I wander out into the apartment. As I pass the iMac the screen flickers to life. Did I jolt it? If so I didn’t notice. But there it is. The photograph of Ben and me. I stand frozen in place in front of it. Drawn to it in the same way, I suppose, that a self-harmer is drawn to run the razor blade over the skin of their wrist.
After that dinner on the rooftop everything was different. Something had shifted. I didn’t like the way Papa had favored Ben. I didn’t like the way Ben’s eyes slid away from mine when he talked about our Europe trip. I also very much didn’t like the fact that every time I suggested we go for a drink, he was too busy. Had to rush off to see his editor, to review some new restaurant. Avoiding my calls, my texts, avoiding my eye when we met on the stairs.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. It wasn’t what I'd planned when I had offered him the apartment. He had been the one to get in touch with me. His email had blown open the past. I had taken a huge risk, inviting him here. I had assumed we had an unspoken agreement.
I walk across to the wall behind my iMac, run my hands over the surface. Feel the thin crack in the plaster. There’s a second staircase here. A hidden one. Antoine and I used to play in it when we were kids. Used it to hide from Papa, too, when he was in one of his dangerous moods. I am ashamed to admit this, but there were a couple of times when I used it to watch Ben, peering into his apartment, into his life. Trying to work out what he was up to. Wondering what he could be writing so busily on his laptop, who he was calling on his mobile—I strained to hear the words, but caught nothing.
Though he snubbed me, it seemed he did have time for the other residents of this place. I found them in the cave one afternoon when I came down to do my washing. Heard the laughter, first. Then Papa’s voice: “Of course, when I inherited the business from their mother it was a mess. Had to make it profitable. Have to be creative now, with a wine business. Especially when the estate’s no longer producing and it’ll all turn to vinegar soon. Have to find ways to diversify.”
“What’s going on?” I called. “A private tasting?”
They stepped out of the wine cellar like two naughty schoolboys. Papa holding a bottle in one hand, two glasses in the other. Ben’s teeth when he smiled were tinted from the wine he’d drunk. He held one of the few remaining magnum bottles of the 1996 vintage. A gift from my father, it seemed.
“Nicolas,” Papa drawled. “I suppose you’ve come to break up the party?”
Not: Would you like to join us, son? Care for a glass? In all the time I have lived under his roof my father has never suggested the two of us do anything like their cozy little wine tasting. It was salt in the wound. The first proper betrayal. I’d told Ben what sort of man my father really is. Had he forgotten?
Ben grins out at me from the photograph on the screensaver. And there I am grinning away next to him, like the fool that I was. July, Amsterdam. The sun in our eyes. Talking to Jess has brought it all back. That evening Ben and I spent in the weed café. Telling him all about my birthday, the “gift” from Papa. How it was like a catharsis. How I felt cleansed, purged of it all.
Afterward, Ben and I wandered out into the darkening streets. Just kept walking, chatting. I wasn’t sure where we were going; I don’t think he had a clue either. Somewhere along the way we’d left the touristy part of town and the crowds behind: these canals were quieter, more dimly lit. Elegant old houses with long windows through which you could see people inside: talking over glasses of wine, eating dinner, a guy typing at a desk. This was somewhere people actually lived.
You couldn’t hear anything other than the lapping of the water against the stone banks. Black water, black as ink, the lights from the houses dancing on it. And the smell, like moss and mold. An ancient smell. No queasy clouds of weed to walk through, here. I was sick of the reek of it. Sick, too, of the crush of other people’s bodies, the chatter of other people’s conversation. I was sick even of the two other guys: their voices, the stink of their pits, their sweaty feet. We’d spent too long together that summer. I’d heard every joke or story they had to tell. With Ben it was different, somehow—though I couldn’t put my finger on why.
This quiet: I felt like I wanted to drink it in like a cold glass of water. It felt magical . . . And telling Ben all that stuff about my dad—you know when you’ve eaten something bad and after you vomit you feel empty but also kind of cleansed, almost better than before in some indefinable way?