and secondly because he had looked over and I was still talking to “that girl”. He passed the milk to me while Leo, bored and impatient, interjected a question about her physical attractiveness.

“She’s more Simon’s type,” I replied, again surprising myself with the defensive tone in my voice. Simon shrugged and sipped his tea. “She was sick after you left,” I volunteered, the ceramic side of my mug hot against my enclosing fingers, wanting again to compensate for the harsh tone that seemed to spring up from the inexplicable and vague annoyance thoughts of Remi created within me. “She threw up in the street, so I walked her home.”

“Did you kiss her?” Leo asked, stretched up now and swinging with his fingertips on the top of the door-frame like a bored child.

“With the taste of sick in her mouth? I already told you I don’t like her.”

Leo shrugged and left, no longer interested in our company, while mine and Simon’s conversation turned briefly to another subject before we each went to our bedrooms. I was tired, and so did not stay up long, but as I lay in bed I thought of Remi’s arms tight around my shoulders, and that brought to my mind my first embrace with Lila, by the creaking black gate on that cold September evening. That had been more than a year before, and had filled me with warmth and optimism, expectation, while Remi’s embrace, genuine as it was, felt insubstantial, inspired in me nothing more than indifference and mild resistance, had been even mildly uncomfortable, squeezing my chest, my lungs, causing me to gasp silently the cutting air. It had barely registered in this gasp how scentless her body was, though I realised now I had noticed only the faintest aroma of shampoo when she pressed against me, no lingering perfume like Lila had worn, no smell of alcohol or clothes or anything, but perhaps that was the cold, blocking up my nose or suppressing all scent so that I could not smell and be repulsed by her vomit on the drain, could observe it detachedly as I now recalled the hug. And yet I wondered why I was thinking about the hug from this girl at all, this girl who I had claimed already to my housemates that I did not like, why I would compare it with my first embrace of Lila, whom I had had strong feelings for at the time. True it did not happen every day that a girl would so blatantly flirt with me, would hug me, but I would not fall in love with her for that, I would not fall in love with her, I was adamant, though it seemed inevitable, and I fell asleep nursing that thought: I would not fall in love with her.

Tags: autumn, boy meets girl, extract, leaves, Marcel Proust, Modernism, night, party, Relationships

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 at 9:28 pm and is filed under Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.