Nick Hornby - High Fidelity

High Fidelity
http://www.fictionbook.ru/author/hornby_nick/high_fidelity/hornby_high_fidelity.html
Page 47 of 112
6/20/2006
wrote—” (and here I name Steve’s greatest hit, a drippy and revoltingly sensitive ballad) “should be
such a bastard.” I’m very pleased with this explanation for my amazement. Not only does it get me out
of a hole, but it’s both sharp and relevant.
“That song’s about his ex, you know, the one before me. It felt real good listening to him sing that
night after night, I can tell you.”
This is great. This is how I imagined it would be, going out with someone who had a recording
contract.
“And then I wrote ‘Patsy Cline Times Two,’ and he’s probably writing something about me writing a
song about all that, and she’s probably writing a song about having a song written about her, and … ”
“That’s how it goes. We all do that.”
“You all write songs about each other”
“No, but … ”
It would take too long to explain about Marco and Charlie, and how they wrote Sarah, in a way,
because without Marco and Charlie there would have been no Sarah, and how Sarah and her ex, the one
who wanted to be someone at the BBC, how they wrote me, and how Rosie the pain-in-the-arse
simultaneous orgasm girl and I wrote Ian. It’s just that none of us had the wit or the talent to make them
into songs. We made them into life, which is much messier, and more time-consuming, and leaves
nothing for anybody to whistle.
Marie stands up. “I’m about to do something terrible, so please forgive me.” She walks over to her
audiocassette, ejects one tape, rummages around, and then puts in another, and the two of us sit in the
dark and listen to the songs of Marie LaSalle. I think I can understand why, too; I think if I were
homesick and lost and unsure of what I was playing at, I’d do the same. Fulfilling work is a great thing
at times like these. What am I supposed to do Go and unlock the shop and walk around it
“Is this gross or what” she says after a little while. “It’s kind of like masturbation or something,
listening to myself for pleasure. How d’you feel about that, Rob Three hours after we made love and
I’m already jerking off.”
I wish she hadn’t said that. It kind of spoiled the moment.
We get back to sleep, in the end, and we wake up late, and I look and perhaps even smell a bit grottier
than she might have wanted, in an ideal world, and she’s friendly but distant; I get the feeling that last
night is unlikely to be repeated. We go out for breakfast, to a place that is full of young couples who
have spent the night together, and though we don’t look out of place, I know we are: everybody else
seems happy and comfortable and established, not nervy, and new and sad, and Marie and I read our
newspapers with an intensity that is designed to cut out any further intimacy. It’s only afterwards that
we really set ourselves apart from the rest, though: a quick and rueful peck on the cheek, and I have the
rest of Sunday to myself, whether I want it or not.
What went wrong Nothing and everything. Nothing: we had a nice evening, we had sex that
humiliated neither of us, we even had a predawn conversation that I and maybe she will remember for
ages and ages. Everything: all that stupid business when I couldn’t decide whether I was going home or
not, and in the process giving her the impression that I was a halfwit; the way that we got on brilliantly
and then had nothing much to say to each other; the manner of our parting; the fact that I’m no nearer to
appearing in the record sleeve notes than I was before I met her. It’s not a case of the glass being half
full or half empty; more that we tipped a whole half-pint into an empty pint pot. I had to see how much
was there, though, and now I know.
Eleven
All my life I’ve hated Sundays, for the obvious British reasons (Song of Praise, closed shops,
congealing gravy that you don’t want to go near but no one’s going to let you escape from) and the
obvious international reasons as well, but this Sunday is a corker. There are loads of things I could do;