Nick Hornby - High Fidelity

High Fidelity
http://www.fictionbook.ru/author/hornby_nick/high_fidelity/hornby_high_fidelity.html
Page 109 of 112
6/20/2006
“Shall I send it to you Or do you fancy a drink”
“Umm … A drink would be great. I’d like to buy you one to thank you.”
“Great.”
Tapes, eh They work every time.
“Who’s it for” Laura asks when she sees me fiddling around with fades and running orders and
levels.
“Oh, just that woman who interviewed me for the free paper. Carol Caroline Something like that.
She said it would be easier, you know, if she had a feel for the kind of music we play.” But I can’t say it
without blushing and staring intently at the cassette deck, and I know she doesn’t really believe me. She
of all people knows what compilation tapes represent.
The day before I’m supposed to be meeting Caroline for a drink, I develop all the textbook symptoms
of a crush: nervous stomach, long periods spent daydreaming, an inability to remember what she looks
like. I can bring back the dress and the boots, and I can see her bangs, but her face is a blank, and I fill it
in with some anonymous rent-a-cracker details—pouty red lips, even though it was her well-scrubbed
English clever-girl look that attracted me to her in the first place; almond-shaped eyes, even though she
was wearing sunglasses most of the time; pale, perfect skin, even though I know she’s quite freckly.
When I meet her I know there’ll be an initial twinge of disappointment—this is what all that internal
fuss was about—and then I’ll find something to get excited about again: the fact that she’s turned up at
all, a sexy voice, intelligence, wit, something. And between the second and the third meeting a whole
new set of myths will be born.
This time, something different happens, though. It’s the daydreaming that does it. I’m doing the usual
thing—imagining in tiny detail the entire course of the relationship, from first kiss, to bed, to moving in
together, to getting married (in the past I have even organized the track listing of the party tapes), to how
pretty she’ll look when she’s pregnant, to names of children—until suddenly I realize that there’s
nothing left to actually, like, happen. I’ve done it all, lived through the whole relationship in my head.
I’ve watched the film on fast-forward; I know the whole plot, the ending, all the good bit. Now I’ve got
to rewind and watch it all over again in real time, and where’s the fun in that
And fucking … when’s it all going to fucking stop I’m going to jump from rock to rock for the rest of
my life until there aren’t any rocks left I’m going to run each time I get itchy feet Because I get them
about once a quarter, along with the utilities bills. More than that, even, during British Summer Time.
I’ve been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and
me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.
I know what’s wrong with Laura. What’s wrong with Laura is that I’ll never see her for the first or
second or third time again. I’ll never spend two or three days in a sweat trying to remember what she
looks like, never again will I get to a pub half an hour early to meet her, staring at the same article in a
magazine and looking at my watch every thirty seconds, never again will thinking about her set
something off in me like ‘Let’s Get It On’ sets something off in me. And sure, I love her and like her
and have good conversations, nice sex and intense rows with her, and she looks after me and worries
about me and arranges the Groucho for me, but what does all that count for, when someone with bare
arms, a nice smile, and a pair of Doc Martens comes into the shop and says she wants to interview me
Nothing, that’s what, but maybe it should count for a bit more.
Fuck it. I’ll post the fucking tape. Probably.
Thirty-Four
She’s a quarter of an hour late, which means I’ve been in the pub staring at the same article in a
magazine for forty-five minutes. She’s apologetic, although not enthusiastically apologetic, considering;
but I don’t say anything to her about it. Today’s not the right day.